During our recent government crisis, I
argued that the strategy of defunding ObamaCare through government spending
bills would succeed in shutting down the government but would not succeed in
ending or delaying ObamaCare. Now that the strategy has played out with little
success, the Wall Street Journal – America’s largest conservative
newspaper – offers this assessment:
For weeks [Senator Ted] Cruz scolded his fellow Republicans as
the "surrender caucus" and closet supporters of ObamaCare because
they wouldn't support his strategy to tie a vote to fund the government to
defunding ObamaCare. His GOP colleagues thought the Cruz strategy was futile,
and politically dumb, as it proved to be. Yet now even Mr. Cruz is admitting
that there are limits to what Republicans can achieve when they control only
one house of Congress. Maybe he's learning, or maybe his earlier accusations
were, well, less than sincere.
Speaking of admissions, one of the ringleaders of the shutdown
caucus conceded Wednesday that he always knew ObamaCare couldn't be defunded
this year. "Well, everybody understands that we're not going to be able to
repeal this law until 2017 and that we have to win the Senate and win the White
House," Michael Needham of the Heritage Action political operation told
Fox News.
That's also true, but wait. If the defund cause was always
futile as some of us argued, why spend weeks pursuing a strategy he knew would
fail? And why run ads declaring the opposite, as Heritage Action did, in
Congressional districts held by Republicans who actually oppose ObamaCare? Mr.
Needham and his allies claim to be tribunes of the people, but they're the ones
who treated the public like rubes by misleading it about what was politically
possible.
Rich Lowry, editor of the most widely
read conservative magazine, National Review, makes a similar argument:
. . . [T]he
defunders gave Sen. Harry Reid the shutdown confrontation that he was more than
happy to fight, because he knew it would be such a potent partisan tool for his
side. The defunders stormed the barricades at their strongest point. They
exhibited no willingness to distinguish among bad options or appreciation for
what was really achievable.
At best, their approach was a high-risk, low-reward strategy. As it turns out, there wasn't even any reward.
. . . Sen.
Ted Cruz, the very able point man for the defunders, kept the strategy afloat
longer than most people would have expected, but even he could never explain
persuasively the path from a shutdown to the desired end of a signing ceremony
in the White House defunding the president’s signature piece of legislation.
With the shutdown behind us, it’s worth
considering which steps conservatives should now take in our fight for smaller,
more effective government.
As for ObamaCare, I have warned for
years that the program would be disastrous. Its awful rollout was predictable
and inevitable. In my opinion, instead of trying to repeal ObamaCare through
legislative gimmicks that are doomed to fail, Congress needs to develop
free-market alternatives that will dramatically improve healthcare without
relying on heavy-handed government intervention. Along with representatives in
the House and Senate, I have proposed an initiative – the Patient’s
Choice Act – that would achieve these goals. I am encouraging my colleagues
in Congress either to support this act or present their own proposals to
replace ObamaCare.
We must also continue our fight against
the ruinous debt that jeopardizes our economy and our children’s
future. The Congressional Budget Office now predicts that American debt
will exceed 100 percent of our annual economic output in less than 25
years. The 75-year projections are even more alarming. Paying these
bills would require an amount of money equal to the combined 2009 gross
domestic product – every single dollar – of the entire planet. Once again, I
believe the best strategy is not to rely on legislative tricks, but to convince
the American people that we conservatives have a responsible plan to balance
the budget, reduce our debt, and reform entitlement programs that are careening
toward insolvency.
For more information on the end of the
shutdown, listen to my conversation with conservative, nationally syndicated
talk radio host John Batchelor here.
