Free Republic

Eric Cantor is always looking for new and imaginative ways to screw conservatives. He has Pete Sessions (R-TX), as Rules Chairman, helping him with his latest creative way to screw conservatives. I’ve already well documented Pete Sessions’s increasingly bitter attitude toward Ted Cruz and staggering contempt of his own constituents who want to defund Obamacare. Cantor and Sessions’ latest idea tops even his most absurd shenanigans. The plan is to pass the real CR that fully funds Obamacare, then pass a fake bill that defunds Obamacare. The Senate will pass the CR, and throw the defunding bill in the garbage....

Since March 2010, when President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and its companion Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (HCERA), the administration has published in the Federal Register 109 final regulations governing how Obamacare will be implemented. These regulations add up to 10,516 pages in the Federal Register—or more than eight times as many pages as there are in the Gutenberg Bible, which has 642 two-sided leaves or 1,286 pages.Using the regulations.gov website and the Federal Register itself, CNSNews.com found 109 distinct regulations for the implementation of PPACA and the health-care related provisions of...

Text of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that will fund the government for 60-75 days will be released on Tuesday, the conservative source said, before a House vote on Thursday. The move comes abruptly as conservatives are ramping up their final push on House leadership with a big Tea Party rally outside the Capitol on Tuesday calling for Obamacare’s defunding.House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel told Breitbart News the “CR will include defunding ObamaCare,” but would not specify whether or not a certain procedural “trick” the GOP leadership used in a similar situation in 2011 will be employed yet again.Breitbart...

Louisiana Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy might be feeling some empathy for Mitt Romney after a challenger has compared his past health care bills to Obamacare. On Wednesday, Rob Maness, who is running against Cassidy in the 2014 Senate race, coined the term “Cassidycare,” attacking the congressman for bills he proposed as a state senator that bear similarities to some of the components of the Affordable Care Act. The two are challenging Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat who has represented the Bayou State since 1997. “Mary Landrieu was the deciding vote on Obamacare through the Senate but Mr. Bill Cassidy, who...

<p>110,000 current and soon to be eligible retirees working for IBM woke up to an unpleasant surprise this morning, when the WSJ reported that as a result of soaring healthcare costs, the tech bellwether giant will be terminating its company-sponsored health plan and instead giving (soon to be former) beneficiaries a lump sum payment to buy coverage on a health-exchange: a move which the WSJ characterized as indicating that employers are unlikely to keep providing the once-common benefits as medical costs continue to rise. The reason why all IBM retirees will have to find alternative, third-party, retirement coverage upon hitting the Medicare eligible age of 65 is that "IBM said the growing cost of care makes its current plan unsustainable without big premium increases." And to avoid those premium increases, the costs will find a clearing price either in a private exchange (supposedly competitive, realistically monopolistic), or will end up commingled with other public healthcare funding. End result: IBM benefits, everyone else loses.</p>

Ten months after Mitt Romney shuffled off the national stage in defeat — consigned, many predicted, to a fate of instant irrelevance and permanent obscurity — Republicans are suddenly celebrating the presidential also-ran as a political prophet. From his widely mocked warnings about a hostile Russia to his adamant opposition to the increasingly unpopular implementation of Obamacare, the ex-candidate’s canon of campaign rhetoric now offers cause for vindication — and remorse — to Romney’s friends, supporters, and former advisers. “I think about the campaign every single day, and what a shame it is who we have in the White House,”...

Health Reform: More bad news for Obama-Care this week: Another state announced huge rate increases, and another labor union rebelled over the harm it will do to members. Yet, this train wreck just keeps on rolling. ObamaCare may very well be the worst law ever passed by the federal government in the history of the U.S. The public didn't want it in the first place — going so far as to elect a Republican senator in solidly Democratic Massachusetts to try to stop it — and they've hated it ever since. The latest IBD/TIPP poll finds that just 38% want...

...... In 30 days, about 50 million people across the country — and about 1 million in New Jersey — will be able to sign up for expanded Medicaid or enroll in the health insurance exchange created by the new law, known as "Obamacare."

Republican infighting over the defunding of ObamaCare is growing increasingly nasty and could spill over into the 2014 elections. Hardline conservatives are pushing for the GOP to shut down the government if Democrats refuse to defund ObamaCare, and are threatening reprisals in primaries if they don’t get their way. Establishment Republicans are just as furious, and aren’t backing down. The GOP conflict is the most public — and heated — of any since Republicans lost the 2012 elections, and exposes a rift in the party that will likely grow deeper. The civil war could hurt the party’s chances to retake...

Turning back the clock to 2012, President Barack Obama took a shot at defeated rival Mitt Romney. Speaking about how funding education ought to be a bipartisan idea during remarks in Scranton, Pa., Obama suggested the same should be the case with his signature health care law. “These are ideas that should have bipartisan support,” Obama said of his education priorities. “Of course, so should Obamacare, it’s actually a really good idea. It’s going to work. It used to be a Republican idea. There’s a governor of Massachusetts who set it up. It’s working well.”

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, number 4 in House GOP Leadership, said the effort by conservatives to defund ObamaCare is "not realistic." She advocated a piece-meal approach to repeal, delay or defund individual provisions of the sweeping health care overhaul. The debate will likely dominate discussions within the Republican caucus when Congress returns next month. “To get the entire bill repealed, or defunded, is probably not realistic,” McMorris Rodgers said. “But I do think there are provisions in the law that we can get delayed, or provisions in the law we can get defunded.” The government's spending authority expires on September...

Via the Daily Caller. No surprise that he feels this way, but I believe his comments here are the first time he’s pooh-poohed a shutdown publicly. Which, in itself, tells you what a terrible idea the GOP leadership thinks it is: McConnell’s desperate to pander to tea partiers in hopes of avoiding a serious primary challenge in Kentucky next year but the thought of a shutdown is simply a bridge too far, even though he’s getting killed for it on sites like Red State. In fact, John Cornyn, McConnell’s deputy in the Senate leadership and another guy who’s terrified of...

Vitriol has gone beyond partisan give-and-take in the nation’s politics. It is now seeping into and poisoning the ranks of the Republican Party. Mainstream Republican politicians are cringing at the proposal of tea party Senators -– Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL) -– to hold federal appropriations legislation hostage in their quest to defund Obamacare. Republicans opposing this strategy see it as lose-lose. They don’t believe this tactic will work. And at the same time, they see it producing more antipathy toward Republicans and branding them as zealots and obstructionists. I think the tea partiers are on...

The chairman of the House Budget Committee says there's a better way of repealing President Barack Obama's health care law than shutting down the government this fall — a path some Republican conservatives are backing. “We, all Republicans, want to repeal and replace Obamacare. … We’re having a debate about the best way of achieving that goal, the best strategy,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” Ryan, who was the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2012, pointed out that a government shutdown wouldn't impact entitlements, including Obamacare. “Rather than sort of-swinging for the fences...

Once upon a time, some of us counted heads and concluded that there was little chance of ObamaCare ever becoming law -- or, if through some mischance it did, ever staying law. But now after the passage of a number of years and any amount of public and private maneuvering, our naiveté has evolved into a much more realistic view of politics. We now know, for example, that if the left-wing liberal power structure get the chance to put another notch in their gun, they'll pull the trigger, no matter how many innocent people wind up shot... --snip-- Indeed, examples...

We must be forever vigilant in protecting and defending our Country — because one mistake, one terrorist attack that we don’t prevent, can cost untold lives and suffering. That said, we must also do the smart and Constitutional thing, and not just everything we can think of, and get away with, with terrorism as the excuse. With that in mind, lets look at this from a medical perspective: Let’s say you’re healthy overall but you develop a cough, it’s lasted for a month, and it seems to be getting worse. It might just be allergies, or bronchitis, or pneumonia, or...

An aggressive push by Tea Party lawmakers to defund ObamaCare is increasingly pitting Republicans against Republicans, as some party leaders and conservative pundits claim the goal is not achievable this year -- and could irresponsibly risk a government shutdown. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and his allies in the Senate are trying to round up support for a pledge to oppose any budget bill that funds the health care law. They're emboldened by the administration's recent decision to delay a key part of the law, arguing the move shows it's not ready for prime time. "Businesses don't like it. Individuals hate...

If there is anyone here who really believes the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, is a good idea, please feel free to raise your hand in the comments. This monstrous piece of legislation is despised by conservatives, and rightfully so. It was forced down our throats and we have been told we need to learn to like the new normal it is producing. That hasn't sat well with many members of the GOP, thus the many efforts to repeal Obamacare. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) recognizes that the efforts to disable or repeal Obamacare are useless. In fact, he...

Populism is fun. “I never thought I’d see the day when the White House, the president came down on the side of big business but left the American people out in the cold as far as his health care mandate is concerned,” Cantor told reporters after House Republicans met for their weekly closed-door meeting. “And we, as House Republicans, are not going to sit still for that.”…“What the president did is outrageous,” Boehner said. “The idea that we’re going to give big businesses a break on Obamacare but we’re going to punish small businesses and families? It’s wrong. And we’ll...

Romney said his Bay State health reforms weren’t necessarily suited to other states. Few listened. By Avik Roy During the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney maintained that the health-reform law he signed in Massachusetts was not the same as Obamacare. “Our plan was a state solution to a state problem,” Governor Romney insisted. He was trying to fix Massachusetts’ uniquely broken insurance market, he said; Obamacare, by contrast, was a “a power grab . . . a one-size-fits-all plan.” Nobody took him seriously — not conservatives, and not liberals. But today, as the nation braces for health insurance “rate shock,”...