When The Captors Want The Hostage Dead, Is It Kidnapping?
The sheer silliness of even casting a shadow of a glimmer of a sliver of blame on the Democratic Party members in Congress regarding this shutdown thing is laughable enough. There is more than enough evidence that the Tea Party has run with this ball all the way. I won't bother recounting it here
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That's ridiculous.
That both sides put forth solutions to end it shows neither side as a party wanted it.
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The implication being of course that Republicans don't want to fund the government.
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Be that as it may, the House was unilaterally making these decisions on what to cut and what to fund. Had House Republicans met in conference with Democrats like they had been requesting since April, they might have been able to meet in the middle and avoid this situation altogether. Instead, House Republicans reneged on the number they agreed to and overreached by demanding a full repeal of Obamacare. I'm all for routinely cutting programs that are redundant, no longer necessary, complete failures, or are receiving more than they need to function successfully (you know, like the defense department).
The problems with the law didn't start two weeks ago. It started long before as the insurance industry started gearing up for regulatory compliance.
Like I said, if in a few years after the entire thing has been implemented it is still a bad program with no hope of saving, that would be the appropriate time to amend or ( ... )
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"The Power of the Purse" is one of the strongest and most basic checks on executive power there is. This is a good thing.
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I see a lot of people saying "this is unacceptable" but not a whole lot of "this is unacceptable for reasons X, Y, and Z"
There are 121 comments if you have a particular one in mind point it out cause otherwise I'll say again.
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"Obama didn't ask for anything other than funding the government. This is neutral ground, not a concession to Democrats. ...
I said that a functioning government and not defaulting are neutral ground, not things to be used as leverage. By definition, using them as leverage means you are willing to allow them to happen if you don't get what you want. Otherwise, they aren't leverage."
Since I already know where you're going to go with this, I'll repeat: this is not a concession. Funding government -- all of the stuff that's already been haggled and passed -- is not a thing that occupies the Democrat's side of the scale in a negotiation. It's something both parties desire. Defunding Obamacare would have required some kind of actual concession for Democrats like gutting the military by 80%, or raising taxes substantially on the rich. We both know the Republicans would never, ever agree to anything like that, so why ( ... )
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No, it is not neutral ground. As I said before, "the power of the purse" is one of the most fundamental checks on the executive branch that house can wield.
Likewise these "good faith" conferences were nothing more than photo ops for Dems to polish their "bipartisan" credentials. That nothing of import was going to be negotiated was made quite clear from the beginning. Likewise I don't really see how it can be argued that the shutdown has put the GOP in a worse bargaining position when the President made it clear that he had no intention of bargaining in the first place.
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You are absolutely right, the power of the purse IS a fundamental check on the POTUS. However, the thing that all Americans can agree on is that our standing in the world, and therefore our standing in international financial markets has far reaching consequences and requires absolute certainty, I.E. the rest of the world needs to know that our government is stable, open for business, and will pay its debts.
Negotiation is a constant process, not a cudgel. The Republicans in the House absolutely have a right to negotiate the levels at which we're spending money, and they can absolutely demand concessions from the Senate/POTUS for reduced spending levels. But what they CANNOT do is do these things are the end of a gun.
Obama simply made it clear (after the debacle in 2011) that he would negotiate as long as the government is open, and America pays its bills, and that everything else was open to conversation. It's ridiculous to equate "keeping the government functioning" with "concessions to the Dems ( ... )
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Agreed, and if congress had passed a proper budget in the last 5 years this wouldn't even be an issue. To me, Democrats trying to blame Republicans for the current crisis sounds a lot like "Don't blame me! I may have doused the house in gasoline, but it was the other guy who lit the match."
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But can you at least see how someone else might see things that way? As far as I'm concerned the entirety of congress is to blame.
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