The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson says that President Barack Obama must be the strong disciplinarian in his dysfunctional congressional family because Republican leaders have failed to corral errant party members who think they can dismantle Obamacare, force a government shutdown and hold the debt ceiling hostage by throwing tantrums.
Mature adults in the GOP should have explained reality to these tantrum-throwing tykes long ago: It simply is not within their constitutional power to make Obamacare go away. They can scream at the top of their lungs, roll around on the floor, hold their breath until they turn blue, waste everybody’s time with 41 useless votes — whatever. All they can really do is hurt themselves or others.
Yet here we are, with Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) cowed into letting his members threaten to shut down the government unless they are allowed to stay up all night watching television and eating candy. Also, unless the Senate and Obama agree to nullify health-care reform before it fully takes effect …
At issue is not just the threat of a federal shutdown, which will happen Oct. 1 unless Congress passes a continuing resolution to fund government operations. The debt ceiling has to be raised before the Treasury hits its borrowing limit, which will happen around Oct. 18. If House Republicans don’t kill or neutralize Obamacare with the funding bill, they are ready to threaten the nation — and the global economy — with a potentially catastrophic default.
Read Eugene Robinson's entire piece at the Washington Post.
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