House to Move Soon on Bills Slashing Obamacare Slush Funds

I think they are going about this the wrong way but, the Republican leadership is not listening to us. They are going their own way in order to try to accomplish what we want. I hope they know what they're doing and I pray they succeed. - Reggie

h/t Speaker John Boehner

The U.S. House of Representatives spent last week slashing billions of dollars in so-called mandatory spending from the unpopular TARP bailout program and the Obama administration's prized Dodd-Frank financial regulation law – and billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded Obamacare slush money will be among the programs targeted next, a senior GOP source on the Hill reports.

As the first major act of the new majority, House Republicans voted en masse to repeal Obamacare in its entirety, via H.R. 2," said the source. "If the Senate won't pass H.R. 2, then Republicans in the House will repeal Obamacare chunk by chunk, including these wasteful mandatory spending slush funds."

Legislation to eliminate the Obamacare slush funds is expected on the floor “soon,” the source reports.  “This stuff has been in the works since January, and it’s almost ready,” according to the source.

A March 7 internal memorandum by House Energy & Commerce Committee Republicans details some of the Obamacare slush funds that could be targeted.  The slush funds include billions of dollars in mandatory spending accounts that were tucked into the final health care legislation by the Democratic-controlled Congress last year.  One such fund, for example, “was designed to provide the Secretary [of Health & Human Services] funds to spend at her discretion above whatever spending amount Congress appropriates,” the memo notes.

“These mandatory spending slush funds were set up by the authors of Obamacare to stay on the books automatically, year after year, with little or no oversight,” the source notes.  “These accounts are outrageous, and they need to go.”

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