The New Republican Majority Attacks President Obama’s Reforms

The conservative wing of the U.S. Congress sets its sights on the health care laws.

Their immediate objective is to undo the main reforms undertaken by President Barack Obama. Tomorrow, when they occupy their seats in the new Congress, the Republicans will have a majority 49 votes in the House of Representatives, which is sufficient to pass measures that honor promises they made to voters who were disillusioned by the Democrats in last November’s legislative elections. Their objective will be to repeal health care reform, a revocation that, in order to make good on a promise, will be mainly symbolic. Nevertheless, their opposition would be more effective against the placing of limits on harmful gas emissions or the financial reforms made by the president.

In their recent declarations, the conservative representatives show signs of making the destruction of health care reform their principal political battle. They want to vote to repeal the health care reform before the State of the Union Address, which Obama will deliver next month. If they pass this annulment, they would need a comprehensive two-thirds of the House — which they aren’t counting on — in order to get around a presidential veto. And they should, furthermore, send that amendment to the Senate, where the Democrats still hold an adjusted majority. It will be a symbolic battle.

For some Republicans, a war-like comparison is more adequate. Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey said on Friday during an interview with conservative channel Fox News that, “They may say … don’t just say you’re not going to do it because it’s too heavy a lift. Back in 2006, when we were about to lose the battle in Iraq, thank goodness our patriots fought in the Anbar province and Fallujah and turned that thing around.” So he compared Obama and the Democrats to Iraqi rebels.

If the 112th Congress becomes the battle that changes the course of the war, one of the representatives who will fight with the most determination is Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann, one of the leaders of the radical tea party movement. In March, one day before Obama ratified the health care law, Bachmann began steps to repeal this reform. Her principal effort has been to annul the provision that calls for all Americans to acquire health insurance before 2014, under penalty of fines. The latest studies put the number of citizens without medical coverage in America at 50 million.

Diverse federal courts are considering whether this provision is constitutional. This past December, a Virginia court — led by judge Henry Hudson, who was nominated by George W. Bush — assisted the Republicans in their effort to declare this obligation to obtain medical insurance unconstitutional. Still, health care reform finds itself deep in a long process of judicial decisions and appeals that will surely end up in the Supreme Court, which will be the one to decide in the end.

Bachmann and the rest of the members of Congress who identify with the tea party have announced that if the repeal of health care reform doesn’t do well on the block, they will attack the rule in parts. In addition to the compulsory nature of obtaining policies, those lawmakers have harshly criticized a last-minute amendment that allows, in very limited cases of incest and rape, the use of public funds to subsidize abortions.

During the four years in which Democrat Nancy Pelosi presided over the House of Representatives, one of her greatest political battles was passing a law that placed limits on the emissions of contaminant gases, with the objective of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 17 percent by 2020, something that she achieved in 2009. The Senate, where the Democrats are in the majority, should have ratified it, but they never did. They let it languish without even starting a debate about it. The Republicans in the House nevertheless want to use their new majority to block the law with a fatal blow that would be as symbolic as the one they are preparing for health care reform. But they won’t stop there.

In August, before the legislative gridlock, Obama announced that this year the Environmental Protection Agency, dependent on his administration, would regulate the emission of pollutant gases factory by factory, refinery by refinery and energy center to energy center in a laborious and costly process of individualized inspections. The man who will be the new chairman of the House Energy Committee, Fred Upton, said Sunday on Fox News that, “We are not going to let this administration regulate what they’ve been unable to legislate.” Upton has announced that he will organize oral hearings about executive regulations on the matter of pollutant gases and that he is considering blocking them by virtue of a law known as Congressional Review Law.

What Republicans have talked about the least these days is their opposition to Obama’s financial reform. This doesn’t mean that they’ve made any less of it. Last year, the Democrats granted wide powers of control to two government agencies: the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In order to undertake these tasks, both agencies need to double their budgets, something the Republicans have already opposed and aspire to block. That way they indirectly impede Obama from putting limits on Wall Street.