White House Delays Obamacare While Attacking Republicans For Trying To Delay Obamacare

The Obama administration is delaying online Obamacare enrollment for small businesses in federal health exchanges for a month according to multiple reports. Small businesses that wish to enroll in the exchanges to purchase health insurance for employees will be forced to fax, call, or make purchases for their employees in person.

And while the Obama administration’s delay is not the first — the White House previously delayed implementation of the employer mandate until 2015 among other unplanned postponements — this delay comes at a time when the White House is attacking Republicans for wanting to delay parts of the president’s health care law.

According to Politico, House Republican leadership is considering adding a yearlong delay of the Obamacare individual mandate to a Senate bill that would avert a government shutdown.

“It’s unconscionable to imagine that there are those in the Congress — and now, apparently, because he couldn’t persuade them otherwise, the speaker of the house has joined them — who believe that it is the right thing to do to threaten another recession, threaten economic calamity in this country and the globe, over their ideological desire to defund or delay the Affordable Care Act,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said last Thursday.

Carney hammered Republicans twice more in his Thursday briefing for wanting to delay the law.

“And we can’t go to the nation — or we shouldn’t — they shouldn’t go to the nation and say, we couldn’t get this through normal means, so we’re going to threaten your job, your welfare, your security and future, so that we can defund Obamacare, or delay it — a proposition which would actually increase the deficit,” he said.

“He understands we need to do more, but we need to do it in a way that’s fair to the middle class,” said Carney. “What is not fair to the middle class is a shutdown that hurts the middle class. What is not fair to the middle class is default for the sake of the ideological goal of defunding or delaying the Affordable Care Act, ‘I’m either going to take your job — make sure you lose your job, or take away your access to health insurance’ — that’s the choice.”

In his Wednesday briefing the day before, Carney also hit Republicans for wanting to delay the law in the upcoming fight to fund the government.

“The irony is that they are doing it in the name of trying to defund or delay, or defeat in some other way, a law designed to provide access to insurance for millions of Americans — to health insurance — a law that is already providing tangible benefits to millions of Americans; a law, as I said the other day, that when implemented will ensure that at least close to 6 in 10 uninsured Americans will now have the capability of buying insurance for less than $100 a month.”

Asked about specifically why the White House wasn’t open to Republican-pitched Obamacare delays while the White House had already delayed some key portions of the law, Carney said previous delays were a “very small portion” and “the right and responsible thing to do.”

“On the employer responsibility provision, which represents a very small portion of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, it was the right and responsible thing to do, reacting in part to the requests of businesses to delay implementation of that for a year.”

“As every Republican who is pushing the idea of delaying implementation of the individual responsibility provision, they know that that is the heart of the Affordable Care Act. It is what is essential to ensuring that everyone in your extended family who has a preexisting condition can still get health insurance and isn’t blackballed by the insurance companies to making that work, making sure that the individual responsibility provision is there.”

“Furthermore, delaying it would do what? Add to the deficit,” Carney concluded. “So in the name of deficit reduction, Republicans are saying we should add to the deficit, even as we’re taking away health care for millions of Americans. Seems like a bad idea.”

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Ted Cruz Fails To Convince Enough Republicans To Join Him In Blocking Funding Measure

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

WASHINGTON — After 21 hours of trying to convince all of his Republican colleagues to join him in opposing a Senate procedural vote, Sen. Ted Cruz fell short — by a lot.

It was not a surprise to anyone that the measure passed. The vote, which was a motion to end debate on the House continuing resolution that defunded Obamacare, passed 79-19. Twenty-five Republicans joined Democrats in voting yes. Nineteen Republicans voted no.

Cruz had launched into a near-daylong speech earlier in the week to protest Obamacare, and urged all Republicans to join him in blocking an end to debate on the House spending bill. He argued that a vote in favor would be a vote to fund the health care law, because inevitably, Majority Leader Harry Reid would be able to strip out the defunding provision with a simple majority vote. The vote to end debate required 60 votes.

As expected, Senate Democrats were able to strip language that would have defunded the health care law on a party line vote, 54-44, and the continuing resolution passed as well. The bill is now sent back to the House.

“The House was always in the position were it was going to lead,” Cruz said after the vote. “I know from my perspective … we look forward to helping and supporting the House, standing up and doing the right thing.”

A continuing resolution needs to pass the House this weekend, and then be approved again by the Senate by Oct. 1, or the government will shut down. Many Republicans, who are united in their opposition to the health care law, felt that Cruz’s hardball tactics were unnecessary and his ultimate goal to defund the health care law — even at the risk of shutting down the government — was unrealistic. Many were angry with Cruz for publicly calling out Republicans and trying to force their hand.

Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee clashed with Cruz on Thursday of stalling a vote on the bill and accused him of trying to showboat.

“They want people around the world to watch maybe them and others on the Senate floor,” Corker said. “And that is taking priority over getting legislation back to the House so they can take action before the country’s government shuts down.”

Cruz argued he merely wanted the vote at a time when the public could watch.

The GOP Senate leadership team voted for cloture on the bill — including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, John Thune, and Cruz’s Texas colleague John Cornyn. They argued that they were supporting the House bill, and opposed funding for Obamacare.

Cruz was able to ignite his conservative base with his speech. Tea party activists flooded the phone lines of Republican (and Democratic) senators urging them to vote against the measure. Several conservative House Republicans were in the Senate chamber for a vote.

The group FreedomWorks blasted the Republican senators who supported the motion in an email with the subject “They betrayed you.”

“Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul did everything they could to Defund ObamaCare. But, Establishment Republicans stabbed them in the back. They gave Obama an easy out. They helped fund ObamaCare,” wrote FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe.

Correction: Twenty-five Republicans voted yes. An earlier version of this article misstated this number. (9/27/13)

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Harry Reid To Republicans: "Get A Life"

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a message for Republicans: “Get a life.”

That’s what the Nevada Senator said Republicans should do instead of focusing on ObamaCare after the Senate voted 54-44 along party lines to fund the government and strip language defunding ObamaCare.

“Here’s a president, who less than a year ago, won the election by 5 million votes, 5 million votes. ObamaCare has been the law for four years. Why don’t they get a life and talk about something else? People deserve better,” he said.

The battle to fund the government now heads back to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

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Hillary Clinton Takes On Congressional Republicans Over Obamacare

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended the Affordable Care Act and criticized House Republicans at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York City. Getty Images

At a Clinton Global Initiative panel discussion on women’s health, Hillary Clinton momentarily turned the conversation to Washington politics when she offered a full-throated defense of the Affordable Care Act and laid into a “noisy minority” of Republicans threatening to shutdown the government over the bill.

Clinton’s riff on the current affairs of the capital, where House Republicans are attempting to defund President Obama’s landmark health care bill, marked a notably partisan moment for the former secretary of state. Clinton has kept quite this year on much of what happens inside the Beltway.

“I find the debate over this issue to be quite unfortunate,” Clinton said Tuesday, on a panel moderated by CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta about women’s health. “A law was passed. It was upheld by the Supreme Court. It is the law of the land.”

To affect a contrast with what she described as today’s “noisy minority” of House Republicans, Clinton cited past health care bills, specifically George W. Bush’s Medicare Part D benefit, which also presented implementation challenges but was met with less opposition by lawmakers on the right. “You didn’t have obstructionist members of Congress once the vote was taken,” said Clinton.

Clinton, a possible presidential candidate in 2016, did acknowledge that Democrats could stand to benefit from Republican threats in Washington to shutdown the government over funding for the bill. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing for Democrats if they tried to shut the government down,” she said. “We’ve seen that movie before. It didn’t work out too well.”

“If they want to try to shut the government down,” Clinton added, “that’s on their head — that’s their responsibility.”

But Clinton said that if Republicans “go even further” by refusing to raise the debt ceiling over the issue, sending the country into default, “that is not just partisan politics, that is going to the heart of our credibility around the world,” she said. “I hope that smarter, cooler heads prevail and that we deal with our budget and we deal with our debt limit.”

Clinton, calling Obama’s health care reform a “significant step forward,” did acknowledge the bill wasn’t infallible. “Nobody is saying it’s a perfect bill. I served in the senate for eight years — there is no such thing as a perfect bill.”

She also gestured toward the public messaging problems the Obama administration has faced with the measure, stressing that while people may “agree with the specifics” of health care reform, “they have been in effect convinced the overall program is not to their liking.

“We’re in this sort of bipolar political world,” Clinton said.

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