The extremist Republicans who control the House of Representatives have destructively shamed the United States by introducing government via extortion to the American political canon.
In their blind, who-gives-a-damn zeal to be rid of Obamacare — an end they haven’t the power to achieve legitimately — the GOP fanatics bargained with the essence of the country’s federal functions, the employment of 800,000 of their fellow citizens and the state of the struggling national economy.
House Speaker John Boehner and the Tea Party band took all of that hostage, offering deals that were no deals at all: Bow to us on this, that or the other Obamacare provision and we will keep Uncle Sam in business. This wasn’t the art of compromise. It was political criminality.
President Obama and Democrats, to their credit, refused to buckle. Republican moderates — led by New York Rep. Pete King — tried to stand up for sanity.
They rightly refused to let a fringe of the GOP drag the government over a cliff.
Whatever one thinks of the Affordable Care Act — and we are a far cry from enthusiastic cheerleaders for the law — this is no way to run a country, much less the most powerful nation on the face of the earth.
That President Obama and the Democrats rammed through their health care overhaul over the unanimous opposition of Republicans offers no justification for the GOP’s recklessness. The law was duly passed by both houses of Congress, signed by a President and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Along the way, Obama won a second term in an election that was at least partly a referendum on Obamacare.
Nobody says Republicans have to smile and salute as Obamacare is implemented. The law may produce dangerous economic side effects — and, in fact, it may not achieve the goals of delivering affordable health care coverage while slowing the growth of medical spending. The overhaul may need its own overhaul, but those changes must be made deliberately, on their own terms — not with a body tied to the tracks.
And now, as of midnight, the shutdown is in full effect. The lost paychecks for hundreds of thousands of federal workers will hurt. As will the shuttered national parks (the Statue of Liberty included), suspended services for veterans and seniors and children and more. The still-limping economy will take a swift whack to the kneecaps.
Trying to bludgeon Obamacare out of existence is a perversion of the democratic process. And should the Republicans feel that their dangerous game-playing is rewarded, imagine how they will be emboldened when, just weeks from now, it comes time to raise the nation’s debt limit — in other words, to pay the nation’s bills, most of them racked up by previous Congresses and Presidents.
It once was a standard responsibility. It is fast becoming, like everything else, scorched earth.
Obama had it exactly right late Monday: “You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job.”
The one silver lining: If House Republicans don’t correct course soon, millions of Americans will go to the polls next November to ensure that it’s not their job to do anymore.
