An Urgent Apeal: We Must Defund Obamacare Now!

I am calling you all of you to take action on an urgent matter!  This upcoming Wednesday congress will vote on the "Continuing Resolution".  The continuing resolution is a piece of legislature that is designed to prevent the government from shutting down. While I support legislature that keeps the government running,  I strongly oppose the current  form of the continuing resolution because it does not address a key budgetary issue; the defunding of Obamacare.  Hidden in this resoultion are funding measures (appropriations) that are designed to begin funding Obamacare.  What makes this so insidious is the fact that this appropriation is crafted in a way that will make it nearly impossible for future congresses and presidents to overturn Obamacare. So here are the gloomy facts as reported by former congressman Ernest Istook in the March 10 Washington Times article: (To read the article in its entirety click here.)

• "The new law attempts to bypass the normal appropriations process, another feature that makes defunding more difficult. By making advance appropriations for tens of billions of dollars up to the year 2019, these provisions of Obamacare seek to remove spending decisions from the reach of the current Congress and from future Congresses and Presidents."

• "One largely unknown fact is that $6-billion or more was immediately appropriated in the new law and approximately $105-billion more was appropriated for FY2011 and beyond. That violates the typical Congressional process of appropriations. The normal process typically involves enacting authorization bills that authorize spending, and then follows those with separate legislation that actually appropriates the money."

• "To de-fund Obamacare, it is insufficient simply to deny future funding. Until the full law can be repealed, at least the existing and advance appropriations need to be rescinded, just as the House last month voted to repeal billions of dollars from previous appropriations to 123 federal programs. An effort to restrict use of the funds appropriated within Obamacare was thwarted because the House did not waive the same point of order (House Rule XXI) as it waived to allow de-funding those 123 other programs. This was most unfortunate."

Unfortunately the Republican leadership which campaigned this past November on defunding Obamacare has not showed a willingness to defund Obamacare in the current continuing resolution.   This is not acceptable, we must take action and call our Republican congressmen and tell them to vote "no" for the continuing resolution.

Here is the number to call:  202-224-3121.  This number is the congressional switchboard.  Even if your congressman is a Democrat (like mine) or a Republican  you can still leave a message for your representative or for the Republican leadership; House Speaker John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Chairman Hal Rogers.  When you call just say this,

"I,(name optional) as a concerned citizen urge you (congressman/woman name) to vote "No" on the Continuing Resolution because it doesn't cut funding for Obamacare!"  

So get on the phone, write an e-mail, tell your friends, relatives, co workers, and fellow parishioners.  Most importantly take action, because if you don't and this continuing resolution passes, funding for Obamacare will begin, creating a entitlement juggernaut that will be nearly impossible to derail in the future.  We owe it to ourselves, to our children, to our grandchildren, to our great country.  We must heed these prophetic words of Ronald Reagan,

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."