GOP Plans Hearings on Obamacare
The Wall Street Journal reports:
When it comes to repealing ObamaCare, plan B for John Boehner (R., Ohio) will be more important than plan A.
Plan A, of course, is to repeal the new health-care law whole hog. If Republicans take the House in next month's elections, they will surely introduce—and pass—a bill to do so. The question is: What happens when that bill then goes nowhere in the Senate, where even a Republican majority will not be large enough to rebuff a filibuster, much less override a presidential veto?
That's where plan B comes in. Republicans would do exactly what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi so memorably predicted would happen once the health-care bill passed: find out what's inside it. Mr. Boehner says his priority is full repeal. But he also knows he is in for a fight. In this fight, hearings would help Republicans accomplish several things.
First, they would help define the law's problems for the American people.
Second, by defining the problems, Republicans would be in a better position to define and sell their more market-friendly fixes.
Third, by doing the first two, Republicans might get enough votes here and there to kick out key rungs of ObamaCare.
Even if Republicans could not get the president to sign anything into law, by forcing votes and vetoes Republicans would drive home an important point: If the American people really want repeal, they will need to vote for a Republican president in 2012.
Properly speaking, of course, the people's representatives are supposed to hold hearings before they pass legislation. Plainly Americans have issues with much of the new health-care law. Its unpopularity, however, owes just as much to the way it was rammed through—with little real debate and even less in the way of real information about consequences.
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