Federalist publisher Ben Domenech joined CBS’s “Face The Nation” Sunday morning to explain why Republicans’ lies are to blame for their failure to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Domenech explained that the trouble started in 2010, when Republicans decided to campaign promising to repeal and replace Obamacare once they were elected — despite no intention of following through.
“They formed and chose to campaign on repeal and replace for the following seven years, and they did so to great electoral effect,” he said. “When in reality, about half of the caucus in the Senate, and perhaps even more, was totally unwilling to ever get to full repeal and replace.”
One of these many Republican lawmakers who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk is Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Domenech said.
“Seven out of the 10 top employers in the state of Ohio are insurers or hospital systems,” he said. “They depend on tax exemptions and subsidies flowing to them. [Portman] was never going to get to ‘yes’ on a repeal that included reform or restriction on any of the Medicaid expansion that was enacted under Obamacare.”
Even if the so-called “skinny repeal” bill had passed last week, it would have been a total failure.
“It would’ve been an expression of rolling back just eight of the 419 provisions of Obamacare,” he said. “That is not repeal, and it is certainly not replace. This is a failure that is at the core of the Republican experience in the last several years and it depends on the fact that they chose to lie.”
You can watch his remarks in full here. On Sunday, Ohio Gov. John Kasich underlined Domenech’s point, saying he’s “glad” Republicans haven’t fulfilled seven years of campaign pledges to repeal Obamacare and that they should instead focus on proposals that garner Democrat approval. These typically would reinforce and extend Obamacare rather than repeal or replace it.
