Congress Has A Plan To Override The President’s Obamacare Veto

by Juliegrace Brufke

The lower chamber is scheduled for a Tuesday vote to override President Barack Obama’s veto of the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act – a bill designed to dismantle key components on Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood for a year.

Congress passed the measure in early January using reconciliation, a budgetary tool used to fast-track legislation, allowing an unlimited number of amendments and requiring just a simple majority in the Senate to pass. The president vetoed the bill unraveling his landmark health-care legislation days later.

The speaker’s office said regardless of whether the bill passes, they have proven that with a Republican president in office, Congress has a clear path to repealing the law without the 60 votes usually needed in the upper chamber.

In another effort to do away with the ACA, Republicans in Congress filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration for appropriating money from the Department of Treasury without Congressional approval.

“In total, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Treasury Department have improperly paid out more than $5 billion to insurance companies—money that should have gone to taxpayers’ refunds,” the speaker’s office said in a statement Monday. “The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that $136 billion of taxpayer money will be doled out over the next decade if this theft from taxpayers continues.”

The House Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight has been requesting documents into an investigation on the allegedly unlawful spending, having subpoenaed Treasury Sec. Jack Lew on Jan. 20.

The final briefs on House v. Burwell are slated to come out this week.

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