Just in case you missed it, House Republicans handed Boehner an embarrassing defeat last Friday when they voted down his plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security for three weeks. The WSJ editorial correctly described this debacle as a victory for Obama:
"The sad if predictable irony is that this is exactly what Mr. Obama hoped to incite with his November immigration order. He wanted to goad an overreaction that made the GOP look both anti-immigrant and intemperate enough to shut down the government."I think this analysis is absolutely correct -- Obama is tapping into the overwhelming hatred the GOP feels for him and using it for his own political benefit. The editorial also noted that the GOP's failure in this regard gives Obama an opportunity "to gain the political high ground on national security."
But, as Sahil Kapur of TPM pointed out today, it gets even better:
Congress just gave the Supreme Court a glimpse of what to expect if it drives a stake through the heart of Obamacare: CHAOS.There is no way in hell that Republicans would be able to do anything to mitigate the disastrous effects that an anti-Obamacare ruling in King would cause, even if they wanted to (which they don't). Christ, the GOP can't even do something as simple as fund the Department of Homeland Security without fucking it all up.
Oral arguments in King v. Burwell are this Wednesday, and they come amidst peak dysfunction in the new Republican-led Congress, which would be tasked with fixing the law if the justices rule that federal exchange subsidies for Americans in some three-dozen states are not allowed under the language of the Affordable Care Act.
Let's hope at least a couple of Supreme Court justices (namely, Kennedy and Roberts) take this into consideration.
2 comments:
Don't count on it. I think SCOTUS rules against ObamaCare on this one.
I almost hope they do. The upheaval would be so great that maybe we'll finally start moving toward single payer like every other industrialized country in the world instead of this convoluted Republican idea of the Individual Mandate.
But I'd be surprised if SCOTUS threw it out. Kennedy seemed pretty concerned about the whole issue of states rights and federalism (i.e., the unconstitutional federal coercion of states), and Roberts could have easily gotten rid of this Law several years ago but decided not to.
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