Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Republicans Aim To Block Health Care Funding

Janet Hook wrote the following for The Wall Street Journal:
House Republicans will use a stopgap spending bill coming to the floor next week as a vehicle to block money for the new health-care law, a top lawmaker said Tuesday.

The latest push to neutralize the legislation, confirmed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, (R., Va.), comes on the heels of an earlier effort to repeal the law. That passed the House but fell short in the Senate.

The spending bill, needed to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, is being drafted by the House Appropriations Committee, which is seeking deep spending cuts. The current stopgap bill expires March 4.

While the initial version isn't expected to include the health-law funding ban, Republicans plan to introduce it as an amendment to the bill, Mr. Cantor said. It is expected to block the use of money in the bill to carry out the law, for example by preventing the Department of Health and Human Services from hiring more workers to oversee the new benefits.

The House Republicans' strategy means President Barack Obama's health-care initiative will be a major hurdle to passing the government-wide spending bill. Democratic leaders in the Senate are unlikely to back any move to defund the new law.

With repeal of the health law dead for now, Republicans have also called for rolling back specific parts of the legislation, such as the requirement that most Americans carry health insurance or pay a fine.
This article got me thinking.  Republicans are against the health care bill, they are against unemployment benefits, and they are for reduction in corporate taxes.

In regards to corporations, Bob Herbert wrote the following for The New York Times, making an interesting observation (I learned of this article through Politics Plus):
Enormous numbers of workers are in grave danger of being left behind permanently. Businesses have figured out how to prosper without putting the unemployed back to work in jobs that pay well and offer decent benefits.

Corporate profits and the stock markets are way up. Businesses are sitting atop mountains of cash. Put people back to work? Forget about it. Has anyone bothered to notice that much of those profits are the result of aggressive payroll-cutting — companies making do with fewer, less well-paid and harder-working employees?

For American corporations, the action is increasingly elsewhere. Their interests are not the same as those of workers, or the country as a whole. As Harold Meyerson put it in The American Prospect: “Our corporations don’t need us anymore. Half their revenues come from abroad. Their products, increasingly, come from abroad as well.”
So, corporations are posting profits and the stock market has rebounded, yet unemployment still remains high and millions of Americans remain uninsured (the health care reform bill helps in that area).  Republicans essentially want to give more breaks to these corporations while refusing to help any of their human constituents.  If Republicans get their way, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer and sicker.

I am curious as to how the Republicans actions will play out in next year's elections...

1 comment:

  1. Yes, an only 14 Republicants have refused their government subsidized health insurance. This is simply blatant hypocrisy.

    ReplyDelete

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