What does it take to enact a law in the USA?

In a country with a parliamentary system, a Prime Minister is chosen by the party with a majority in parliament, or by a coalition of parties if none of them has a majority.  The Prime Minister then proposes laws and normally they are enacted by parliament.  If parliament rejects an important bill, the Prime Minister has the option to call an election, and let the people decide which they think is right.

Here in the United States, the process is different.  In order to become law, the Affordable Care Act has to get a majority of votes in the House of Representatives and 60 out of 100 votes in the U.S. Senate.  It then had to be signed by the President and reviewed by the Supreme Court.  It seems to me that, whether or not you agree with the law, that ought to be enough.

Hat tip to Buffalo News.
Update: President Obama signed a law providing for continuation of pay of active-duty military personnel.

But now the Republicans in the House of Representatives are threatening to shut down the government unless the Obama administration delays implementation of the health care act.  They don’t have the votes to repeal the law, so they are using a blackmail tactic instead.

In my opinion, Obamacare is a flawed plan which is unlikely to work as intended.  But it is law, and millions of individuals and thousands of businesses have made plans based on the schedule for implementing it.   Shutting down the government would be harmful to the country, but there would be even more harm from the economic uncertainty created by doubts as to whether a law really is law even after it is enacted.

Granted, there are worse things that could happen than a temporary shutdown of government.  But it creates unnecessary disruption, unnecessary hardship and also unnecessary expense, because it is more costly to shut down and restart than to continue operations.  It is terrible way to run a government.

The politics of defunding Obamacare (2)

Click on The GOP’s Self-Defeating ‘Defunding’ Strategy for Karl Rove’s article in the Wall Street Journal.

Public opinion and Obamacare

This opinion poll by Pew Research indicates that more than half of the opponents of the Affordable Care Act think that elected officials should try to make it work as well as possible rather than sabotaging it and making it worse.

Some time back I saw a public opinion poll that indicated that some of the opponents of Obamacare oppose it because (like me) they would prefer a single-payer system (Medicare for everybody) or a public option as a voluntary alternative to private insurance.  I wasn’t able to find the poll in a Google search. 

[Update: In the latest CNN poll, 54 percent of respondents opposed Obamacare, but of that group, 16 percent opposed it because they thought the bill was not liberal enough.]

What I’d be interested in seeing is a current poll of the opponents of Obamacare giving a breakdown as to (1) those who oppose it because they think it won’t provide affordable health insurance to the currently uninsured and (2) those who oppose it because they are opposed in principle to the government spending money to give people medical care.  I’d also like to see a breakdown of opponents who would like the government to (a) do more or (b) do less.

But whatever Americans think of the Affordable Care Act, a majority disagree with shutting down the government or risking a default on government in order to prevent it from being implemented.

The politics of defunding Obamacare

Click on What Republicans don’t understand about the politics of Obamacare for more from Ezra Klein on the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.

Hat tip to jobsanger.