The Through the Looking Glass with Andy Edition, in which up become down, black become white, and right becomes wrong.
The Herald Leader published an Opinion piece today by Representative Barr explaining why he was voting for a budget bill that would defund “Obamacare,” a bill that would fail in the Senate, and would likely lead to a government shutdown.
The title of the article was “Obama willing to shut down government over bad health law.”
Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that the Republicans in Congress have hatched this plan to threaten to shut down the government in an attempt to force the Democrats in the Senate, and President Obama, to defund “Obamacare” as the Affordable Care Act is now called. Republicans have been threatening for months to shut down the government, but now Barr suggests that it’s Obama who’s trying to shut down the government. Does he think we’re stupid?
It reminds me of those strange news stories you read of a criminal suing the victim. I saw one a few days ago where a rapist was going to sue his victim because he contracted AIDS during the rape.
Rep. Barr says that the Republicans in Congress reflect the will of the people. But remember, the Affordable Care Act passed both houses of Congress, and was signed into law by the President. The Congress that enacted the law was elected by the people. President Obama was elected by the people, and we re-elected after a campaign where the Affordable Care Act was a major issue. If the public disapproved of Obama’s signature policy initiative they could have turned him out of office. But they didn’t.
I recognize that the public is deeply divided over the issue. But I also understand that it was properly enacted. What Republicans are trying to do now is unprecedented. Having failed to stop a piece of legislation they are now trying to stop its implementation by using the power of the purse to deny funding. That isn’t democracy, that’s an end run around democracy. But we now live in a world where words have lost all meaning. We now live in a world where a Republican votes to shut down the government, then claims that it’s his opponent that’s doing it. A strange world indeed.
