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Conservatives have to use things like CR's and the debt ceiling to extract policy wins against Democrats because they can't win the argument at the ballot box.
None of it has anything to do with the "ballot box" - the Government (House & Senate, Republicans & Democrats) has used the CR (continuing resolution) instead of a Budget since 2009. The last passed Budget in the USA was the Fiscal Year 2009 Budget which was left over from the Bush era. It was passed by the Majority Democrat House and the Majority Democrat Senate AFTER they added the Trillion Dollar (including interest) to the Bush Budget.
Every single year since that Budget - Obama has submitted a Budget that was so extreme that Harry Reid would not allow a vote on it or they voted it down unanimously (with no amendments) on the few occasions that the Minority Leader was able to force the vote. Instead of a negotiated Budget - they use a CR and just add a percentage of increase in spending .... keep in mind that the Baseline Budget they are using is the 2009 Budget that included the Trillion dollar Stimulus Bill funding. We are spending that Stimulus Bill Trillion every year and adding a % to it.
The 2013 Budget brought a difference - Obama traded the Sequester for his 2011 multi-Trillion dollar Debt Ceiling to get him past the 2012 Election. The Sequester is still part of a CR if they have to use a CR again this year ...... which they will. The President was 2 months late with his Budget - the Senate and House did not wait for him and never even proposed a vote on "his" Budget ..... so when he mentions that in speeches, he counts on people being too dumb to know what is going on and what has happened this year. The House & Senate each passed their own Budget because their Pay was going to be held until the end of 2013 unless they did it by a deadline that was part of the Tax the Rich deal they passed in January.
So ..... here we are again. Fiscal year 2013 ends on the last day of September and they don't have a reconciled 2014 Budget. We will have to have another CR added the the 2013 Budget, with the standard threats by Reid and Obama that they will not accept anything less than their demands that they can't get by a vote. They talk constantly about how the President won't "negotiate" and because he won't "negotiate" the Republicans "want" to shut down the Government. The Media are very good little parrots and obediently repeat the same thing - of course they can't ever come up with a single news clip or video clip of any Republican CongressCritter saying they want to "shut down the Government".
I personally think there is no point in "funding" all the delayed parts of ObamaCare ..... if it's not going to be used - why does it need funds? Fund the percentage or parts they will actually implement - Obama has delayed 19 parts of it so far. We have been paying the taxes on it for 3 years now. I'm pretty sure everyone can tell by now that they are just too incompetent to get it off the ground anyway - what they will be able to get working is going to cause so many problems that people will go ballistic with anger. Let them do it - it's probably the only way to illustrate what a disaster it will be.
Obama knows this Law is sick, he's even said it needs "changes", Pelosi has said the same thing and so has HHS ..... thing is, they won't open it up to any changes. The Unions are screaming because they know it's a disaster for them The Obama Administration will just attempt to make it work with Waivers, Exemptions and Delays. They can't bring themselves to admit they never considered all the Un-intended Consequences like the new 30 Hour Work Week. This is hurting real people, but mostly people in the Middle Class - they simply don't care when their Ego is on the line.
Every time the words "tax credit" are used - remember that means that a Tax Payer to Income Tax is paying for somebodies Insurance. The Income Tax payers pay twice for Insurance. They pay for their own (which has increased again this year) and they are forced to pay for the person getting the "Tax Credit".
Conservatives have to use things like CR's and the debt ceiling to extract policy wins against Democrats because they can't win the argument at the ballot box.
So I know you and Candidate Obama hate CRs....
Why did President Obama and the Democratic Senate and Democratic House use them in his first 2 years if they are so bad?
The hard core conservatives in the house were elected by hard core conservative voters to shut Obama down. They're doing exactly what they were elected to do.
They don't answer to the whole country, they answer to the majority of the voters in their districts.
And therein lies the problem. They could care LESS what the majority of the country wants or needs or even what is best for this country. They care only about pandering to their base so that they can get reelected. They need to GO.
And therein lies the problem. They could care LESS what the majority of the country wants or needs or even what is best for this country. They care only about pandering to their base so that they can get reelected. They need to GO.
I just heard on NPR today that the house plans to shut down the government, unless the government agrees to basically kill ObamaCare. When is this belligerent stupidity going to stop? Sheesh, they are sounding more and more like the Taliban.
What is wrong with rational, centrist governance? When did conservatives decide to send in the goon squad instead of real leaders? It is just getting insane.
It only seems crazy if you think its okay the government should punish people for not purchasing a product. Now what was that about stupidity?
This is an interesting article which reveals that they really have nothing to lose because they can only appeal to a particular portion of the populace anyway...
Quote:
Now, in 2013, we have the politics that 50 years of this process have created. The Democratic Party has fewer conservatives than it once did, but is still a broadly coalitional party with liberal and moderate elements. It controls the coasts, has strength in the industrial Midwest, and is making inroads in the upper, more urbanized South and in Florida. It confronts a Republican Party almost wholly dependent on the interior states of the old Confederacy. (The party continues to win in the mountain and prairie West, but the region is too sparsely populated to provide any real electoral heft.) Because of its demographic weakness, it is more beholden than ever to the intensity of its most extreme voters. This has engendered a death spiral in which it must take increasingly radical positions to drive these voters to the polls, positions that in turn alienate ever larger segments of the population, making these core voters even more crucial - and so on. We have a name these days for the electoral residue produced by this series of increasingly rigorous purifications. We call it "the Tea Party."
The cry of the hour is that our politics is "dysfunctional" - mired in "gridlock," all bipartisanship lost. This is of course true, but it must be seen as merely the latest result of the conservative politics of purity. After all, when does a politician, in the normal course of affairs, have a reason to do something? When he thinks it will gain him a vote, or that not doing it will cost him a vote. It follows that politicians have a reason to be bipartisan - to work with the opposition - only when doing so will increase, not decrease, their electoral support. And this can only happen if they potentially share voters with their opposition. But the Republican electorate is now almost as purified as the Republican Party. Not only is it unlikely to support Democratic candidates, it's virtually certain to punish any Republican politician who works with Democrats. The electoral logic of bipartisanship has collapsed for most Republicans; they have very little to gain, and much to lose, if they practice it. And so they don't.
Conservatives have to use things like CR's and the debt ceiling to extract policy wins against Democrats because they can't win the argument at the ballot box.
Only because much of the population is dependent upon the government teat.
And therein lies the problem. They could care LESS what the majority of the country wants or needs or even what is best for this country. They care only about pandering to their base so that they can get reelected. They need to GO.
The super wealthy and republican leadership understand that over time the American people will come to realize that they do indeed have a right to healthcare and always have. That is why the republican party is so desperate to stop healthcare reform no matter how many people they would kill as a result.
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