Putting Partisanship Ahead of the People

Editor's Note: I originally wrote this piece the day the partial government shutdown took effect a little over two weeks ago. Unfortunately I never logged on to actually publish it until this morning. Apologies for the delay and another post will be coming this afternoon about the end of the shutdown.
 
           In Congress Tuesday one party and its leaders put bitter partisan politics ahead of the American people and shut down the government.

            And it wasn’t Republicans.

            That’s right, I’m talking about President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.

            The sticking point of the failure to pass any legislation was, as we all probably know, Obamacare. Or, as the official euphemistic titles goes, the Affordable Care Act.

            Retiring Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Obamacare had the potential to become a “train wreck.” And what a train wreck it has become. Among numerous other failed promises, President Obama promised the American people that if we liked our health plans, we could keep them. That was a lie. Thousands and thousands of people are now having their health plans dropped under the law.

            Obama promised the American people that healthcare premiums would decrease by $2,500 for a typical family. That was a lie. Instead, across the country premiums will increase $7,450 for a family of four. In Maryland, the rate increase could be as high as 83-86 percent. In Tennessee, reports indicate that rates could increase as much as 190 percent. Read that again. It’s not a typo. And for Andy and Amy Mangione, a couple living in Kentucky, health care costs tripled literally overnight, going from $333 to $965 per month.

            Workers who had worked full time jobs have suddenly found those jobs cuts to 29.5 hours per week or, worse, these workers have been laid off. The exchanges in the majority of states were not ready for Tuesday's deadline and still aren't working right. Small businesses, the backbone of Main Street that Obama vowed to protect and restore, can no longer pay the health care costs they used to pay for their employees. And the list goes on.

            Repeated polling has shown that nearly 60 percent of Americans want to return to the healthcare system we had in 2009, before Obamacare was forced on the American people. A full seven in ten Americans now have a problem with some or all of the law. Even unions, the backbone of Obama’s political machine, have turned on Obamacare.

            Seeing all this outrage from the American people and the disastrous effects Obamacare is having on America across the board, last week Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a bill that would fully fund all government operations except Obamacare. Democrats in the Senate, led by Reid, then voted to strip the defunding measure from the bill.

            So House Republicans compromised. In the early hours of Sunday morning, the House passed a new bill that would fully fund the government, repeal the incredibly unpopular excise tax on medical devices and delay Obamacare for one year. This measure would have been on par with the wholly unconstitutional executive actions Obama has already taken to delay and rewrite Obamacare on his own. Except this time it would have been a legal change.

            Republicans showed remarkable flexibility on this issue. They did not want a government shutdown and they also knew the American people do not want Obamacare. But when they realized they would not get Obamacare defunded in the Senate, they instead substituted a one year delay that would have given both sides some of what they wanted while keeping the government open.

            But alas, it did not happen. Obama, Reid and Senate Democrats, in an absolutely stunning show of “my way or the high way” politics, rejected this compromise. With no other legislation in place, the government shut down.

            In choosing to shut down the government instead of compromising with Republicans, Senate Democrats put partisan politics and their insane need to cling to a law the American people do not want ahead of the American people. By taking this action, Democrats on The Hill have utterly failed the American people. Despite almost assured media attempts to frame it otherwise, this shutdown rests purely on the shoulders of President Obama and the Democrats, not Republicans.

            I hope Obama and his fellow party leaders are ready for the 2014 midterm elections because the American people will be out in force to make them pay for this incompetence.

Jimmy Williams