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Laurence Verga: Stop the funding

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Column by Laurence Verga
www.vergaforcongress.com
 

After Sunday’s passage of an unconstitutional government takeover of our health-care system, Republicans are searching aloud for ways to undo this travesty. While I support and have signed The Club for Growth’s “Repeal It” pledge, this couldn’t realistically happen until we have a Republican president and Congress, which at the earliest is 2013. And while I support the State’s Attorneys General’s constitutional challenge to the bill, this can also take years and has no guarantee of success. There is a better and more immediate response to the bill: Stop the Funding!

Most of ObamaCare’s provisions don’t kick in until 2014, shedding led light on the sham of the Democrats’ urgency to help the uninsured. However, before this date Congress will need to fund the hiring of over 16,000 new IRS employees for enforcement purposes and thousands more to run the over 159 new programs and bureaucracies necessary for implementation. Stopping these appropriations is where Republicans can act most immediately, aggressively, and pragmatically given we are out of power.

Lost in the debate over ObamaCare is the fact that it is an authorization bill, not an appropriations bill. If we can stop the funding of the new government entities and employees necessary to implement and enforce the bill, most of the bill’s provisions won’t see the light of day.

With 41 senators today, we can filibuster this year’s relevant appropriations bills and if we take back the House of Representatives next year, our ability to stop the funding of ObamaCare will be even greater.

To restore our constitutional liberties, economic prosperity, and fiscal sanity, it is imperative that we stop ObamaCare. Stopping the funding is the most immediate, aggressive, and pragmatic solution in the short term.

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