With Obamacare, GOP faces 'the Pottery Barn rule': You break it, you own it [View all]

[DonViejo]

By Paul Kane January 4 at 7:02 PM

Democrats have an emerging strategy to defend the Affordable Care Act from Republican assault, daring their opponents to defy the “Pottery Barn rule”: They’re about to break the health-care system, and that means they will own it.

For more than six years, Republicans have attacked unpopular parts of the law without having to propose alternatives. Those days are over.

Emerging from their final huddle with President Obama, congressional Democrats said their plan is essentially to leave it to the GOP to replace Obamacare. And they’re getting an unintended assist from Republicans, who to date have no full plan, only a vague timeline and very few details on how they intend to do it.

“They’re going to own it and all the problems in the health-care system,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference after a 90-minute meeting with the president in the Capitol basement on Wednesday. Republicans will discover quickly, Schumer said, that implementing their preferred market-based alternatives will be virtually impossible without a large source of revenue, which would probably require Democratic votes for approval.

“Now they’re responsible for the entire health-care system, and it will be on their backs,” he said. “And I believe, a year from now, they will regret that they came out so fast out of the box.”

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