President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare, into law on March 23. Immediately several U.S. Representatives and Senators introduced bills to repeal this unconstitutional government intrusion into the healthcare system; some had even introduced their bills before Obama had affixed his signature to the act.
With Democrats in complete control of both houses of Congress, the chances for these bills even to get out of committee, let alone be passed by both houses and sent to the President, are slim. However, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is doing his best to see that his ObamaCare repeal bill, H.R. 4972, does indeed get a vote before the entire House of Representatives.
King’s bill, introduced on March 25, reads simply: “Effective as of the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, such Act is repealed, and the provisions of law amended or repealed by such Act are restored or revived as if such Act had not been enacted.” One sentence to repeal 906 pages of terrible legislation: Now that’s bang for your buck.
King’s bill has 90 cosponsors, including such conservative stalwarts as Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.), Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who later introduced his own bill to repeal ObamaCare.
Rather than trying to get his bill out of committee through the normal channels, which are closed since the party of ObamaCare controls them all, King has introduced a discharge petition to bring his bill up for a vote before the full House. King needs a simple majority of House members — 218 representatives — to sign his petition in order to force a vote. As of this writing he has 52 signers, including himself, most of whom have signed in the past seven days. It seems that as awareness of the petition grows, so does its popularity.
Thus, it is imperative that as many congressmen as possible be informed of the existence of the discharge petition and their constituents’ desire that they sign it. Click here for a John Birch Society (JBS) Advocacy Action alert to learn more about King’s petition and to obtain a sample letter that you can personalize and send to your congressman to let him know that you want him to sign the petition.
The odds of an ObamaCare repeal bill’s being passed by both houses of Congress are extremely slim, and it is virtually certain that President Obama would veto such a bill, requiring Congress to come up with the necessary two thirds of each house to vote to override the veto. Nevertheless, forcing a vote on King’s bill would, as the JBS alert puts it, “force both Republicans and Democrats in the House to take a stand on repealing ObamaCare now, while they are in the midst of campaigning for the fall elections. Such a vote would put the Republicans and Democrats on record regarding simple repeal of the entire ObamaCare law.”
Given Americans’ increasing disenchantment with ObamaCare, Obama himself, and the Democratic Party — all hovering around 45 percent disapproval in the latest Gallup polls — the results could be surprising.
Photo: Rep. Steve King
