Morning Examiner: Is there anything the Republican establishment won’t let Obama get away with?

By CONN CARROLL | JULY 29, 2013

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., joined Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., this weekend in denouncing any attempt to alter Obamacare during the upcoming continuing resolution fight. “We should not be closing down the government under any circumstances. That doesn’t work; it’s wrong,” King told CNN’s Candy Crowley.
Coburn seemed equally determined to avoid a government shutdown at any cost. “Among that group of senators that has been considering this, I was the only one who was here for that,” Coburn told the Washington Examiner‘s Byron York in reference to the 1995 and 1996 government shutdowns. “The president is never going to sign a bill defunding Obamacare. Do you think he’s going to cave?”
What else is Coburn willing to cave on?
But Coburn seems to be unaware that Obama has also made it clear he will veto any bill that does not end the sequestration spending cuts that have slowed government spending across the federal government. If Coburn, McCain, King and the rest of the Republican establishment are signaling they will cave without a fight on Obamacare, why should Obama expect any different from them on spending?
Obama doesn’t care what Congress does
Obama may have won re-election last November, but since then he has made drastic and unilateral changes to Obamacare; changes that fully funding the law now, would endorse. “Where Congress is unwilling to act,” Obama told The New York Times in an interview July 24, “I will take whatever administrative steps that I can in order to do right by the American people.”
So far, that has meant that Obama has unilaterally delayed enforcement of Obamacare’s employer mandate and insurance subsidy income verification requirements. Both delays are flagrantly illegal and will make it easier to get more Americans hooked on new government spending, even if significant portions of that spending is expended fraudulently. Coburn, McCain, King, and every other Republican who says they will not shutdown the government over Obamacare, is essentially telling Obama they are perfectly fine with this.
Holding Obama accountable
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, may have overshot by asking his colleagues to sign a letter committing them to not fund a cent of Obamacare in the upcoming continuing resolution. But there are more targeted means of checking Obama’s power. Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn., has introduced legislation that would block the Obama administration from paying insurance subsidies through the Obamacare exchanges until the law’s anti-fraud measures are fully implemented.
If Republicans are not even willing to stand behind this common-sense, good-government position, they might as well all just go home, a judgement voters may also make come November 2014.