Majority Leader Eric Cantor spent 90 percent of a presentation to House Republicans in the Capitol basement this morning explaining and defending his convoluted plan to force the Senate to vote on defunding Obamacare before eventually allowing the upper chamber to send a “clean” CR to President Obama.
Towards the end, however, he dropped a big piece of news about the House Republican strategy heading into the next fiscal fight — over raising the debt ceiling. To increase the debt ceiling, Cantor said, Republicans will demand a one-year delay to Obamacare.
It was the first definitive announcement regarding what, specifically, the House will demand in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, and a big reason that some of the typical conservative hardliners came out of the meeting relatively placid.
“We think that as this thing is implemented there’s going to be an outcry, and that’s when the delay comes in,” said Representative John Fleming of Lousiana, who supports the plan.
That’s not to say that everyone is happy about Cantor’s CR idea, which will mean passing the funding bill under a House “rule” that forces the Senate to vote on defunding Obamacare before they can pass the CR itself.
Senator Mike Lee, who proposed the original defund-Obamacare strategy in July, ripped Cantor’s proposal as a “face-saving” measure that could actually rebound against the GOP politically.
