It may seem juvenile or at least politically risky, and while I think Obamacare is a terrible law I do not know if this is the best way to kill it.  It seems like it is dying under its own weight of hubris and incompetence.  Dick Armey once advised not to waste time killing someone who is busy committing suicide.

The shutdown has demonstrated how many non essential workers the federal government has.  This is a concept that is foreign to anyone running a for-profit enterprise.  While government representatives and media sycophants drone on about how this affects ‘real people’, most of us have barely noticed any change in our lives.  Ok, my accountant cannot get info from the IRS, and I am sure those federal workers who are laid off are feeling some pain.

But the rest of America has been feeling this pain for some time- so forgive me if I lack sympathy for the federal employees who feel they are in limbo.  Even laid off you realize this will end in a few weeks and your pay will be restored. Most of the workers who lost their jobs in the private sector did not fare so well.

Are the Republicans radical in their demands?  They want Congress to be subject to the same law they have rammed down the throats of the rest of the country.  Is that radical?  They want individuals to receive the same delay in sign up that Obama granted corporations.  Is that so radical? They want changes in the health care law, specifically to remove the tax on medical devices.  Apparently most Democrats support that, so why is that so radical?

Democrats contend that it is unconscionable to tie the changes in this law to government funding.  It is also unconscionable for the president who swore an oath to execute the laws of the land, unilaterally picks and chooses which laws he will enforce, and he declared changes in his own law without congressional approval when he delayed corporate requirements for a year.  He demonizes the Republicans for doing precisely what he did, though his act fell well outside of his constitutional powers.

If the Republicans can be accused of playing dirty pool in their demands, have we forgotten how the Democratically controlled Congress passed Obamacare.  Perhaps if they were not so smitten with their power and had included the GOP more in the process and had garnered a SINGLE GOP vote they would have some moral ground to preen about this GOP tactic.

From Charles Krauthammer in The National Review,  Who Locked Little Johnny out of Yellowstone? ,

From Social Security to civil rights to Medicaid to Medicare, never in the modern history of the country has major social legislation been enacted on a straight party-line vote. Never. In every case, there was significant reaching across the aisle, enhancing the law’s legitimacy and endurance. Yet Obamacare — which revolutionizes one-sixth of the economy, regulates every aspect of medical practice, and intimately affects just about every citizen — passed without a single GOP vote.

The Democrats insist they welcomed contributing ideas from Republicans. Rubbish. Republicans proposed that insurance be purchasable across state lines. They got nothing. They sought serious tort reform. They got nothing. Why? Because, admitted Howard Dean, Democrats didn’t want to offend the trial lawyers.

Moreover, the administration was clearly warned. Republican Scott Brown ran in the most inhospitable of states, Massachusetts, on the explicit promise to cast the deciding vote blocking Obamacare. It was January 2010, the height of the debate. He won. Reid ignored this unmistakable message of popular opposition and conjured a parliamentary maneuver — reconciliation — to get around Brown.

Nothing illegal about that. Nothing illegal about ramming it through without a single opposition vote. Just totally contrary to the modern American tradition — and the constitutional decency — of undertaking major social revolutions only with bipartisan majorities. Having stuffed Obamacare down the throats of the GOP and the country, Democrats are now paying the price.

As to the complaint that a minority are pressing their will against a majority, they are using the power they have which has been frustrated at too many other passes.  Only a third of the colonists supported revolution.

I would recommend a procedural rule that both parties could easily support.  In the event of a shutdown the total pay of all congressmen and their staff should be the first to be cut. That should avoid this mess in the future.

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