One of my friends jokes that U.S. Supreme Court John Roberts is a liberal. I used to laugh him off – not anymore.
President George W. Bush’s legacy was hurt with the King v. Burwell decision by the Supreme Court to uphold ObamaCare. Chief Justice John Roberts, for a second time, saved ObamaCare using faulty legal analysis and a results oriented logic. This is further evidence that President Bush made a bad decision to nominate a stealth liberal lawyer to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Roberts is morphing into retired Justice David Souter right before our eyes. The parallels are stunning.
President George W. Bush’s dad, George H.W. Bush, nominated little known New Hampshire lawyer David Souter to replace retiring Justice William Brennan in 1990. Souter was pushed by President Bush’s Chief of Staff John Sununu and sold to the movement as a conservative. He turned out to be one of the liberal justices in my lifetime.
That seat now is considered a “liberal seat” and conservatives didn’t put up much of a fight when hard left Justice Sonia Sotomayor replaced Souter. It appears that a terrible decision by President George H. W. Bush has ceded a seat to liberals for, at least, another 30 years.
Now we have Chief Justice Roberts going the same direction tarnishing the legacy of President George W. Bush. He was sold to the conservative movement as a conservative, but he is turning out to be a strong ally of liberals. He has saved ObamaCare twice, even though the law was clearly unconstitutional and the subsidies in question were not lawful.
The biggest political loser in this decision was Governor Jeb Bush who can’t be trusted with Supreme Court nominations. The Bush family has packed the court liberals in conservative clothing. America can’t take the risk of another Bush making the same mistake.
There is an upside to the decision upholding ObamaCare – now Congress has no excuse not to repeal ObamaCare.
Republican leaders in the House and Senate were hoping that the Supreme Court would strike a blow at the heart of President Obama’s health care law when they acted illegally to grant subsidies to individuals purchasing coverage through the federal health insurance exchange in 34 states. They wanted the Court to do the heavy lifting.
Congress is America’s last hope to repeal ObamaCare.
Republicans promised to repeal ObamaCare using the House and Senate passed budget process called “reconciliation” to repeal the law. They made that promise to the American people earlier this year and they need to keep it.
The promises made by Republicans a few months ago during the budget debate are important because they were very public about the guarantee and there is no excuse not to fight.
The House Budget Committee produced a one pager earlier this year where they claimed that the Congressionally passed budget “Repeals Obamacare.” The document’s first bullet point relating to health care swore that the budget “Repeals Obamacare in full – including all of its taxes, regulations and mandates.”
The Senate Budget Committee posted a press release where they make a similar claim the budget “provides for Repeal of Obamacare to Start Over with Patient-Centered Reforms.”
It is time for some leadership from Congress and time for these guys to keep a promise.
There is a way to fully repeal ObamaCare using reconciliation – root and branch, and the Republicans need to do it ASAP. They need to learn a lesson from the government shutdown of 2013 – it worked. They may need to use the same hardball tactics to fight to defund or repeal the law.
After the government shutdown, establishment Republicans predicted massive losses if conservatives picked a fight and let the government shut down to prevent funding for ObamaCare. Leadership in both the House and the Senate were falling all over themselves to blame Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT), because they were terrified that the government shutdown was bad politics.
The actual result was the opposite – Republicans regained control of the Senate for the first time since 2006 and they expanded the majority in the House to the largest margin since 1928. The government shut down helped Republicans because it showed that some were willing to fight.
Remember when Sen. Rand Paul said that the “Republican brand sucks?” If they don’t even try to repeal ObamaCare using the budget process called reconciliation, then the brand will continue to suck.
If Congress does not immediately move to repeal ObamaCare and then defund ObamaCare if the budget strategy fails, then they will have broken a promise.
New leaders are needed moving forward.
Brian Darling served as Sr. Communications Director and Counsel for Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) from 2012-15. Before his tenure with Sen. Paul, Darling served in three different capacities with The Heritage Foundation. Follow him @BrianHDarling on Twitter.
