And maybe that wouldn't have worked. No indication that anyone ever tried, but maybe it wouldn't have worked any better than dozens of anti-ACA votes. There was, of course, another option, which was to put a definite end to all business - including things like raising budget ceilings and passing appropriations bills - until the ACA was fully repealed. The GOP flirted with that idea too, remember? Of course, it turned out disastrously - very politically damaging - so that kind of suggests that the GOP legislators weren't elected to do that.
The remaining alternative - again, speaking of competent legislators and not the careerists whose cause you champion - might have been more targeted, discrete revisions of the law in ways that serve Republican interests and policy goals. We have had numerous opportunities to think about the ACA and the ways it may not be working as intended. Democrats don't like a malfunctioning law. Republicans don't like a malfunctioning law. They might disagree about what's causing the "malfunction," but more often than not there's room for compromises and horse-trading on this.
Granted that many Republicans were elected to repeal the ACA. But the ACA remains as legally valid as ever, and it promises to remain so for at least another couple of years. Moreover, while Republicans have been dithering over futile repeal votes, its various provisions are rapidly becoming part of the status quo, so even by the time Republicans do manage to get the votes that they need to repeal the ACA outright without concession or compromise, they're going to be seriously constrained on some fronts from doing so. They will, essentially, be voting to end people's insurance and to make it prohibitively expensive, far more profoundly than even the fake horror stories told about Obamacare have portrayed. You won't need to look very hard to find an unemployed 24 year old with a congenital heart condition and an insurance cancellation notice.
So you've just got to ask - what are these legislators doing? They've failed in the task they've specifically been elected to achieve. Their strategy is not evolving and promises to put the party in a very difficult position when and if they finally get the power to do what they've been elected to achieve. If you think it's "doing their job," then you are - like I said - either lying or profoundly stupid. Because it's clear that's not what they're doing. They're keeping their job. And you're helping them to do that.
For another, many of us vote specifically to act as a block on the Democratic majority, and/or to do as little as possible.
You know, I've thought a lot about this line, and it might make sense if we were working with a blank slate, without a host of laws already on the books. But that's not where we are. It just so happens that we do have things like the Clean Air Act, and it just so happens that it has been authoritatively interpreted by the Supreme Court to require the regulation of carbon dioxide omissions. That's just legally the case; the President has no choice but to try to implement that law. The Clean Air Act is decades old and a horrible tool for this, as we all well know, and the President himself would prefer an alternative means of regulating carbon dioxide. But the GOP won't have it. They also can't seem to come together to repeal the Clean Air Act or to carve out carbon dioxide - politics, politics! - so this whole sitting-on-their-hands, doing-as-little-as-possible strategy means simply one thing: A bad law remains on the books, and the President has to enforce it. They aren't blocking that. They're making it happen.
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The remaining alternative - again, speaking of competent legislators and not the careerists whose cause you champion - might have been more targeted, discrete revisions of the law in ways that serve Republican interests and policy goals. We have had numerous opportunities to think about the ACA and the ways it may not be working as intended. Democrats don't like a malfunctioning law. Republicans don't like a malfunctioning law. They might disagree about what's causing the "malfunction," but more often than not there's room for compromises and horse-trading on this.
Granted that many Republicans were elected to repeal the ACA. But the ACA remains as legally valid as ever, and it promises to remain so for at least another couple of years. Moreover, while Republicans have been dithering over futile repeal votes, its various provisions are rapidly becoming part of the status quo, so even by the time Republicans do manage to get the votes that they need to repeal the ACA outright without concession or compromise, they're going to be seriously constrained on some fronts from doing so. They will, essentially, be voting to end people's insurance and to make it prohibitively expensive, far more profoundly than even the fake horror stories told about Obamacare have portrayed. You won't need to look very hard to find an unemployed 24 year old with a congenital heart condition and an insurance cancellation notice.
So you've just got to ask - what are these legislators doing? They've failed in the task they've specifically been elected to achieve. Their strategy is not evolving and promises to put the party in a very difficult position when and if they finally get the power to do what they've been elected to achieve. If you think it's "doing their job," then you are - like I said - either lying or profoundly stupid. Because it's clear that's not what they're doing. They're keeping their job. And you're helping them to do that.
For another, many of us vote specifically to act as a block on the Democratic majority, and/or to do as little as possible.
You know, I've thought a lot about this line, and it might make sense if we were working with a blank slate, without a host of laws already on the books. But that's not where we are. It just so happens that we do have things like the Clean Air Act, and it just so happens that it has been authoritatively interpreted by the Supreme Court to require the regulation of carbon dioxide omissions. That's just legally the case; the President has no choice but to try to implement that law. The Clean Air Act is decades old and a horrible tool for this, as we all well know, and the President himself would prefer an alternative means of regulating carbon dioxide. But the GOP won't have it. They also can't seem to come together to repeal the Clean Air Act or to carve out carbon dioxide - politics, politics! - so this whole sitting-on-their-hands, doing-as-little-as-possible strategy means simply one thing: A bad law remains on the books, and the President has to enforce it. They aren't blocking that. They're making it happen.