New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters can't stand the House GOP's stubborn attempts to repeal President Obama's "signature legislative achievement." "House Votes Again to Repeal Health Law" [1] marks his second story in two days on the GOP's quixotic quest, and once again [2] he injects obvious mockery into what's supposedly a straight news story:
One by one, they queued up in the aisles of the House of Representatives, eager for their one minute to unload on President Obama’s signature legislative achievement.
For many Republicans, this was one of the major reasons for coming to Washington in the first place. And they were not going to miss their chance -- whether it was their 37th time voting to repeal the 2010 health care overhaul, or their first.
“Obamacare is enforced by the I.R.S., probably the most feared federal agency in the United States government,” said Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, offering one of the newest and more novel reasons Americans should fear the law. The dreaded Internal Revenue Service, she said, had just been caught targeting people from all walks of life: Christians, friends of Israel, people for less debt and more jobs, to name a few.
Peters doesn't bother hiding his contemptuous sarcasm.
Representative Luke Messer, a freshman from Indiana, said that he could not possibly sum up in the minute allotted all that was wrong with such a wretched law.
So he stuck with a critique declaring it “the biggest assault on the 40-hour workweek in this country in a generation.” Employers, he said, were cutting employees’ hours in anticipation of the new policies’ costs.
Representative Robert Pittenger of North Carolina, another freshman, said the law was making medical students anxious about what awaits them upon graduation. Some undergraduates, he said, do not want to even go to medical school because of the law. (The Association of American Medical Colleges, however, has reported a steady increase in medical school enrollment every year since 2008.)
....
At the end of more than five hours, Mrs. Bachmann banged the gavel with a satisfied smile. The 37th effort to repeal, defund or otherwise dismantle the law had passed 229 to 195. No Republicans voted against the repeal and two Democrats voted for it. But the bill, which has no chance in the Senate, will go no further.
Why is the bill doomed in the (Democratic-controlled) Senate? Peters doesn't say, but Ken Shepherd at NewsBusters explained [3], "every single time the Senate has scuttled a repeal bill, it's not been with an up-or-down vote. One would think that if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is so confident in his caucus's stance on ObamaCare, he'd be fine with calling it up for a vote so he can kill it with a resounding "no" on the record.