Obamacare is on the table

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, opened up another front in the fiscal cliff negotiations Wednesday when The Cincinnati Enquirer published an op-ed by him calling for Obamacare to be included in debt deal talks. From Boehner’s op-ed:

The president’s health care law adds a massive, expensive, unworkable government program at a time when our national debt already exceeds the size of our country’s entire economy. We can’t afford it, and we can’t afford to leave it intact. That’s why I’ve been clear that the law has to stay on the table as both parties discuss ways to solve our nation’s massive debt challenge.

A White House aide later told The Huffington Post‘s Sam Stein that Obama “would oppose involving the Affordable Care Act in the negotiations taking place to stave off the so-called fiscal cliff.” But Stein also added, “Another Senate Democratic aide did concede that some changes to the Affordable Care Act could be made as part of a grand-bargain deal that would replace the expiring Bush-era tax cuts and the $1 trillion in spending cuts included in the sequester. But those changes would not alter the purpose and reach of the law ‘in any meaningful way.’”