President Barack Obama is threatening to veto another stack of Republican-drafted government funding bills until the GOP gives up its efforts to reform the Obamacare network.
“If the President were presented [with the 10 bills funding individual agencies]… he would veto the bills,” said a Oct. 4 White House statement about the bills, which are being voted through he House Oct. 4.
“Instead of opening up a few Government functions, the House of Representatives should re-open all of the Government,” it said.
Reopening a few agencies “is a gimmick,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Oct. 4. “It is inappropriate and bad for the economy and bad for our democracy” to not pass a big government-wide funding bill, Carney claimed.
Obama’s aggressive stance is intended to force the GOP to abandon its Obamacare reforms.
Those reforms include ending a tax on the revenues of high-tech medical device makers, ending the lucrative Obamacare subsidy for Democratic and Republican congressional staffers, and setting a one-year delay in the 2010 law’s requirement that all adults buy health insurance, no matter their age, health or other priorities.
Democrats fear those reforms will lead to the collapse of the hugely ambitious health-sector takeover, which has yet to win support from a majority of Americans.
Republicans’ poll-backed reforms were dismissed Oct. 4 by White House spokesman Jay Carney as “sabotaging the Affordable Care Act.”
The GOP-led House has approved the 2014 budget three times, but each bill has been rejected by Obama and the Democratic-majority Senate.
Since the GOP’s funding bills were rejected, Obama and his flacks have touted the resulting budgetary impact, which includes the furloughing of roughy 800,000 government employees. In addition, the president’s deputies have barricaded national parks and closed down websites.
Obama also cancelled his trip to four Asian countries and three international summits rather than accept the reforms proposed by Republicans.
Carney blamed the GOP for the president decisions, which he said “undercut U.S. leadership abroad.”
“This is not good for America, this is not good for our economy,” Carney admitted.