Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Asks: How Does the US Gov't Budget Crunch Affect You?
The partial government shut-down that the U.S. is experiencing right now is about to enter its second week. Various government functions and services have been disrupted (including some web sites, whether it's a good idea or not), and lots of workers on the Federal payroll have been furloughed. But since the U.S. government is involved in so many aspects of modern American life, you don't have to work for the government to be affected by the budget politics at play. So, whether or not you work for the government in any capacity, the question we'd like to hear your answer to is this: What does the shutdown mean to you, in practical terms, whether the effects are good, bad, or indifferent?
Since congress already voted to pay all furloughed workers for the days they missed, what is exactly the point of not having them come into work anymore?
Er... have you been reading the news haven't you? OK, I'll explain.
It's never been about saving money. The GOP wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but doesn't have the votes in the Senate to do it, much less override the veto that would inevitably provoke.
So plan B was to take funding for implementing ACA out of the budget. But they don't have the votes to do that either.
Now when you are arguing over the budget, you still have to keep things running; soldiers and air traffic controllers have to be paid. But the president doesn't have the constitutional power to spend money; he has to spend what Congress tells him to spend, neither more nor less (a lot of Americans don't seem to understand this). He has a lot of influence over the budget, but ultimately Congress has the power of the purse.
So what Congress does when it can't resolve its budget differences on time is pass something called a "continuing resolution". It pretty much says "continue on as you were under the last budget for so many days or until we hash this out." Congress is behind on its budget work so, it's time for a continuing resolution.
What the House Republicans tried to do was slip the budget stuff they didn't have the votes to pass into the continuing resolution. When the Senate stripped that stuff out and sent the CR back to the House, the Republican leadership refused to bring the CR to a vote until their demands were met. Those demands have been a moving target, running from a long laundry list of priorities (including stuff like the Keystone pipeline), to anything that will allow them to claim victory. Boehner has also floated a cut of a certain size to yet-to-be-named budget items as a condition, but this was precisely the gambit that was tried in 2011. Those cuts never materialized, triggering the sequestration cuts across the board this year, including defense. That's not very credible. So the only way the House Republicans come out of this with something that looks like a victory would be to get ACA de-funded, which is not going to happen.
The House Republicans are technically within their rights not to bring an continuing resolution to the floor, but they're using it to undermine the Constitution. They don't have the votes to get what they want, nor have they anything offer in exchange that will persuade anyone else to vote with them, so they're trying to *compel* the Senate to vote the way they want by shutting down the government.
Honestly, it feels like final years of the Roman Republic, when wealthy, ambitious men competed to carve power bases for themselves out of what had been offices of service to the Republic. Crassus Boehner, anyone?
Now they basically get a free paid vacation. If the taxpayer is on the hook for their salaries, they should be doing their jobs.
I agree with you. They should be back at their jobs, and being paid on payday as usual (you do know that essential employees aren't getting paid). But that's not going to happen until one side or another cracks under the political pressure. Already the US Chamber of Commerce is wading in with promises of primary support to Republicans who vote for a clean CR.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Those of us who are funded at least partly by NSF grants are potentially in trouble. For people who have money in their account from an active grant that will last a few months - all the better. For those whose paycheck depends on the next installment from a grant, tough luck. The worst affected will be folks who had payments and grant reviews in progress.
More info @ http://www.nsf.gov./ The most relevant portions:
Payments: No payments will be made during the shutdown.
Issuance of New Grants and Cooperative Agreements: No new grants or cooperative agreements will be awarded.
FYI, the Republicans in the house passed FOUR funding bills before the shutdown, which allocated more money than was spent last year. The ball's in the democrat's court.
The Republicans rejected 18 requests to discuss the budget. The Democrats compromised to fund the govt. at sequester levels. Shutting down the government or making it default is not the way to fight a constitutional law. Back to you Republicans.
You mean the tax cut that Barack Obama just made permanent? That one? I got some news. The tax cut happened in 2001. The tax rates have been in effect since then, or 12 years. More than a decade. Newt Gingrich was speaker of the house when we balanced the budget. Spending and taxes originate in the House, and no matter how much Barack Obama wants it to be true, they will never originate in the White House.
What you are seeing is the liberal's strategy for staying in power. Get as many people as possible dependent on the government. Then nobody dare oppose them or they will threaten to take away the government teat like what is happening right now. Obamacare is their attempt to get the majority of the population dependent on government for medical care. Imagine the power they will wield when they can threaten to shut down the government and take away your health care.
Every point in your post is the complete opposite of the truth. It's the Republicans who repeatedly threaten to take away the Government when they don't get concession on top of concession. And most of the safety net programs are designed to keep you from becoming destitute and therefore remain employable instead of becoming a social burden. And the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is not Government health care; It's the opposite of that. You are required to take responsibility for yourself and get yourself insured so we don't have to pay for you when things go wrong, but beyond that it's up to you to make a deal with your own private insurer. They even provide an online free market system in which to do it. It's a Conservative wet dream, but they can't let Obama get credit for it. That's why they have no plan themselves, just repeal and go back to the old system.
So now they're demanding we bring back pre-existing conditions, re-enstate lifetime insurance caps, make it harder for low-income and working class women to control their fertility, make us pay for some uninsured YOLO's emergency room visit, keep graduate students or people starting their career from staying on previous insurance while they're getting on their feet, eliminate preventive care for diabetics and other high-risk individuals forcing them to go to the emergency room when things get bad, eliminate vaccination programs, allow insurers to raise rates to increase their profits arbitrarily, prevent individuals starting businesses to self-insure in an open competitive marketplaces or else they'll shut down the Government, refuse to negotiate a budget, and default on the debt. Yeah. That makes sense.
E pluribus unum
So which is it? Are you too stupid to figure this out for yourself? Or are you a liar, intending to deceive the people reading this site?
Well, there's three kinds of lies; Lies, damned lies, and statistics. You can quote yours, he can quote his, and nobody will be any better informed when you two are done pissing in the wind while yelling at each other.
On a very basic level, Obamacare supporters have the position that poor people, who don't have enough money to afford health care, should be forced into buying health care plus the costs of program administration overhead from the government. On it's face, it seems pretty obvious this will mean that people will be worse off; If they couldn't afford it before, how are they going to afford it now?
The flip of this is though that health care costs aren't a simple x + y = z equation. The reason a lot of health care is so high is because people are uninsured or underinsured and so they only go to the hospital when the symptoms become severe enough to qualify as an emergency. Emergency room visits aren't just expensive because of labor and resource costs... they're expensive because you have to have enough spare capacity to handle the very worst case scenario -- in other words, you're paying for excess capacity to have a safety margin. And many of those visits wouldn't be necessary if people were having proper, planned, preventative care instead.
If people could go to the doctor whenever they needed to, on a flat rate system (not per visit, not with deductibles, not with all this complicated bullshit), you'd probably see costs drop off by a significant portion. Obamacare may accomplish this change in patient behavior. If it does... the aggregate healthcare costs will drop.
The second part of the equation, and the part Obamacare doesn't address, is that the current system we have with health insurance, auditing, billing records -- an absolutely massive and complex system that covers up a lot of flaws and makes investigation incredibly time consuming and difficult to the point you need a forensic accountant to break down the average person's bill, means that the administrative costs make up a huge portion of health care. Do you really think it costs $250 to run a urinalysis? Or to do bloodwork? No, it doesn't. The supplies and labor is much less than that. But because of a massive billing system, combined with over a dozen layers of auditing and reporting, means that administrative costs take a big bite out.
It is this second problem that will get worse under Obamacare. How much worse, we won't know until the system is deployed, and the initial kinks worked out so we have a stable baseline to draw comparisons from (You never judge a system based on it's initial performance -- there will be lots of bugs and training costs up front that simply can't be anticipated. You have to look at it once it enters the maintenance phase to evaluate the true cost of it correctly).
As you can see, the problem is much more complex than just pulling some numbers out your ass (You, and Forbes magazine, both guilty as charged). We don't have the numbers yet to know whether this is going to save money, or cost money.
All we can really debate at this moment in time is the ethics of having a national healthcare system. For my part; I think it's long overdue. We need it. I'm not sure this is the best implimentation, but... whether it succeeds or fails, it will tell us a lot about what we need to know to make better decisions about health care as a country down the line. It is a good experiment. It should be carried out without delay, and the results published.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Well:
"Obamacare is their attempt to get the majority of the population dependent on government for medical care."
Since the vast majority of people will continue to pay unsubsidized price of their health insurance to private companies, there is no possible way this statement, which is the crux of his entire statement, can possibly be true.
"Get as many people as possible dependent on the government. Then nobody dare oppose them"
The federal programs instituted by FDR have been around for about 70 years now, and Democrats have most definitely NOT stayed in power that whole time. Even if there was the slightest bit of truth to this claim, all the Republicans have to do is promise not to take away Obamacare, and they're right back on-par with Democrats, aren't they? Besides, Republicans are facing a demographic shift that is promising to make them non-viable in national politics in just a decade or so, meaning Democrats don't have to do ANYTHING to undermine them. The Republicans have done a superb job undermining themselves.
"What you are seeing is the liberal's strategy for staying in power."
In fact Obamacare was terribly unpopular, and numerous Democratic senators lost their seats specifically because they voted for it. They must have voted for it for other reasons than political expediency.
"Imagine the power they will wield when they can threaten to shut down the government and take away your health care."
Except it's always Republicans threatening to shut down the government, and taking away or "privatizing" government services.
Every single sentence in his post is quite easily provably factually incorrect. And the implication of some vast, sinister conspiracy makes it troll/flamebait.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
For the senate to compromise with the Tea Party is like you having to compromise with someone that is threatening to shoot you.
Tea Party: I want to shoot you in the head, OK?
You:No.
Tea Party: OK, let's compromise. How about if I just shoot you in the stomach?
You:No.
Tea Party:Be reasonable! Then just let me shoot you in the hand. This is my final offer.
You:No.
Tea Party: So you won't negotiate. So, I'll just put up roadblocks everywhere so nothing can get though. And it's all your fault!