Congressman Rush Holt (D-12) calls the Republicans’ threat to shut down the federal government if changes to the Affordable Care Act aren’t made immature. He told NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider that he suspected it would come to this after witnessing the “intransigence of the Republicans over the last couple of weeks.” While he said there are portions of the Affordable Care Act that could be better, he disagrees with the Republicans’ approach to the issue.
Holt said it’s ironic that Republicans want to shut down the government to stop what they call Obamacare, but many parts of the Affordable Care Act are already in effect and have been for a couple years.
Speaker John Boehner has been in the spotlight with this latest action and Holt said while doesn’t believe Boehner wants the government to shut down, he’s being pushed by the radical parts of his caucus. “They seem to be operating in fear of the Tea Party instead of just having the more mature members stand up and say, ‘Look, we’ve seen this before and we don’t like the way it plays out. Go back and sit down and come to us with a better idea,'” Holt said.
While Holt believes the Tea Party is responsible for the threatened shutdown, he said legislators can work with them, recognizing that they are a minority.
“Speaker Boehner should say with the reasonable members of his Republican conference, along with virtually all of the Democrats, he could get a clean bill to keep the government operating and then talk about improvements that we need to make to make sure that everyone in America has affordable, accessible, excellent health care. And there’s plenty to talk about,” he said. “There’s parts of the Affordable Care Act that no doubt can be improved, some things that need to be tweaked. But basically it has been operating for years now. There are new parts taking effect tomorrow that will be very beneficial to very many Americans. To threaten shutting the government down over this, just makes no sense.”