In February of this year, Republicans in the Senate tried to make President Obama veto a law that would initially call for a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. The other name you might know this Act better by is Obamacare. Obamacare is President Obama’s landmark health legislation that has been attacked year after year ever since 2010 by every Republican in the Senate. The Act itself gives affordable healthcare for millions of uninsured Americans. Once it was held up by the Supreme Court in June of 2012, Republicans began to work hard to make sure that law would get appealed.
Republicans since then have made it their mission and goal to repeal Obamacare. They have wasted hundreds of hours and possibly millions in taxpayer dollars – along with over 60 attempts to repeal the law. Their drive and motivation to repeal this Act has betrayed their confidence in replacing it with something else. Even now, even if the Republicans did come up with some sort of working solution to replace Obamacare, this health insurance is now covering over 16 million Americans nationwide. If repealed, all those American citizens would lose their heath insurance. The tagline for Republicans seems to be focus on Obamacare because nothing else matters when a Republican is voted into office – they a seem to have tunnel vision and desire to make removing Obamacare from legislation their ultimate endgame.
Although Republican this year in February tried to force president Obama to veto his Affordable Care Act, they were unsuccessful in doing so. They ended up not having enough tangible support to veto the Act. Instead, they tried to halt the process of Obamacare by attaching placing “veto bait” language into must-pass legislation. This attempt has also failed and it seems now that Republicans have put up their white flags in total surrender to battling Obamacare. They have abandoned any an all efforts to use their power over the federal purse strings to try to put a halt to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
Now Republicans have taken a more pragmatic approach to their endgame by creating a huge spending measure that would reflect a hope by the top Republicans in the Senate to attempt to throw away any veto bait from must-pass spending bills. This is in the hopes of allowing such bills to pass with ease. The spending measure looks to be around $164 billion.
The bill focused on boosting medical research, Pell Grants for low-income college students, and extra money to treat opioid or heroin addicts. After using their more pragmatic approach in the Senate, such a bill measure was passed without any sort of trouble through the Senate Appropriations as of June 8th, 2016. The pragmatic approach seems to be the right approach that Republicans in the Senate need to hold on to if they intend to pass better and more structured bills. This is rare due to the fact that this approach is hardly ever used by a Republican in the Senate.
With Republicans pulling only 12 percent in Congressional approval ratings, it is very real that Democrats might regain control over the Senate. This is election year and we are months away from the our next president. It is wise for Republicans to pull such stunts in the effort to pass some much-needed legislation before the Democrats take control of the Senate once more. With their presidential candidate most likely having to be Donald Trump, Republicans are playing it safe and smart as only months are left before a new POTUS is elected into office making it their top priority to join together and pass their desired legislation before it’s too late.