Bachmann says she’s ‘heartsick’ to find GOP can’t dismantle health reform

Rep. Michele Bachmann told the Conservative Republican Forum podcast on Saturday that she was “heartsick” in learning on Friday that the new Republican majority in the U.S. House was powerless to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. She said that winning the Senate and the presidency in 2012 would be the top priority for defunding proponents — meaning the health care reform law will remain in place for at least two years.

“I think what rank-and-file Republicans need to understand is that there is a commitment” to defunding health care reform — or “Obamacare,” as she refers to it, but “information that we have just discovered within this last week is… the insidious nature of what President Obama and Speaker Pelosi put into place in order to actually implement ‘Obamacare.’”

“We were under the thinking that we would have it within our authority in the House of Representatives to defund ‘Obamacare,’” she said. “We thought we had the authority to do the defunding.”

But, Bachmann discovered, that’s not the case.

“What we came to understand is that Speaker Pelosi put the funding for ‘Obamacare’ into mandatory spending, which means we are prohibited by law from touching that spending. They knew what they were doing, because they knew that they wanted socialized medicine to continue even if they lost the majority.”

She said it means that the tea party will need to win the “Triple Crown” in 2012.

“In other words we have to win the White House, win the Senate with 60 votes and the House of Representatives. This will be an uphill battle, but we can do it,” she said. “The tea party demonstrated that we can have victories, and we need to band together and explain to people that the only way that we will get rid of this government takeover of private industry and all of the sea of red ink that the liberals are producing is if we replace the White House, the Senate and the House.”

“I wish I had better news for you,” she added.

“I spent a long time on Friday with people in the know who understand the mechanics of the budget,” she said. “I was heartsick. I was absolutely heartsick because I had been working with Steve King on our goal, which was to defund ‘Obamacare’ in the next two year period, and I didn’t want to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

She added, “And we are putting together a task force right now to study this issue to see if there is anything at all that we could find out” about the possibilities for defunding health care reform.