Defund ObamaCare!

And by the way, if Republicans do act, if they vote to fund Obamacare, then they are for Obamacare. Don’t let them fool you with meaningless “repeal” votes. Repeal – i.e., changing the law – is a positive act; unlike refusing to spend money, it cannot be accomplished simply by saying no. Just as President Obama needs Republicans to get his spending, Republicans would need the president (or substantial cooperation from congressional Democrats) to get their repeal. This, we all know, they will never get – there will be no repeal until an election or two drastically changes the landscape. But spending is another story – and President Obama should be made to understand that it is just as hopeless to get Republican assent to spending on Obamacare as Republicans understand it is hopeless to get Obama’s assent on repeal.

In fact, defunding has a chance to work precisely because it is not an effort to repeal Obamacare. President Obama is a proud man. It is unreasonable to expect that he would ever sign a repeal, a complete surrender that would be tantamount to an admission of total failure. Defunding is not a complete victory for Republicans – Obamacare would still remain on the books as the law of the land.

Moreover, defunding is not all bad for Obama. Putting Obamacare to the side for a moment, there is no conservative who believes the federal government should be funded at current astronomical levels. To compare, in 2000, at the end of the Clinton presidency that Democrats speak of as an economic Golden Age, annual federal spending was around $1.76 trillion, roughly 18 percent of GDP. Today, spending has doubled ($3.5 trillion), hovering around a staggering 25 percent of GDP – and debt has tripled to $17 trillion (without accounting for tens of trillions more in unfunded liabilities). Conservatives want spending slashed at least back to Clinton levels. Yet, for purposes of the Obamacare defunding battle, conservatives are agreeing to fund the rest of the government at the current absurd heights just to make the political point that if the government shuts down, it is Obama’s doing.