Category: Blame Republicans

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Blame Republicans Politics

New Poll – Americans Would Blame Republicans for DHS Shutdown – Video

And rightly so. Republican House Speaker John Boehner went on Fox News over the weekend and screamed down Fox host, Chris Wallace, telling him that the blame for any Department of Homeland Security shutdown would be placed on Senate Democrats. Boehner was quick to point out that the House of Representatives already passed a bill to keep DHS going past the February 28th deadline, but he failed to admit that the bill contained language specifically geared to shutting down President Obama’s immigration order.

Senate Democrats have said that they would not entertain any DHS funding bill that degrades the President’s immigration order, so we stand at a standstill with the February 28th deadline quickly approaching.

But who should be blamed if the deadline passes and Homeland Security funding stops?

A recent poll conducted by CNN puts that blame in the lap of Congressional Republicans.

Republicans in Congress would shoulder the blame for a shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security if they are unable to enact a new spending bill to keep the agency running, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. The survey finds 53% of Americans would blame the Republicans in Congress if the department must shut down, while 30% would blame President Barack Obama. Another 13% say both deserve the blame.

If a spending bill is not passed by Feb. 28, the agency’s funding will run out.

A majority says a shutdown at DHS, even if it’s just for a few days, would be a crisis or a major problem. Republicans are less likely to see a shutdown as a big problem, 46% say so compared with 66% among Democrats. Among all adults, slightly fewer see a DHS shutdown as a problem or crisis than said so in November when asked about a possible shutdown of the whole government, 55% now vs. 59% in that poll.

As in November, this shutdown threat has more to do with immigration policy than with budgetary concerns.

House Republicans have been sparring with their Senate counterparts over whether a bill to continue the agency’s funding should also reverse Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which shielded millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. The House has already passed a bill to fund DHS which includes a provision to undo Obama’s actions, but Senate Democrats have blocked attempts to bring the bill to a vote and some Senate Republicans have spoken out against dealing with both issues in one bill.

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Blame Republicans Politics

Juan Williams – Blame Republicans for Low Congressional Approval Ratings

As the year ends, Gallup reports that public approval of Congress averaged 14 percent during 2013. This, the polling firm points out, is “the lowest annual average in Gallup’s history.”

The pollsters added: “2013 is the only year in Gallup’s history in which all monthly readings were below 20 percent.”

Yet this is “the new normal,” according to Gallup, because in each of the last four years the congressional approval rating for the year has been below 20 percent.

It was such a bad year for Congress that Gallup predicts the 2014 midterm elections will not, fundamentally, be a fight over which party controls the House and Senate.

Instead, the campaign could hinge on the overwhelmingly negative view of Congress and the sense “that more Americans feel that problems are with the institution itself rather than with the particular party or people who control it.”

This brings us to the quote of the year about political life on Capitol Hill. It came from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), defending the Republican-led House.

“We should not be judged on how many new laws we create,” he told CBS in July. “We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal.”

This Republican strategy is at the heart of why Congress is so unpopular. They will not work on the big issues, beginning with their failure to deal with the number one public priority: creating jobs and boosting the economy.

Instead, the GOP’s congressional focus, according to the influential Republican Study Committee, is on extracting what they term “reforms” — really, they’re talking about budget cuts — in “mandatory spending” programs including food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. There is practically no desire for those cuts reflected in any polling.

As Campaign 2014 gets underway, Republicans are threatening another government shutdown tied to refusal to approve a debt-ceiling hike to pay bills. Their demand is for President Obama to make major cuts to programs such as Social Security.

The reduced-government, reduced-spending, reduced-federal-power strategy extends to the Senate where Republicans have used an historic number of filibusters and threats to block nominees to Obama administration posts and judicial seats. That led Senate Democrats to the “nuclear option,” opening the door to simple majority votes on most nominees.

But even with rules changes intended to break gridlock, the economy continues to struggle partly as a result of the GOP strategy.

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Blame Republicans Politics

Howard Dean – Republicans Should Take Some Blame for Blotchy Obamacare Site

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D) contended Thursday that Republicans deserve some of the blame for the Affordable Care Act’s bumpy rollout.

The former Democratic National Committee chair and 2004 presidential aspirant told the panel on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Republicans “delayed” the law considerably, which he said has contributed to the problematic launch. Dean also said that the 36 states that did not set up their own health exchanges should have been divied up into four or five different regions, to avoid relying on one single source. 

“I think it’s a problem, I think the fundamental mistake that was made — well, first of all, in fairness you gotta blame the Republicans for some of this because they delayed everything they possibly could, threw as many monkey wrenches into the process as they could, and there’s some success here,” Dean said.

“But the truth is, what the Obama administration should have done is divide the 36 states that are on the federal exchange up into four or five regions, do it the way the government does health care. And then put each of these regions out to bid, so you don’t have one single contractor who, if they screw up, screws up the whole system, which is what’s happened.”

He added that the Obama administration was forced to set up a single federal marketplace “because the Republican governors refused to accept exchanges.

“The states with exchanges are doing pretty well,” he said. “There’s some glitches. They’re not big. A lot of people are gonna be able to get their insurance in the 14 states that have their own exchanges.”

Co-host Willie Geist asked Dean if he was really blaming the GOP for the glitches that have troubled the federal exchange website, HealthCare.gov.

“Well, not directly, but they did slow the process down considerably and that time does make a difference in the website,” Dean said. “I think the fundamental flaw was not having multiple districts and multiple bidders and multiple contractors working on this because then what you could have done if one contractor screwed up, as this one clearly has, you could actually just use a different exchange in a different region.”

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