Post by Adam Awesome on Aug 11, 2013 20:23:15 GMT -5
tv.msnbc.com/2013/07/25/gop-senators-threaten-government-shutdown-to-derail-obamacare/
According to MSNBC, Tea Party members in both the House and Senate are threatening to shut down the U.S. federal government if the Democratic controlled Senate and President Obama do not help the Republican controlled House of Representatives in repealing Obamacare....for the 40th time. The main culprits behind this are none other than Mr. Agua himself, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). The Washington Times reported that Senator Rubio, Senator Cruz, and several other Tea Party darlings like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in the upper chamber will filibuster any proposed legislation to pass budgets for the federal government unless Obamacare is COMPLETELY de-funded. Senator Lee agrees, but would only filibuster in the case that the Democrats decide to implement the later add-on's to Obamacare including the 2015 individual mandate. Although knowing Republicans led by the ever-so intelligent, Mitch McConnell, I doubt Mike Lee would stay true to that if it ever comes up.
Back in March after the well-known sequester also caused by the Republican Party, there were $55 billion in cuts to federal agencies and knowing that most parts of the Affordable Care Act will be implemented on January 1st, 2014, they're again using the "fear" tactic to try to get their way to fully de-fund Obamacare. And unfortunately, because Americans are too lazy to read up on how Obamacare will help every single one of them, a majority of them (49%) are still against the ACA while only 37% for it. Congress has come to mediocre agreements on it before, but the problem this time is a lack of cooperation and the amount the GOP led House and the Democratic led Senate want to spend on some of these government agencies is about a $90 billion gap between what the 2 houses want. Obama and Reid have already said that if the House passes any bill that cuts government spending anymore or keeps it at the same rate, they will respectively veto or decline a vote on it. The current federal budget is at $988 billion and a lot of Republicans, especially Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, are saying they'll accept nothing more than a cut in it to $967 billion.
Now for those of you unaware of what the process is to pass a bill (especially one as important as this to keep the government running), here's the basic layout. A bill can be proposed by a group or a single person starting on the House of Representatives floor which is heard by all representatives in attendance followed by a decision by the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, as to whether or not the bill will be allowed to be voted on or not. Obviously, you can already sense the problem there because Speaker Boehner has never done anything that has benefited the American people since taking the gavel in 2011. But let's just say either Speaker Boehner does allow a vote on it or the House Democratic Minority led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), can issue a discharge petition and if signed by a majority of the House (218), this petition could overrule Boehner's authority. So the bill would be voted on and if a 218 member majority say "yea", the bill passes and goes to the Democratic controlled Senate. But again, can't be too sure on that either because of the 201 House Democrats, I can guarantee at least 5 of them would vote any measure down meaning they'd have to rally about 22 or so moderate Republicans to join them on passing it. Now in the Senate, it would take 60 votes to get the bill passed. Again, very hard to do especially with all those idiots in the Senate who would rather waste time and filibuster than hear debates and vote. Currently (Counting Angus
and Bernie Sanders), there are 54 Democrats in the Senate. If you bare in mind maybe 1 or 2 Democrats will vote against it if it can even make it to the floor for a vote, it would still need about 8 Senate Republicans to go for it. Seems easy, right? Well, besides John McCain for sure, a moderate like Mike Johanns, or maybe even Mikel's guy Richard Burr of North Carolina, it again would be really hard to get those votes needed. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) could issue the nuclear option which would make it needed for only a simple majority (51) to pass, but the problem is, the Democratic leadership in the Senate are spineless and would never do it. So if this all somehow gets pieced together within less than 2 months, it will go to President Barack Obama's desk who will of course sign the bill and would prevent the government from another 1990s like shutdown.
And bare in mind, this isn't like a criminal background checks bill. Congress can't procrastinate on it for months because the deadline is on September 30th which is only 7 weeks away. If the Republicans become unwilling to compromise with the Democrats in Congress, we would have a national travesty on our hands with this. There would be no plan for the 2014 fiscal year and we would see drastic cuts in things like welfare, Medicare, social security, or food stamps which has already seen another recent cut. So if this does end up happening, it will be 1995-1996 all over again and that did not sit well with voters because not only did Speaker Newt Gingrich end up losing the gavel to Hastert, but Bob Dole lost the election big time to Clinton and the Republicans nearly lost the House and Senate. But the Gingrich/Dole Congress isn't anywhere near as bad as the Boehner Congress because the GOP Congress back then never had a 12% approval rating and Boehner and his stooges are just asking for it in the 2014 midterms. They may have "protected" themselves partially by gerrymandering a lot of Republican districts, but with demographics changing, it might not even matter because out of all 234 of those House Republicans, only 17 would need to be unseated for a Democratic majority in Congress again. Just like my signature states, America died in 2010 because that's when the Republicans took back the House of Representatives and it's been nothing but destruction since and I doubt they'll decide to do the right thing in this case either.
Oh yeah, and I find it ironic how Congress goes on a 5-week vacation aside from all the other vacations and days off they've had this year while Bush had 367 vacation days in his whole Presidency, yet Boehner and McConnell still find a way to attack Obama now for his only one-week vacation and his only 100 days of vacation time he's had since entering office in 2009. And even on these days they were "in session", all they did was attempt to repeal a bunch of laws which Boehner recently said in an interview was what Congress should do rather than pass new ones. Our taxpayer money shouldn't go to them for nothing. Either let's just pay them nothing for doing nothing or let's impeach all of them because I can guarantee this is what the Founding Fathers were strictly against. As President Obama puts it, they need to stop making meaningless votes to repeal ACA and share some concrete, effective ideas with this nation. Because if they don't, why are they there? At this point in time, I can say Vladimir Putin would make a better Speaker of the House than John Boehner because even though both are equally dreadful, at least he can pass laws!
According to MSNBC, Tea Party members in both the House and Senate are threatening to shut down the U.S. federal government if the Democratic controlled Senate and President Obama do not help the Republican controlled House of Representatives in repealing Obamacare....for the 40th time. The main culprits behind this are none other than Mr. Agua himself, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). The Washington Times reported that Senator Rubio, Senator Cruz, and several other Tea Party darlings like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in the upper chamber will filibuster any proposed legislation to pass budgets for the federal government unless Obamacare is COMPLETELY de-funded. Senator Lee agrees, but would only filibuster in the case that the Democrats decide to implement the later add-on's to Obamacare including the 2015 individual mandate. Although knowing Republicans led by the ever-so intelligent, Mitch McConnell, I doubt Mike Lee would stay true to that if it ever comes up.
Back in March after the well-known sequester also caused by the Republican Party, there were $55 billion in cuts to federal agencies and knowing that most parts of the Affordable Care Act will be implemented on January 1st, 2014, they're again using the "fear" tactic to try to get their way to fully de-fund Obamacare. And unfortunately, because Americans are too lazy to read up on how Obamacare will help every single one of them, a majority of them (49%) are still against the ACA while only 37% for it. Congress has come to mediocre agreements on it before, but the problem this time is a lack of cooperation and the amount the GOP led House and the Democratic led Senate want to spend on some of these government agencies is about a $90 billion gap between what the 2 houses want. Obama and Reid have already said that if the House passes any bill that cuts government spending anymore or keeps it at the same rate, they will respectively veto or decline a vote on it. The current federal budget is at $988 billion and a lot of Republicans, especially Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, are saying they'll accept nothing more than a cut in it to $967 billion.
Now for those of you unaware of what the process is to pass a bill (especially one as important as this to keep the government running), here's the basic layout. A bill can be proposed by a group or a single person starting on the House of Representatives floor which is heard by all representatives in attendance followed by a decision by the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, as to whether or not the bill will be allowed to be voted on or not. Obviously, you can already sense the problem there because Speaker Boehner has never done anything that has benefited the American people since taking the gavel in 2011. But let's just say either Speaker Boehner does allow a vote on it or the House Democratic Minority led by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), can issue a discharge petition and if signed by a majority of the House (218), this petition could overrule Boehner's authority. So the bill would be voted on and if a 218 member majority say "yea", the bill passes and goes to the Democratic controlled Senate. But again, can't be too sure on that either because of the 201 House Democrats, I can guarantee at least 5 of them would vote any measure down meaning they'd have to rally about 22 or so moderate Republicans to join them on passing it. Now in the Senate, it would take 60 votes to get the bill passed. Again, very hard to do especially with all those idiots in the Senate who would rather waste time and filibuster than hear debates and vote. Currently (Counting Angus
and Bernie Sanders), there are 54 Democrats in the Senate. If you bare in mind maybe 1 or 2 Democrats will vote against it if it can even make it to the floor for a vote, it would still need about 8 Senate Republicans to go for it. Seems easy, right? Well, besides John McCain for sure, a moderate like Mike Johanns, or maybe even Mikel's guy Richard Burr of North Carolina, it again would be really hard to get those votes needed. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) could issue the nuclear option which would make it needed for only a simple majority (51) to pass, but the problem is, the Democratic leadership in the Senate are spineless and would never do it. So if this all somehow gets pieced together within less than 2 months, it will go to President Barack Obama's desk who will of course sign the bill and would prevent the government from another 1990s like shutdown.And bare in mind, this isn't like a criminal background checks bill. Congress can't procrastinate on it for months because the deadline is on September 30th which is only 7 weeks away. If the Republicans become unwilling to compromise with the Democrats in Congress, we would have a national travesty on our hands with this. There would be no plan for the 2014 fiscal year and we would see drastic cuts in things like welfare, Medicare, social security, or food stamps which has already seen another recent cut. So if this does end up happening, it will be 1995-1996 all over again and that did not sit well with voters because not only did Speaker Newt Gingrich end up losing the gavel to Hastert, but Bob Dole lost the election big time to Clinton and the Republicans nearly lost the House and Senate. But the Gingrich/Dole Congress isn't anywhere near as bad as the Boehner Congress because the GOP Congress back then never had a 12% approval rating and Boehner and his stooges are just asking for it in the 2014 midterms. They may have "protected" themselves partially by gerrymandering a lot of Republican districts, but with demographics changing, it might not even matter because out of all 234 of those House Republicans, only 17 would need to be unseated for a Democratic majority in Congress again. Just like my signature states, America died in 2010 because that's when the Republicans took back the House of Representatives and it's been nothing but destruction since and I doubt they'll decide to do the right thing in this case either.
Oh yeah, and I find it ironic how Congress goes on a 5-week vacation aside from all the other vacations and days off they've had this year while Bush had 367 vacation days in his whole Presidency, yet Boehner and McConnell still find a way to attack Obama now for his only one-week vacation and his only 100 days of vacation time he's had since entering office in 2009. And even on these days they were "in session", all they did was attempt to repeal a bunch of laws which Boehner recently said in an interview was what Congress should do rather than pass new ones. Our taxpayer money shouldn't go to them for nothing. Either let's just pay them nothing for doing nothing or let's impeach all of them because I can guarantee this is what the Founding Fathers were strictly against. As President Obama puts it, they need to stop making meaningless votes to repeal ACA and share some concrete, effective ideas with this nation. Because if they don't, why are they there? At this point in time, I can say Vladimir Putin would make a better Speaker of the House than John Boehner because even though both are equally dreadful, at least he can pass laws!