Charles Krauthammer:
The Obamacare/shutdown battle has spawned myriad myths. The most egregious concern the substance of the fight, the identity of the perpetrators and the origins of the current eruption.
(1) Substance
President Obama indignantly insists thatGOP attempts to abolish or amend Obamacare are unseemly because it is “settled” law, having passed both houses of Congress, obtained his signature and passed muster with the Supreme Court.
Yes, settledness makes for a strong argument — except from a president whose administration has unilaterally changed Obamacare five times after its passage, including, most brazenly, a year-long suspension of the employer mandate.
Article I of the Constitution grants the legislative power entirely to Congress. Under what constitutional principle has Obama unilaterally amended the law? Yet when the House of Representatives undertakes a constitutionally correct, i.e., legislative, procedure for suspending the other mandate— the individual mandate — this is portrayed as some extra-constitutional sabotage of the rule of law. Why is tying that amendment to a generalized spending bill an outrage, while unilateral amendment by the executive (with a Valerie Jarrett blog item for spin) is perfectly fine?
(2) Perpetrators
The mainstream media have been fairly unanimous in blaming the government shutdown on the GOP. Accordingly, House Republicans presented three bills to restore funding to national parks, veterans and the District of Columbia government. Democrats voted down all three. (For procedural reasons, the measures required a two-thirds majority.)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid won’t even consider these refunding measures. And the White House has promised a presidential veto.
The reason is obvious: to prolong the pain and thus add to the political advantage gained from a shutdown blamed on the GOP. They are confident the media will do a “GOP makes little Johnny weep at the closed gates of Yellowstone, film at 11” despite Republicans having just offered legislation to open them.
And besides, whence comes the sanctity of the “clean CR,” the single bill (continuing resolution) that funds all of government? The Democrats have declared it inviolable — and piecemeal funding, as proposed by the Republicans, unacceptable on principle. On what grounds? After all, the regular appropriations process consists of 12 separate appropriation bills. The insistence on the “clean CR” is just a fancy way to suggest some principle behind the president’s refusal to compromise or even negotiate.
(3) Origins
The most ubiquitous conventional wisdom is that the ultimate cause of these troubles is out-of-control tea party anarchists.
But is this really where the causal chain ends? The tea party was created by Obama’s first-term overreach, most specifically Obamacare. Today’s frantic fight against it is the echoing result of the way it was originally enacted.
From Social Security to civil rights to Medicaid to Medicare, never in the modern history of the country has major social legislation been enacted on a straight party-line vote. Never. In every case, there was significant reaching across the aisle, enhancing the law’s legitimacy and endurance. Yet Obamacare — which revolutionizes one-sixth of the economy, regulates every aspect of medical practice and intimately affects just about every citizen — passed without a single GOP vote.
The Democrats insist they welcomed contributing ideas from Republicans. Rubbish. Republicans proposed that insurance be purchasable across state lines. They got nothing. They sought serious tort reform. They got nothing. Why? Because, admitted Howard Dean,Democrats didn’t want to offend the trial lawyers.
Moreover, the administration was clearly warned. Republican Scott Brown ran in the most inhospitable of states, Massachusetts, on the explicit promise to cast the deciding vote blocking Obamacare. It was January 2010, the height of the debate. He won. Reid ignored this unmistakable message of popular opposition and conjured a parliamentary maneuver — reconciliation — to get around Brown.
Obama is having fun using the government shutdown to squeeze the public in imaginative, purposefully hurtful ways.
Who, specifically, does he want to hurt?
TAXPAYERS……
The new World War II Memorial on the Mall has been barrycaded shut, today with the addition of wire holding all the barryicades together.
Photos compare WWI with WWII barrycades:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wired-shut-barricade-wwii-memorial-reinforced_759193.html#
An angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”
And the MILITARY……
Camp David is NAVY run.
Obama INSISTS it be kept open for his convenience.
But Obama tried to stop the Army and Navy football games.
AND Obama has stopped all televised coverage of both the MFL and the baseball playoffs to all military personnel overseas:
A notice on the Armed Forces Network page reads:
The virtual elimination of sports coverage was noticed by the New England Sports Network, co-owned by the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins. “AFN provides a form of escape for many troops stationed around the world. Let’s hope the popular station gets back on the air soon,” they reported.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/military-keeps-camp-david-open-halts-nfl-baseball-coverage-to-troops-overseas/article/2536819
Having been passed by both houses of Congress, signed by the President, and upheld by the Supreme Court—with the deciding vote being cast by a conservative justice—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. Further, the president who championed the bill was reelected by a solid majority of American voters after all of this took place, despite the fact that his opponents had made the law a central election issue. Obamacare is as soundly established as a law gets under our system of government.
Laws can be repealed if there’s sufficient support for such action. There’s a legitimate process whereby this can be accomplished. What republicans are attempting isn’t it. What they’re attempting is far worse than unseemly. It’s a serious challenge to our legislative system and the rule of law. They shouldn’t expect Obama or any other American president to “compromise” on those points. What they’re defining as “compromise” would be nothing less than the overturning of legislation that has become the law of the land by means not provided in the U.S. Constitution.
@Greg:
. Greg, you’re not really that dumb are you? Surely it’s just an act. Slavery was once the law of the land, did that make it right? Is it still the law?
All money spent by the US government has to be done so by a spending bill that originates in the House.
Passing a law that makes something either legal or illegal goes no where until money is appropriated, by a bill originating in the House, to fund that law. So far, no money has been appropriated to fund Obamacare. That’s the law also, just as you point out that Obamacare is the law. Until funding is appropriated and approved by both congress and the President, no money can be spent on Obamacare. So, just getting a law passed without getting funding passed, doesn’t mean a damn thing.
@Greg:
Actually, Greg, they are following the law, which requires that a bill originating in the House to fund the law has to be passed. To date, that has not happened, til it has been done, the law can’t be enforced. That’s what the Republic is about. The Representatives are supposed to represent their constituents. Learn about the process before you speak about something you seem to have no knowledge of….
@Redteam, #4:
As I stated in another thread:
Thinking such overriding powers were intended to be part of the budget process simply makes no sense.
Scott Walker refuses federal order to close state parks