(Sen. Mike Lee/ Creative Commons)

Just days before the government shutdown, Lee told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren that Republicans often disagree, but when it came to Obamacare their fundamental stance was the same. 

"We do stand behind the idea that we need to stop Obamacare," Lee said. "We need to fight it. We need to stop it any way we can, even though some of us might have different ideas about how best to get there."

The National Review Online has more on Lee’s anti-Obamacare stance: 

The wheels of the defunding effort began to turn shortly after the Obama administration announced, on July 2, that it would delay the law’s employer mandate. . . . "The fact that the president himself has said, 'This law is not ready to be implemented as written,’ gives us a lot more momentum and allows us to make a very serious case for defunding,” Lee said.

As of Monday night, Lee and his Republican colleagues' effort to defund Obamacare has failed and subsequently caused the first government shutdown in 17 years. 

Fred Parker, general manager at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Lee's hometown of Provo, Utah, said that although the government shutdown was extreme, something had to be done to curb government spending. 

“I don’t think that the government should have shutdown, but at an impasse like this you have to do something drastic. I think that if anything else this sends a message that something has got to change. We can’t just continue spending like this,” he said in reference to Obamacare.

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