see congress move ahead and not move back. reporter: and, last night the house spent about two hours in their initial debate of this repeal legislation. the house is now in session as you can see, there on your screen and will have another five hours of debate, divided evenly between the two parties today, at the end there is no doubt here, martha, the republicans have a 50-seat majority in the house and are likely to get as many as 8 to 16 democrats joining them in supporting the repeal. martha: that will be the thing to watch, how many democrats they may get who may be in vulnerable elections themselves in the coming years who might feel the pressure to cross over to the republican side on this? reporter: that s right, people talk about whether or not this is symbolic because the senate will not take up an actual repeal and there will be reforms the senate will consider but as a practical matter, politically, it requires democrats to defend again, the health care act, that got a
house democrats. even the richest most powerful insidious special interest groups that sided with republicans against certain aspects of health reform in the first place, the lobby group america s health insurance plans, even they are not joining in the republicans repeal effort this week. politico.com reports that the pharmaceutical industry is staying out of this all together and the health insurance lobbyists are not supporting republicans on repeal. the politics on this are falling apart for republicans. and in light of recent events unrelated to health reform, there was already awkwardness around the republicans using the phrase job killing in the title of their repeal legislation. but today the associated press turned insult to injury when they checked the actual claim that health reform is job killing. the ap found that claim to be more than just awkward but it was wrong. the republican cites the non-partisan congressional budget office as the source of their claim that health
repeal in the senate as well. the senate ought not be a place that legislation goes into a dead end. that is the point here. we are talking about doing things for the american people, delivering results. republicans are planning other ways to get rid of the law in its current form including chipping away at its pursestrings. steve king of iowa is leading the gop appeal evident. welcome representative king. thanks for being here. thanks for having me. if in the democrat-controlled senate this got there, what would happen in repealing the health law. you know the president would veto it? we are exactly on schedule with the strategy that i ve worked on from the beginning in last march when i introduced the repeal legislation. if there is a vote that can be forced in the senate the votes will be there to repeal it.
nothing is expected to happen, president obama would never sign repeal legislation. how do you answer that? i think this is an important first step. i do believe that repealing the health care reform law will pass the house of representatives today. i think it will send a message. one it will send a message to the american people that we heard them. that we heard them loud and clear on november the 2nd. the second thing i think it will set up a process hopefully at the very least we ll be able to amend the health care reform law and get the bad parts out of it. jon: such as? gosh, where do i start? for example, cutting medicare half a trillion dollars is something that i m adamantly opposed to. expanding the irs and having them fine you if you do not buy health insurance is something that i m adamantly opposed to. those are just a couple of good places to start. jon: do you think that if health care had not passed, if so many democrats had not voted for it in the last
say western europe. by the way, if i can, the united kingdom is dismanslaughter behind their socialized healthcare program as we speak. i don t know if we are picking up the left over pieces and putting it back here in the united states but that should tell us something. jenna: one of the ways you say you re going to stop the growth of this tumor as you call it the healthcare law is to pull away funding for it. and a question that our viewers have is, then what happens? if the house cuts funding for the healthcare law, what is next? well, the proposal that i m making is that she should shut off all funding that would be used to implement orin force obamacare for the duration of 2011 and 2012. if we do that it freezes in place any of the implementation, it freezes the growth of this tumor as i ve described it. it let s us get to the presidential election of 2012, and i am hopeful that the next president of the united states will run on the ticket of wanting to sign this repeal legisla