VIDEO: Paul Ryan Concedes He’ll Help His Constituents Enroll In Obamacare

BY SCOTT KEYES/Think Progress

RACINE, Wisconsin — Some Republicans have indicated they will use any means necessary to sabotage Obamacare’s implementation, even if that means ignoring constituents who come to their office with questions about how the new law can help them. But Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) won’t be one of them.

For years, Republicans have tried every possible method they could think of to undermine Obamacare. Now, after failing to stop the law from passing, failing in an attempt to get the Supreme Court to strike it down, and failing in nearly 40 tries to repeal the law, some conservative House Republicans are simply going to try to sabotage the law. The leaders of this new effort are Reps. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who have said they will try to undermine Obamacare by purposefully not helping constituents who come to them with questions about navigating Obamacare.

However, Ryan, the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate in 2012, isn’t going along with this strategy. ThinkProgress spoke to the Wisconsin congressman after a town hall on Friday and asked whether his office would be helping constituents who had questions about the program. “We always help any constituent with any problem they have with the federal government,” Ryan declared.

KEYES: Are you going to be helping constituent services, much in the way with Social Security and Medicare?

RYAN: We always help any constituent with any problem they have with the federal government.

KEYES: Including Obamacare?

RYAN: Anybody has a problem with the federal government we’re going to help them because that’s my job. But the best thing I think I can do to help my constituents with respect to Obamacare is to work to delay the whole law.

Watch it:

Even if Ryan won’t be a part of this latest effort to undermine Obamacare, it could still have a major impact on the law. Congressional scholar Norm Ornstein, who works at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, derided the “unprecedented, contemptible GOP quest to sabotage Obamacare” in an Atlantic article last week. “It is important to emphasize that this set of moves is simply unprecedented,” Ornstein notes, drawing a parallel with similar recent legislation that Democrats opposed during debate but didn’t try to undercut once it was law.