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US Government Shutdown Ends
An anonymous reader writes "After more than two weeks of bickering that made the schoolyard appear civilized, Congress has finally passed a bill to reopen the U.S. Federal Government. 'The Senate passed the measure by a vote of 81 - 18, followed by approval in the House by a vote of 285 - 144. The bill now goes to the President, who will make remarks on Thursday regarding the reopening of the federal government. ... Earlier in the day, Speaker Boehner conceded that the House would not vote to stop the Senate-negotiated agreement. In a statement, the Speaker said that, after a fight with President Obama over his signature health care law, " . . . blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us." The agreement will raise the debt limit until February 2014, fund the government through January 2014 and establish a joint House-Senate committee to make spending cut decisions.' CNN adds, 'Obama, for one, didn't seem in the mood Wednesday night for more of the same -- saying politicians in Washington have to "get out of the habit of governing by crisis." "Hopefully, next time, it will not be in the 11th hour," Obama told reporters, calling for both parties to work together on a budget, immigration reform and other issues. When asked as he left the podium whether he believed America would be going through all this political turmoil again in a few months, the President didn't waste words. "No."'"
I didn't think the Democrats were capable of not caving in.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
it's interesting to hear that it falls short of your ideal. i haven't heard many people state that opinion.
Its backers accepted a lot of compromises in order to get it out of committee and onto the floor for a vote. A lot of people think the original was somewhere between "substantially better" and "much better".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Given pro is the opposite of con,
What is the opposite of progress?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
The bill passed the House, but 144 votes were cast against it -- more than 1/3 of those voting! One can only guess at the careful thought that went into casting those votes. Do these people actually believe that funding "Obamacare" for a few months is worse than letting the federal government default on its loans? There is no acceptable answer to this question. If the answer is "yes," well -- yikes. If the answer is "no," and this is just shameless pandering to the extreme right faction of the GOP/"Tea Party", then -- yikes.
Don't fall for that nonsense. People talk, the party whips do what they do. Everyone is reasonably certain of how everyone is going to vote long before the actual event. It can sometimes be beneficial to vote no on something that will assuredly pass, and you may even want passed, merely because voters and donors that care to keep track in such detail want you to vote no.
I second his motion. I wanted a single payer system, not a crazy clone of Romneycare.
The fundamental problem is that the actual cost of healthcare is way too high, mostly because a healthy market cannot be established when the option is pay or die and many of the 'customers' come in unconscious. If insurance could fix it, it would have done so in the last several decades.
While Obamacare has addressed some of the issues like 'pre-existing conditions' and rescission, it falls far short of what we really need.
Depends. A good deal of additional revenue could be appropriated simply by revisiting the corporate tax code. Preventing eg, Apple, from doing a "double Irish with a Dutch sandwich", and hiding $11bn from the us's 30-ish% tax alone is 3bn. (Extend that to microsoft, oracle, and pals as well, and you get the picture.) Playing footsie with investors only works when the market isn't at death's door. In the long run, making those companies pay their goddamn taxes is way better than having debt limit crisis 2014, return of the deficit bomb, both for them, and the world at large, and for the same said investors.
There's plenty of revenue that isn't being properly appropriated. The major problem is the byzantine tax system the US uses, which has more holes in it than a whiffle ball.
We don't really need new taxes, we need to revisit and refine the taxes we already have, and sanitize the tax code. Of course, that would almost certainly never see the light of day, since like term limits, it stands to cost all of the corrupt people on the hill a good deal of money. (Eg, it demonstrates a genuine conflict of interest for them.)
As an Australian, I've been protected by a national health scheme since 1975. I do not have to pay for ambulances because I live in Queensland. If I present at a hospital all I have to do is show my medicare card and I'll either be seen straight away or an appointment will be made. I've had my share of misfortune, and have had several surgeries for life threatening conditions. I've paid for them all when I was younger, and was paying tax.
Now I'm a pensioner. I pay $5.80 (I think) for most prescriptions. I saw my GP for about an hour today. I didn't have to pay a thing.
I'm going to hospital in a few weeks to investigate some growths. I won't have to pay a thing.
If I wanted to, I could pay and get faster, higher priority treatment. I have that choice.
What is the problem that so many Americans have with socialised medicine? A healthy community is a productive community and pays more taxes to get the job done. I just don't understand why you have a debate about it.
And nothing of value was lost. Or gained.
Nothing was lost? All the work that the government workers could have been doing during the shutdown was lost. All the revenue from the National Parks were lost. Two weeks food inspections, drug inspections, VA claims processing were lost . Worldwide confidence in the US and the US dollar was lost. US credit rating was compromised with the possibility of higher interest rates on new deficit. Scientific tests will have to be thrown out and restarted.
You might not be personally affected, but plenty of money and confidence has been lost during the past three weeks.
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Lol, insurance used to be very affordable before the govt included health care in tax deductions for employers but not for employees. That alone killed the transparency because there is no market for individuals. That means nobody in the whole system gives a fuck how much things cost. Healthcare user, as long as he has one, doesn't care because he doesn't see the bills, employer doesn't care because it's not his health, hospitals don't care either as it's in their best interest to inflate the costs, so who is supposed to put a downward pressure on prices?
Any 3rd party payment system based on spending someone else's money is prone to suffer from overuse and cost inflation. Yes, in theory it's employee's money because it's his compensation but the difference stems from the fact that the employee doesn't have to kiss the dollars in his possession goodbye. Out of sight, out of mind. If it all happens beyond the curtain, he doesn't feel the money was ever his.
Also insurance is about risk management, but in the current form it's far from that. Huge chunk of the cost is about trivial 'maintenance', yearly checkups, flu, etc. These things should be paid out of pocket and you insurance in the meaning of the word should cover only disasters. Recurring costs 100% certain to happen have nothing to do with risk management. Yes, for that reason insurance is a lousy model in case of preexisting conditions but trying to fit a square peg into a round hole as the ACA tries to do won't work and expect to see increases in prices across the board.
Actually, from what I've read, it's true. More people dislike "Obamacare" than like it. On the other hand, the "Affordable Care Act" seems to have quite a bit of support--and this government shutdown has actually improved it's support especially among those who didn't know anything about it.
More people do oppose Obamacare than support it.... however, those people support the ACA more than they do Obamacare. In additional, ALL of the major parts of the ACA (AKA: Obamacare for anyone without their head shoved up their ideological ass) show a large majority support (some over 90%), other than the individual mandate.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/17/1239587/-Obamacare-or-Affordable-Care-Act-Don-t-ask-GOP-to-choose
So...saying more people oppose it than support it is a Microsoft answer...technically correct, but bullshit. As soon as you change the question to do they support the ACA (instead of Obamacare), almost 60% of conservatives change their tune. The real answer is: more people don't know enough about it, or are ideologically incapable of agreeing with ANYTHING that has Obama's name on it.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
It was Rand Paul and not Ron Paul. I'm not sure if you just made a mistake or didn't know. Ron Paul is retired and never held a Senate seat. Rand Paul is his son.
Don't forget
6) Republicans have spent the last 20 years telling people that "government is the problem, not the solution" -- that is, that the government can't do anything to help them. If some dude now comes along and sets up a government health insurance program that actually does help people, the Republican Party gets badly discredited. Better to keep everything broken than to risk that!
(the fact that what the dude got passed is almost exactly what Republicans themselves were proposing in the 1990's only makes it worse -- those proposals were never meant to be taken seriously, they were only put out there as a way to stop HillaryCare, and were supposed to be forgotten immediately after that was accomplished)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
How are you surprised that he voted no?
He didn't vote to defund the government, he voted to end all government spending except for essential operations, including paying debt. HE voted true to his mindset and word. IF you canceled Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and reduced the military to a few special ops. teams, there would be more then enough money to stary paying off the debt and no need to default.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Wrong Paul. Please pardon the pun.
What amazes me is that those people seriously considered a situation that could have had a devastating economical effect on the US. Things like this cause nations to implode. A bankrupt, non-functional state has time and again led to violent overthrow and civil war. This is what their game of chicken was risking. And when you listen to some of their backers they would welcome this in the hopes to build a different state from the ashes. Only their vision is really frightening.
And yet come next election they will present themselves on TV spots with flowing stars&stripes banner and parade their patriotism in front of everybody who is stupid enough to believe in it.
I feel our definitions of patriotism differ substantially.
20 minutes into the future
Austerity did not work for Hoover, nor Europe recently. It just makes the problem worse. You cannot pay off debt if the economy remains in a slump. Keynesian policy may be counter-intuitive to some, but some things in life are like that. At least pick the middle ground if you hate stimuluses.
If it were the case that it was being overdone, then our inflation rate would be higher than it is. Our inflation rate should be higher to encourage the rich to spend their cash instead of sitting on it waiting for better times. About 2.2% would be nice, but we are at about 1.7% right now (annually adjusted, smoothed over several months).
I realize there is risk either way, but history tends to favor stimuluses over austerity during prolonged slumps. I'll go with the horse with the better record.
Table-ized A.I.
You give credit to Clinton for the debt going down.
This was the Internet bubble time. The economy was white hot and tax revenues were phat. You could have put a Teddy Ruxpin in as President and the effect would have been the same.
It's still vastly preferable to the US system.
First, it is opposed by more people than favor it
That's a curious notion.
The GOP (and the Dems) turned the 2012 Presidential election into a referendum on Obamacare - and they lost.
If most people oppose the legislation why did they vote for the guy who made it his singular legislative achievement; and why did the guy who vowed to repeal it lose ?
how could they ?
By spending that money in the economy. Creating demand, supporting businesses. ,their extra workers also create more demand and incentive for yet more growth and investment.All of which pay more taxes
Causing those businesses to invest and grow their business, make more profits hire more workers and pay more taxes.
This business, its extra workers, its suppliers
etc.
Or American style, they could use their proof of a regular income to take out loans buy houses get credit cards and do all those previous things turbo charged and on steroids. (When the house prices go up they can then refinance and spend yet more still.)
Or they could take their paycheque leverage it and invest in anything profitable, stocks/bonds/derivatives/etc. and pay extra taxes on the profits
Or they could get lucky and gamble their way to fortune, daytrading, online poker.
I'm sure there are more ways.