President Obama let loose on Republicans today by explaining that the GOP will never be able to come up with their own healthcare plan because Obamacare was based on their ideas.
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The president said:
But the bottom line is this for the American people: The Affordable Care Act, this law, is saving money for families and for businesses. This law is also saving lives — lives that touch all of us. It’s working despite countless attempts to repeal, undermine, defund, and defame this law.
It’s not the “job-killer” that critics have warned about for five years. When this law was passed, our businesses began the longest streak of private-sector job growth on record: 60 straight months, five straight years, 12 million new jobs.
It’s not the fiscal disaster critics warned about for five years. Health care prices are rising at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years, which has helped cut our deficit by two-thirds since I took office. Before the ACA, health care was the single biggest driver driving up our projected deficits. Today, health care is the single biggest factor driving those projections down.
I mean, we have been promised a lot of things these past five years that didn’t turn out to be the case: death panels, doom. A serious alternative from Republicans in Congress.
The budget they introduced last week would literally double the number of the uninsured in America. And in their defense, there are two reasons why coming up with their own alternative has proven to be difficult.
First, it’s because the Affordable Care Act pretty much was their plan before I adopted it — based on conservative, market-based principles developed by the Heritage Foundation and supported by Republicans in Congress, and deployed by a guy named Mitt Romney in Massachusetts to great effect. If they want to take credit for this law, they can. I’m happy to share it.
And second, it’s because health reform is really hard and the people here who are in the trenches know that. Good people from both parties have tried and failed to get it done for 100 years, because every public policy has some trade-offs, especially when it affects one-sixth of the American economy and applies to the very personal needs of every individual American.
Republicans will never be able to come up with their own health care plan because the ACA was their healthcare plan. Considering how Republicans have opposed the ACA, it is a bit mind boggling to remember that the Affordable Care Act was their idea.
President Obama demonstrated just how much of a loser running on repealing Obamacare will be for Republicans in 2016. Bashing the ACA works when Republicans are running in regionalized and gerrymandered elections, but just like Mitt Romney in 2012, Republicans stumble every time they are confronted with the fact that the ACA was based on their ideas.
Obama has spent the week of the fifth anniversary of the ACA relentlessly hammering Republicans, but the most damning indictment against the GOP is the fact that they refuse to take credit for a successful Obama accomplishment that was based on their ideas.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
