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House Republicans To Boehner: If We Can’t Repeal Obamacare, Shut Down The Government

In the letter dated July 18, more than 100 GOP lawmakers asked House Speaker John Boehner (OH) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA) to stop “any legislation” from coming to the floor that would fund the implementation of the Affordable Care Act — potentially leading to a government shutdown. Congress must pass a funding measure before October 1 to keep the government running, yet a majority of Republicans are willing to risk a shutdown in order to take away coverage from more than 30 million Americans and increase the deficit by more than 100 billion.

Despite the possibility of a standoff with the Democrat-controlled Senate and a veto threat from President Obama, the Republicans called for defunding Obamacare while continuing attempts to repeal the heath care reform law:

Since much of the implementation of ObamaCare is a function of the discretionary appropriations process, and since most of the citizens we represent believe that ObamaCare should never go into effect, we urge you not to bring to the House floor in the 112th Congress any legislation that provides or allows funds to implement ObamaCare through the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Health and Human Services, or any other federal entity. We also urge you to take legislative steps necessary to immediately rescind all ObamaCare-implementation funds.

According to Talking Points Memo, Boehner suggested on Tuesday that he would reject the proposal. “I expect we’ll have an agreement with the Senate on a CR,” he said. “But our goal would be to make sure the government is funded and any political talk of a government shutdown is put to rest.”

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House Republicans so far have wasted $50 million trying and failing to repeal Obamacare 31 times. The latest Congressional Budget Office report shows that eliminating the Affordable Care Act would add $109 billion to the nation’s deficit.

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