First the Republicans insisted that they were shutting down the government to save us from Obamacare, which they claim will ruin our wonderful health insurance system. Cough.
Then the Republicans changed their minds, and decided that it wasn’t about Obamacare after all, but instead it is about the deficit (even though Obama has been lowering the deficit, unlike their last president).
So, do the Republicans really care about the deficit? After all, they did pass a bill that will pay all the government workers for not working. Not sure how that is going to save any money.
But my new favorite answer to this question is a request that Republican Congressman Darrell Issa made after he helped force the government shutdown. He requested that his two year old lawsuit that he filed against the Justice department be allowed to proceed despite the shutdown. If you recall, Issa filed the suit over his failed investigation into alleged misdeeds by the Department of Justice in the “Fast and Furious” operation.
The best part is the response from the judge:
There are no exigent circumstances in this case that would justify an order of the Court forcing furloughed attorneys to return to their desks. Moreover, while the vast majority of litigants who now must endure a delay in the progress of their matters do so due to circumstances beyond their control, that cannot be said of the House of Representatives, which has played a role in the shutdown that prompted the stay motion.
In other words, lift the shutdown or suffer like everyone else — you ain’t exempt from your own misdeeds.
7 Comments
I am actually with you on this one IK. They have no clear goals or message. I do disagree with you though on this point:
even though Obama has been lowering the deficit, unlike their last president
That’s awful misleading and sounds like a conservative media sound bite technique. 43 ran up 5T in debt over 8 years, but never ran even close to a trillion dollar deficit like 44. So you are correct 44 has lowered the deficit, down closer to what 43 ran, but that’s only because he started so far above. 44 will by the end of his 2nd term hold the record for adding the most debt both in % and $ then any President before him, heck he’ll add more debt then all presidents before him combined.
We do need a plan for reducing our debt and paying it down, I’m just not sure republicans know how, and I’m fairly certain dems don’t know either. By the end of 44’s 2nd term our debt will be around 20T and that’s not counting the trillions added from QE. The interest alone will make it the 2nd or 3rd largest budget item behind HHS.
I know the argument that everyone borrows and the government needs to as well. I agree, but I don’t agree the we need to always borrow. If so, then why wasn’t Clinton chastised by Dems, I think what he and republicans did was awesome. I’d love to see 44 do the same with some of our sane republicans, I’d love it even more if some Dems would join in. I also want Republicans to stop attacking the ACA, it’s law, so fix it and get to work amending it to make it better and beneficial to all including business. It has problems so they need to get to work fixing it and Dems should lead the way since it’s their baby and ask Reps to assist. Draw up a list of what needs to be fixed and talk about how to fix it. It’s not impossible.
As ugly as it is the shutdown may just get the 2 sides talking if they serve the right Kool-Aid at these meetings. If there had been no shutdown neither side would have talked rationally and there would be no progress.
Crises can get two opposing sides on speaking terms under some conditions, but when a particular crisis was caused, even engineered, by one of those sides, the healing power of the emergency is pretty limited.
Unfortunately, there don’t appear to be enough sane republicans to overcome the absurd “Hastert rule” which unofficially requires any measure passing the house to be approved of by a majority of Republican reps. Our country is being held hostage by folks representing well under a fifth of the country’s population, and these reps are all Republican and perfectly happy with the mess they are causing.
Great story, especially the quote from the judge.
The people clamoring for these bizarre actions seem to have no grasp of the basic principle of cause and effect — weirdly reminiscent of their astonishment when the sequester they allowed turned out to affect air traffic controllers too.
Have you noticed? The Obamacare opponents have shifted from trumpeting our “best health care in the world” to complaining that there aren’t enough doctors to serve all of us. Articles about how Obamacare is going to overload the system and cause Real People (like their putative authors) to have to wait for medical care have been sprouting all over in the past couple of weeks.
Thatguy – I think Paul Ryan could be that guy, if the Jr Senator from TX would ced the floor to the Sr. Congressman from Wisconsin. Obama respects him as do many of his colleagues from the party of no. If the press will give him and the process a chance I believe progress can be made.
PSgt, I think we can agree that it is hypocritical of the Republicans to claim they care about the deficit, since they have done at least as badly on that score as the Dems. Especially hypocritical to claim that it is worth shutting down the government over, since that will RAISE the deficit.
I do agree that they are as much to blame as the Dems. I’d love to see the Dems lead the charge, but that’s not likely. I can still hold out hope that someone in our government can propose a common sense approach to fixing our structural problems. Can’t I?
Now for a bit of nit picking, I understand that CGI a Canadian company built the ACA site and not for the reported 600 million but somewhere around 93 million. With Americans needing jobs why can’t the gov’t hire American companies exclusively. I know the first response will be the competitive bidding process, but really why can’t they. The other major similar foreign hiring was the Golden Gate remake. It seems like they say we want to put Americans to work and then hire some foreign company. Does that mean American business like IT, engineering, steel etc. don’t have the skills? Come on i’m sure some American company could have coded the mess that is the ACA site just as poorly, and at least a couple hundred people would have gotten jobs.
Because when you hire an American firm, you have to pay more as they HAVE TO pay their employees health insurance which is very expensive. That raises the cost of doing business with an American firm. The foreign firms are more competitive as they have single payer health insurance. GET HEALTH CARE INSURANCE OUT OF THE WORKS PLACE. IN Essence this will immediately raise taxes on the rich as they will pay the full amount for their health insurance to take care of the less fortunate.
And didn’t the Republican President OK a War game in Iraq that busted our budget making the rich in this country even richer? And wasn’t it a Republican President who , in spite of his totally false pretense war, lowered the taxes on the rich who got richer from his war? that was ten years ago which is beyond most people’s memories.