As Congress approaches the looming October 1 deadline to pass a budget—a task they have failed to do in four years—Republicans have made it clear that they will not support a budget proposal that includes any funding for Obamacare.
While House Republicans were so eager to pass a budget on Friday that continues to fund the government but defunds and delays Obamacare for one year, they neglected to inform Americans that their plan actually consists of implementing savings from the Affordable Care Act.
Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) called the Republican-backed resolution “misleading” and a “hoax” during an interview on ABC’s This Week. The exchange, which begins at around 5:25 in the video above, had Van Hollen saying that Republicans “have to explain to the American people how they voted for a budget that includes all of the Medicare savings from Obamacare, that includes the same level of revenue generated from Obamacare and, in fact, would not even balance in 10 years, if not for the Affordable Care Act.”
Appearing alongside Van Hollen, Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA), who authored the House bill that passed by a 230-189 margin on Friday, had no response to the assertion that the Republican bill benefits from the $716 billion in Medicare cuts and its $1.2 trillion tax increase.
As Forbes reported in March, the Republican approach to funding the government “keeps, but repurposes, Obamacare’s Medicare cuts and tax increases, while repealing the law’s spending on the uninsured.” Nonetheless, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) recently stated, “Let’s defund this law now and protect the American people from the economic calamity Obamacare will create,” in an attempt to further the misleading Republican narrative that the implementation of the health care reform law would be harmful to the economy.
A majority of Americans are still opposed to the Affordable Care Act. When asked on Sunday how the Democratic Party plans to uphold an unpopular law, Van Hollen said, “I’m not surprised that there’s a lot of confusion. These guys have been running around the country demagoguing, scaremongering on this issue. They’re not afraid that it’s going to be unsuccessful, they’re afraid it’s going to be successful and all of that misinformation will be shown to be a fraud.”
