Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is the man Republicans count on to make a maximum effort to defeat Obamacare in the United States Senate. He sounded great on C-Span when he denounced Obamacare at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He dramatically stood by the six-foot tall stack of more than 20,000 pages of regulations that have been issued so far to implement Obamacare, and announced that 828 pages of new regulations had been issued in just one day.
McConnell sounds tough on the Senate floor with television cameras present. “This law is a disaster waiting to happen,” he insisted. “Imagine the burden we’re placing on the single mom who wants to open her own store. Or the young entrepreneur who wants to sell some new idea. Or the business owner we all know back home – the folks who employ so many of our constituents. We’re hitting them with a brick of regulations.
“In my view, Obamacare is a colossal mistake for our country. There’s just no way to fix it. It needs to be pulled out by the roots and we need to start over. This bill needs to be repealed and replaced – not with another unreadable law or another 20,000 pages of new regulations – but with common-sense reforms that actually lower health care costs. Anyone who thinks we are giving up that fight is dead wrong,” McConnell boasted.
Texas Republican Ted Cruz and Utah Republican Mike Lee, both freshman senators, sponsored an amendment and forced a vote to defund Obamacare. All 45 Republicans, including their leader, voted in favor of the amendment that had no chance of passing. Of course, 55 Democrats voted against it.
Before leaving town for a two-week spring break, Minority Leader McConnell and 19 other Republicans who voted to defund Obamacare voted with Democrats to fully fund Obamacare, that the Leader had referred to as “a disaster waiting to happen,” for the remainder of this Fiscal Year.
The 20 Republicans who voted to fully fund Obamacare after voting to defund it are: Lamar Alexander, John Barrasso, Roy Blunt, John Boozman, Saxby Chambliss, Dan Coats, That Cochran, Susan Collins, Bob Corker, John Cronyn, Orrin Hatch, John Hoeven, Johnny Isakson, Mike Johanns, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, John Thune, and Roger Wicker.
These are the games politicians play. These 20 Republicans can go home and boast that they voted to defund Obamacare and they can boast that they voted to fund Obamacare. What they really did was demonstrate that they have no backbone, no integrity and they cannot be trusted.
The two South Carolina Senators, Graham and Scott voted with the 25 Republicans who opposed Obamacare on both votes. They should be commended.
Here in South Carolina the legislature is under intense pressure to support Obamacare and oppose the House and Senate bills that would Nullify Obamacare in the Palmetto State. There may not be enough true Republican Conservatives in either the House or Senate to pass the Nullification bills without help from Democrats or RINOs.
At least there are citizen groups keeping score on the South Carolina lawmakers. They will be confronted with their voting records in 2014 if they betray their constituents.
Finally, there is little we can do to influence the votes in Washington short of encouraging and advising our elected members of congress. In order to offset the money pouring into South Carolina from government and private sources in support of Obamacare, there must be intense involvement from grass roots conservatives until the legislative session is over.