Arizona senator Jeff Flake became the latest Republican to voice his opposition to shutting down the federal government in an effort to defund Obamacare.
“There’s a move by my Republican colleagues to use the continuing resolution to defund Obamacare,” Flake said at a local Chamber of Commerce breakfast this week. “I would love to defund Obamacare, but the continuing resolution is not the mechanism.”
He continued to assert that the health-care law will “be a continual drag of the economy” and that recent delays show it is “falling on its own weight.”
The effort to use upcoming budget negotiations to defund Obamacare has been been led by Utah’s Mike Lee and Texas’s Ted Cruz, with the latter headlining a “Defund Obamacare” tour with Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint. So far, 14 senators have signed on to the effort; Kansas senator Pat Roberts is the latest to announce his support.