Last week, Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee voted to hide their attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) from protestations that it would contribute to the federal budget deficit.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Obamacare's repeal would cost $210 billion. Not an insignigicant contribution to the nation's already large deficit.
The budget resolution for 2015 includes "reconciliation instructions" that ask congressional committees to create the means of undoing Obamacare. The problem? That same spending plan includes verbiage allowing lawmakers to block any legislation that would add more than $5 billion to the budget deficit. And by the CBO's last accounting, repealing the ACA would cost $210 billion. All of which will be added to the deficit. So making the very argument a non-starter.
Rational human beings readily admit that the U.S. healthcare system was due for a reboot. Everyone may not agree on the means by which that reboot was achieved. Yet, with the ACA emebedded into the nation's administrative tapestry, sane observers -- including the administration's harshest critics -- must realize that the cost of repeal sits wildly beyond the imaginations of those conservative alley cats caterwauling atop their ideological fences.
Quit calling for the ACA's repeal. To those GOP legislatures who ran and won on a promise to repeal Obamacare, the lesson should be this: when you make promises you cannot keep, your opportunity to make sure future promises diminishes with each election.
Obamacare? Here to stay. Deal with it.