The Hill is reporting that Democrats and Republicans alike say the 113th Congress is shaping up to be the worst ever.
Veteran lawmakers are used to partisanship and stalemate, but they say Capitol Hill has sunk to a new dysfunctional low.
Congress has in some ways already closed for business until after the mid-term election. Any laws made between now and November will be minor.
President Obama’s “year of action” has started slowly and could end up as a punchline. Congressional approval ratings have hit all-time lows.
The relationships between congressional Republicans and Obama as well as between Democratic and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill lack the indispensable element of trust.
The most memorable action taken by this Congress was last year’s shutdown.
Of course this is not Breaking News, we’ve seen stuff like this happening all the time with these Republicans! Republicans have gunned for our veterans and anyone who does not have a LLC following their name. This week however, they blocked a veterans health bill because they claimed the needed a way to pay for it.
This latest Republican action against the veterans got Jon Stewart steamed… and confused!
Stewart pointed out many of these senators didn’t have a problem voting for Iraq War authorizations that cost quite a bit of money, but what really set him off was senators trying to attach an Iran sanctions amendment to the bill, with one complaining it’s the only way to get what they want. Stewart mockingly said, “You’re right, you’re the victim here, you’ve been denied something you need by an impersonal bureaucracy.”
He concluded by saying that on the “shame-ometer,” “I think these senators may have just tweeted out a picture of their enormous balls. Now can we kick them out?!”
Senate Republicans used a filibuster to prevent a vote on expanded veterans benefits after Democrats blocked efforts to add an amendment on Iran sanctions.
The vote Thursday was 56-41 in favor of a bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ind-Vt., to — among other things — expand healthcare programs and provide breaks on college tuition for veterans. Sixty votes were required to overcome the filibuster, the Hill reported. Two Republican senators, Dean Heller of Nevada and Jerry Moran of Kansas, voted with the Democrats, the Capitol Hill publication said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., refused to allow an up-or-down vote on a Republican amendment that included provision for further sanctions on Iran over that country’s nuclear program.
“I hope all the veterans groups have witnessed all the contortions the Republicans have done to defeat this bill,” he said. “Shame on Republicans for bringing base politics into a bill to help veterans.”
If your wife is planning a run for the presidency and the opposition has an in your face effort to suppress the vote, you would do whatever you can – legally of course – to make sure that she gets a fair shot at winning. And you wouldn’t wait until she announce her intention to run.
You’ll get on the ball as soon as possible, explaining to all that what the opposition is trying to do is wrong. You’ll go on the offense. You’ll fight!
Bill Clinton has began the fight. Realizing that his wife would need a supportive Congress, the former president has already been on the campaign trail, supporting other like minded Democratic candidates, and now this – an ad painting out how the opposition is trying to suppress the vote.
For all those wondering if Hillary was going to run for president, wonder no more.
Name calling is now a staple of today’s Republican party and being that they have nothing else to offer the American people, these Republicans resort to what they know best.
Charlie Crist, who was a Republican governor of Florida, then left the party because of the downward spiral Republicans adopted in recent years, held a book signing to promote his new book, The Party’s Over, How the Extreme Right Hijacked the GOP and I Became a Democrat. The party he wrote about showed up to the book signing and protested. Then naturally, the name calling began.
A Miami Sun-Sentinel‘s political reporter — who tweets under the name @BrowardPolitics — wrote on Twitter, “On his way out, one of the Republican protestors called @CharlieCrist a ‘commie whore.’ And that was the most printable comment.”
Shark-Tank.com reported that the protester who shouted that Crist looked “like an AIDS victim” repeated the remark three times as the governor walked to his car after the event.
Actress and singer Bette Midler noted the incident and tweeted a message alluding to the Tea Party’s history of posing as a grass roots movement while actually receiving support from corporations and wealthy oligarchs like billionaires Charles and David Koch.
“Yesterday, at book signing in Fort Lauderdale, @TeaPartiers shouted ‘commie whore’ at @CharlieCrist and other insults. Wonder who paid ‘em?” she wrote.
As if they have implemented big policies before in recent memory.
After a tumultuous week of party infighting and leadership stumbles, congressional Republicans are focused on calming their divided ranks in the months ahead, mostly by touting proposals that have wide backing within the GOP and shelving any big-ticket legislation for the rest of the year.
Comprehensive immigration reform, tax reform, tweaks to the federal health-care law — bipartisan deals on each are probably dead in the water for the rest of this Congress.
“We don’t have 218 votes in the House for the big issues, so what else are we going to do?” said Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), an ally of House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio). “We can do a few things on immigration and work on our principles, but in terms of real legislating, we’re unable to get in a good negotiating position.”
Added Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who works closely with party leaders: “It is an acknowledgment of where they stand, where nothing can happen in divided government so we may essentially have the status quo. Significant immigration reform and fundamental tax reform are probably not going to happen.”
Thanks to massive internal disarray, Republicans are unable to agree on any kind of immigration reform plan. They can’t say that, though, so they’re blaming it on the fact that President Obama is a rogue despot who can’t be trusted to enforce the law no matter what it is. He’ll implement the parts he likes and ignore the rest, just as he’s been doing for years with his sun-king presidency. So no immigration reform.
Also thanks to massive internal disarray, Republicans are unable to agree on a plan to raise the debt limit. Plan A was to demand the end of risk corridors in Obamacare (aka the “insurer bailout”), but that went nowhere. Plan B was to repeal the benefit cut for veterans that was enacted last month, which might have gone somewhere since Democrats are probably willing to go along with that in any case. But that didn’t make the cut either because it would have made it tough for tea partiers to vote against the bill. Plan C is to “wrap several popular, must-pass items around a provision to extend the federal government’s borrowing authority beyond the November midterm elections.” But even this plan is look shaky.
The common thread here is that the Republican Party is unable to get its act together enough to look beyond next week. Both immigration reform and a quiet debt limit increase would benefit the GOP in the long term. But both would also infuriate the yahoo wing of the party in the short term. So far, the yahoo wing is winning.
Of course things like this surprises no one. Congressional Republicans and other elected officials have just about said these same things, only not in so much words. So hearing a Congressman encouraging a woman calling for the president’s execution, is sadly not surprising.
U.S. Congressman Jim Bridenstone (R-OK) attended a luncheon hosted by the Tea Party sub-group Tulsa 9:12 Project last week to discuss the issues of the day with his constituency. One of the people in the crowd said “Obama is not President as far as I am concerned. He should be executed as an enemy combatant really” the congressman’s response was not to immediately shoot down the stupidity and treason expressed.
Instead, Bridenstone fed into the woman’s moronic fears, based on lies and a lack of understanding if what an Executive Order is. Bridenstone laughed and said “Don’t hold back, Emma.” The woman then went on to ask the congressman about “the Muslims that he is shipping into our country through pilots and commercial jets.” Bridenstone’s lack of denial about such nonsense is telling regarding just how far he will go to gain the support of people wishing for the death of the standing President of The United States.
They think Americans are poor because they’re too lazy.
Findings released Thursday by Pew showed that most Republicans think rich people are largely responsible for their socioeconomic status. They also feel the same way about poor people.
Fifty-seven percent of GOP voters said that a person is rich because “he or she worked harder than others,” while just 32 percent attribute it to advantages they enjoyed. The results are almost completely flipped among Democrats.
Overall, 51 percent of Americans said that people are wealthy due to advantages in life, while 38 percent said it had more to do with hard work.
Pew also found that 51 percent of Republicans believe that people are poor due to a lack of hard work, compared with just 32 percent who attribute it to circumstances beyond their control.
Those results also put Republicans out of step with the rest of the country.
Republicans are not ready to give up the fight to take away your healthcare. They have tried the failed strategy of repealing the entire Obamacare bill I’ve 40 tines already, and now, they have a plan that just might achieve their ultimate goal of allowing Americans to die because they have no healthcare.
Their plan? To make Obamacare also called The Affordable Care Act, unaffordable. Their plan is to repeal a provision in the law that keeps premiums low, thus raising the oremiums.
The provision — called “risk corridors,” but dubbed the “Obamacare bailout” by the law’s opponents — seeks to stabilize costs by creating a pot of money that takes in funds from insurers who enroll healthier customers and uses it to pay out insurers who enroll sicker customers. It’s a safety valve that sunsets after 2016. The repeal push is clever messaging in a sense because it lets conservatives snatch the mantle of populism from liberals against wealthy insurance companies. But it comes with its share of dangers, too.
Last November, as TPM reported, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced legislation to repeal this provision. Since then it has picked up 13 Republican co-sponsors, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and spawned two companion bills in the House, which are supported by numerous Republicans. The idea has been championed by conservative lobbying groups like the Club For Growth and Heritage Action, and pushed by writers including Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, Ramesh Punnuru in Bloomberg View and Deroy Murdock in National Review.
The conservatives are open about the end goal: collapse Obamacare by causing higher premiums on the law’s marketplaces for the newly insured, which progressive experts who support Obamacare agree may occur if the provision is scrapped.
Picture this Americans. Working seven straight days without a break in between, unlike what those pesky unions are imposing on all Americans.
And picture this. With a seven day work week, you no longer get overtime unlike the mandatory overtime pay those pesky unions demand. So corporations get two more days of production from their employees, and they save on the overtime pay. More power to the Corporations.
A pair of Republican legislators in Wisconsin are circulating a draft of a bill that would allow a 7-day work week for the state’s workers. According to the Stephen Points Journal newspaper, the two lawmakers are floating the bill on behalf of the state’s largest anti-union business lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.
The bill is a “slap in the face” to the state’s public labor unions, which lost most of their power when Gov. Scott Walker (R) stripped them of their ability to bargain collectively in 2011. It was proposed by state Sens. Glenn Grothman (R) of West Bend and Mark Born (R) of Beaver Dam.
“Even God said rest on the seventh day,” protested David Reardon, secretary-treasurer for Teamsters Local 662.“I would hate to see that Republican bill pass. Some employers would really take advantage of that.”
Republicans say that the bill will expand workers’ opportunities to make money by working unconventional hours. They promise that the 7-day work week will increase productivity in the state and stimulate revenue.
Opponents of the law say that employers would likely use the law as a means of erasing the weekend and forcing employees to work longer hours without rest.
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