WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s decision Thursday to uphold the Affordable Care Act prompted swift responses from the two presidential candidates, moving the debate squarely into the political sphere and setting it up to figure prominently for the remainder of the campaign.
On Capitol Hill, congressional Republicans said they will try to use the Supreme Court’s decision to their advantage in the November election. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia announced that the Republican-controlled chamber would vote again July 11 to repeal the law.
President Barack Obama, speaking from the East Room of the White House, celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision, offered a detailed defense of the legislation and said any discussion of the politics of the decision “completely misses the point.”
“I didn’t do this because I thought it was good politics,” Obama said, touting the act’s provisions to protect patients with pre-existing conditions, to allow children up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ plans and to require insurers to provide free preventive screenings. “I did it because I believed it was good for this country.”
The president said that even as implementation of the act continues, it can be improved upon. But the court ruling allows the country to avoid, Obama said, going back to “fight the political battles of two years ago,” when the law was passed.
Republican Mitt Romney, speaking on the roof of an office building in downtown Washington, the Capitol behind him and a lectern in front with a sign reading “Repeal & Replace Obamacare,” said the Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t change the fact that the act is “bad law” and “bad policy.”
“What the court did not do on its last day in session, I will do on my first day as president, and that is, I will act to repeal Obamacare,” Romney said.
Romney avoided criticizing the Supreme Court, taking aim instead at the Affordable Care Act, which the president said was modeled on a similar law Romney championed when he was governor of Massachusetts.
Although Romney promised to retain some of the act’s more popular provisions, including protections for patients with pre-existing conditions, he excoriated the rest and called the law a “job killer” overall.
Romney’s campaign said Thursday evening that it had raised $2.5 million from 24,000 donors during the day, crediting a response to the court decision. But based on the sheer average of Romney’s fundraising - a rate of more than $2 million a day last month - it was unclear how much of Thursday’s money was attributable to the health-care opinion.
At the Capitol, Republicans in both chambers took aim at the taxes and fees in what they’ve termed “Obamacare.”
“Elections have consequences,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said at a news conference. “The American people will make that evident.”
Whatever repeal efforts House Republicans make almost certainly will die in the Senate, where Democrats have control, and Obama would have the ability to veto such a bill if it passed both chambers.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., went to the Senate floor minutes after the ruling was announced to praise the law as “the greatest single step in generations toward ensuring access to affordable, quality health care for every American” and said the decision should stop repeal efforts.
“Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress continue to target the rights and benefits guaranteed under this law,” Reid said. “They would like to give the power of life and death back to insurance companies. But the United States Supreme Court has spoken. This matter is settled.”
House Republicans, who passed a bill, 245-189, to repeal the health-care law in January 2011, were meeting Thursday in the Capitol to map out their next steps.
“The only way” to “get rid of Obamacare” after Thursday’s decision “is to elect a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican president this fall,” said Rep. Steve Chabot, an Ohio Republican.
While they didn’t offer immediate details on how they would proceed after a House vote on repeal, several Republicans said the court’s decision will give them a boost in the November election as they emphasize tax increases in the law that will start taking effect next year.
“It’s not really a health-care law, it’s a tax law,” said Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican and member of the Tea Party Caucus.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said Republicans are “disappointed but not deterred” by the court’s decision. “This just makes the stakes of the next election all that higher,” he told reporters.
Democrats said Republicans are overplaying the tax angle.
“This is only a tax burden on free riders and it was a Republican idea in the first place advanced by Newt Gingrich of all people that free riders should pay their own way,” said Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia.
House Republicans already have voted 30 times to eliminate, defund or scale back parts or all of the health-care law, most recently passing a measure to repeal a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices set to take effect in January.
Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who is running for the U.S. Senate, said Thursday’s decision moves the issue “back to the political field” and will once again be a liability for Democrats in November.
Senate Minority LeaderMitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Thursday that he would press efforts to do away with the law, which he said the court’s ruling showed was “a tax.”
“Today’s decision does nothing to diminish the fact that Obamacare’s mandates, tax hikes, and Medicare cuts should be repealed and replaced with common sense reforms that lower costs and that the American people actually want,” McConnell said in a statement.
Democrats, who provided all of the votes to pass the health-care overhaul in 2010 before losing control of the House in midterm elections later that year, called the ruling a vindication of the law and a victory for the health of the American people.
“With this ruling, Americans will benefit from critical patient protections, lower costs for the middle class, more coverage for families, and greater accountability for the insurance industry,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, who was House speaker when the law passed, said in a statement.
Asked by reporters whether the ruling gives Republicans a political opening, Pelosi said, “The politics be damned: This is about what we came here to do.”
On Thursday, heading to a hastily called Democratic Caucus meeting to discuss the decision, Pelosi ran into a longtime friend, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., and they hugged, according to an aide.
“What a great victory!” Pelosi said.
“You bet your ass,” Miller responded.
“I did,” she said, as they laughed.
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the chamber’s third-ranking Democrat, said in a statement that the ruling affirms the Supreme Court’s “position as an institution above politics.”
“Just as Speaker Boehner vowed not to spike the football if the law was overturned, Republicans should not carry on out of pique now that the law has been upheld,” Schumer said.
Information for this article was contributed by Amy Gardner of The Washington Post; by Kathleen Hunter, Roxana Tiron, Greg Stohr, Heidi Przybyla, Richard Rubin and James Rowley of Bloomberg News; by Ben Feller, Ken Thomas, Julie Pace, Steve Peoples and Jim Kuhnhenn of The Associated Press and by Robin Abcarian, Maeve Reston and Richard Simon of the Los Angeles Times.
Front Section, Pages 10 on 06/29/2012