It’s turning out to be the same story all over again. The Republicans promise fiscal discipline and debt reduction measures, then once they get into office, those promises seem to be at the back of their minds. Isn’t it a big coincidence or a part of their plan? Let’s look at the health care bill that was signed by President Obama.
In it, there are provisions that protect consumers and, in many cases, brings down the costs. But just like every other bill that has been signed into law, there are some flaws. With a Congress of 435 representatives and 100 senators, not everybody will agree on everything.
The Republicans ran on repealing the health care bill, and they have every right to attempt the repeal. I don’t know why they are so confident in it getting repealed. The Republicans took control of the House in November, but they were unsuccessful at getting control of the Senate even though they did manage to gain several seats. To get the bill repealed, the House would have to vote to do so.
That would happen since the Republicans have a large percentage of the vote. In the Senate, the Republicans would have to get some unwilling Democrats to go along.  And if by chance enough Democrats were naive and fell into the Republicans’ trap, then the president has already vowed to veto it if it ever reached his desk.
There is politics as usual being played here. The Republicans know they have a slim-to-none chance of getting it repealed, so they will have a meaningless vote in the Senate just so they can attempt to blame the Democrats for being obstructionists. But many people won’t fall for that anyways because when the Democrats had control the past two years, the Republicans used the greatest number of filibusters in American history to block many pieces of legislation. If by some miracle the republicans get their way, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which is nonpartisan, has projected that the federal budget deficit would increase by $230 billion in ten years. Of course, when the CBO comes out with estimates that help the Republican argument, those leaders are quick to back the CBO. When the figures are contrary, then they want to discredit them. This is not good for the Republicans who want to have federal spending back to what it was when Obama took office.
The Republicans should’ve seen the bad news coming. The CBO initially said that with the enactment of the health care bill that the deficit would decrease. So one should guess that the opposite would happen if it was repealed.
The Republicans always want to talk about doing what the “American people” want. But they conveniently forget about the American people when it’s something that is contrary to their position. This certainly brings more notice to House Speaker John Boehner’s so-called “fiscal responsibility.”
A lot of the deficit reduction in this health care reform bill is what is expected to be brought in via new tax revenue. Repealing the law would make those savings go away.
This bill has been called a “Job-Killing Bill.” But Obama will not sit idly by and let the Republicans ruin his biggest domestic achievement. Also, the Democrats that supported the bill know that millions of Americans will no longer be protected if it is repealed.
The republicans vow to scrap the entire bill and replace it with things that will actually work. The problem is that many people don’t think their “common-sense reforms” will actually bring down the federal budget deficit.
They accuse others of fudging the numbers when it comes to how much something will cost in the federal budget.
I just hope that health care reform remains as is so that millions of Americans won’t be negatively affected.
Christopher Webb is a junior majoring in general business administration. He can be contacted at [email protected].