31st Time the Charm? Nope.
Republicans refuse to get over the fact that they flat out lost the fight over health care — first in Congress, then at the Supreme Court. They just won’t move on to other things like, say, jobs and the economy.
This bizarre obsession with health care played out once again today as the House of Representatives took its 31st — yes, 3-1 — vote on repealing Obamacare.
All Repeal, No Replace
Just as they have for the last two years, Republicans promised to replace Obamacare with something else. The only problem with that is that they’ve been promising to do the same thing for the past two years yet have made approximately zero actual effort to do so.
Check out the GOP’s Groundhog Day-style promises about replacing Obamacare:
A Tax Increase on Millions of Americans
Republicans have been busy falsely claiming that the health care mandate is a tax. Even if that were true, it would be a tax that impacted less than one percent of Americans.
In reality, Obamacare is a sizable tax cut for millions of Americans. The average household buying insurance through the new exchanges will get a tax credit of $5,210. Just to put that into perspective, that’s more than twice as large as the value of the Bush tax cuts for the average middle class family.
So, Republicans are both holding middle-class tax cuts hostage right now and voted affirmatively today to raise taxes on millions of middle class Americans.
IN ONE SENTENCE: It’s time for Republicans to get over their obsession with health care and move on to helping middle class Americans instead of raising their taxes.
Evening Brief: Important Stories That You May Have Missed
Mitt Romney got booed three times today during his speech to the NAACP.
NAACP members said Romney was “patronizing” and “totally disconnected” from the concerns of regular people.
Romney’s tax plan would raise taxes on at least 2.2 MILLION African American families, and is likely to increase taxes on everyone but the very wealthiest Americans.
Under Obama, taxes are at a 30-year low.
The Romney campaign says asking questions about his shady foreign accounts and secret tax returns makes you a socialist.
An amazing new video series: public lands, private profits.
After they finished wasting time repealing Obamacare today, Republicans turned their attention to another important topic: golf.
GOP to the uninsured: drop dead.
A financial black hole.