Herrera Beutler backs defunding Obamacare

U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler supports a Republican spending plan that eliminates funding for the 2010 health care reforms Congress and the president approved in 2010, her spokesman said Wednesday.

The plan also maintains the across-the-board federal spending cuts, known as the sequester, which went into effect in March.

Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, “supports the House’s spending proposal, which would remove funding for the flawed health care law (and) maintain spending at the sequester levels agreed to by both parties,” her spokesman, Casey Bowman, said by email.

Although Herrera Beutler supports defunding Obamacare, she said in an interview last week that she disapproves of threatening to shut down the federal government if the proposal doesn’t become law. Congress needs to pass a budget by Sept. 30 to avoid a government shutdown.

“I think it’s silly for either side to be posturing and threatening, because we all either win or lose together,” she said during the interview. She added that Congress can’t forget about the debt while raising the nation’s debt ceiling or “let the whole thing shut down and devolve into chaos. We can do this in a reasonable, adultlike fashion.”