Repeal Obamacare Bill Leads New Congress Agenda
The first bill to be introduced on the first day of the 113th Congress was a bill aiming to have Obamacare repealed in its entirety, mirroring numerous failed attempts to strike down the healthcare legislation in the previous Congress.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) did not waste any time in the new Congress to start work on reining the president's health care law, officially known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The law aims at providing insurance coverage to poorer Americans to reduce the nearly 50 million people who currently do not have health insurance. One of the many controversial aspects of the law stipulates that individuals must purchase insurance or they will be subjected to a fine.
Bachmann revealed her actions through her Twitter feed on Thursday.
"At noon today, I introduced the first bill of the 113th Congress to repeal Obamacare in its entirety," Bachmann wrote.
This attempt in the new Congress comes after many failed attempts by various members in the last Congress. 33 separate bills to repeal Obamacare were- either in part or in its entirety- defeated in the Senate after being passed in the House.
Recent polls show that support to repeal Obamacare has subsided in the weeks since the election, with many states already beginning to implement the law.
America's fiscal health has been dominating headlines in recent weeks, with the House quickly passing a deal to resolve the nation's "fiscal cliff" fiasco. Meanwhile, the debate regarding the nation's debt ceiling is only a matter of weeks away.
The cost of the repeated attempts to repeal Obamacare contributes to a staggering total. A report by CBS published in July stated that the total cost of the failed bills amounted to nearly $50 million in taxpayer dollars and nearly 80 hours of work.