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View Full Version : Politico: Hey, it’s really Republican sabotage causing Obamacare’s problems



red states rule
11-02-2013, 04:20 AM
I actually saw this "reported" on the Chris Matthews Show last night, Now I know there are some Obama lap dogs that will buy this - but not that many. Once again the liberal media has pressed the panic button and are starting an all out offensive to try and save the Dems from the wrath of the voters

$600 MILLION plus have ben spent and as usual, Dems whine that there was not enough funding





To the undisputed reasons for Obamacare’s rocky rollout — a balky website, muddied White House messaging and sudden sticker shock for individuals forced to buy more expensive health insurance — add a less acknowledged cause: calculated sabotage by Republicans at every step.

That may sound like a left-wing conspiracy theory — and the Obama administration itself is so busy defending the indefensible early failings of its signature program that it has barely tried to make this case. But there is a strong factual basis for such a charge.

From the moment the bill was introduced, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress announced their intention to kill it. Republican troops pressed this cause all the way to the Supreme Court — which upheld the law, but weakened a key part of it by giving states the option to reject an expansion of Medicaid. The GOP faithful then kept up their crusade past the president’s reelection, in a pattern of “massive resistance” not seen since the Southern states’ defiance of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.

The opposition was strategic from the start: Derail President Barack Obama’s biggest ambition, and derail Obama himself. Party leaders enforced discipline, withholding any support for the new law — which passed with only Democratic votes, thus undermining its acceptance. Partisan divisions also meant that Democrats could not pass legislation smoothing out some rough language in the draft bill that passed the Senate. That left the administration forced to fill far more gaps through regulation than it otherwise would have had to do, because attempts — usually routine — to re-open the bill for small changes could have led to wholesale debate in the Senate all over again.

But the bitter fight over passage was only the beginning of the war to stop Obamacare. Most Republican governors declined to create their own state insurance exchanges — an option inserted in the bill in the Senate to appeal to the classic conservative preference for local control — forcing the federal government to take at least partial responsibility for creating marketplaces serving 36 states — far more than ever intended.

Then congressional Republicans refused repeatedly to appropriate dedicated funds to do all that extra work, leaving the Health and Human Services Department and other agencies to cobble together HealthCare.gov by redirecting funds from existing programs. On top of that, nearly half of the states declined to expand their Medicaid programs using federal funds, as the law envisioned


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/the-obamacare-sabotage-campaign-99176.html#ixzz2jTiJf0ye

red states rule
11-05-2013, 03:26 AM
Roly Poly Crowley joins in and tries to blame R's for the massive failure of Obamacare





CNN: Aren’t Republicans vulnerable on ObamaCare for, er, opposing the debacle all along?

After watching this exchange between Candy Crowley and Sen. Kelly Ayotte on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday, I had to go back and read the transcript (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1311/03/sotu.01.html) to be sure I heard it correctly. Perhaps Crowley intended to play devil’s advocate here by encapsulating the latest Democratic Party spin to push blame for ObamaCare on the political party that has opposed it all along, and had nothing to do with its implementation. Regardless of intent, this question made my jaw drop:


CROWLEY: I want to play for you something the president said Wednesday in Boston about the opposition to his Affordable Care Act.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Unfortunately, there are others that are so locked into the politics of this thing that they won’t lift a finger to help their own people because if they put as much energy into making this law work as they do in attacking the law, Americans would be better off.

CROWLEY: Now, he is saying in a sort of nuance way what other Democrats are saying right out there which is that you- all would rather defeat the president and Obamacare than help your constituents. Have you helped your constituents who called to your office looking for help? And do you think republicans are vulnerable on this that they have tried so hard and so many times to derail it, but now the criticism looks like nothing but politics? [emphasis mine]

AYOTTE: Well, Candy, my constituents are writing me, but how can I help them when it’s the situation of their getting cancellation notices because of the way that Obamacare is drafted when they can’t access the website because it’s such a mess. So, absolutely, I want to help my constituents. But again, I would say to the president, why doesn’t he call a timeout on this, understanding that it’s not working right now?

This was passed on a party line basis. Why not convene a group to see how can we work together, issues like the 29-hour workweek, issues like if you — people being denied their current plans, issues like rising health care costs, all of which are unfortunately I’m hearing the opposite from my constituents. I want to help them, but obviously, the administration in the way this is being rolled out is a mess. So, it’s time to call a time out.
What exactly is the argument here — that Republicans have been proven correct about what a clusterfark ObamaCare would be, and so their opposition was therefore nothing but politics? Er, doesn’t the multi-layered failures of the scheme demonstrate that opposition was substantive all along? The website and the skyrocketing premiums show that the ACA should have been derailed years ago, and that the White House has been repeatedly dishonest for years about its impact and their ability to manage it.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/11/04/cnn-arent-republicans-vulnerable-on-obamacare-for-er-opposing-the-debacle-all-along/