COLUMBIA,SC–Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin and ForAmerica chairman Brent Bozell stopped at the Columbia, South Carolina statehouse on Tuesday for a press conference to attack Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is up for re-election next year and facing multiple challengers, for his stance on defunding the Affordable Care Act.
“If Obamacare is not ready for Big Business, Big Labor and Big Government, it’s not ready for the American people,” Martin said to cheers from those activists who attended the press conference on the steps of the state capitol building. “It’s time for President Obama, Congress and Senators Graham and [Tim] Scott to do the fair thing and exempt America from Obamacare. The only way to do this is to stop spending our hard-earned tax money on Obamacare, which we can do while funding the rest of the entire government for all of the fiscal year 2014.”
Martin added that, in July, Graham argued that the negative effects Obamacare has on America’s economy cannot be postponed and that delaying its implementation does not undo its fundamental flaws. “Senator Graham, if you vote to spend our hard-earned tax dollars on this broken law with fundamental flaws, you would be voting in favor of what you have said yourself is a financial disaster for our country,” Martin said.
When ForAmerica’s Bozell took the stage, he quoted remarks from Obamacare architect Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who said recently that “Obamacare is heading for a train wreck.”
“The question is, where are Sen. Lindsey Graham and where is Sen. Tim Scott on this legislation?” Bozell asked. “It seems almost like they may want this to happen. They are doing nothing to stop it, nothing of serious purpose. Some of the president’s closest allies, even they are trying to get away from this.”
“If they don’t vote to defund this law, Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Tim Scott will take ownership of this,” Bozell added later in his speech. “They are effectively telling the people of South Carolina that you must pay for it. The only way to stop this is for these Senators, these Republican members of Congress, to say ‘enough is enough, we’re not going to force the American people to pay for something they do not want’… No more double talk, no more excuses, no more equivocation, no more delays–defund it now.”
Bozell cited several anecdotes which he argued show the “wheels are already coming off” Obamacare and rounded out his speech with a message to Graham and Scott: “If you fund it, you own it.”
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