Posted on 11/07/2010 1:33:15 PM PST by upchuck
There have been several articles here on FR and elsewhere espousing the legislative repeal of ObamaCare. Now that the Republicans will have a majority in the House come January, this idea has some appeal. However we all know that nobama will veto any attempt to repeal, or even modify, his "signature legislation." And that we won't have the votes to override.
There is another way however. Dr. Henry Aaron explains this method in the New England Journal of Medicine. I have excerpted the essence here. The bolding is mine:
Customarily, substantive legislation “authorizes” spending, but the funds to be spent must be separately “appropriated.” The ACA (ObamaCare) contains 64 specific authorizations to spend up to $105.6 billion and 51 general authorizations to spend “such sums as are necessary” over the period between 2010 and 2019. None of these funds will flow, however, unless Congress enacts specific appropriation bills.
In addition, section 1005 of the ACA appropriated $1 billion to support the cost of implementation in the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). This sum is a small fraction of the $5 billion to $10 billion that the Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal government will require between 2010 and 2019 to implement the ACA.
The ACA appropriated nothing for the Internal Revenue Service, which must collect the information needed to compute subsidies and pay them. The ACA also provides unlimited funding for grants to states to support the creation of health insurance exchanges (section 1311). But states will also incur substantially increased administrative costs to enroll millions of newly eligible Medicaid beneficiaries. Without large additional appropriations, implementation will be crippled.
Thus Congress (specifically, the House) can just sit on its hands and watch ObamaCare wither on the vine. What could be easier?
Here's the link to Dr. Arron's article (.pdf). This excerpt begins on page 1686.
I would also freeze the White House budget and chop it drastically. Enough elite extravagance. We don’t havethe money for it, they said they’d reign in wasteful spending, but they spend more of what we don’t have. Chop the purse strings, defund the White House.
Bump
The current junket to India, at outlandsih expense and opulence, is a prime example of what must be cut if it can be cut.
It’s going to be hilarious listening to the commie ‘RATS whining about the GOP “killing jobs” by defunding ObamaCare. It wasn’t about health care! It was about jobs for the communists in the SEIU.
I think we’ve all said that Obamacare must be defunded.
That could be a complex business. But if any of the current departments or agencies use any of THEIR funding to implement it in any way, then they should be defunded, too, as much as necessary. The prospect of losing their funding should make any agency hesitate to act on implementation.
For better or for worse, it’s always about the money. Every single aspect of our society is run by money. The Republicans control the House. If the federal government or (to a large degree) state governments do something (anything) bad in the next two years, the proper admonition will be “Follow the money” — and it will lead to Republicans who approved the badness. And those are the people we need to “talk to”.
Someone other than Congress should be determining its pay—preferably We the People.
Sounds much to small too "implement" this curse on America.
Need to publish exact costs for all the White house vacations for the whole family so far, not just the O but the M too.
No reason not to do both. It won’t take much to cobble up a repeal bill and send it on through to put everyone on record for the 12 election. We need to put in motion as many avenues to destroy Obamacare (and those who support it) as possible.
That certainly needs to be done. The 0bamas dance away at 200 million a day while our country grows deeper and deeper in debt.
Jim wrote,
Woo hoo!! Closing in on the finish line!! Less than $2,100 to go!!
Let's git er done!!
If you enjoy reading or posting to FR and haven't donated yet, please consider doing so today!
The very word: OBAMACARE turns my stomach. It was the same with Hillarycare.
I can think of only one program that memorializes an individual; The Marshall Plan, which was well deserved and did what it was intended to do. Then in stopped.
Wouldn’t the House also have to pass appropriations for the dozens of Obama czars, thier offices, their staffs, their programs and the like?
The Congress should put its foot down and just declare that if those czars won’t face congressional hearings, their offices won’t get any federal appropraitions.
If those pr*cks want to remain unaccountable, let them work for free.
As my mother used to say at allowance time, never underestimate the power of the purse.
Can UAW bailouts also be blocked in this way?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.