OUR WORKING YEAR BEGINS TODAY – AT 7:37 A.M. ET:  We know that because the next tax estimate deadline is only 12 days away.  Get those payments in.  The Obama administration is going to need bucks to take over even more of the economy.  Help out, would you? 

No.

The new Congress is arriving today and will be sworn, and sworn at, on Wednesday.  Republicans plan to get right down to work, as The New York Times reports: 

WASHINGTON — Soon after the 112th Congress convenes Wednesday, Republicans in the House plan to make good on a campaign promise that helped vault many new members to victory: voting to repeal President Obama’s health care overhaul.

The vote, which Republican leaders pledged would occur before the president’s State of the Union address later this month, is intended both to appeal to the Tea Party-influenced factions of the House Republican base and to emphasize the muscle of the new party in power. But it could also produce an unintended consequence: a chance for Democrats once again to try their case in support of the health care overhaul before the American public.

Democrats, who in many cases looked on the law as a rabid beast best avoided in the fall elections, are reversing course, gearing up for a coordinated all-out effort to preserve and defend it. Under the law, they say, consumers are already receiving tangible benefits that Republicans would snatch away.

The repeal vote will be symbolic.  The Dem-controlled Senate can stop any repeal effort.  Even if repeal passed the Senate, with the help of moderate Democrats, the president would veto it.  Repeal is a shock tactic designed by Republicans to announce, "We're here."

Charles Krauthammer has, correctly, urged caution on the GOP.  Some aspects of Obamacare are attractive, and those are the ones the Dems will advertise during a repeal battle.  (Examples: allowing "kids" to stay on parents' health plans until they're 26, or prohibiting insurance companies from rejecting applicants with pre-existing conditions.)  And, the Dems have gamed the system by introducing desirable reforms now, but putting off new expenditures until 2014, creating a financial deception, something at which they're superb.

The real GOP strategy, as reported by The Politico, is to attack the Obamacare obamination piece by piece after a repeal vote.  Incoming House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) described the battle plan on Sunday:

“If we pass this bill with a sizeable vote, and I think that we will, it will put enormous pressure on the Senate to do perhaps the same thing,” he said. “But then, after that, we're going to go after this bill piece by piece.”

Upton specifically called out the requirement for businesses to complete 1099 tax forms, the individual mandate and the amendment on abortion introduced by Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak. "We will look at these individual pieces to see if we can't have the thing crumble," he said.

And...

“The more the people learn about Obamacare, the less they like it,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on CBS's "Face the Nation." She added, “It's very costly; it's unwieldy. So we will put forth a clean repeal bill of Obamacare. And you'll continue to see us make that fight because that's what the American people want us to do.”

COMMENT:  Note to Republicans:  Be careful, as Krauthammer advises.  Because Obamacare is a mess doesn't mean there's no health-care problem.  The system needs reform.  Republicans must be ready with alternative ideas that capture the public's imagination.  Just saying no to aspects of Obamacare, without solving problems, will make the GOP House as unpopular as the Democratic House just buried.

Republicans have a chance now to show the creativity they've lacked in recent years.

January 3, 2011