Where Do the Funds Go If Obamacare Is Defunded?

Much ado about nothing?
All this talk assumes that the defunding of Obamacare really takes enough money away from Obamacare programs to cause them to stop — or at least significantly weaken them. Is that a valid assumption? Probably not.

Sen. Tom Colburn (R-Okla.), a medical doctor by profession and no fan of the president’s health-reform legislation, asked the Congressional Research Service, or CRS, to provide information on the possible consequences of a “funding lapse” on implementation of Obamacare. The answer in a nutshell: Funding for Obamacare would continue even if the government were shut down.

Yep — Obamacare possesses zombie-like abilities. It keeps moving even if you think it’s dead.

There are several reasons for this. One is that the government could use money not included in annual appropriations called multiple-year and no-year discretionary funds. The Obamacare exchanges would probably keep on rolling. In fact, they’re supposed to be self-sustaining beginning in 2015.

According to the CRS, the IRS could still collect Obamacare taxes, federal subsidies to help many individuals purchase health insurance would probably still be in place, and the individual mandate would still be in force. All of these elements would largely march forward even if Congress didn’t allocate another dime to Obamacare. Such are the strange ways of the federal legislative and budgetary processes.

As Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) admits, the effort to defund Obamacare is “largely symbolic.” Even if Obamacare is defunded, the funds keep on flowing for the most part. The current debate — on both sides of the political spectrum — is mainly much ado about nothing.

The article Where Do the Funds Go If Obamacare Is Defunded? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Keith Speights.

Fool contributor Keith Speights and The Motley Fool have no position in any of the stocks mentioned.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.