US House passes budget bill that would defund healthcare law

Jason Cannon
Unit 1-3

I read one article on this from the BBC and one from the Herald Sun.  The Herald Sun had more info and also seemed more biased.  Their information was mostly the same.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24178690

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/us-republicans-vote-to-defund-obamacare-risking-government-shutdown/story-fni0d2cj-1226724237350

Synopsis:
On October 1, the government will shut down unless temporary budget plans are set up.  The House of Representatives (largely Republican) passed a bill that would allow the government to avoid shutdown as well as stopping the Obamacare funding.  The Senate said that they would reject this bill, and the President said that he would veto it if it made it to him.  The articles also talk about the debt ceiling needing to be raised soon, but I will focus on the House's bill.

Detailed Analysis:
Harry Reid said that the "Republicans are simply postponing for a few days the inevitable choice they must face: Pass a clean bill to fund the government, or force a shutdown."  The Republican Speaker of the House said, "The American people don't want the government shut down, and they don't want Obamacare."  The article on the Herald Sun said that the Tea Party was the major cause behind the part in the bill about defunding Obamacare. 

This current event is a great example of checks and balances.  Even though the House of Representatives passed a bill, that bill will not go into effect unless it passes both the Senate and the President.  In this situation, the bill will not even make it through the Senate.  This system causes government stalemates to occur often.  If the House of Representatives will not allow a new budget bill that still funds Obamacare to pass, then the government could be in shutdown for a while.  I think that the House is fine to want to get rid of Obamacare, but compromise needs to be reached in order for the government to keep functioning.  It may not be too smart for the House to be super stubborn on the needed budget bill.

The two party political system is also demonstrated in this current event.  The Republicans in the House and the Democrats in the Senate disagree and cause issues like this to arise.  These disagreements are good for our nation and keep each party in check.  I think that the Republicans should be able to disagree with the Democrats on the issue of Obamacare and that they can attempt to pass bills to stop it.  But there comes a point in which compromise has to be reached in order to keep the government running (literally).  It seems to me that the Republicans in the House are trying to fight a losing battle by trying to get rid of it on this bill.  I still think they should still fight it, but not in this particular way.

If it is true that the Tea Party was the cause of the part of the bill defunding Obamacare, then this current event also shows how powerful aggressive factions are in political parties.  Just like we talked about today in class, factions have the power to greatly influence a party to do what it was not planning to do (as the Herald Sun says the Tea Party did).