by 
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) knows how to get in the news. Lately, she’s been exposing a little known provision of ObamaCare—the fact that it authorized $105 billion in government spending, without any further action by Congress.
The Republicans are calling this “Legislative Fraud”.
Why The Democrats Put It In
The Democrats knew their measure was unpopular. They also knew that, down the road, anything was possible electorally. Therefore, it would be prudent to authorize spending for the measure to keep it in play, regardless of how the elections turned out.
I mean, if you believed that this Health Care legislation was the fix for the problems in American Health Care, you’d put everything in there you could to make sure it couldn’t be stopped.
Why The Republicans Don’t Like It
When the Republicans failed to take the Senate, they knew they had little chance of an out right repeal—though the House passed it anyway. Their backup strategy was to defund the bill, or not authorize any spending to implement the legislation. That’s part of what’s going on right now with the spending bill, whether or not funding for ObamaCare will be included.
By having the funding already in the ObamaCare legislation, the Republicans cry foul, because they can’t just refuse to fund it, they actually have to remove funding!
Which is why they are calling “Legislative Fraud.”
Except, I don’t see the problem here.
At the time this bill was passed, the Democrats had majorities and the House of the time did pass the legislation to fund ObamaCare. Though the bill should have been read and our representatives should have know about this ahead of time, they did not—except for maybe the authors of parts of the legislation.
Calling “dirty tricks” doesn’t get us anywhere—like most name calling. Instead of focusing on the past, Republicans should do their best with what they find themselves in.
I mean, if they think it’s wrong for Pres. Obama to blame everything that happens on former Pres. Bush, they should look past what happened and to “what will we do about it now?”
Oh, and maybe they ought to make sure they’re on the same page about what to do with future legislation if they should lose?
