Rep. Steve King: If We Can’t Kill Healthcare Reform, We’ll Kill Government
Here’s how the Republicans’ power over the purse could lead to an insoluble fight over spending, and, potentially, a government shutdown.
In a presentation at CPAC on Thursday, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) called on Republicans to hold the government hostage until President Obama abandons his dream of reforming the nation’s health care system.
Or to put it in King’s words: Republicans should do to “ObamaCare” what Democrats did to the Vietnam War.
Speaking to a small audience in CPAC’s auxiliary meeting room — where most of the social conservatives like King have been pushed this year — King outlined his plan to use Congress’ ability to shut down the government by refusing to fund it as means of pushing the health care reforms into an early grave.
The reform law signed by Obama last year includes what King called “self-enacting appropriations” — mandatory spending — which means they’ll kick in on their own unless Congress passes a law to stop them. King’s plan: tell Obama that unless he agrees to kill that spending, the GOP will refuse to pass new legislation to fund the government, which runs out of money on March 4.
Without that legislation, the government would shut down. And, voilà: a government held for ransom.
King said he got the idea from the 1974 law Congress passed to forbid President Ford from continuing the war in Vietnam. The law that Congress forced Ford to sign forbade him and the treasury from funding any military action in, around or in the skies above Vietnam.
King said the ‘74 law was a “clear precedent” for Congress to rip out the automatic funding of the health care law.
“I disagreed with that decision Congress made in 1974,” he said. “But I believe we have the foundation to shut off the automatic funding to ObamaCare.”
So bascially King has finally admitted he is a hypocrite. And what’s with this juvenile behavior from an elected offical? They did it to us almost forty years ago so we are going to do it to them? My three year old acts more mature then this guy.
