Democrats Also Voted Against Money for Implementing Obamacare
And the administration found the money between the seat cushions, anyway
The press has started to pick up on this talking point. Ezra Klein, who writes extensively on health care for the Washington Post, said Republicans are purposefully trying to derail ObamaCare's launch.
"Republicans manage to deny ObamaCare the anticipated funding required for smooth implementation," he wrote. "This makes implementation go less smoothly. Democrats begin to worry. Republicans use Democratic worries over implementation as a way to attack the law itself."
Even right-of-center New York Times columnist David Brooks echoed this line, writing last week that "Republicans in Congress have made things much more difficult by refusing to provide enough money for implementation."
The only problem with this claim is that there is no evidence to back it up.
It's true that Obama asked for $949 million in additional funds through the end of the current fiscal year to set up federal exchanges in the dozens of states that didn't agree to take this task on. But it wasn't just the GOP-controlled House that denied Obama the extra money. Democrats who control the Senate also failed to include the extra funds in their "continuing resolution" bill.
Politico said it was the "weakness of Obama's response" that led Democrats not to push to include it.