|
Daily
Events...
Fridays
with Erick Erickson
Partial
Repeal strategy for Obamacare
03.02.12
Republicans
and Democrats in Congress are working on some popular bipartisan
legislation to
begin partially repealing parts of ObamaCare — no doubt parts of
ObamaCare that
would never have made it in had the Democrats read the bill first.
I think any
partial repeal, and we’ve already seen some, is a disastrous plan for
the
Republican Party to follow and will almost certainly ensure that
ObamaCare
stays around forever. The only strategy the Republicans should pursue
is full
and complete repeal, repeatedly getting the Democrats on record
supporting a
policy the American people are opposed to by significant majorities.
In a
partial repeal strategy, as the GOP is now pursuing, once they’ve
gotten rid of
all the stuff on which there is bipartisan agreement, every additional
point of
repeal becomes a full on partisan fight just like a full repeal vote,
but with
one big difference: a full repeal vote has the American people on the
side of
the GOP.
Each
additional partial repeal vote will have the public breaking off back
and forth
between the Republicans and the Democrats depending on the particular
part of
ObamaCare being considered for repeal, making partial repeal a mine
field for
the Republicans.
If the GOP
will not commit to votes on full repeal with the American people so
clearly on
their side, prepare to be nickeled and dimed into an even more costly
form of
ObamaCare where all the stuff both sides agree they hate (the stuff
that was
initially designed to keep costs down) goes away and all the stuff the
Democrats love stays because a handful of Republicans are too scared to
vote
with the rest of their party to get rid of the programs.
That also
adds one significant issue — the items in ObamaCare that are the most
unpopular
on both sides of the aisle are the things written into the bill
designed to
mitigate the costs of ObamaCare. Once both sides get rid of those
proposals
with no alternatives to mitigate the costs, ObamaCare will not just
stick
around, but be an even bigger budget burden.
—Erick
Erickson
Read this
and other articles at Daily Events
|
