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发帖数: 29846 | 1 September 16, 2013 by Warner Todd Huston
We are hearing from many of our representatives that it just isn’t possible
to defund Obamacare because the House rules say they can’t. This, as it
happens, is just a dodge. The House has defunded separate things while
passing the rest of a budget many times.
One of the things that weak-willed Republicans that don’t want to discuss
defunding Obamacare say is that the mandatory spending cannot be clocked
with an appropriations bill. This is simply not true. In fact, it has been
done many times in the past.
The most obvious example is the Hyde Amendment which has renewed every
single year since 1976 and prevents the expenditure of federal tax dollars
on abortion. It applies both to discretionary spending as well as mandatory
spending.
But abortion, you may say, is such a special situation that maybe it should
be treated as such and left out of the discussion.
Then let’s do that. Let’s forget the Hyde Amendment. But there is far more
evidence that the House commonly makes changes to appropriations.
Another example of goes by the somewhat absurd name of CHiMPS. This is the
name bestowed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) upon changes in
mandatory spending bills.
As recent as 2011 the House made changes to several bills to save the
treasury millions.
In fact, parts of Obamacare have already been defunded when the House
eliminated $2.2 billion in the “permanently cancelled” funding to Obama’s
co-op health insurance program (P.L. 112-10). Several other parts of
Obamacare has also already been defunded and eliminated.
But this is all current examples. The truth is examples like this go back
all the way to the 1980s. AsThe Heritage Foundation points out.
Historically, Congress has used the “power of the purse” broadly to
make key policy statements through defunding. For instance, in 1982 Congress
acted to block the Reagan Administration’s policy for supporting the
Contra forces opposing the Nicaraguan government. As part of Public Law 97-
377, Congress prohibited both the Department of Defense and the Central
Intelligence Agency from furnishing military equipment and support to any
group for the purpose of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government. Even though
defense spending is not funded through mandatory appropriations, the
example demonstrates that defunding has been–and remains–a powerful tool
Congress can use to affect public policy.
So, when your Congressman tells you that Congress just can’t defund
mandatory programs, tell him he and his comrades in the House have already
done so and have been doing it for at least 30 years. |
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