Republican House leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor thought they had a plan to win over the really far right wing bloc of their very right wing caucus, defusing their demands that the government be shut down if they can't defund Obamacare. Boehner and Cantor, knowing that that's both impossible
and politically insane, came up with a
convoluted alternative: Passing a funding bill and a resolution that would defund Obamacare, then hold onto the funding bill until the Senate voted on the defunding resolution. That would make the Senate "own" Obamacare, they'd get that part out of the way, and then they could move on to starving government with an inadequate budget.
So far the teabaggers aren't buying it.
“Any strategy that allows Harry Reid to fund Obamacare is a failed strategy,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of the featured speakers at the rally outside the Capitol. “I don’t think the American people are interested in yet another symbolic vote. We need leaders in the House and Senate to stand up to defund Obamacare.” [...]
Heavyweight conservative organizations including Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and Heritage Action said the same thing on Tuesday: All complained that the plan wouldn’t really block spending on the Affordable Care Act because it would allow the Senate to knock out the defunding language.
Hopefully, this opposition will derail the leadership's real budget plan: Breaking the 2011 budget law that set spending levels at just over $1 trillion, but offering up a spending bill that sets levels at the sequester spending, $988 billion. That $988 billion would then in turn be subject to sequester cuts, so real spending would be $967 billion, even below the devastating levels we're at now. For now, the teabaggers are so blinkered by their obsessions with Obamacare, they're missing that bigger budget picture, missing their chance to really destroy government.
If we're lucky, that blindness will see us through this budget fight and Boehner and Cantor will lose enough of their own caucus to be stuck with two choices: A budget that complies with current law and that they can get some Democratic support for, or being responsible for, shutting down government. Either way, it's not going to be pretty and it's not going to be fun for Boehner and Cantor. Too bad.
Stand with Daily Kos and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in denouncing Republicans who would completely shut down the government just to destroy Obamacare.