Politics & Government

Bachmann Promises to Keep Fighting to Defund Obamacare

The Congresswoman said Republicans shouldn't fear a shutdown.

Rep. Michele Bachmann was one of a dozen Republicans who voted against their own party’s last-minute legislation that scaled back changes to the Affordable Care Act in an attempt to reach a deal that would a government shutdown.

“Up until this point you’ve seen incredible unity on the part of the Republicans, all weekend long. Up until this vote we’ve been absolutely unified. This is the first schism,” the New York Times quoted Bachmann, “because we’ve deviated from our agreed position, which was to stop implementation of Obamacare this year.”

House Republicans have sought to include changes to Obamacare in a continuing resolution needed to fund the government. Yesterday, they first passed laws to defund or delay Obamacare in its entirety and then voted early Tuesday to delay the requirement for people to buy insurance.

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President Barack Obama and the Democratic-run Senate have said Obamacare isn’t up for negotiation in continuing resolution talks. The Senate rejected the first House proposals and is expected to reject the most recently passed version.

The government began a partial government shutdown Tuesday, with about 800,000 federal workers off the job.

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But Bachmann, whose district includes St. Michael, didn’t appear to be blinking. During an interview with conservative website WorldNetDaily, she accused Democrats of trying to get citizens hooked on another program.

"I think the reason is because President Obama can't wait to get Americans addicted to the crack cocaine of dependency on more government health care," Bachmann said. "Because, once they enroll millions of more individual Americans it will be virtually impossible for us to pull these benefits back from people."

She said Republicans shouldn’t fear a shutdown and promised “to keep fighting until we defund and delay this thing,” according to the New York Times.



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