G.O.P. Eyes Hard Line Against Health Care Law
Published: September 10, 2013 - New York Times
WASHINGTON — The House Republican leadership signaled
Tuesday that Republicans would support an essential increase in the nation’s
debt limit in mid-October only if President
Obama and Democrats agree to delay putting his health insurance program into
full effect — a demand that sets the stage for another economically risky
confrontation.
The strategy, which Representative Eric
Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, outlined to a private caucus
of Republicans, underscored the clout of the most militant conservatives, whose
demands to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act have cleaved the party.
While the tactic is fraught with risk for Republicans, some conservative
lawmakers and groups objected that it did not go far enough in using the looming
fiscal deadlines as leverage with Democrats.
The proposal for dealing with both fiscal fights of
the fall — on a continuing resolution to keep financing federal operations after
the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, and a mid-October deadline for increasing the
Treasury borrowing limit — seemed to reflect House leaders’ belief that
Republicans’ bigger political risk is being blamed by voters for a government
shutdown, as they were during the Clinton administration.
Many economists and analysts say the bigger economic
risk, however, is a failure to lift the debt ceiling, which would leave the
Treasury unable to pay creditors and bills that the government already is
obligated for, harm the nation’s credit rating and ultimately could cause the
first default. Yet that issue is where House leaders are making their more
serious stand against the three-year-old health insurance law they call
Obamacare. Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio had already promised “a whale of a
fight” with the administration over the debt limit, and Mr. Cantor shared more
specifics of the strategy with his colleagues at the party meeting.
“This law is not ready for prime time and will never
be,” Mr. Cantor said in a statement.
This week, he said, the House will vote on a
resolution to continue discretionary spending for domestic and military programs
from Oct. 1 through Dec. 13 at the current reduced levels, which reflect the
across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester, which Mr. Obama and
Democrats want to end. To appease hard-line conservatives, the House will also
vote on a companion resolution to defund the health care program.
The Republican House majority presumably would pass
both resolutions. But the Democratic-controlled Senate could choose to ignore
the health insurance measure and negotiate over government funding.
The Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and
Senate have agreed to meet on Thursday, for the first time since Congress
returned from its five-week summer recess, to begin discussions on the coming
fiscal fights over the continuing
resolution and the debt limit.
In the House, the Republicans’ private caucus on Mr.
Cantor’s strategy came as Congress was roiled by the debate over Syria. While
several lawmakers lodged objections, the reception was not so hostile initially
to dissuade the leadership from following through.
But the Club for Growth, an activist group feared by
many Republicans for its track record of financing primary campaigns against
incumbents deemed insufficiently conservative, quickly sent an e-mail to
Congressional offices urging opposition to the proposed continuing resolution,
and warning that the vote would be part of the group’s annual scorecard for
lawmakers.
“Rather than fight to defund Obamacare, or to even
have an honest debate about it, House leaders have decided to go with a ‘smoke
and mirrors’ strategy that avoids the issue,” the club’s vice president for
government affairs, Andy Roth, wrote in the e-mail.
And the club president, Chris Chocola, a Republican
former congressman from Indiana, in a statement characterized the strategy as
“legislative tricks,” and added, “I hope this proposal is nothing more than a
bad joke and is quickly discarded.”
Outside the Capitol, Tea
Party supporters protested the health insurance law and called for Mr.
Obama’s impeachment. One sign pictured the president alongside Hitler and Stalin
with the words “Abort Obumacare!” and “Impeach the Liar!”
While House leaders’ immediate problem is unifying
Republicans behind a fiscal strategy, ultimately they need support from Senate
Democrats and Mr. Obama to both finance military and domestic programs and raise
the debt limit. And the White House and most Congressional Democrats support the
health law and oppose Republicans’ proposed budget levels.
Those levels, Democrats argue, provide more money and
flexibility for the Pentagon, while freezing domestic programs at sequestration
levels lower than provided in the budgets that Mr. Obama proposed and the Senate
passed for the 2014 fiscal year.
A White House official said that the administration
had not seen House Republicans’ proposed language for a government-funding
resolution, but that the president would not accept anything “that defunds
Obamacare or further cut the investments we need to grow and create jobs.” As
for the debt
limit, the official reiterated the president’s position that he will not
negotiate over raising the borrowing ceiling.
“Unfortunately, it sounds like the extreme right wing
has once again defeated the wiser voices within the Republican
Party,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior
Democrat on the House Budget Committee. Republicans, he added, “are now
threatening our entire economy if we don’t hand control of Americans’ health
care back to the insurance industry.”