Jeb Bush speaks out against defunding Obamacare as ‘quite dicey’ politically
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) criticized the efforts of some in his party to use the threat of shutting down the government to force defunding of ObamaCare, warning the move was politically “quite dicey” and unrealistic.
“If you control one half of one third of the levers in Washington, D.C your ability to influence things are also relative to the fact that you have one half of one third of the government,” Bush said at the National Press Club. “That’s the reality.”
Bush speaking against the conservative base of the GOP and ramifications of this vote.
conservative base of the party, added that as the country approached the real deadline for when the government runs out of money to fund its operations, the stakes would get higher for Republicans.
“This isn’t a hypothetical,” Bush said. “So as we get closer to these deadlines there needs to be an understanding of that or politically it’s quite dicey for the Republican Party.”
Bush’s statements are in sharp contrast to Louisiana Governor and Chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Bobby Jindal, who said the effort to “repeal and defund is certainly a fight worth having.”
“I don’t know why as a party we would ever try to negotiate with ourselves for taking the option off the table,” Jindal said. “It’s certainly presumptuous for us to think that the president will choose to shut down the government over this.”
In his recent book Bush condemns the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, recently accepted by Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL), for doling out “welfare” to the children of illegal immigrants.
“This is why the Obama administration’s attempt to coerce states to adopt a major Medicaid expansion as part of its national health-care program had the effect of inflaming anti-immigration sentiment,” he and co-author Clint Bolick write. “Although the administration assured the states that illegal immigrants would not be eligible for Medicaid benefits, their children who are born in the United States are eligible because they are citizens. Moreover, if illegal immigrants are offered a path to citizenship or permanent legal residency, eventually they will become eligible as well. Fortunately the US Supreme Court struck down the Medicaid expansion by a 7-2 vote as unduly coercive and therefore contrary to constitutional principles of federalism. The proposal should not be resurrected.”
Sooner or later Jeb Bush will find his calling…he hasn’t at this point in his life.