The House voted to repeal ObamaCare today, well….they voted to move forward to the final vote on Wednesday, but vote they did and it passed.
Confronting President Obama, the new Republican-led House took a first step Friday toward a symbolic vote to repeal his landmark health care overhaul law, which would provide coverage to more than 30 million Americans without health insurance.
But the 236-181 largely party-line vote is unlikely to amount to more than a political message, since Democrats who still run the Senate have promised to block efforts to scrap the law and Obama has veto power.
Four Democrats voted alongside Republicans, less then the vote in March, and Allah does an excellent job explaining why:
…remember, most of that herd of 34 was culled by voters in November, leaving just 13 survivors to vote on this bill. (There’s one “achievement” you won’t hear Pelosi boast about.) And of those 13, most are now in a position where they have more to fear from angry liberals challenging them in a primary than from conservatives coming after them in the general.
~~~Ross and Boren were two of the four Dems who voted yes today; the others were Larry Kissell and Mike McIntyre. All four voted no back in March, and all four had a surprisingly easy time against the GOP in the general election last November notwithstanding the big red wave breaking across the country. Boren won by 13 points, Ross by 17, Kissell by nine, and McIntyre by eight. The thinking here, I assume, is that liberals won’t risk challenging southern Democrats who seem to have a lock on their seats; they’re too rare and valuable these days. If they’re going to go after someone, better to go after a Jason Altmire who won with only 51 percent in November and could have another tough run ahead in 2012. Liberals could knock him out in the primary and then, with Obama base voters turning out in the general, win back the seat with a more liberal Democratic nominee. No wonder, then, that Altmire voted no today after voting no on O-Care back in March whereas Boren et al. felt comfortable sticking it to the left by voting yes on repeal.
Either way it will get blocked by the Senate so, as the Washington Times noted above, it’s largely symbolic. What isn’t symbolic is the money that would be saved if the monstrosity was repealed:
The Congressional Budget Office, in an email to Capitol Hill staffers obtained by the Spectator, has said that repealing the national health care law would reduce net spending by $540 billion in the ten year period from 2012 through 2021. That number represents the cost of the new provisions, minus Medicare cuts. Repealing the bill would also eliminate $770 billion in taxes. It’s the tax hikes in the health care law (along with the Medicare cuts) which accounts for the $230 billion in deficit reduction.
That 540 billion is actually low-balling it.
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