Yawn:
The House voted again Wednesday to repeal the 2010 healthcare reform law, giving Republicans some revenge against the late June Supreme Court ruling that found the law to be constitutional.
Members approved the bill in a 244-185 vote, after five hours of debate that stretched over two days.
I didn’t watch one second of the five hours of “debate.” I doubt too many people were willing to make the House of Representatives’ colossal waste of time their own. The only suspense was in the roll call, to see how many scaredy-cat Democrats would vote to repeal ObamaCare. It turns out there were five, and none of them were particularly surprising. Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma appears to just be a flat-out conservative. He voted for repeal even though he is retiring and doesn’t need to worry about angering his constituents. Let’s look carefully to see where he finds work.
Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas is also retiring. He was Chair of the Blue Dog Health Care Task Force in the 111th Congress (2009-2011). He voted against the PPACA.
Rep. Jim Matheson of Utah is one of the most conservative members of the Democratic Party. He voted against the PPACA.
Finally, Reps. Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell of North Carolina both voted against the PPACA. Now they’ve joined the three above in voting to repeal the bill. There were 34 Democrats in the House who voted against final passage of the PPACA in 2010. So, having five voting to repeal it isn’t very impressive. If you look at the roll call of the 2010 vote, you’ll notice that almost every Democrat who voted against the bill is no longer in office. It’s hard to say if any Democrats saved their political careers by opposing the president.
In any case, aren’t the Republicans boring?