The GOP Has Been Planning The Government Shutdown Since Last Year. Here’s The Proof (INFOGRAPHIC)

Author: Elisabeth Parker

On September 30th, Rachel Maddow told us how the House GOP planned to shut down the U.S. government since at least 2010. More and more Americans know who to blame for the Obamacare standoff: Recent polls show voters may hand Democrats the House in 2014. But Republicans are still in denial. Now, The New York Times has proof positive that the House GOP’s to blame, in the form of a “Coalition Letter” from FreedomWorks, dated February 14, 2013. Funded by the Koch Brothers and other wealthy donors, FreedomWorks funnels money to Tea Party candidates and causes. And the letter proves that this shutdown isn’t just the result of stubbornness on both sides, or botched negotiations.

The House GOP — and their wealthy masters — will go to amazing lengths to deny people access to healthcare

FreedomWorks’ peculiar Valentine to the American people outlines a harsh, uncompromising strategy for getting rid of the Affordable Care Act at all costs. Never mind that the American people voted for Obamacare and the Supreme Court upheld its key provisions as constitutional. The House GOP — and the people who pay them — will go to amazing lengths to deny people access to healthcare:

Conservatives should not approve a CR [continuing resolution] unless it defunds Obamacare.  This includes Obamacare’s unworkable exchanges, unsustainable Medicaid expansion, and attack on life and religious liberty.

… And here’s how you shut down the U.S. Government

This letter to the Tea Party coalition — including its bought and paid for House GOP members — then details how to shut down the Federal government if Congress refuses to “delay the implementation of Obamacare”:

A mere “date-change CR” is unacceptable.  Although the Obama administration and others will argue the CR is not the appropriate legislative vehicle to defund Obamacare, it is easily done through a series of appropriation riders.  Because the CR represents one of the best vehicles possible to delay the implementation of Obamacare, it must not be used to bargain on the upcoming sequester.

The letter was originally presented to FreedomWorks as a memorandum from the Conservative Action Project. Led by the late President Ronald Reagan‘s former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, CAP held a hush-hush meeting at an undisclosed location in the Capitol shortly after President Barack Obama started his second term. After the meeting, leaders from over 36 conservative groups signed on to this evil strategy. If you have the stomach for it, you click here to read the entire thing.

House GOP government shutdown bought and paid for by the Koch brothers

Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s New York Times article also reports that the David and Charles Koch, and their affiliated groups, threw some pretty big bucks around. Freedom Partners distributed $200 million to various “grassroots” anti-Obamacare groups. Meanwhile, the Americans for Prosperity plunked down $5.5 million for anti-Obamacare television ads. Freedom Partners also paid an additional $115 million to the egregiously misnamed Center to Protect Patient Rights. Meanwhile, the youthful and comparatively thrifty Generation Opportunity spent a scant $740 thousand on their creepy Uncle Sam ad. in hopes of scaring us away from Obamacare’s state health insurance exchanges.
Oh, and in case you’re one of the increasingly fearful members of the House GOP, and your voters show up on your lawn with torches and pitch forks, you can explain yourself, with help from the Tea Party Patriot’s handy “Defunding Obamacare Toolkit.”

“When it comes to ‘can’t keep the lights on’ failures of basic governance [...] that is just how they planned it.” — Rachel Maddow on the House GOP’s government shutdown

Even before FreedomWorks’ letter came to light, Rachel Maddow best explains how the House GOP planned on shutting down the government all along:

“This is not an accident that keeps happening over and over again. Republicans control one half of one branch of government, and they have never had any plan to use that control to pass anything into law. [...] We are deep into year three of them running the House now. We’ve got zip from them in terms of law or policy. And, we’re at seven and counting when it comes to ‘can’t keep the lights on’ failures of basic governance. And that is just how they planned it.”

In retrospect, this all makes sense. After all, the influential neoconservative Grover Norquist did once say, “Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.” Now, all these Americans who thought they hated the government and who’ve voted for Republicans all these years are finding out what life without the U.S. government is really like.
In case you missed it, here’s the September 30th video with Rachel Maddow: