In what is nothing more then a spiteful gimmick to show that the Republicans "respect" the support of Teabaggers in helping get them back in power, House Republicans today performed a procedural vote for the purpose of seeing what type of support could be found in the House for a full repeal of last years historic health care reform.
What that means is if health care reform, officially known as the 2010 Affordable Care for America Act or HR 3962, would be repealed, parents would no longer be able to keep their children under their plans until the age of 26, insurers would no longer be barred from denying service based on preexisting conditions, Medicaid would not be expanded and 30 million uninsured Americans would not find coverage by 2019.
Following the procedural vote the tally came to 236 to 181 in favor of repealing health care reform with two Republicans who were forced to vote present because they missed the congressional swearing-in ceremony on Wednesday due to having fundraisers to attend. Those two were Pete Sessions of Texas and Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. Which is technically a violation of the Constitution under the oath of office provision. I wonder if the GOP knew that while that were reading an amended version of the Constitution.
Because of the success of the procedural vote, Speaker Boehner will put a full repeal vote on the calender for next Wednesday which is likely to pass.
But don't fret, that is where it will end. With the Democrats still being in control of the Senate, the bill is dead on arrival after passage in the House. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already said that any attempt to even put a repeal vote up on the docket would not happen as long as he is in charge. And, even if Republicans would have won the Senate last November, Democrats would have likely filibustered the bill to death the way the GOP has for the past 2 years.
But this procedural vote and next weeks actual vote were never meant to pass. It was meant to shut the Teabaggers up and try to score some type of moral victory by finding any conservative Democrat willing to jump ship. After the vote is defeated from even being introduced into the Senate, the House is already planning a game of chicken with the upper chamber by sending them a series of spending bills which, if passed, would chip away at health care reform, and if not passed would defund and possibly shut down the government.
In addition to the perks that would be lost if the signature piece of legislation for the Obama Era thus far were ever repealed, the Congressional Budget Office has also added that repealing the bill would cost the American people $230 billion over the next decade and nearly $1 trillion the decade following. A group of Harvard economists have also said it would cost America 400,000 jobs per year for a decade or more that would likely add 1.5 percent to our unemployment rate. In other words, it would be like instantly raising our 9.4% unemployment to almost 11%.
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