Next up in the health care debate: Let’s defund Medicare

Earlier this week, I mentioned how Paul Krugman called the GOP’s power brokering in Washington “unprecedented” in American politics, but what must be even more astounding as we sit this side of the government shutdown that has already affected national parks, the Statue of Liberty site, 800,000 jobs and more, is the fact that House Republicans have held the government hostage on a disagreement about a health care act, Obamacare, that is already on the books.

If the Affordable Care Act was just a proposal or an unpassed piece of legislation sitting on someone’s desk, this might not be such a big deal. But here we are talking about current law that is being disputed at the expense of funding the next fiscal year of government. It would be the same if Republicans decided just out of the blue that they no longer want to fund Medicare, and they were determined to block any legislation for funding the general government until Medicare was dismantled. Imagine the blow back from this. Of course, this particular scenario would never happen since the GOP largely depends on the senior demographic for a good majority of its support. Meanwhile, young and minority voters can just fend for themselves and can go straight to the poverty line if they happen to get sick. What do House Republicans care, since most of those votes will go to Democrats anyway? And Republicans wonder why they can’t turn out more of the young vote and why they are becoming more irrelevant with each passing year.

Needless to say, the current maneuvering on the health care bill is a dirty and shameful bit of politicking on the part of Tea Party Republicans, and if it’s not blatantly obvious at this point, Speaker John Boehner has clearly lost control of his own party in the House.