Nancy Pelosi: Government Shutdown Over Obamacare Defunding Is ‘Legislative Arson’

Nancy Pelosi says government shutdown threats over Obamacare defunding measures essentially amount to the Republicans being “legislative arsonists.”

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, the government shutdown from the debt ceiling will occur October 1 unless Congress comes to an agreement.

The current Federal government debt has almost reached $17 trillion. Republicans in the House of Representatives believe the cost of Obamacare is too high so they’r promoting an Obamacare alternative along with efforts to defund Obamacare completely.

Democrats believe the only way to deal with high budget deficit is to increase taxes dramatically. Republicans believe there needs to be more tax cuts. Last time the two parties faced each other down over the Federal budget the debt ceiling was only raised because of the inclusion of the automatic sequester, which made across-the-board cuts indiscriminately. The two parties agreed the automatic sequester was only a backup plan that no one wanted to occur, but partisan bickering prevented any agreement. Instead of coming up with a final budget solution, the automatic sequester cut $850 billion from a 10-year planned spending increase of $3.25 trillion, bringing the spending increases down to $2.4 trillion from 2013 to 2023.

In short, the automatic sequester didn’t solve the problem but only slowed the increase in government spending. So Republicans are targeting Obamacare since it’s one of the biggest targets for spending increases.

But Nancy Pelosi believes tying Obamacare to the government shutdown doesn’t help Congress come to a solution:

“”They want to shut down the government. The effect of putting the Affordable Care Act on the bill is to shut down government. They know that and they know that it has no prospect of prevailing. I call them legislative arsonists.”

Still, Nancy Pelosi backed of the rhetoric a little by saying she doesn’t believe all Republicans can be painted “with the same brush, and I certainly don’t paint the speaker with that brush.” House Speaker John Boehner apparently doesn’t fully support some aspects of the recently passed bill.

Many other Repbulicans believe the same and even Bill O’Reilly says continuing attempts to defund Obamacare are “fanatical.” One-third of 46 Republicans in the Senate also disagree with defunding Obamacare. Since not a single Democrat supports the idea, this means any final compromise bill will strike defunding Obamacare from the list of options. Still, some Republicans believe Obamacare is an “albatross” Democrats are defending in order to protect President Obama’s legacy.

Do you agree with Nancy Pelosi that threatening a government shutdown over defunding Obamacare is a waste of time?