With yet another budget fight starting on Capitol Hill, it
appears our elected representatives are up to their usual political games –
none of which will even remotely begin to solve our nation’s fiscal problems.
Republicans, in their never ending fight against Obamacare,
have voted to defund the implementation in the House and are now squabbling
among themselves about tactics in the Senate.
Democrats, who control the Senate, will never let the House bill stand
however, and Republicans know that. The result
– as usual – is a stalemate and a looming government shutdown.
President Obama has also weighed in by insisting he won’t
negotiate with Congress on raising the nation’s debt limit. Of course, this ignores that pesky
Constitutional thing called co-equal branches of government, but who is
quibbling?
The whole saga would be comical if very real consequences
weren’t the result of this insanity.
I think the Republican tactic of falling on their sword over
defunding Obamacare is dumb. First, it’s
a losing battle – House Republicans continually ignore the fact that it is
impossible to govern by holding just one chamber of Congress.
Second, poll after poll shows that Republicans will share
most of the blame for a government shutdown.
That isn’t a great place to be when the GOP is eying taking control of
the Senate in 2014. In fact, playing
this game to its end will likely keep the Senate in Democrat control and give
the Democrats more seats in the House.
That’s not to say I favor Obamacare. I don’t.
It’s is, in my opinion, the single worst piece of legislation passed since
Prohibition. And the Supreme Court
ruling that found it Constitutional defies common sense, logic, and the law in
spite the senseless opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts.
What Republicans seem to not get is that fighting Obamacare
at this point is a losing hand that they don’t have to fight. If there is anything we know after five years
of the Obama Presidency, it is the fact that incompetence reigns supreme in his
Administration.
By all accounts, the implementation of Obamacare is likely
to be much of the same, but on a much grander scale. As such, the Republicans would be much
smarter to just let the Affordable Care Act implode on its own.