Populism is fun.

“I never thought I’d see the day when the White House, the president came down on the side of big business but left the American people out in the cold as far as his health care mandate is concerned,” Cantor told reporters after House Republicans met for their weekly closed-door meeting. “And we, as House Republicans, are not going to sit still for that.”…

“What the president did is outrageous,” Boehner said. “The idea that we’re going to give big businesses a break on Obamacare but we’re going to punish small businesses and families? It’s wrong. And we’ll have another vote. Count on it.”

Here’s the letter Boehner sent to O inquiring about whether there are any more “glitches” and surprises in O-Care’s implementation that the White House knows about but is keeping quiet for now. ObamaCare repeal votes are usually party-line (or almost party-line) but I’m intrigued by this one. With the midterms getting closer and Democrats getting nervous about their party’s signature boondoggle, maybe a vote demanding a modest one-year delay in the individual mandate will draw more than token support from them. That means nothing legislatively since Reid will certainly block the House bill in the Senate, but it’ll be spun by the GOP as a bipartisan vote of no confidence in ObamaCare generally. What’s a panicky Democrat who’s reluctant to humiliate Obama to do?

While they’re busy taking votes, here’s one more for them to take:

If Republicans were smart, they’d draft a bill based on the following mantra: “No Subsidization Without Verification.” That is, they should take a stand that nobody can receive subsidies through Obamacare before the government has a system in place that can independently verify the information as accurate.

If such a piece of legislation becomes law, it would effectively delay one of the central provisions of Obamacare indefinitely, because after more than three years, the government has not been able to figure out a way to meet the technological challenge of verification. As stated in the HHS rule published Friday: “After reviewing and considering the appropriate public comments and completing a technical analysis, we have concluded that the service described in the proposed rule is not feasible for implementation for the first year of operations. This service would involve a large amount of systems development on both the state and federal side, which cannot occur in time for October 1, 2013.”

Of course, Obama and his fellow Democrats would likely block such an attempt by Republicans. If they do so, they will be put into the position of explaining to the American people why they are willing to hand out a over a trillion dollars of taxpayer subsidies without proper procedures in place to prevent fraud.

Boehner mentions O waving bye-bye to ObamaCare’s anti-fraud provisions in the clip, but it seems to be a secondary line of attack after the populist individual/employer mandate talking point. It shouldn’t be. The average low-information voter might not be paying close enough attention to understand the distinctions between the two mandates. Everyone understands the point about verification, though. If we don’t leave people to the honor system in reporting their taxes, why should we leave them to it in demanding welfare for health insurance? That hits taxpayers in the gut. Not sure the mandate point does.