Will Health Care Reform Be Starved To Death ?

It looks like the Republicans are still playing their political games on Capitol Hill -- the one where they say no to everything, even when it meets the goals they laid down.   Take the newest appropriations bill for instance.   The Senate Republicans decided the bill spent too much money.   They said they would not support a bill that spent more than $1.1 trillion.   So the Democrats got together with Republicans on the Appropriations Committee and cut the bill down to $1.1 trillion -- it was a real bipartisan effort.

Now a reasonable person might think that the bill could then get to the Senate floor and at least get voted on, if not approved.   But that didn't happen.   Even though the bill was pared down to meet Republican demands, the Republicans decided to filibuster it anyway.   And with help from a few rogue Democrats they kept the bill from coming up for a vote.

This time they said the bill contained too many earmarks.   I guess they meant it had too many Democratic earmarks, because the Republicans had a couple of billion dollars of earmarks in the bill themselves -- including earmarks from the very people complaining about earmarks (like $561 million in earmarks from Thad Cochran, $75 million in earmarks from Lamar Alexander, $25 million in earmarks from John Cornyn, $113 million in earmarks from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and that's just a few of the Republicans with earmarks).

So if earmarks weren't the problem, what was?   Well, the Republicans are trying to pass a "continuing resolution", which would keep spending at the current level until next September.   They say this will keep the deficit from increasing.   That is just not true.   Even if spending is kept at the same level, the deficit will grow by about $400 billion this year (because of the massive tax cuts for the rich they just forced on the Democrats).

There is one thing that failing to pass the appropriations bill and instead passing a continuing resolution will do.   It will defund the new health care reform law.   The appropriations bill had contained about $1 billion dollars to begin implementing some parts of the new health care reform law.   The continuing resolution will not have that money.

The Republicans know that their effort to kill the health care reform law in the courts is probably doomed to fail (since there are indications that even their most reliable court conservatives, Roberts and Scalia, would not rule the law unconstitutional).   But they have another option, which many Republicans in Congress are pushing -- refuse to fund the new health care law.   They want to starve the law to death by refusing to fund it.   And it looks like the Senate Republicans have taken the first step toward doing that.

Sadly, it looks like the Democrats have caved again and will probably go along with the continuing resolution.   That means there is no hope of a new appropriations bill until the new Congress meets in January -- and that Congress will have a House of Representatives controlled by Republicans.   There is a very good chance the Republican House will refuse to appropriate any funds for the new health care law.

I was not happy with the health care law that was passed.   I didn't think it went nearly far enough in fixing our broken health care system.   But it did accomplish a few things, and now it looks like even those few accomplishments might die from lack of funds.   This is about as mean-spirited as Congress can get.   Millions of people could have gotten at least some kind of coverage under the new law, and now they probably won't.   The Republicans can give $400 billion to the rich (who could already afford their own health care), but won't come up with $1 billion to get health care for millions started.

This is disgusting, but it looks like the Republicans might now be able to stop health care reform.