For Immediate Release
December 17, 2010
Christopher Jaarda
571-399-2432
AHEC APPLAUDS SHORT TERM FUNDING MEASURE
CONGRESS PULLS BILL THAT WOULD HAVE PUT OBAMACARE FUNDING ON AUTO-PILOT
Washington, DC - Just days after pushing to pass a bloated $1.1 trillion appropriations bill, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has dropped his efforts to pass the bill. This "omnibus bill" - which is a combination of multiple appropriations bills - included funding for the federal government for the remainder of the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30, 2011.
While many groups criticized the bill as bloated and because it contained billions of dollars in wasteful spending, The American Healthcare Education Coalition (AHEC) opposed the bill on the basis that it included more than $1 billion in spending to implement the ObamaCare legislation.
"Instead of defunding ObamaCare, this bill would have spent more than $1 billion to implement that law, a law opposed by the American people," stated AHEC spokesman Christopher Jaarda, "The fact that the new Congress will now have a say as to whether this money is spent at all is a victory for the American people."
"Think about what Congress was trying to do," Jaarda stated, "Washington politicians pass ObamaCare against the wishes of the American people and the American people fire them as a result of their arrogance. So what do these same politicians try to do after they got "shellacked" last month - they once again tried to ignore the American people by spending $1 billion to implement the same law that got them fired."
Earlier this year, Congress failed to timely pass each of the regular 13 appropriations bills to fund the government before the September 30, 2010 deadline. As a result, the government had been operating under a series of short-term funding bills. In a practice that has become all too common in Washington, Senate Democrats tried to jam more than $1.1 trillion of spending into a single bill and then tried to rush to pass the bill before the American people could scrutinize the bill.
###