Reality check

Let's get a few things straight -- because the Republicans have been doing everything they can to twist the truth.

1.  The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was legitimately passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama three years ago.   It is the law of the land.

2.  Except for one part, which is no longer part of ACA, the constitutionality of the law was upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court.

3.  President Obama ran for re-election on it;   Mitt Romney ran on the promise to get rid of it.   Obama won re-election.   So, it's the law, it's constitutional, and the people voted to re-elect its chief author/promoter.

4.  Republicans don't like the law.   They now have a majority in the House -- but that is only one of three entities that have to approve laws.

5.  House Republicans have voted about 44 times now in vain attempts to gut the law or overturn it outright.   They fail every time to get it passed by the Senate, and the president would veto it if it did.    To continue is a fool's errand.

6.  There are enough Republicans in the House who have now said they would vote to support a "clean" bill to finance the government that it would now even pass the House.  But Speaker Boehner refuses to bring it to the floor.

7.  Now the Republicans are screaming that it is Obama who will not "negotiate," who is responsible for shutting down the government.

8.  The fact is that the "Continuing Resolution" bill to keep the government running is already a huge compromise from the Democrats.   For this temporary spending bill, they accepted the continuation of the Republican numbers in the sequester bill.   There is nothing further to negotiate -- other than gutting Obamacare.

9.  It is clear and simple -- it has nothing to do with spending, nothing to do with government services, and everything to do with a political fight to defeat the president's signature legislation.

10.  Republicans can do this because they control enough state governments that they have been able to redraw district lines so favorable to them that they amount to safe seats in Congress for these conservatives.   They don't worry about being voted out of office in 2016 in the House.   But it will be different in the Senate and the Presidential 2016 election.

11.  Beyond the politics, though.    How can they look in the mirror and feel proud of what they are doing?   Do they not have the slightest twinge of conscience about what they are doing to individual lives and to our joint economic health?

Ralph