Senior House Republicans are demanding that the Obama administration reveal its contingency plans in the event that the Supreme Court scraps Obamacare subsidies in three dozen states.
Five Republicans on the powerful Energy & Commerce Committee made their request in a letter Wednesday to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
“Specifically, we are examining the extent to which the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and other relevant agencies of the federal government, are preparing for the possible consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of King v. Burwell,” wrote the lawmakers.
The lawmakers are Energy & Commerce Chair Fred Upton (R-MI), Health Subcommittee Chair Joseph Pitts (R-PA), Oversight Subcommittee Chair Tim Murphy (R-PA), Chair Emeritus Joe Barton (R-TX) and Vice Chair Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
Here are the questions they sought answers to:
Asked by TPM, HHS and the White House declined to say if they were making preparations for an adverse court ruling. A decision is expected by the end of June.
“We believe we are in a place where our argument and our position will prevail,” Burwell said at a news conference last month, as quoted by CNBC.
The Republicans lawmakers appeared to side with the view that the Supreme Court should ax the federal exchange subsidies, which would spark the crisis they expressed concern about in the letter. They wrote: “The plain text of the PPACA expressly limits such eligibility to those individuals who purchase insurance through a state exchange…”
The answer should be short and to the point, something like: We would prepare legislation to address whatever drafting errors Scalia, Kennedy, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts claimed to have discovered in the act and submit it to you clowns for immediate action, then sit back and watch as you tried to explain that all you have to address an undeniable problem is hot air.
Another day another republican demanding someone else do his job for him.
Remind the GOP of the Pottery Barn Rule (made famous by Colin Powell). They break the ACA. They own it.
Shouldn’t we be asking the Republicans in Congress what they plan to do if the Supreme Court rules adversely against the ACA?
LOL. What a fucking joke. Here we have a “problem” that could be fixed by changing ONE FUCKING WORD in the statute, which is something that the GOP/Teatrolls are in total control over because they have the majority in both the House and Senate, and yet here they are wasting everyone’s time and money trying to paper-up arguments to sell to the MSM that claim it’s all Obama’s responsibility and that any and all fallout for anyone after an adverse ruling in the SCOTUS is in fact his fault because he “didn’t prepare for it well enough.”
What. A. Fucking. Joke.
How many words are in this letter? How many? And they bother writing this nonsense instead of drafting a piece of legislation that could be all of 15 words long replacing one word in the ACA? Please proceed, motherfuckers, please proceed. I hope to God that Obama makes you eat your own pathetic little peckers for this.
EDIT: BTW, what they are digging for is this…“There is nothing to prepare for. If the SCOTUS rules that the subsidies to these people must stop, then we will stop giving the subsidies to people, and we are not authorized to try to give them out in any other manner or to do anything else to try to continue funding the subsidies or the health insurance the subsidies were buying. This is a problem whose solution MUST come from Congress.”
They will then snip snip snip and run around on the MSM saying that Obama is threatening to kill the subsidies…and everyone’s health insurance as a result…if he doesn’t get his way in the case. The MSM will dutifully broadcast it to the four corners of the globe and pretend it’s a potentially valid argument that “you know, they just didn’t do anything and they could’ve at least tried to prepare for it to protect all those poor people, but instead they spitefully did nothing so they could blame it on us.”
My favorite part will be when they start yelling about “Oh, NOOOOOW he can’t do anything because his hands are tied and he admits that Congress is supposed to authorize everything…but when it came to illegals invading our country, he did whatever he wanted!!! So which is it!!!”