Tag: gop shutdown

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Domestic Policies Healthcare News Politics

Sixteen Days, Thirteen Nights

What a waste of time, effort and money. During the sixteen days that the government was shut down, the United States could have been funding scientific research, analyzing economic data and providing needed services to people who need them. It could also have begun work earlier on the health care website that will obviously need almost a complete overhaul, while fending off calls to delay or scrap it by members of both parties. The shutdown only delayed the solutions, and the hope, on this side of the political spectrum at least, is that the site will be up and running more effectively by the middle of November. In the meantime, the federal government should allow the states in which it runs the exchanges to post their choices and prices so that people can simply log on and sign up when the site’s fixed.

Remember, the rollout of the Medicare Prescription Plan in 2005 was also extremely buggy. Wait, you mean that you don’t remember? That’s because it works plenty fine now. We shall get through this as well. In the meantime, we’ve wasted time.

And speaking of wasted time, there are only thirteen nights left until New Jersey voters trudge to the polls to choose between the evil we know and the better candidate we don’t know. It’s been an odd week for the governor as he’s had to face this news…

Despite those marks, the poll shows voters disapprove of the way Christie has handled two issues they cite as among the most important in the state: the economy and taxes. Only 42 percent approve of his handling of the economy and jobs, while 38 percent approve of his performance on taxes.

while also gaining an endorsement from the Newark Star-Ledger that was one of the least enthusiastic in recent memory. It seems as thought the Ledger was just following other left-leaning voices in not wanting to offend the great offender and pull punches rather than be called stupid in a YouTube video.

It really is a terrible state of affairs that Democratic candidate Barbara Buono, who actually has a positive plan to run the state and will stay in Trenton for the next four years, has had such trouble getting her message out. She’s compassionate, tough, and respectful, things the present governor is not so much of. Now that the Senate special election is over, the Buono-Christie race has a clear field ahead of it. With negatives in the two areas that most New Jerseyans care the most about, Buono has a chance to score some points and gain in the polls. That the state and national Democratic Party will sacrifice her to the gods of money and opportunity is one of the great sell-outs of all time.

It’s the season of scary, and the thought of more GOP power in the statehouse and nation fits it very well. This year, though, the cry will not be boo, but boo-hoo. Oh, what could have been.

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House of Representatives Politics

New Poll: More Americans Want Democrats Controlling the House

Just over half the public says that it’s bad for the country that the GOP controls the House of Representatives, according to a new national poll conducted after the end of the partial government shutdown.

And the CNN/ORC International survey also indicates that more than six in 10 Americans say that Speaker of the House John Boehner should be replaced.

The poll was conducted Friday through Sunday, just after the end of the 16-day partial federal government shutdown that was caused in part by a push by House conservatives to try and dismantle the health care law, which is President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement.

According to the survey, 54% say it’s a bad thing that the GOP controls the House, up 11 points from last December, soon after the 2012 elections when the Republicans kept control of the chamber. Only 38% say it’s a good thing the GOP controls the House, a 13-point dive from the end of last year.

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Politics

The Teaparty Energized by Government Shutdown

CLEVELAND, Tenn. — “The premise was good,” said Bob McIntire, 53, an insurance executive here in deep red Bradley County, where the local Democrats would have trouble filling up a phone booth.

The payoff, well, that was the problem.

On talk radio and in the conservative blogosphere, the bipartisan vote on Wednesday to reopen the government without defunding President Obama’s health care law was being excoriated as an abject surrender and betrayal by spineless establishment Republicans. But for glum and frustrated conservative voters on Thursday around breakfast tables in eastern Tennessee, in the shadow of a military base in Colorado Springs and on the streets of suburban Philadelphia, it was as much a surrender to reality as to Democratic demands.

To Mr. McIntire, that reality was a media environment in which conservatives don’t get a fair hearing, a unified and shrewd Democratic opposition, and a Congress hopelessly compromised by Washington deal making. For Matias Elliott, a cabdriver in Colorado Springs, the reality was the harm being done to the nation’s military and to the local economy. For Jean Naples, a homemaker in Doylestown, Pa., it was the “despicable” way the shutdown disrupted funerals for military personnel killed overseas and the way her husband’s medical supply business had suffered a severe cash-flow problem during the shutdown.

Many conservatives described a dispiriting gap between conservative ideals, which they believe inspire widespread agreement, and conservative tactics, which do not. The failure to stop the health care plan left Republicans like Ms. Naples pessimistic and disillusioned. “I’m just totally blown away by everything,” she said. “I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong anymore.”

Still, for many Wednesday night’s vote had to play out as it did, because there was no other alternative.

“The shutdown had to end,” said Andre Zarb-Cousin of Colorado Springs, who said that he believes the Affordable Care Act could destroy the country. “Who’s suffering? Veterans’ families. People being on welfare.”

Among commentators on the right, the reaction has been less driven by despair than by anger. In heated language on talk radio and on conservative blogs, many spoke of a winning if difficult strategy sabotaged in the end by weak-willed leadership.

“I was thinking about this last night, too, while I was pondering if I can ever remember a greater political disaster in my lifetime,” Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday on his radio show, “if I could ever remember a time when a political party just made a decision not to exist for all intents and purposes.”

This view of the shutdown, while infuriating to many on the right, has the virtue of being something fixable. On the conservative blog RedState, Erick Erickson said the capitulation was an urgent lesson in the need to replace establishment Republicans with true conservatives. Tea Party members here in Tennessee agreed, saying that despite the lack of policy victories by the Republicans in Congress, the shutdown had energized the base and shown them that some conservatives, like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, were willing to stand up.

“We’re just trying to make Washington, D.C., listen, and I think we did a really good job of that,” said Donny Harwood, 49, a nurse and the director of the Bradley County Tea Party.

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Politics

New Report – Crisis Like The GOP Government Shutdown Cost America 900,000 Jobs

A new report called “The Cost of Crisis-Driven Fiscal Policy” is confirming what we all know, that self inflected wounds is not good for you. The report concludes that crisis-driven government and the resulting fiscal policy uncertainty has directly harmed the American economy by increasing the unemployment rate by 0.6%, or the equivalent of 900,000 jobs. “The Cost of Crisis-Driven Fiscal Policy” was prepared by Joel Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, a leading independent research firm, for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

Michael A. Peterson, President and COO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said: “This report makes clear that self-created fiscal crises have significant costs to our economy and to American families. These partisan battles not only threaten our fragile economic recovery, but they have not resulted in any comprehensive solution to our real fiscal challenge, stabilizing our long-term debt.”

“Partisan divided government has failed to address our long-term fiscal challenges sensibly, instead encouraging policy that is short-sighted, arbitrary, and driven by calendar-based crises,” said Prakken of Macroeconomic Advisers. “Based on this report’s findings, we can assert confidently that the crisis-driven fiscal policies of the last several years have damaged our still-struggling economy. One can only hope that our policymakers will implement more sensible policy in the future.”

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Politics

Peter King: “it was madness to follow Ted Cruz”

In an interview with CNN host Anderson Cooper on Tuesday, Republican Rep.Peter King continued scolding his party for their dumb decision to follow first year Senator, Ted Cruz and his failed efforts to take away health care from the American people.

“The game is over,” King told Cooper. “We have to get this done. [House Speaker] John Boehner’s (R-OH) tried everything he can, but there’s some people in our party, no matter what he tries to do, they won’t go along.”

After Boehner’s failed attempt on Tuesday to put a bill forward ending both the government shutdown and avoiding the imminent deadline on raising the U.S. debt ceiling, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) are reportedly ready to bring their own agreement, a development King said he would support.

“I’ve said all along, this is madness — it was madness to follow Ted Cruz,” King said to Cooper. “It was absolute madness to say we want to shut down the government, to defund Obamacare. It never made sense and now all we’re down to, apparently, is trying to pass a [continued resolution] to take away healthcare from congressional employees. That’s what we shut down the government for. It makes no sense.”

Cooper then pointed out that King has made multiple statements to that effect, before asking him if he felt that a Senate bill including funding for the new law could pass the House now.

“As certain as I can be of anything, I’m certain of that,” King answered. “If it comes to a vote on the House floor, we’ll probably get all the Democrats and certainly enough Republicans to get it through.”

“And you’re confident Speaker Boehner would allow it to come to the House,” Cooper pressed.

“I don’t know what John would do,” King conceded. “But I would think, though, if he’s gonna be involved in expediting the process at all, he probably then would allow it to come to a vote in the House floor. It’s getting too close to the wire.”

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Domestic Policies News Politics Teaparty

Meltdown

I’ve used the tsunami wave metaphor in other posts about the decline of the Republican Party and  its associated havoc-wreaking on the country over the past two years.

Today we talk about the complete meltdown of the party. The debacle over the debt ceiling and the as-we-speak collapse of any kind of deal shows us the final truth about the right: This is not an entity that can be a partner in governing.

Here we are on the brink of a default that many conservatives believe will not be “that bad,” despite the warnings from banks, foreign governments and ratings agencies, most of whom could not remotely be labeled liberal, and they are still trying to knock off the Affordable Care Act. Yes, I understand how important it is to settle the issue of whether congressional aides can qualify for subsidies on the health insurance exchanges, but is is worth embarrassing the United States and inviting the wrath of the financial markets?

Clearly, it is. And that’s the problem with the GOP as is exists today. The extremism knows no bounds and the disdain of the president is ugly. They accuse Obama of not negotiating when that has been their strategy since he was elected. They want to stall, delay, overturn and defund anything he’s signed. They want no revenue increases in any fiscal bill. They want the Consumer Protection Board gone and they want the EPA to stop telling factories they can’t pollute. These are non-negotiable items, yet it’s Obama’s willingness to stand his ground that has them so incensed (I would be worse, though. Open the government and increase the debt ceiling for a whole year, says I).

It’s a sad state of affairs that only the party muckymucks can address. John Boehner doesn’t know which way to go, because all paths lead to The Tenth Circle of Hell (the one that Donald Trump bought and developed). He either has to continue giving in to the Tea Party or he has to sacrifice his speakership and get Democrats and moderates to get us out of this mess.

Some people who know more than I say that the American voters will probably forget all this by next November. I don’t think so. The next wave will be a Democratic takeover of the House.

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Politics

Poll: Republican Party Badly Damaged by Government Shutdown

The Republican Party has been badly damaged in the ongoing government shutdown and debt limit standoff, with a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finding that a majority of Americans blame the GOP for the shutdown, and with the party’s popularity declining to its lowest level.

By a 22-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent), the public blames the Republican Party more for the shutdown than President Barack Obama – a wider margin of blame for the GOP than the party received during the poll during the last shutdown in 1995-96.

Just 24 percent of respondents have a favorable opinion about the GOP, and only 21 percent have a favorable view of the Tea Party, which are both at all-time lows in the history of poll.

And one year until next fall’s midterm elections, American voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress to a Republican-controlled one by eight percentage points (47 percent to 39 percent), up from the Democrats’ three-point advantage last month (46 percent to 43 percent).

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Politics

Death Benefits to Military Families Withheld Because of GOP Shutdown

(Left to right) Pfc. Cody J. Patterson, Sgt. Patrick C. Hawkins, 1st Lt. Jennifer M. Moreno and Special Agent Joseph M. Peters were killed by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan on Sunday.

In what veterans call an outrageous slight after the ultimate sacrifice, the shuttered federal government is withholding a $100,000 payment normally wired to relatives of fallen soldiers — including the families of five killed in Afghanistan over the weekend.

The payment, known as the death gratuity, is typically sent to families of the fallen within three days to help them cover funeral costs or travel to meet the flag-draped coffins of their loved ones.
The families of five American service members killed over the weekend in Afghanistan have been notified that they will not receive the payment. A relative of one of the five called it “devastating.”

The families of five U.S. troops killed overseas this weekend will not receive the usual “death gratuity” due to the government shutdown. A typical $100,000 compensation is wired to families within 36 hours to help with funeral and other expenses.

“Impacting grieving families when they are at their absolute weakest point is just disgusting,” said Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the largest organization of combat veterans in the United States.

“Veterans, military personnel and now their families are not to be used as leverage in this political game of blame,” he said. He called on leaders in Congress to “put the country ahead of their politics.”

Congress passed a law last week to pay the military during the shutdown. Pentagon officials studied it to assess whether it might cover the death gratuity and determined that it was not possible, a defense official told NBC News on Tuesday.

Republican aides in Congress said that they were drafting legislation to restore the death gratuity, and that it could be put to a vote as early as Wednesday. The aides also said that they believed that last week’s law had covered the payment.

But for now, the $100,000 payment, meant to tide families over until military survivor benefits kick in, is being withheld for relatives of the killed over the weekend in Afghanistan, four from the Army and one from the Marines.

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Politics

Remember When Boehner Said “Obamacare Was The Law Of The Land?” – Video

It wasn’t that long ago! As a matter of fact, Boehner said it right after President Obama won re-election in 2012.

Back in November, when Americans went to the poll and overwhelmingly reelected President Obama who ran his entire campaign on his signature law, John Boehner gave an interview to ABC. Host Diane Sawyer asked if there would be any more votes to repeal the law and Boehner answered that “the election changes that.” He then went on to proclaim, “Obamacare is the law of the land.”

That was then. Today, Republicans have attempted to repeal Obamacare over 41 times. Unable to do so, they have now shut down the government hoping the President would somehow take away this life saving healthcare provision from millions of Americans.

Let’s take a short stroll down memory lane.

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Politics

John Boehner: The President won’t talk to me, so I will let the nation default

You can’t make this stuff up!

On Sunday John Boehner basically said that because the president of the United States is not talking to him, or is not “having a conversation” with him, he, John Boehner, is willing to let the nation default on its debt. A move that many economists have said would result in worldwide catastrophe.

Don’t just take my word for it, this is what John Boehner said on Sunday’s show;

“That’s the path we’re on. … I don’t want the United States to default on its debt. But I’m not going to raise the debt limit without a serious conversation about dealing with problems that are driving the debt up.”

“The nation’s credit is at risk because of the administration’s refusal to sit down and have a conversation.”

Republicans are doing everything they can to make sure that the presidency of the first black man in the White House result in failure. There’s no other logical explanation. They cannot say it’s because of his policies why they’re against him, because before he was even sworn and any of his policies took effect, Republicans were already holding meetings trying to figure out how to make the President a failure.

They have said no, and have put up stumbling blocks to every policy the president tried to initiate. Even policies they once supported. And even with all their lies and misinformation about the president, Mr Obama was still able to pass and sign historic legislations into law.

And that brings us to this present government shutdown and the catastrophe of a default. Republicans know that when they force the nation into its first default, their propaganda machine over at Fox News will help them place the blame squarely at the feet of Barack Obama.

In there effort to make this man a failure, Republicans will destroy the full faith and credit of the United States of America. They will destroy the very fabric of this country. They will destroy everything you know and love about this great nation.

Yes al Qaeda. You needed people who were willing to be internal terrorists in the United States? Well you got them and they’re called Congressional Republicans.

Just sit back and watch in amazement as these fools do everything they can to accomplish what you couldn’t on September 11 2001.

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Politics

Rep. Peter King – Up to 150 Republicans Would Vote for a Clean CR

On Sunday, Republican John Boehner told ABC’s Stephanopoulos that he didn’t have the votes in the House to pass a clean Continuing Resolution. But members of Boehner’s own party strongly disagree with Boehner’s conclusion.

Rep. Peter King is one of those Republicans. King, in an interview with the New York Times, said that if Boehner brought a clean CR to the floor for a vote, the bill will pass and the government will reopen. King also stated that if a secret vote was held, about 150 Republicans would support it.

“I’m positive that a clean C.R. would pass,” said Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York.

“If it went on the floor tomorrow, I could see anywhere from 50 to 75 Republicans voting for it,” he added. “And if it were a secret ballot, 150.”

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Domestic Policies Healthcare News Politics Teaparty

Orange Alert

Here’s a surprise: the shutdown was planned months ago. So the pleadings and forthright looks we’ve been getting from Ted Cruz and the orange-tinged scoldings from John Boehner and the laments of the lack of compromise by Republicans everywhere have been fakes. Falsehoods. Frauds. Wait for it…Lies.

What the Republican Cadre, because it’s no longer a viable political party, has done is reprehensible. From the beginning, and I mean 2009, they have tried to obstruct President Obama’s agenda and wait out the electoral clock for four, and now eight years while they plot their way back to power. Thank heavens that they don’t, in fact, know how to do that effectively on the national stage. They will continue to win House seats, though a new poll suggests otherwise, but they’ve fallen farther behind when it comes to women and Hispanics, and we know how viable you are when that happens. In the meantime, all they have is obstruction.

Any talk of compromise or negotiation is not to be trusted. They don’t want to delay the health care bill, they want it gone. They also want Dodd-Frank repealed and for the XL pipeline to be built and they want no new taxes in any economic or tax bill they’d support. And who won the 2012 elections?

But, oddly, they seem to love Medicare and are falling over themselves to fund some parts of the federal government if they believe it will help them. Wait long enough, and they’ll CR themselves into opening the whole thing in a week or so.

Just to make things worse, Boehner is now disavowing his comments from last week that suggested some compromise. He and the far right will now take us to default if the president won’t do as he says. The  crash is coming, it won’t be pretty and the GOP will take the fall.

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