What I'd Like to See

Republicans are, as we all know, currently refusing to pass an appropriations bill keeping the government funded. "Why are they doing this?" you might ask, if you were from another planet or something. Here on earth we know they're doing it because they want to repeal/defund/delay/whatever "Obamacare," also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In normal-person speak, one translation of that sentence would be that they are inflicting this suffering upon the world in service of the cause of denying health care coverage to poor people, and protecting rich people from marginally higher marginal taxes. To most of us, that sounds bad! But Republicans, to their, I dunno, credit, don't put it that way. They say they're doing this because Obamacare is destroying the economy. So here's what I'd like to see:

Will somebody, anybody, please just ask them how Obamacare is ruining the country?

Like, literally, go up to John Boehner or Ted Cruz or Mike Lee or Paul Ryan or whoever and just say, "how is the Affordable Care Act hurting the economy?" And when they say something like "it's destroying jobs" or whatever, keep asking, how? And don't stop until you've got an answer at least as concrete as, say, the standard Democratic explanation for how austerity is destructive in a depressed economy.

Oh wait, you won't get that. Because there isn't one. So maybe I should specify an alternate termination condition, lest this hypothetical reporter be stuck saying "but how?" forever. Let's say, until you get that kind of answer, or, more realistically, they a) tell you to fuck off, or go fuck yourself, or whatever; or b) some non-profane version of (a). In other words, until they implicitly concede that they haven't got an answer. I can't think of any other end-point. Behind all the nonsense about "job-killing regulations" or whatever, there just isn't any specific causal mechanism in mind. And that's stunning. Republicans have shut down the United States government and are prepared to create a situation in which the government has no legal way to pay its legal obligations, with the possible result of massive and irreversible global financial calamity, on the grounds that all of that is worth it to stop one terrible law that's destroying the country. And they cannot tell you how the law is destroying the country. They can only assert that it is. It's staggering.