The Supreme Court will rule later this year on the question of whether Obamacare subsidies should be repealed in states that don’t run their own insurance exchanges. That would gut a major portion of the law, and Jonathan Weisman reports today that because of this, “the search for a replacement by Republican lawmakers is finally gaining momentum.”
I’m not quite sure how he could write that with a straight face, since I think we all know just how serious Republicans are about passing health care reform of their own. In any case, I think the real news comes a few paragraphs down:
Aides to senior House Republicans said Thursday that committee chairmen were meeting now to decide whether a budget plan — due out the week of March 16 — will include parliamentary language, known as reconciliation instructions, that would allow much of a Republican health care plan to pass the filibuster-prone Senate with a simple majority.
Representative Tom Price of Georgia, the House Budget Committee chairman, said that reconciliation language would be kept broad enough to allow Republican leaders to use it later in the year however they see fit, whether that is passing health care legislation over a Senate filibuster or focusing on taxes or other matters.
If this is true, it means that Republicans are prepping for yet another government shutdown over Obamacare. Any budget that tried to essentially repeal Obamacare in favor of a Republican “replacement” would obviously be met with a swift veto, and that would lead inevitably to the usual dreary standoff that we’ve seen so often over the past few years.
Of course, this will all be moot if the Supreme Court upholds Obamacare in the way common sense dictates. Still, it’s something of a sign of things to come. Shutdown politics is pretty clearly still alive and well in the GOP ranks.
