The GOP is about to save Obamacare

Later this month, the Supreme Court may decide that Obamacare’s subsidies are illegal. But rather than take this opportunity to gut Obamacare, the GOP is set to save it, led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

Johnson told me that he “fully support[s] the repeal of Obamacare,” but his actions, and those of his colleagues, indicate he is leading less a fight and more of a capitulation — in violation of more than five years of campaign promises by Republicans.

{mosads}Johnson, who is in serious re-election trouble, introduced the Preserving Freedom and Choice in Healthcare Actin April. The bill repeals Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates, and, says Johnson, “eliminates mandated coverages that have driven up the cost of health care and forced millions to lose health care plans they liked and could afford.

In exchange, Johnson’s bill would keep Obamacare subsidies in place for nearly 6.4 million people until early 2017. He told me that “it my belief that extending the subsidies through 2017 will make the next presidential election a referendum about the future course of health care in this country.”

“I believe the American people will view this proposal to be so reasonable that public pressure will be applied to Democrats and President Obama instead of Republicans,” said the senator, who assured me that “electoral politics did not play a role” in the bill’s introduction.

Several realities show that Johnson’s optimism is misplaced.

First, it was just three years ago that voters re-elected Obama and gave Democrats more seats in Congress even though Obamacare was a central part of that year’s campaigns. And that was before the subsidies kicked in — in 2016, the public will have even more incentive to support Obamacare.

Second, Johnson’s efforts assume that Obama will compromise on Obamacare, something the president has been loath to do as he has chalked up numerous victories against Republicans and used Executive Orders to undermine federal law.

Third, ever since King v. Burwell was accepted by the Supreme Court, the mainstream media has depicted the potential loss of subsidies as the GOP’s problem — rather than the responsibility of President Obama and congressional Democrats, who wrote, enacted, and illegally applied the health care law over the last five years.

Fourth, the GOP has a poor track record against Obamacare. Three election cycles of promises to repeal Obamacare has brought us to Johnson’s bill, which puts Republicans on the side of bribing the public for votes while the GOP prays for victory in 2016.

Republicans already decided this year that making Social Security and Medicare affordable is too risky, and they gave the bloated Pentagon a $38 billion slush fund even while breaking a campaign promise to prevent Obama’s illegal amnesty. Why would the U.S. public expect them to repeal Obamacare when even the House’s so-called “conservatives” are considering Johnson’s proposal?

Lastly, as has been seen too many times, “temporary” often becomes “permanent” in Washington. As Mark Steyn noted in 2010, once government gets big enough, “the result is a kind of two-party one-party state: Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.”

In other words, subsidies to prevent short-term pain might help the GOP next year, but the nation would lose. It would certainly be another nail in the coffin for the GOP’s credibility on fiscal issues.

Even Johnson, who made a campaign promise in 2010 to repeal Obamacare, tacitly admitted his predictions could go wildly off-course. “We can never know what future Congresses are going to do,” he told me.

Rather than duck their heads whenever they can actually hold to campaign promises, Republicans ought to take the offensive. Rather than cower before Obama’s media allies, they should demand accountability for the Democrats who broke their own law and thus put 6.4 million Americans’ insurance at risk.

They should ask whether the media would have pushed Democrats to retroactively save a Bush policy — say, the invasion of Iraq — if it was found to be illegal.

And they should remind themselves that they were not elected to save Obamacare. They came to office swearing to uphold the U.S. Constitution and promising to be fiscally responsible.

It is not the job of Congress to prevent pain, no matter how politically attractive it is. It is Congress’ responsibility to follow the Constitution and do what’s best for America — and letting Obamacare collapse is just part of the job.

Siggins is the public relations officer and DC Correspondent for LifeSiteNews. He is also a media consultant and a co-author of the forthcoming book, Bankrupt Legacy: The Future of the Debt-Paying Generation. Follow him on Twitter: @DustinSiggins