It has been like a long-delayed New Year’s resolution for Republicans.
However, this year would finally be the year when they put legislation on US President Barack Obama’s desk repealing his health care reform law.
The bill undoing the president’s signature legislative achievement is to be the first order of business when the US House of Representatives reconvenes this coming week, marking a sharply partisan start on Capitol Hill to a congressional year, in which legislating might take a back seat to politics.
Photo: EPA
There are few areas of potential compromise between Obama and the Republican majority in the House and the US Senate in this election year, but plenty of opportunities for scoring political points during the presidential campaign season.
Three senators — Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky — are seeking the Republican presidential nomination.
Obama would veto the health care law repeal bill, which also would cut money for women’s health provider Planned Parenthood. The measure already has passed the Senate under special rules protecting it from Democratic obstruction.
However, that is the point for Republicans, who intend to schedule a veto override vote for Jan. 22, when anti-abortion activists hold their annual march in Washington to mark the anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision in 1973 that legalized abortion nationwide.
Despite dozens of past votes to repeal the health law in full or in part, Republicans never before have succeeded in sending a full repeal bill to the White House. They insist that doing so would fulfill promises to their constituents while highlighting the clear choice facing voters in the November presidential election.
Every Republican candidate has pledged to undo the health law. The Democrats running for president would keep it in place or extend it.
“You’re going to see us put a bill on the president’s desk going after Obamacare and Planned Parenthood so we’ll finally get a bill on his desk to veto,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told conservative radio talk show host Bill Bennett over the holidays.
“Then you’re going to see the House Republican Conference, working with our senators, coming out with a bold agenda that we’re going to lay out for the country, to say how we would do things very differently,” Ryan said.
In the Senate, which reconvenes on Monday next week, a week later than the House, early action would include a vote on a proposal by senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who is running for president, for an “audit” of the US Federal Reserve. Democrats are likely to block it.
However, like the health repeal bill in the House, the vote is to answer conservative demands in an election year.
Also expected early in the Senate’s year is legislation dealing with Syrian refugees, following House passage of a bill clamping down on the refugee program.
Conservatives were angry when the year ended without the bill advancing. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell promised a vote, though without specifying whether it would be the House bill or something else.
The House Benghazi committee is to continue its investigation of the attacks that killed four Americans in Libya in 2012, with an interview of former CIA Director David Petraeus on Wednesday.
In the Senate, McConnell’s primary focus is protecting the handful of vulnerable Republican senators whose seats are at risk as Democrats fight to regain the Senate majority they lost a year ago.
That means weighing the political risks and benefits of every potential vote to endangered incumbents in Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
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