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New York Times email:

With the federal government careening toward its first shutdown in 17 years, House Republicans chose a hard line Saturday in their attack on President Obama’s health care law, setting up a late vote to attach a one-year delay of the health care law to legislation that would keep the government operating past midnight Monday.

The House Republican package would also permanently repeal a tax on medical devices that helps pay for the Affordable Care Act.

The House will also vote on a separate bill to ensure military forces continue to be paid in the event of a government shutdown, an admission that the outcome of the fiscal showdown is all but sealed.

The decision to choose confrontation over compromise or surrender all but ensures that much of the government will close on Tuesday, barring a last-minute decision to pass a short-term spending bill while negotiations continue.

The behavior is childish, immature, and dangerous.  Let’s take it a step further and call it un-American.  Do these extremists not accept that the ACA was passed by both houses of the Congress, signed  into law by the President   and declared Constitutional by the Supreme Court?  These are the very people who would be screaming and shrieking RULE of LAW over one of their own issues such as immigration.   They fail to respect the law or acknowledge rule of law  when it comes to  the ACA.

This Congress has done very little except try to do away with the ACA and try to pass anti-abortion legislation.  They need to be sent home in shame.  They are a disgrace to this great nation.

106 Thoughts to “House Republicans almost ensure government shutdown”

  1. Kelly_3406

    I am quite sure the Republicans will surrender in the end. In the meantime, way to go, Boehner!

    There is nothing in the Constitution that requires the House to provide funding for a given law. The Senate could have compromised with a bill that delays the individual mandate by a year. The House would have passed it before the ink even dried and a shutdown would have been avoided.

    So the Senate and president have not been exactly conciliatory either.

    1. Why should the President or the Senate be conciliatory? ACA is the law of the land. Rule of Law? We are a nation of laws. Why should we delay implementing a law? That makes no sense to me.

      It baffles me to no end to make sense of why a law would not be funded. How about NCLB? How about the Medicare Rx plan? Why would Congress just arbitrarily refuse to fund a law? Spite.

      The House Republicans will bear the responsibility and they will be the losers.

      If they try this crap on the debt ceiling, they should be removed from office.

  2. Scout

    And why, Kelly, is it a good idea to bring the operations of the Government of the United States of America to a halt?

  3. Kelly_3406

    I would prefer the government not be shutdown. The Senate and president can easily avoid it by accepting the House version of the CR. At the same time, it’s not the end of the world if the bureaucracy shuts down for a few days.

  4. The Senate and the President shouldn’t be bullied by a few right wing terrorists who threaten the very fiber of our country.

    Washington Post:

    While much of official Washington on Saturday somberly faced the likelihood of a government shutdown, the most conservative members of the House sported a different expression.

    They were smiling.

    “We’re very excited,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). “It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it.”

    This is sick. These people are ignorant. Shutting down the government puts at least a third of the federal employs without pay and costs the government about $2 billion.

  5. Michelle Bachmann seriously must have suffered some injury since the time she studied at William and Mary. They don’t take anyone this stupid.

  6. Emma

    “it’s not the end of the world if the bureaucracy shuts down for a few days.”

    To some people who live paycheck to paycheck, it might seem that way.

    You might be surprised how many hardworking “bureaucrats” are out there. It’s not the knee-jerk oxymoron that “witty” people like to think it is. Many of them will be forced to work next week without any guarantee of pay at all. And believe it or not, they have mortgages and kids’ tuition and all that, too.

    1. Thank you for saying that, Emma. I think the fact that real people are out there being harmed by all this is of critical importance and shame on me for not saying it a little louder. There are no guarantees that all the people furloughed will ever see a dime for the time missed and they do have mortgages, bills to pay, and they need to eat.

      Regardless of how we feel about the underlying issue, these are the people being hurt.

  7. Censored bybvbl

    This country and its reputation are being held hostage by a bunch of out-of-control Kochheads who probably couldn’t balance their own family budgets. Think of the time and money wasted in preparation for their antics.

  8. punchak

    Will Congress members go without pay in case of a shutdown, I wonder?

    1. No they will not go without pay. The President, the Supremes, and Congress will all get paid regardless of how long the government is closed.

  9. Censored bybvbl

    I’m reminded of a game my family used to play when my siblings and I were young. It was called “Doodle”. All you needed was a pencil and paper. Each person took a turn drawing a line, squiggle, whatever and the next person had to add a line or squiggle to the first. The object was to complete an identifiable picture. No one had total control over where the drawing went and each had a say in the finished product. It taught kids that they can’t always have their way and to use their creativity. The finished sketch was often much better than what an individual had imagined. Once in a while a cranky kid would grab the paper and tear it up – or quit – but generally the game went smoothly and was fun. The House Republicans remind me of the cranky kid. They have yet to make a contribution to the game but have held the paper and pencil hostage.

  10. Kelly_3406

    @Emma

    There have been numerous government shutdowns since 1976 – something like 17 or 18. Federal employees have typically been paid retroactively. When democrats shut down the government in the past, it was somehow viewed much less apocalyptically.

    The majority of people in this country view Obamacare negatively. The democrats want Obamacare implemented more than they want to keep the government running.

    1. I am not sure we know what the majority of the people want and I am not sure they know either. There is a real dichotomy when looking at the polls. People will say they love being able to keep their kids on their health care until 26, are relieved that pre existing illness is no longer keeping them from being insured (or the fear of it) and yet mouth that they hate Obamacare.

      Excuse me, but…../that makes no sense. Most people don’t know enough about it to really have an opinion other than what special interest groups have told them to say. I think I include myself in that statistic although I have recently begun to scratch the surface to learn.

      Maybe the majority of the people you know view Obamacare negatively. The majority of the people I know do not. Do you think it’s fair to say birds of a feather at this point?

  11. Emma

    And the Republicans went Obamacare revoked more than they want to keep the government running.

    So here we are…

    1. Then there is that rule of law thing. It is the law. Why don’t the Republicans evaluate what’s wrong with it and fix that rather than trying to gut something that is the law of the land? That makes more sense if they truly hate something that hasn’t yet been tested. Right now they are tilting at windmills with no solutions.

  12. BSinVA

    @Kelly_3406 The majority of the people in this country view Obamacare positively as demonstrated by the re-election of President Obama. The GOP ran against Obama and chanted “down with Obamacare” while doing so. The majority of the people disagreed with the right wing then and still do. The framers of the Constitution outlined the process of creating and changing laws. They did not envision a minority party having the power or even the idea of collapsing the Republic to circumvent the law making process. We are witnessing an economic Civil War by the Republican Party against the United States of America.

    1. One correction, law ENACTING process. The law making process has already happened.

      The Republicans will be the losers here. Probably half of these do called constituents are on Medicare anyway. They would be howling like stuck pigs if someone messed with their Medicare.

      I think we are witnessing a civil war within the party. I have all the respect in the world for the GOP while at the same time, not always agreeing with them (or the Democrats either for that matter) The real GOP needs to get rid of thugs and get back to the principals of the Republican party, not the made up crap they are using for a platform now.

      I can’t tell you how many Republicans I have talked to that feel bullied by the thugs in the party to the point that free flow and exchange of ideas is impossible.

  13. Kelly_3406

    @Censored bybvbl

    Let’s extend the analogy of your childhood game. The game was fun because everyone was free to choose whether to participate or not. But now let’s say that your parents REQUIRED everyone to participate. Furthermore, let’s suppose that there is a cost for the activity and 1/2 that did not want to play in the first place had to pay for themselves and contribute to the cost for the other 1/2 to play.

    You would be very naive to suppose that a significant proportion of the 1/2 being shafted would not disrupt the game.

    1. What ever happened to that old Republican notion of self reliance? Why on earth would you and your party encourage people not to participate and to have no health insurance? Most of us simply cannot afford an out of pocket catastrophic disease. It eats up savings and takes away options. People often end up having to declare bankruptcy or lose their homes if the costs get too high. Medical costs end up getting written off. Someone pays.

      You and I pay on our policies. Debt is written off but that adds to the surging over-all cost of health care. Not having health care is like playing Russian roulette.

      I just don’t understand why you are encouraging this behavior. I don’t know anyone who voluntarily has no health coverage. I do know people who don’t have it because they can’t afford it. Hopefully the government backing will enable everyone to have coverage.

      I don’t think required health care is being shafted and I certainly don’t think younger people should be without. I think its simply irresponsible.

  14. Scout

    We force all drivers to have insurance. If they don’t have it, they pay into a state fund. Nobody is forced to participate in health insurance program. If one chooses not to, however, there is a penalty on their taxes that partially compensates the rest of us for their recklessness. I fail to see a problem with that.

    1. I don’t have a problem with it either. Scout, you hit the nail on the head with the word ‘recklessness.’ It saddens me to hear how much people are being encouraged to be reckless.

  15. middleman

    I’ll play amateur fact-checker. The number of Americans in polls that “view Obamacare negatively” includes folks that want single-payer and otherwise think Obamacare didn’t go far enough to provide insurance for all Americans. That fact skews the numbers to make it seem like more folks are on the GOP side, and it is probably why over 60% of those polled DO NOT want the ACA repealed or de-funded. Polls also show that most people don’t really know what Obamacare is, so one really has to view all these polls somewhat skeptically.

  16. Kelly_3406

    @BSinVA

    Multiple polls show that much of the country does fully understand Obamcare, so the election should not be considered a referendum on the ACA. I contend that a majority of people that understands what Obamacare will do is solidly against it.

    Luckily, in our Republic, a past election or vote does not bind future Congresses from taking action. It is clearly within the prerogative of the House to refuse to include Obamacare in the CR.

    1. Maybe the Democrats should have refused to include funds for the Iraq War in the CR back a few years ago.

      That action would have hurt the nation and placed troops in harms way.

      I guess congress can act as irresponsible and thuggish as it wants.

      I have to figure out who my congressman is and blast him. I got a new one out of Newport News or something. I can’t remember his name but I feel confident he is part of the gang of thugs.

      I do think that the election was a referendum of sorts. Everyone knew that Obama supported Obamacare. Everyone knew Romney did not, even though the plan was similar to the one he successfully orchestrated in Massachusetts. Maybe if Romney had been true to his own principals instead of being fake tea party, he might have won. Who knows.

      The Tea Party and idiots like Michelle Bachmann are having their last swan song. I have confidence that GOP-sters of good conscience will take back their party and sent the Know-Nothing thugs home.

  17. Kelly_3406

    @Kelly_3406
    Typo: … much of the country does NOT understand Obamacare ….

  18. middleman

    What my Republican friends need to do to understand this situation is to “flip it.” What if the GOP held the presidency and the Senate, and a small group of extreme liberals in the House INSISTED that they would not fund the government unless taxes were increased on corporations, background checks and 10-round magazines were mandated, and all immigrants currently in the country were made citizens immediately? The howl from conservatives could be heard from the moon!

  19. Cato the Elder

    The histrionics from the extreme leftist government-is-God crowd are hilarious.

    The real worry here is what if the government shuts down, and the rest of the country yawns. Just like the sequester nonsense.

  20. middleman

    More fact-checker: The government has only been shut down once in history for more than a few hours- in 1995-96 (I remember that one because I worked for a contractor and was laid off for 3 weeks or so. My employer, EG&G Automotive Research, paid us for the time, earning my undying gratitude).

    It’s interesting that if the GOP gets it’s wish to get rid of the ACA, it will INCREASE the deficit. And they purport to be fiscal conservatives!!

  21. middleman

    Your stock portfolio will also yawn, as it drops into the cellar…

  22. BSinVA

    @Kelly_3406 Kelly: when an uninsured person becomes ill and goes to the local hospital’s emergency room…. who pays???

  23. I figured out who my congressman is. I have so much in common with Williamsburg, Newport News and the Northern Neck. Dear God. I will just jump on my tractor and roll on down the road with my concerns.

    Here is the statement from Rep. Bob Wittman:

    Representative Rob Wittman (VA-1) today released the following statement after voting in favor of legislation to continue federal government operations past September 30, 2013:

    “Today I voted in favor of legislation to prevent a government shutdown and prevent a harmful law from being implemented,” Wittman said. “It is unfortunate that Washington, D.C., was again on the brink of another fiscal year without completing its business. I have said time and time again that last-minute deals are no way to govern, but I firmly believe that the government must continue to operate, to ensure our service members and federal employees continue to be paid, and other operations that folks count on each and every day are not interrupted. I urge the Senate to act quickly to pass this legislation and avert a government shutdown.”

    – See more at:

    http://www.wittman.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=843:wittman-
    votes-to-prevent-government-shutdown-defund-obamacare&catid=34:2013-news&Itemid=100133#sthash.al1jvCQX.dpuf

  24. Censored bybvbl

    @Kelly_3406

    I’m not convinced that half the people don’t want to play the game. Some don’t understand the rules. Some are cranky. Some are spiteful. But at some point everybody plays. Those that don’t contribute don’t get to bitch when their imaginary “elephant” doesn’t materialize but looks more like a donkey in the end.

  25. Kelly_3406

    @BSinVA

    That is a very good question that is best left up to the individual states. My problem(s) with Obamacare are the expansion of federal power to implement the individual mandate on the states, the assumption of a one-solution-fits-all approach, and the imposition of a huge transfer of wealth on the middle class.

    However, if a state chooses a given solution, then the situation is entirely different. A state could choose single payer, Romney/Obamacare, health savings accounts with catastrophic coverage, or nothing at all. The state may decide that the individual gets treated one time only without coverage, after that it is pay as you go. If a particular solution does not work well for a state, then it would be much easier to change/improve than for a large federal program where people from Massachusetts likely would want something entirely different than the people of Arizona.

    Fundamentally the goal should be to sharply reduce federal involvement in healthcare. Whatever the federal government touches/regulates instantly becomes much more expensive and much less efficient. My overall answer is that there is no one single solution for the entire country. Who knows what creative solutions might emerge from the individual states?

    This is my last post of the day — I let myself get dragged into a very interesting discussion, but I have other responsibilities.

    1. @Kelly, we have cookies…. 😈

      I am not a states rights person. I figure that all got settled 150 years ago and probably not to at least half my ancestors liking.

      Virginia opted out of having any control over any of the health care. So whose fault is that? Would we have more options? Probably, I don’t know.

      I can’t see shutting the government down or defaulting on our debt over something that is already law. The thing to do is to work towards making sure that works. I am sure it will need tweaking. Most things do.

      This tea party stuff is just posturing and grand-standing and putting both people and the nation at financial risk. I don’t do brinkmanship well.

  26. Scout

    I question the assumption that the federal government necessarily is more inefficient than state of local governments. My guess is that the factual answer is that “efficiency” in a governmental program sense varies greatly from one state to another as well as being highly variable depending on the underlying program. This localization that Kelly advocates can get rather nutty. There may well be people in Cohasset, MA who “want something entirely different” than people in Newton, MA. The questions is whether the underlying program is something that affects the national interest. Health care certainly does.

    1. Maybe we should have lots of choices. I understand that people will be able to chose dental care also either as a stand alone or part of a full policy. Does anyone know about vision care?

  27. Scout

    “state of local” should read “state or local” in previous comment. Apologies.

  28. BSinVA

    Kelly expresses my thoughts exactly. The right is not really opposed to Obamacare; they are opposed to any expansion of the Federal reach, even if it is a rational, fair and good for the country. They were against Social Security, Medicare, Interstate Highways, the space program and the abolition of slavery. Being against those programs was not all bad. Opposition makes the proponents of change think more clearly about what ripple effects are in the future. I also agree with Scout. A State run program is not necessarily better than a Federal program. If, however, you believe the way Kelly believes…a State run program is better than a Federal one… and it follows that a County run program is run more efficiently than a State run program, and a neighborhood program always beats a County program and my own program is superior to any others. Hello Atlas Shrugged.

    1. Well, that was a rapidly descending free-fall. Ker-plunk. Now we are down there taking orders from BS.

      I don’t mind the feds passing things on to the states to implement. States are often closer to the problems they are trying to fix or enhance…just because of geography. I think at some point we are either a country or we aren’t. I am not quite ready to split into a whole bunch of city-states. I resisted giving an exact number since Texas plans to secede from the Union still and parts of Colorado are seceding from the other part.

      I keep thinking that we had a war about 150 years ago where about 600,000 people lost their lives. Probably twice that many were permanently maimed. I don’t think the states’ rights side won. I also remember states rights revival of sorts back in the 50s and 60s over segregation an the need to preserve it. Again, the states rights folks got smacked down.

      It seems like a waste of time to keep trying at something that you lost 150 years ago….well give or take 2 years.

  29. @Moon-howler
    “The decision to choose confrontation over compromise or surrender”?

    The House is attempting to negotiate. But the extremists in the Senate and the President “refuse to negotiate.” That’s a quote from the President.

    Bullied by the right? It’s the Senate and President acting as the bullies just to assuage Obama’s pride over the disaster that is the ACA.

    “Why don’t the Republicans evaluate what’s wrong with it and fix that rather than trying to gut something that is the law of the land? ”
    They are. The basic premise that the government can set a legal precedent that they can force you to buy a product merely because you exist is wrong. Period. Putting the IRS in charge…wrong. Being able to waive a law for political allies….wrong. Want to have pre-existing covered….then write a specific bill for that….of course, what you have after that is not insurance.

    If one does not pay a medical bill, start the proper proceedings. If it is an illegal alien seeking medical help, bill that person’s government.

    The ACA is designed to fail.

    1. The ACA is the law of the land. There is nothing to negotiate about.

      Your solutions are not grounded in reality.

  30. BSinVA

    Cargo: you are spewing the talking points prepared by the right. You know that the GOP likes some aspects of the ACA… you know the DEMs have expressed a willingness to make the ACA a better law. You know there is a process in place that meets both goals of keeping the good stuff and changing the bad stuff. The House needed to follow that process and should have appointed negotiators to sit with the Senate’s representatives and hammer out a compromise. Instead the House wanted all or nothing. They are getting nothing except the blame for being incompetent.

  31. Scout

    The President absolutely cannot “negotiate” on this. To do so would be to encourage these incendiary tactics, not just by this bunch of House Republicans who are taking their electioneering campaign to such extremes that they would break the governance processes of the Republic, but also inspire future Congresses to try the same stunt over any piece of legislation in which they lost the normal legislative battle. The idea that the Nation would repudiate its debts, or that the Congress would turn off the lights on government over a piece of legislation that they did not like, is an deep threat to the contination of responsible governance under the Constitution. This has to be stopped now by firm opposition from Members of Congress who support the Republic as well as the President. Otherwise, small men in both parties will reduce our governance to a series of crises every time they end up on the short end of a legislative process. Obamacare isn’t the issue. There’s nothing to negotiate about now.

    1. I see this Congressional behavior as a direct threat to our Constitution and way government works under that Constitution. I see their behavior as thuggery.

      Scout, you really captured much of what I think many of us trying to say.

  32. @BSinVA
    The is no way to “improve” its basic premise. The gov’t should not have the power to force a citizen to buy ANYTHING. The IRS should not be in charge of heath care rules.

    This is merely another tool to build dependency on the government. That’s what the subsidies are for.

    @Scout
    “The President absolutely cannot “negotiate” on this. To do so would be to encourage these incendiary tactics,”

    Sure he can. He’s already backpedaling on ACA. by giving waivers to all of his political allies. Its obviously not working. Let’s give everyone a waiver, even for a year.

    Sometimes you have to use incendiary tactics to prevent harm to the country.
    Repudiate debts? In what way? Are you telling me that you believe that the President would not pay the debt service? This is not an attack on the Constitution. We are in this problem because this threat was NOT used more often.

    Heck, one of the problems is that this is a Continuing Resolution. Both sides have dropped the ball on providing a BUDGET.

    1. I find it amazing how fast you and your like-minded political allies throw away the concept of rule of law when its something you don’t like or don’t think you like.

      The Supreme Court has ruled on the legality of the ACA. Done deal.

      What more do you want? All three branches of government have affirmed this law.

  33. Scout

    It’s probably well within the President’s constitutional executive powers to adjust certain aspects of the implementation of this or other federal programs. However, for the sake of every future president and every future Congress, this campaign tactic by certain House members has to be stopped dead in its tracks. It never should be the case, under any Administration of any party or any Congress of any particular partisan orientation, that the entire functioning of governance have a gun held to its head by those who think they have a good election issue. If this President can hold firm here and make this blow up in these saboteurs’ faces, the Republic may be spared it ever happening again, or at least for many decades. That’s what’s at stake.

    CS – I’m not hearing the House advocates of this tactic saying that they are doing it because the budget process is screwed up (which it indeed is). They have been fairly overt in saying that this stunt is being undertaken to force revisions in Obamacare.

    Finally, before I go to work, it is absolutely laughable for the Rs who are behind this to say that they are trying to avoid shutting down the government, that the responsibility is on the Administration to give in. That’s like kidnappers saying that they were trying to save a child’s life, but the parents weren’t being quick enough in scrounging up the huge ransom demand, and therefore it’s the parents’ fault that they had to shoot the kid.

    1. Excellent analogy re: kidnappers

  34. Censored bybvbl

    We all know how well a government shutdown worked for Newt Gingrich. His popularity just soared as Clinton’s tanked! (Snark!)

    1. Another great point. Newt never regained his mojo after that. He became that silly little man with the multiple wives. The emperor had no clothes.

  35. Pat.Herve

    Everyone is confused on how ACA is going to work.

    It is not a government takeover of the healthcare industry as many of the right sound bites. It does allow a state to create a plan that insures their citizens – a state can go single payer if it wants. Massachusetts and Hawaii do not have to change their plans. Single payer would have been a government takeover – this is a plan that keeps, encourages and expands private insurance coverage. The free market gets a place (the exchanges) to advertise their product – how much more free market does one want? Insurance regulation stays with each individual state – just the plans have to be more equal. Funny how the ones saying that they want policies to be sold across state lines are the same one wanting states to have more power – keeping the policy regulated by the state keeps the state on top of it.

    Budget – It was an election issue that the Senate had not passed a budget. Now that they have it has been the Republicans who have prevented it from going to conference. Do the R’s want a budget or not – if they want a budget it needs to go through the process. Gunking up the works and preventing Congress from legislating is not how it should be done.

    This is just another CR – CR’s are to fund government at some specified level – not to manipulate an individual law. The R’s are getting wagged by a very small dogs tail.

    If the law is broken – fix it – where is the replace part of the law? All what the R’s in the house has done is vote approx 45 times to defund ACA.

    Delaying it for a single year is a real political ploy by the House – it is not a plan it is delay it to prevent it. A year from now we will be in the same place. We have the election of Obama in 2012 which was a referendum on Obamacare.

    The person that goes without insurance today is hedging their risk on my back. It is not personal responsibility. They are causing the rates of services to increase so that the insured (and those that pay) pay more to cover their poor planning. When they show up they are given services.

    This shutdown is going to be more severe than the 1995 shutdown. Back then about half of government was already funded through several CR’s – but now there is no CR’s in place for anything and a shutdown will be a total shutdown.

    Where were all the debt and deficits hawks when they were voting for war and tax cuts at the same time? Unfunded mandates? Paul Ryan/Cantor/Boenher/McConnel – they all voted for unfunded mandates when the President was not Obama.

    I do hope the R’s are ready for the political backlash that is coming their way. And if anyone is looking at their own internal poll that says that the R’s are on the right side of this and will not get the brunt of the blame, I direct you to watch Karl Rove on fox on election night. They are the same polsters.

    1. Denial. Will Karl Rove ever be back on top of his game? I seriously doubt it.

      Pat, you have also made excellent points.

      This tea party crew will not stop until they destroy something. Right now, it looks like our form of government and the stock market are right in the line of fire.

  36. Pat.Herve

    And talking about State’s Right’s and expanding Government – many of the red states that have punted the free market health insurance exchanges to the Fed’s have really just put more power into the Federal Government and have given away their ability to have the Exchange customized for their state. Way to go.

  37. Exactly, all while whining and crying about too much fed take over. Well, doh…don’t opt out.

    The pure stupidity in all this is baffling. It’s really all about wanting to fix Obama.

  38. Who will miss the baby panda cam or the baby tiger cam? Those will stop at midnight if the government closes down.

    How about no FDA inspections? shut down

    No national parks

    Will there be pressure on the tea party people out there? Of course not. Let’s roll? Michelle Bachmann is happy. They simply don’t care. I am resisting calling them anarchists but ….with a few adjectives in front of the word.

    This is nirvana for them. $200 million a day? They don’t give a crap.

    What A-holes! I can’t imagine Americans wanting their country to fail.

  39. Starryflights

    It is certainly unAmerican not to pay our troops who are risking their lives to keep us free. The repugs hate our troops,

  40. Remember…whatever is shut down…is by EXECUTIVE order.

    Too bad the Senate refused to delay the implementation of this flawed bill while further compromises could be discussed and the bill “fixed” like people here have advocated.

    Its hard to “fix” the problems when the Senate and President are unwilling to negotiate because the President can give waivers to his friends. The extremists in the Senate are willing to shut down America to prevent the President from having to veto commonsense bills. The Senate wasn’t even willing to vote on the House bill as it was….is Reid afraid that it would pass?

    1. Surely you aren’t still trying to defend the anarchists?

      Why should the president have to negotiate established law?

      He shouldn’t.

      Money talks and bullshit walks. There is a lot of bullshit in the House of Representatives. Many of them are simply buffoons. They are willing to hold the country hostage to get their own misguided ways. I never realized they hated the United States this much. Its very sad.

      Who would you have decide what is essential and what isn’t?

      One buffoon today said that this is just a paid vacation for the federal workers. What a horrible thing to say. Paid? Who is paying their mortgage and buying the groceries for the federal employees?

  41. middleman

    I read an interesting fact today in a W. Post letter to the editor. It seems that our country has gone through a very similar time in our past, and the parallels are chilling.

    A quote from a president: “We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten. . . . If we surrender, it is the end of us. This was Abraham Lincoln speaking in 1860.

    The situation then was that southern states were demanding a “compromise” on slavery in exchange for not seceding from the union. Their “compromise” involved the victorious party making all the concessions to ensure the continuation of slavery, and today the “compromise” would involve delaying or preventing millions of poor people from getting good medical care. Just like 1860, southern states are major drivers in the effort to “break up” the country, this time through destabilization of the economy rather than secession.

    Man, the more things change, the more they remain the same…

    1. Look where it got the country. Should I perhaps point out that these are the same people hell bent on no gun laws? Maybe they are planning on a rebellion.

  42. Kelly_3406

    @Pat.Herve

    Obamacare may not be a full takeover, but it’s definitely a power grab. Congress passed an appropriations bill for the DoD today. The House should pass two more CRs: one for HHS minus Obamacare and a “clean” one that funds everything else. Then the Senate and president will have no excuse for not funding the rest of the government. That would call the bluff of Obama and Reid.

    If democrats decide to negotiate on Obamacare, then funding of the HHS can get funded.

    I heard Obama say today that no Congress had ever tried to “extort” a president using a government shutdown or debt limit as leverage. That is not even close to being true.

    1. Let’s negotiate the 2nd amendment instead. That makes as much sense.

      The ACA is established law.

      What happens if the next time some tea party anarchist buffoon gets power hungry and wants to defund Medicare? How about the FBI? How about The ADA?

  43. Emma

    Most thinking people realize that it’s only a small fraction of the hard-right who have fractured and hobbled the Republican Party. Only the simpletons lump all of them into “repugs” or whatever you were instructed to call them today.

    @Starryflights

    1. I think it is very important to remember that it isn’t all Republicans holding America hostage. It is the hard right. I am waiting for the real Republicans to stand up to them.

      Thanks for reminding us, Emma.

  44. Is trying to hold the Republicans to their stated intentions now the definition of “hard right?”

  45. blue

    Middleman,

    The problem with your quote is that Lincoln had already sought compromise to hold the union together — by offering to continue and protect slavery where it already existed but to also prevent its expansion in to the new territories. Southern democracts were unwilling to accept the compromise and went to war not over slavery but over the right to expand it. Here today democrats are again unwilling to compromise. This time its over a bill that was not bipartisan, is already causing economic dislocation and job loss and they are willing to shut down the government to prevent any such offerred compromise. Its time for democrats to compromise to the right, do the right thing and not shut the government down over a bill that could not be passed again today.

    1. Where have you been hiding, Blue? Welcome back.

  46. Scout

    CS: Why would not the Republicans propose amendments to the health care laws without linking them to either continued government operations in non-related spheres or the ability of the government to maintain its credit internally and internationally?

  47. Pat.Herve

    @Kelly_3406
    It is not a power grab. Show the facts to back up the statement.

    1. @Pat, I don’t see how anyone can insist that a bill that was passed by both houses of Congress, signed in to law by the President, and reaffirmed by the Supreme Court can be considered a power grab.

  48. Pat.Herve

    Sad state of affairs when Congress people behold themselves to PAC’s and other groups instead of their constituents.

    Obamacare had the referendum at the election – and the voices clearly stated that they wanted it.

  49. Kelly_3406

    @Pat.Herve

    It is a power grab in that the Feds are creating new powers and invading privacy:

    1) Require Americans to purchase a product from a private company (establishes principle that Feds can require economic activities of individual citizens);
    2) Establish what riders have to be included in private insurance plans (Obama dictated that contraception would be covered);
    3) Require businesses to provide coverage to adult children of employees who may not even be in the same state (could result reduce employment for people with adult children to reduce costs);
    4) Decide when life-saving care will be provided (Kathleen Sebelius approved organ transplant which she means she could also turn it down);
    5) Dictate large price increases for the low risk, young insured (use forced economic activity to spread the wealth and force people to pay more for a service they may never use);
    6) Dictate that private health information will be kept in interconnected database (gives the government including IRS access to private health information).

    I could go on ….

    1. 1. what is the one thing that happens to everyone? Death. I believe that most states require a casket, even when the deceased is being cremated. How do you get around that? Caskets aren’t free. I don’t care if it is the state or the feds. It all ends up the same. Plus having health care is just the responsible thing to do.

      2. That is done in Virginia all the time. The two coverages that pop into my mind are coverage for autism and also a particular treatment for breast cancer. Nothing new here.

      3. It would be interesting to see how much this costs. Presumably the kid is alreay on the parents plan. So it just postpones that adult child coming off by 4 years. No expense is added. In fact, if memory serves me it doesn’t matter if you have 2 kids or 10 kids your dependent costs are the same.

      4. Insurance companies do this now and there is little or no appeal.

      5. I have seen no proof of this assumption. How do you know how much insurance is going to cost the younger worker?

      6. Hipa (sp) rules will prevent sharing of medical information.

      I think we need to take a wait and see approach and fix those flaws that are burdensome. Regardless, ACA has nothing to do with the CR. This is an immature, irresponsible spoiled brat way to handle laws that people don’t like.

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