Doug Mataconis · · 5 comments

Since efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act are doomed to failure as long as Barack Obama is President, the GOP has talked frequently about “defunding” the bill by refusing to allocate funds for its implementation. In their first real budget plan, though, the GOP makes no such effort at all:

House Republicans say they’re all on the same page about wanting to choke off funding for President Barack Obama’s health care law, but in their first real spending bill of 2011, it looks like they’re leaving that priority on the cutting room floor.

As the GOP writes a continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of the year, it is likely to leave out language that would shut off funding for new mandates and programs under the health care law, according to Republican aides and lawmakers.

They’ll still have a shot at killing health care funding — using an amendment vote on the House floor — but by initially leaving the language out of the main funding bill, Republican leaders risk angering conservatives who think the new majority isn’t being aggressive enough.

“We expect them to swing at the ball every chance they get,” said Mark Meckler, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots. Defunding the health care law was “the No. 1 promise” Republicans made in the midterm elections, Meckler said, and if they don’t deliver on it, “they’re going to find themselves in serious trouble with the people who put them in office.”

Groups that are dedicated to repealing the health care law are already framing the spending bill as a missed opportunity.

“If you’re serious about Obamacare, you have to defund it at each and every opportunity” and “stop the fiscal train wreck before it happens,” said Alex Cortes, chairman of DeFundIt.org.

A House Appropriations Committee aide insisted that Republicans need to write a continuing resolution that can be signed into law — keeping the federal government open — and isn’t “loaded up with a bunch of political time bombs.”