Repeal

Regardless of whether the Obama administration and campaign insist on calling Obamacare a penalty, most Americans now believe the president's signature legislation is a tax, according to a new poll by Quinnipiac. Sixty percent of Hispanics believe Obamacare is a tax, and 59 percent of independent voters believe the same thing.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD that Republicans will be able to "effectively repeal" Obamacare with a simple-majority vote in the Senate if they control Congress and the White House in 2013. By using the budget reconciliation process, repeal of Obamacare would not have to get the standard 60 votes needed to break a filibuster in the Senate. 

The House has overwhelmingly voted to repeal Obamacare, by a vote of 244-185.

The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee will later today release the following chart, detailing the rising projected cost of President Obama's signature legislation, Obamacare:

Former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell writes in a long piece at Breitbart.com that the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold (most of) Obamacare, but only on the grounds that its lynchpin provision is a tax, “has changed the nature of the 2012 elections.”  Caddell argues that Obamacare was “the decisive issue” in the 2010 elections and, with President Obama on the ballot this time around, “is an even bigger issue” in 2012.

One hundred times since President Obama signed Obamacare into law in March 2010, Rasmussen Reports has asked likely voters whether they want to repeal Obama’s centerpiece legislation or keep it. In all 100 polls, voters have favored repeal.

A newly released Rasmussen poll asked likely voters, “If Mitt Romney is elected President and Republicans win control of Congress, how likely is it that the health care law will be repealed?”  Only 40 percent of independents said that it’s “very likely.”  The other 60 percent of independents’ responses were divided among “somewhat likely” (33 percent), “not very likely” (15 percent), “not at all likely” (6 percent), and “not sure” (5 percent).

Apparently thinking that, in our republic, the president unilaterally passes laws and the Supreme Court unilaterally decides whether or not we’ll keep them, President Obama has been telling the American people that “the law I passed [Obamacare] is here to stay.”  But former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle — Obama's first choice as secretary of Health and Human Services — says that for Obamacare “to survive,” Obama “must be reelected.”

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives is expected to hold another vote to repeal Obamacare, and the American Action Network is encouraging voters to tell House Democrats in potential swing districts to support repeal.

The Hill reports:

Obama touted the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold his signature healthcare reform legislation to cheers from a crowd of his supporters.

“The law I passed is here to stay,” he told an audience composed largely of Ohio automobile manufacturing workers.

According to a newly released Newsweek/Daily Beast poll of likely voters, the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling makes Americans more likely to vote for Mitt Romney and less likely to vote for President Obama. By a margin of 21 points (32 to 11 percent), voters say that they are now more, rather than less, apt to vote for Romney. By a margin of 15 percentage points (29 to 14 percent), voters say that they are now less, rather than more, apt to vote for Obama.

Two days after the Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling on President Obama’s signature legislation, the president delivered his weekly radio address and didn’t utter one word about Obamacare or the ruling.