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As Senate clears way for Obamacare funding, how the House planned 'from the beginning' to angle for a one-year delay to set up 2014 election showdown

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As Senate clears way for Obamacare funding, how the House planned 'from the beginning' to angle for a one-year delay to set up 2014 election showdown

    The Senate passed a 'cloture' motion and then approved a single amendment to a House budget resolution along strict party lines, fending off tea partiers who sought to defund Obamacare
    The House will now have a 'clean' funding bill to consider, hoping that it won't be the one kneeling on the football when the clock expires
    The government faces a partial shutdown Monday at midnight if Democrats and Republicans can't agree on a budget 'continuing resolution'
    A House source says the game 'from the beginning' has been to angle for a one-year delay in Obamacare's implementation
    Moving everything back 12 months will force Democrats to defend the health caer law leading up to the next congressional elections
    Several Republican senators who face re-election in 2014 joined Democrats to vote for a measure moving the Democrats' preferred approach forward

By David Martosko, U.s. Political Editor

PUBLISHED: 11:08 EST, 27 September 2013 | UPDATED: 15:32 EST, 27 September 2013

Republicans in the House of Representatives have been demanding a complete defunding of the Obamacare law in order to set up the White House for a one-year implementation delay and a 2014 electoral showdown, an aide to a senior Republican congressman has told MailOnline.

The Senate passed its first major procedural hurdle with ease on Friday, with a 79-19 vote to end debate, in which more than half of Republicans joined with Democrats. Two more votes, both strictly along party lines, amended a House budget resolution to strip language defunding Obamacare, and then to approve the resolution itself.

The GOP's political calculations are clear: Forcing Democrats to delay the Affordable Care Act's enforcement for 12 months would shift the current national anxieties about health insurance to this time next year – just weeks before the crucial 2014 congressional elections.

'Look,' said the House aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, 'you have to understand that we've been working for the delay from the beginning. There's no way the White House was going to agree to killing the funding, but if we led with a demand for a one-year "time out," we couldn't have gotten that.'

'It's like every negotiation in business, in politics, in sports salary arbitration: You make an unreasonable demand because you really want something more reasonable.'

'This is what the conference meetings have really been about.'

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called a 12:30 p.m. vote on an amendment to the House's budget resolution, stripping the language that killed funding for the president's national health insurance overhaul. Democrats easily passed their first a procedural hurdle, collecting 79 votes for a motion to close debate on the measure.

They needed only 60.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2435352/Republicans-played-year-Obamacare-delay-beginning-says-GOP.html#ixzz2gI97J5xK

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