On Thursday, House Republicans will try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act, this time after pressure from freshman conservative members of the caucus who are frustrated that they have not yet had the chance to vote for a repeal.
This time around, House Republicans are fueled by the IRS scandal, because of the agency's role in distributing funds from the law. The Washington Post reports:
Half of the billion dollars allocated to cover implementation of the Affordable Care Act went to the IRS. Starting in 2014, the agency will distribute subsidies for health-care coverage through state exchanges and issue penalties against individuals who do not get or businesses that do nor provide insurance.
Republicans have claimed that the IRS will hire 16,000 new agents to deal with health-care reform; factcheckers have deemed that number “a partisan analysis based on guesswork and false assumptions.” But the Obama administration has asked for more money for the IRS to enforce the new law. The president’s 2014 budget calls for $1 billion more for the IRS, $440 million of which is intended to help with ACA implementation. A big chunk of that would go to updating and creating new information technology.
The Post puts the count of repeal attempts at 36, with today marking the 37th, though the number is somewhat debatable because many of the attempts were not full floor votes. The Post has details on each attempt here.
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