Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

No one thought it would be easy for President Obama and Republicans in Congress to negotiate a package of tax increases and spending cuts over the next few weeks. But now Speaker John Boehner is trying to make the process even harder. In an op-ed article for the Cincinnati Enquirer today, Mr. Boehner said that “we need to repeal Obamacare” because it adds to the debt and is unaffordable. As a result, he wrote, “the law has to stay on the table as both parties discuss ways to solve our nation’s massive debt challenge.”

That ignores the plain words of the most reliable and non-partisan judge of these things — the Congressional Budget Office — which said in July that the Affordable Care Act doesn’t add to the debt, it lowers the debt. Repealing the law would add $109 billion to the debt through 2022. (The Supreme Court, in fact, made the law $84 billion cheaper when it ruled that states don’t have to accept the law’s Medicaid expansion.)



More broadly, though, Mr. Boehner is not simply ignoring the results of this month’s election, he is openly defying them. Not only did Mr. Obama and many congressional Democrats win with full-throated support for the reform law, but exit polls showed that only 25 percent of voters agree with the Republican goal of full repeal.

Remarkably, the speaker admitted this in the article. “Over the past couple of years,” he wrote, “I have noted there are essentially three major routes to repeal of the president’s law: the courts, the presidential election process and the congressional oversight process. With two of those three routes having come up short, the third and final one becomes more important than ever.”

The Supreme Court has ruled the law constitutional, but he still opposes it. The people have spoken, but his mind is made up. Now the only route left to him is a kind of rearguard guerrilla action: taking budget potshots at the law, using spending bills and regulations to hobble its implementation.

Mr. Boehner also noted in his op-ed that the House Ways and Means Committee has already issued a subpoena to learn how much the administration has spent in promoting the law. But there’s nothing wrong with using taxpayer dollars to promote it — it’s “the law of the land,” as Mr. Boehner himself acknowledged recently, and the government needs to show people how to use it. Given the refusal of many Republican governors to implement the law in their states, it is particularly important for the White House to explain what steps are necessary to get insurance coverage.

Republicans may succeed in their goal of making it harder for poor people to get health insurance, but the White House made it clear today that changes to the law won’t even be considered in the fiscal cliff talks. Mr. Boehner undoubtedly knows this, and may be trying to look tough to his right flank before the inevitable compromises to come. For those depending on the law to escape the endless lines at emergency rooms, this kind of gamesmanship is an unwelcome reminder of unyielding Republican opposition.