Tuesday, April 12, 2011

ObamaCare in the news




Another day, another ObamaCare defector:

Missouri’s Democratic attorney general broke with his party on Monday and urged a federal judge to invalidate the central provision of the new health care law.

The filing of the brief by Attorney General Chris Koster, a onetime Republican state legislator who switched to the Democratic Party in 2007, underscores the act’s political tenuousness in a critical Midwestern swing state.

Mr. Koster’s action followed months of pressure from state Republicans that he join attorneys general from other states who are challenging the constitutionality of the law.

Though he did not join the litigation, deciding instead to file a "friend of the court" brief, consider this just another stick on the as-yet unlit bonfire stack as Koster objected to the mandate in ObamaCare that compels every U.S. citizen to purchase healthcare.





And elsewhere...

Bummed that the budget deal did not defund Planned Parenthood? Yeah, so are we but this bit of under-reported news on the compromise might make you feel a little bit better.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, agreed to remove the Planned Parenthood provision in exchange for an agreement that would allow Congress to take up the funding issue separately. The Republicans also won inclusion of a provision that will require the Senate to vote on a bill to de-fund the health care reform law.

Another provision won by Republicans would prohibit the District of Columbia from spending local or federal funds on abortion services.

This keeps ObamaCare front and center in the business of Congress rather than be allowed to fade gracefully into that good night as the more ObamaCare gets talked about, discussed and debated, the more unpopular, seemingly, it becomes.

Also, in the face of finding out what's actually in this law, vulnerable Democratic Senators, say, like Claire McCaskill of the aforementioned state of Missouri (by the way, Missourians hate ObamaCare, as it turns out), that voted for it will be forced to defend their votes to their constituents or... vote against it this time around. Harry Reid's 18 seat cushion has dwindled to 6 and things could get very interesting.



Lastly, we couldn't resist this headline:

Democrats will yield on everything but abortion


The deal breaker for Democrats had been the rider cutting off federal funds for Planned Parenthood. As a "senior Democratic source" told the Huffington Post on Friday, "The cuts will be hard for us to swallow, but we won't bend on Title X" -- that is, federal funding of Planned Parenthood. "Reid doesn't even have to go back to the caucus to ask on that one."

Reid said so himself Friday: "We are not -- we are not! -- bending on women's health." When you consider the flexibility of Reid on other issues, this shows extraordinary devotion.

Extraordinary, indeed - but we gotta keep those mills humming, now don't we?

3 comments:

Foxfier said...

Meh, the Planned Parenthood point might be OK if it's a vote to fund PP, rather than to defund PP.

A vote to defund it has a worse chance than a snowball in hell.

Road Dawg said...

Women's health?!?!? How has that phrase in our vernacular been co-opted?

B-Daddy said...

This leaves them open to all sort of political blackmail, so let's use it. Every budget debate should include provisions to defund Planned Parenthood, which chip we cash in for tens of billions in other cuts. Ditto for any other abortion funding we can find in the budget.