Back in March the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that Obama's signature achievement cost more than originally projected. New projections bring the cost to $1.76 trillion over the next decade instead of the original estimate of $940 billion.
Yesterday Rasmussen found that support for repealing Obamacare is growing, despite the massive PR the Obama campaign and Democrats are investing into it.
Most voters continue to support repeal of the national health care law and feel it will increase the federal budget deficit.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 53% of Likely Voters at least somewhat favor repeal of the health care law, while 39% are at least somewhat opposed. Those figures include 44% who Strongly Favor repeal and 28% who are Strongly Opposed.
Last week a New York Times/CBS News poll found that 68 percent of Americans want some or all of Obamacare overturned with only 24 percent wanting the entire law kept.
The Supreme Court is due to rule on the individual mandate's constitutionality this month and whether the mandate is severable without a severability clause inserted. (The severability clause was inserted into the law before passage but never made it into the final version that Obama signed)
Yesterday I noticed a piece over at Politico asking "Does Mitt Romney need Obamacare?"
There's fear in some GOP circles that if the court wipes the Affordable Care Act off the books Romney will lose a rallying point for the movement conservatives he has been struggling to inspire.
“Clearly, the Supreme Court overturning Obamacare is the best thing for the country, but it’s an open question what’s better for November’s election,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) said. If the law is upheld, he said, “it might drive our people out to the polls.”
More:
“Obamacare is the one permanent and potentially irreversible [effect] that Obama will have on the country, and if it is overturned, it makes the election, by default, less important,” a conservative operative intimately involved in the campaign who has reviewed extensive polling and focus group research on the topic told POLITICO earlier this week. “If the court overturns it, 10 million conservative activists suddenly breathe a great sigh of relief, and may not be quite as intensely active.”
I strongly disagree with that mindset as I have said multiple times here at Wake up America.
Yes, if the court rules in favor of the Obama administration and rules in favor of the health care law in it's entirety, Republicans and Romney can use the voter anger to "drive" conservative supporters to the polls, but if the High Court overturns the mandate on constitutional grounds then Conservatives have a message just as intense to drive voters to the polls:
"The Supreme Court had to stop Barack Obama from violating American's constitutional rights"
Just the simple fact that this ruling on Obamacare, no matter which side it falls on, is happening a few short months before the November presidential election, putting Obamacare right into the spotlight again, is a win/win for Republicans.
And a lose/lose for Barack Obama.
Back in March a study of 10,000 simulations of a scenario in which all vulnerable Democrats voted against the health care bill and found that the rejections would have saved Democrats an average of 25 seats, which would have made the House parties close to a tie. (Republicans won 63 seats overall, but the study suggests around 25 of them would have been salvaged.)
In 62 percent of the simulations, Democrats were able to keep the House. ( Source- Washington Post)
In 2010, American voters were able to make their voices heard and they severely punished House and Senate Democrats for passing Obamacare against the opposition of the majority of Americans, but Barack Obama was not on the ballot then.
He is in 2012 and since he pushed for Obamacare despite polling showing how unpopular it was as a whole, and ultimately it was his signature which signed it into law, then his own assertion that voters should speak up at the polls in judgement, should be heeded.
In the words of Obama himself at the February 2010 Obamacare summit: "So the question that I'm going to ask myself and I ask of all of you is, is there enough serious effort that in a month's time or a few weeks' time or six weeks' time we could actually resolve something?"
And if we can't, then I think we've got to go ahead and make some decisions, and then that's what elections are for."
[WATCH]
Finally, something we can all agree on.
