The problem with arguing that 1992 was ancient history is the fact that today's Democrats are far to the right of where the Republicans were then.
Umm, exactly, it's a different political climate. "MIddle" now doesn't mean what middle then meant, nor does "conservative" now mean what "conservative" then meant. Trying to claim you're politically middle when you support the middle of a 2 decade old political system is ridiculous.
Herbert Walker Bush raised taxes to reduce the deficit, whereas Obama made most of Dubbya's tax cuts permanent.
No, he made selective portions of the tax cuts permanent, shifting our tax code to the most progressive since the past decade. That's a move to the left, not to the right.
It's a Republican plan, and that's just a fact you're going to have to deal with.
No, it's a bastardized version of a 20 year Republican plan, sorry.
So if a Mason robs a liquor store, does that mean the entire order is to be considered a criminal organization?
When the organization is actively scheduling events to shut down ports and close down various other parts of infrastructure? (bridges, roads, etc). Probably, yes.
Most of the Republican ridings were won win with between 60-70% of the popular vote and most of Democratic ridings were won with 70-80% of the popular vote. This is exactly what gerry-mandering is supposed to do, concentrate the vote of the other party into as few ridings as possible
But the rural/urban effect would produce the same effect. Take a town of 10 people -- introduce one Democrat and you suddenly have 10% of the popular vote. Take a city of 100,000 -- introduce one Democrat and you haven't scratched the surface of the popular vote. Denser areas will always exhibit those kind of skews. Assuming most of the Democratic ridings are urban, that's pretty much what you should see. And that ignores any number of other factors -- maybe most people in Democrat cities don't even bother to come out to vote since they know which way the city is going to vote regardless -- or maybe it's only the demographics of the swing states that end up mattering -- I honestly have no clue, but I don't believe there's enough evidence to chalk the entire effect up to gerrymandering (or at least enough of an effect to be significant). Though I'm against gerrymandering to benefit either side -- I think the lines should be either random, based on geographic landmarks, or somehow generated by computer. No one should be making a judgment call, and they should ALWAYS be contiguous regions.
Slight problem: the mandate is a Republican idea, and has been since the Heritage Foundation came up with it back in the 90's
In the 90s???? You act like ideas/politics/thought is static and doesn't change after decades of situational differences. The Democrats were for slavery back in the 1850s -- does that mean they'd be all on board a slavery bill today??? Clearly current day politicians don't agree with the Heritage bill (which doesn't surprise me since the austerity movement is a relatively new thing), so I have no idea why this is relevant.
Which means the Republicans in Congress today are massively full of shit, and bluffing.
No, it just means that times change. As do situations. Remember when your president voted against a debt limit increase back in '06? Well golly gee, suddenly now he's for it -- it's amazing how that works, isn't it?
Neither is true in the slightest. There has recently been a slight regression, but it's pure IDIOCY to claim an "ALL TIME HIGH". Just look back to the great depression, when these programs were formed, to see VASTLY WORSE.
By many measurements, it's definitely true, but you are right that total poverty is below depression levels:
Probably some truth to that, but I imagine that one cannot switch plans unless during an open enrollment period or after a life-change event.
Except open enrollment happens frequent enough not to matter: quarterly? yearly?
Of course, low premium plans have high deductibles, high out-of-pocket expenses and less expansive coverage, where high premium plans have the reverse.
Except no one will ever pay the high out of pocket costs because they'll immediately jump on the plan that dumps that cost onto the taxpayers. You see that's the difference between then and now. Before Obamacare, you took a risk with getting on a HDHP while healthy: you might may lower bills now, but if something happened to you, you'd be paying for it. The super paranoid people on the other hand would take the traditional plans with the large premiums but always be covered. Now people have no fear of paying higher out of pocket costs -- to them, it's the best of all worlds: pay low premiums, and then foist the higher expense onto taxpayers should misfortune strike them. We've literally removed personal accountability from the system. And that frustrates the hell out of people like me.
I've read a similar argument from some Republican pundits, but I don't see how that actually favours Republicans. Whether a district is densely populated or not, it should have about the same number of voters per district.
But it does. Each state is apportioned a number of seats which approximately corresponds to its share of the aggregate population of the 50 states However, those seats are spread across districts across the total surface area of that state. If all the Dems congregate in a specific dense area, they give themselves a virtual lock on a single seat but give up lots of other. For instance, take Texas where the Dems hold 12 of 36 House seats (33% of the seats) despite the populace being 40% Democrat. The reason for this is that all the heavily populated cities in Texas (Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and El Paso) hold Democratic sway, but not in the more numerous suburbs (where far more seats are available). So there may be MORE democrats, but they're all congregating in the same cities -- no amount of redistricting or gerrymandering is going to get them more seats unless you redefine the city to include large portions of the suburbs (or if more Democrats move out of the city and into the suburbs).
We spent $2.9 trillion (out of $2.5 trillion in revenue) on "mandatory" and defense in 2012. In other words, we were already $400 billion in the red before we even spent a penny on national parks or NASA or roads or any of the other stuff people actually want the government to do. In 2012, all that stuff cost only $615 billion, which is small peanuts compared to the "mandatory" junk. Clearly, all this whining about cutting out little chunks of programs, like the Tea Partiers are doing, is pretty much worthless.
Umm, I think you're confused. The Democrats are the one pushing for the Discretionary small change. The Tea Party (and the Republicans in general) want grander reforms to Mandatory spending (part of the reason they target Obamacare). However, the only cuts the Democrats are willing to put on the table are discretionary (that's why Obama's sequestration plan dodged mandatory cuts entirely).
Obamacare was THE major issue of the 2012 election and he won.
It was also THE major issue of the 2010 elections when the Republicans swept into the House in overwhelming droves in the first place.
If the situation were reversed and democrats were demanding the abolishion of the second amendment, threatening a government shutdown if it wasn't done, would you be insisting that republicans "compromise"?
They did, and they did (though not on second amendment). In December, another budget standoff had us careening on the edge of a fiscal cliff with 99% of the budget in concord with Obama dropping an ultimatum that nothing gets passed without a tax hike on 250k+ incomes. Republicans, however, stayed at the negotiating table and finally caved with a last minute tax hike compromise at the 450k+ income line to prevent catastrophe. Notice the similarities? If you don't, it's because you're blinded by partisan beliefs that one side just had a sensible idea where the other side was just being unreasonable, because of your personal views on the two topics. Obama won't even BEGIN to talk with Republicans on this issue until they unconditionally surrender up front, and all the Republicans are looking for is to talk about/reform a highly partisan program they had no say in the creation of that isn't even favored by voters.
Then again, I'd much prefer single payer, because I'm not fucking insane.
You know, whenever I ask people what's so great about single payer, they do one of two things:
1) Ignorantly say "well that's what Europe has and life is great over there", knowing absolutely nothing about single payer
--or--
2) They say something like "well it'll let us use the negotiating power of the government to lower costs!"
I of course immediately respond with: "why is negotiating involved at all? why don't things simply cost what they cost?" Then they stare at me blankly.
Uh huh. And for those "young healthy people" that get injured in an accident or get cancer, who pays for their health care if they don't have insurance? The rest of us. It's not about "personal choice," it's about not being an irresponsible freeloader.
Except you've now ADDED a bunch of freeloaders to the system who can stay on low premium low cost plans and then jump on more expensive plans whenever they develop some condition that justifies it. There's literally no reason to be on an expensive plan with the pre-existing condition mandate.
no, no, no. Obama only gets the blame for high gas prices. You absolutely cannot credit his administration for energy independence or low gas prices or anything positive that happens in the U.S. That's heresy.
No administration gets the "credit" for low gas prices. Did he personally invent frakking? Did he fund it? Hell no.
In the case of the ACA, they don't have nothing--they have the ability to amend or repeal it, and they had the chance to not pass t in the first place.
No, in fact they did not, since this is a different Congress. The other Congress was a Demcoratic supermajority, hence the discord now regarding the partisan bill. A similar thing happened not too long ago with regards to the partisan Bush tax cuts (which were actually more favored then than Obamacare is now). However, in that case with a similar impasse during the December budget debate and a similar Democrat fiscal cliff threat, the Democrats inevitably got their way at the last minute as the Republicans compromised on middle ground and allowed the tax cuts to expire on the wealthy, but remain on the poor/middle class. Now we're in a very similar case where a partisan agenda is being put to the budget test and Democrats and trying to have their cake and eat it too by refusing to give even an inch.
It's truly depressing that there are people who can look at what's going on and blame the Democrats. People, like you QuantumPion, are just too stupid, too gullible. A government by the people doesn't work when the people are fools.
It's even more depressing that this country is so partisan that even reasonable requests draw comparison to arson. The most recent Continuing Resolution the House tried to pass does little more than delay the individual mandate (the same way Obama has already delayed it for businesses) and withdrawal the Congressional exemption: http://majorityleader.gov/newsroom/2013/09/leader-cantor-no-special-treatment-for-anyone-under-the-law.html
That's it. And supposedly that's still being "unreasonable". If that's unreasonable, why was Obama's delaying of the business mandate not unreasonable? The House isn't asking for a whole hell of alot here -- it's their job to pass a budget and there's an expensive program (to the tune of 200 billion a year) which was passed on purely partisan lines and isn't even favored by the populace.
And by the way, the Democrats TRIED to negotiate on healthcare. They spent months negotiating.
No they didn't. They spent months trying to get their own party on board (mainly Blue Dogs) and trying to buy off a handful of moderate Republicans with some riders. Never did they come to the bulk of Republicans with any intention of accepting a Republican idea. The reason we know this is true is because very simple conservative concepts the Democrats were largely in agreeance with didn't even make it into the bill (such as malpractice reform). It's also why the final draft of the bill was written behind closed doors by a single party. It's also why Obama didn't even sit down to dinner w/ Republicans until his second term. Remember Obama's "they have to sit in the back" comment? His definition of "working with Republicans" is to have them pitch/parrot left-leaning ideas to him, not to accept their conservative ideas and work them into the bill. Similarly, his idea of "passing a bipartisan budget" means having them rubberstamp the funding on his partisan program as well.
It's fascinating that people can forget such recent history.
I find it equally fascinating that people can rewrite history and/or see it however they please. If Snowe couldn't work with Obama, that's incredibly telling. She's spurned the party line on countless other occasions, and healthcare was one of her primary concerns.
It is true that the Senate Republicans blocked Leader Reid from setting up a conference committee on the budget back in April of this year, after the Senate passed a budget in March. However, the reason for doing so was not simply because the GOP did not want a conference committee. The real reason is that President Obama refused at the time to take tax increases off the table, saying they were a must. Knowing that the Republicans did not support any type of tax increase, GOP leadership simply said that there was no reason for the conference committee given that a parameter was already set in place that the GOP could not accept. In reality, Obama was not allowing for any compromise, making a demand before the negotiations even began.
I'm sorry but that's NOT how things are supposed to be done
And yet it's been done time and time again, by both parties (actually more often by Democratic Congresses).
This is clearly hostage taking tactics
Only if seen through partisan goggles. The Republicans want to meet in the middle. The Democrats think they can unilaterally define what the middle is and what people want (which is especially humorous considering the fact Obamcare was passed with a Democratic supermajority with zero Republican votes and very little public support).
The minority doesn't get to control the majority, or shouldn't, in a Democracy
Except that the Republicans ARE the majority in the House, you blithering idiot.
Of course, what the Senate is passing is a Continuing Resolution, where everything just stays the way it was for another year. So the Dems are proposing to fund everything (whether they support it or not). Better comparison would be if the Senate was planning to defund some Republican-stronghold items.
Except they did defund Republican items back in December during the last budget battle, when the Bush tax cuts were amended and the Sequester gutted defense spending. Basically, the Dems got practically everything they wanted, and the Republicans got fucked (they were looking for Mandatory spending reform, or a Balanced Budget amendment, or a CR that would have extended the Bush tax cuts in their entirety). Because for some reason, holding the budget hostage for tax hikes on "millionaires" ("defunding the Bush tax cuts", if you will) is "just good political sense", but doing it in opposition to Obamacare is "crazy insanity"
The Senate passed a budget back in the spring, but the House has refused to follow regular order and appoint members to a conference committee. Thus the need for a CR.
Honestly, when people are so oblivious to reality it's hard to tell if they're truly that inattentive to the news or if they're deliberately trying to poison public discourse with misinformation and falsehoods.
Seriously? Considering that the Republicans are the ones holding the budget hostage exactly how are the Democrats withholding anything?
Ugh, to repeat myself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_United_States#Federal_government [wikipedia.org]
Note all the Blue under the "House" column. Using shutdown leverage to get concessions is nothing new in politics. What IS new is completely refusing to even come to the negotiating table to find middle ground when two sides don't see eye to eye.
I have no idea what's pushing the dialogue that refusing to fund the other side's hyperpartisan wet dream is somehow "holding a budget hostage". It's been done for FAR more trivial causes than this one. Frankly, I'm surprised they let it go this far. They should have taken this tack back in December. What the Dems are "withholding" is a bipartisan government.
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 the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is not Government health care
Umm, it's thousands of pages long, additional taxes, mandated state exchanges, mandated insurance (for individuals and business), profit limits on healthcare entities, etc, etc...you can call it many things but there is a great deal of it that involves government involvement in and/or regulation of healthcare. Between Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, over one trillion tax dollars a year of government money is sunk into healthcare. Honestly, what do you define as "government healthcare"? Even the highly touted European systems involve people going to private entities to get their care.
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.
Maybe the Dems should have thought of that before they passed a hyper partisan bill that costs 200 billion a year and puts very little effort into actual healthcare cost controls.
The numbers certainly don't lie. Centuries of charity didn't reduce or eliminate poverty. Modern government programs have proven vastly more effective at doing so.
The wage gap is larger than ever -- poverty is at an all time high. Effective, you say?
Social Security is more like an extremely safe investment, where you don't have ample growth, but you do have a guaranteed return.
Says who? All signs point to the program being broke (or the terms heavily modified) by the time I get to take advantage of it. My money would be far safer in an account I own and have full control over.
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.
Except that the Dems have traditionally always made gains against their opponents with claims of "they're going to take away your [insert FDR program]". Remember when Bush wanted to private Social Security? And now again with Obamacare. And regardless, it's not necessarily about power -- some of it is about just about having a terrible program stick around forever. Republicans know that once enough people start getting all the "free" stuff, they won't want to lose it. Americans are notorious for wanting all kinds of programs, but never being willing to pay for them. This is the problem Republicans are trying to avoid.
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.
I'm not convinced that's the case. I think politically they thought it would be a victory -- remember, they believed they were given some kind of "mandate" to be as partisan as possible (many still believe it). Hell, I think some of them simply smugly think they know better than the American people. Still others figured that "anything" was better than "nothing" since it was Obama's primary agenda -- failing to pass it could have been seen as a bigger political failure than passing it in its crappy state.
Except it's always Republicans threatening to shut down the government
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_United_States#Federal_government
Note all the Blue under the "House" column.
No, the tea partiers are wrong because they (hypocritically) claim to want to get rid of the deficit while being almost entirely willing to actually do what's necessary (namely, drastically cut Medicare, Social Security and the military
Umm, cite? Outside of the military, there have been many calls for cuts in Mandatory spending. They ask for it every time and the Dems are never willing to put it on the table. Hell, Boehner just asked for Mandatory cuts just recently in response to White House demands for a "clean" CR.
You know if we look at the relevant election, 2012 instead of 2010, the numbers are quite a bit different. The Democrats got 1.7 million more votes and 33 fewer seats than the Republicans. That is a huge discrepancy.
That is true, but it's not actually all that uncommon. Many left voters tend to live in densely populated areas like cities whereas Republicans are more spread out across rural areas of the country. Those demographics will always favor Republicans where it comes to winning districts, with or without gerrymandering. What I'm saying is that it's not all the unusual for the Democrats to win more of the popular vote but end up losing because of the electoral system. Hell, look at the 2000 presidential election where Bush won, but Gore won the popular vote.
Fair being fair, how do you write off an 8% swing in the House and a 9.7% swing in the Senate for the Democrats in 2012?
Truthfully, most of that was Romney fallout. If you look at the polls about 1 month prior (when Romney and Obama were polling reasonably close at like 45-55%), alot of those seats Dems won were actually leaning Republican. Romney's campaign managed to burn a great deal of Republican favor near the end.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm, exactly, it's a different political climate. "MIddle" now doesn't mean what middle then meant, nor does "conservative" now mean what "conservative" then meant. Trying to claim you're politically middle when you support the middle of a 2 decade old political system is ridiculous.
No, he made selective portions of the tax cuts permanent, shifting our tax code to the most progressive since the past decade. That's a move to the left, not to the right.
No, it's a bastardized version of a 20 year Republican plan, sorry.
When the organization is actively scheduling events to shut down ports and close down various other parts of infrastructure? (bridges, roads, etc). Probably, yes.
But the rural/urban effect would produce the same effect. Take a town of 10 people -- introduce one Democrat and you suddenly have 10% of the popular vote. Take a city of 100,000 -- introduce one Democrat and you haven't scratched the surface of the popular vote. Denser areas will always exhibit those kind of skews. Assuming most of the Democratic ridings are urban, that's pretty much what you should see. And that ignores any number of other factors -- maybe most people in Democrat cities don't even bother to come out to vote since they know which way the city is going to vote regardless -- or maybe it's only the demographics of the swing states that end up mattering -- I honestly have no clue, but I don't believe there's enough evidence to chalk the entire effect up to gerrymandering (or at least enough of an effect to be significant). Though I'm against gerrymandering to benefit either side -- I think the lines should be either random, based on geographic landmarks, or somehow generated by computer. No one should be making a judgment call, and they should ALWAYS be contiguous regions.
In the 90s???? You act like ideas/politics/thought is static and doesn't change after decades of situational differences. The Democrats were for slavery back in the 1850s -- does that mean they'd be all on board a slavery bill today??? Clearly current day politicians don't agree with the Heritage bill (which doesn't surprise me since the austerity movement is a relatively new thing), so I have no idea why this is relevant.
No, it just means that times change. As do situations. Remember when your president voted against a debt limit increase back in '06? Well golly gee, suddenly now he's for it -- it's amazing how that works, isn't it?
By many measurements, it's definitely true, but you are right that total poverty is below depression levels:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/07/supplemental-poverty-measure_n_1080160.html
http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/2013/09/17/us-working-age-poverty-remains-near-record-high-in-2012/
Except open enrollment happens frequent enough not to matter: quarterly? yearly?
Except no one will ever pay the high out of pocket costs because they'll immediately jump on the plan that dumps that cost onto the taxpayers. You see that's the difference between then and now. Before Obamacare, you took a risk with getting on a HDHP while healthy: you might may lower bills now, but if something happened to you, you'd be paying for it. The super paranoid people on the other hand would take the traditional plans with the large premiums but always be covered. Now people have no fear of paying higher out of pocket costs -- to them, it's the best of all worlds: pay low premiums, and then foist the higher expense onto taxpayers should misfortune strike them. We've literally removed personal accountability from the system. And that frustrates the hell out of people like me.
But it does. Each state is apportioned a number of seats which approximately corresponds to its share of the aggregate population of the 50 states However, those seats are spread across districts across the total surface area of that state. If all the Dems congregate in a specific dense area, they give themselves a virtual lock on a single seat but give up lots of other. For instance, take Texas where the Dems hold 12 of 36 House seats (33% of the seats) despite the populace being 40% Democrat. The reason for this is that all the heavily populated cities in Texas (Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and El Paso) hold Democratic sway, but not in the more numerous suburbs (where far more seats are available). So there may be MORE democrats, but they're all congregating in the same cities -- no amount of redistricting or gerrymandering is going to get them more seats unless you redefine the city to include large portions of the suburbs (or if more Democrats move out of the city and into the suburbs).
Umm, I think you're confused. The Democrats are the one pushing for the Discretionary small change. The Tea Party (and the Republicans in general) want grander reforms to Mandatory spending (part of the reason they target Obamacare). However, the only cuts the Democrats are willing to put on the table are discretionary (that's why Obama's sequestration plan dodged mandatory cuts entirely).
It was also THE major issue of the 2010 elections when the Republicans swept into the House in overwhelming droves in the first place.
They did, and they did (though not on second amendment). In December, another budget standoff had us careening on the edge of a fiscal cliff with 99% of the budget in concord with Obama dropping an ultimatum that nothing gets passed without a tax hike on 250k+ incomes. Republicans, however, stayed at the negotiating table and finally caved with a last minute tax hike compromise at the 450k+ income line to prevent catastrophe. Notice the similarities? If you don't, it's because you're blinded by partisan beliefs that one side just had a sensible idea where the other side was just being unreasonable, because of your personal views on the two topics. Obama won't even BEGIN to talk with Republicans on this issue until they unconditionally surrender up front, and all the Republicans are looking for is to talk about/reform a highly partisan program they had no say in the creation of that isn't even favored by voters.
You know, whenever I ask people what's so great about single payer, they do one of two things:
1) Ignorantly say "well that's what Europe has and life is great over there", knowing absolutely nothing about single payer
--or--
2) They say something like "well it'll let us use the negotiating power of the government to lower costs!"
I of course immediately respond with: "why is negotiating involved at all? why don't things simply cost what they cost?" Then they stare at me blankly.
Except you've now ADDED a bunch of freeloaders to the system who can stay on low premium low cost plans and then jump on more expensive plans whenever they develop some condition that justifies it. There's literally no reason to be on an expensive plan with the pre-existing condition mandate.
No administration gets the "credit" for low gas prices. Did he personally invent frakking? Did he fund it? Hell no.
No, in fact they did not, since this is a different Congress. The other Congress was a Demcoratic supermajority, hence the discord now regarding the partisan bill. A similar thing happened not too long ago with regards to the partisan Bush tax cuts (which were actually more favored then than Obamacare is now). However, in that case with a similar impasse during the December budget debate and a similar Democrat fiscal cliff threat, the Democrats inevitably got their way at the last minute as the Republicans compromised on middle ground and allowed the tax cuts to expire on the wealthy, but remain on the poor/middle class. Now we're in a very similar case where a partisan agenda is being put to the budget test and Democrats and trying to have their cake and eat it too by refusing to give even an inch.
It's even more depressing that this country is so partisan that even reasonable requests draw comparison to arson. The most recent Continuing Resolution the House tried to pass does little more than delay the individual mandate (the same way Obama has already delayed it for businesses) and withdrawal the Congressional exemption: http://majorityleader.gov/newsroom/2013/09/leader-cantor-no-special-treatment-for-anyone-under-the-law.html
That's it. And supposedly that's still being "unreasonable". If that's unreasonable, why was Obama's delaying of the business mandate not unreasonable? The House isn't asking for a whole hell of alot here -- it's their job to pass a budget and there's an expensive program (to the tune of 200 billion a year) which was passed on purely partisan lines and isn't even favored by the populace.
No they didn't. They spent months trying to get their own party on board (mainly Blue Dogs) and trying to buy off a handful of moderate Republicans with some riders. Never did they come to the bulk of Republicans with any intention of accepting a Republican idea. The reason we know this is true is because very simple conservative concepts the Democrats were largely in agreeance with didn't even make it into the bill (such as malpractice reform). It's also why the final draft of the bill was written behind closed doors by a single party. It's also why Obama didn't even sit down to dinner w/ Republicans until his second term. Remember Obama's "they have to sit in the back" comment? His definition of "working with Republicans" is to have them pitch/parrot left-leaning ideas to him, not to accept their conservative ideas and work them into the bill. Similarly, his idea of "passing a bipartisan budget" means having them rubberstamp the funding on his partisan program as well.
I find it equally fascinating that people can rewrite history and/or see it however they please. If Snowe couldn't work with Obama, that's incredibly telling. She's spurned the party line on countless other occasions, and healthcare was one of her primary concerns.
Will you stop repeating this lie??? The majority disapproves of Obamacare. It is NOT popular.
The President, that's who: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/brenner-brief/2013/oct/1/government-shutdown-and-assigning-blame-claims-ver/
It is true that the Senate Republicans blocked Leader Reid from setting up a conference committee on the budget back in April of this year, after the Senate passed a budget in March. However, the reason for doing so was not simply because the GOP did not want a conference committee. The real reason is that President Obama refused at the time to take tax increases off the table, saying they were a must. Knowing that the Republicans did not support any type of tax increase, GOP leadership simply said that there was no reason for the conference committee given that a parameter was already set in place that the GOP could not accept. In reality, Obama was not allowing for any compromise, making a demand before the negotiations even began.
Try again: http://blogs.marketwatch.com/health-exchange/2013/09/16/majority-disapprove-obamacare-but-divided-on-whether-to-enact-survey/
And yet it's been done time and time again, by both parties (actually more often by Democratic Congresses).
Only if seen through partisan goggles. The Republicans want to meet in the middle. The Democrats think they can unilaterally define what the middle is and what people want (which is especially humorous considering the fact Obamcare was passed with a Democratic supermajority with zero Republican votes and very little public support).
Except that the Republicans ARE the majority in the House, you blithering idiot.
Except they did defund Republican items back in December during the last budget battle, when the Bush tax cuts were amended and the Sequester gutted defense spending. Basically, the Dems got practically everything they wanted, and the Republicans got fucked (they were looking for Mandatory spending reform, or a Balanced Budget amendment, or a CR that would have extended the Bush tax cuts in their entirety). Because for some reason, holding the budget hostage for tax hikes on "millionaires" ("defunding the Bush tax cuts", if you will) is "just good political sense", but doing it in opposition to Obamacare is "crazy insanity"
It's not the Senate's job to pass a budget. The House controls the purse -- the budget process originates in Congress. Here, educate yourself: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/process.html
How true, how true, anonymous coward.
Ugh, to repeat myself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_United_States#Federal_government [wikipedia.org]
Note all the Blue under the "House" column. Using shutdown leverage to get concessions is nothing new in politics. What IS new is completely refusing to even come to the negotiating table to find middle ground when two sides don't see eye to eye.
I have no idea what's pushing the dialogue that refusing to fund the other side's hyperpartisan wet dream is somehow "holding a budget hostage". It's been done for FAR more trivial causes than this one. Frankly, I'm surprised they let it go this far. They should have taken this tack back in December. What the Dems are "withholding" is a bipartisan government.
Do you know how I know you're young?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_United_States#Federal_government
Note all the Blue under the "House" column. Using shutdown leverage to get concessions is nothing new in politics. What IS new is completely refusing to even come to the negotiating table to find middle ground when two sides don't see eye to eye.
Umm, it's thousands of pages long, additional taxes, mandated state exchanges, mandated insurance (for individuals and business), profit limits on healthcare entities, etc, etc...you can call it many things but there is a great deal of it that involves government involvement in and/or regulation of healthcare. Between Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, over one trillion tax dollars a year of government money is sunk into healthcare. Honestly, what do you define as "government healthcare"? Even the highly touted European systems involve people going to private entities to get their care.
Maybe the Dems should have thought of that before they passed a hyper partisan bill that costs 200 billion a year and puts very little effort into actual healthcare cost controls.
The wage gap is larger than ever -- poverty is at an all time high. Effective, you say?
Says who? All signs point to the program being broke (or the terms heavily modified) by the time I get to take advantage of it. My money would be far safer in an account I own and have full control over.
Except that the Dems have traditionally always made gains against their opponents with claims of "they're going to take away your [insert FDR program]". Remember when Bush wanted to private Social Security? And now again with Obamacare. And regardless, it's not necessarily about power -- some of it is about just about having a terrible program stick around forever. Republicans know that once enough people start getting all the "free" stuff, they won't want to lose it. Americans are notorious for wanting all kinds of programs, but never being willing to pay for them. This is the problem Republicans are trying to avoid.
I'm not convinced that's the case. I think politically they thought it would be a victory -- remember, they believed they were given some kind of "mandate" to be as partisan as possible (many still believe it). Hell, I think some of them simply smugly think they know better than the American people. Still others figured that "anything" was better than "nothing" since it was Obama's primary agenda -- failing to pass it could have been seen as a bigger political failure than passing it in its crappy state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_United_States#Federal_government
Note all the Blue under the "House" column.
Umm, cite? Outside of the military, there have been many calls for cuts in Mandatory spending. They ask for it every time and the Dems are never willing to put it on the table. Hell, Boehner just asked for Mandatory cuts just recently in response to White House demands for a "clean" CR.
That is true, but it's not actually all that uncommon. Many left voters tend to live in densely populated areas like cities whereas Republicans are more spread out across rural areas of the country. Those demographics will always favor Republicans where it comes to winning districts, with or without gerrymandering. What I'm saying is that it's not all the unusual for the Democrats to win more of the popular vote but end up losing because of the electoral system. Hell, look at the 2000 presidential election where Bush won, but Gore won the popular vote.
Truthfully, most of that was Romney fallout. If you look at the polls about 1 month prior (when Romney and Obama were polling reasonably close at like 45-55%), alot of those seats Dems won were actually leaning Republican. Romney's campaign managed to burn a great deal of Republican favor near the end.