This May Finally End This Sorry Show...

[Lord Jim]

At different times he's used "screwy", "loopy" and "screwed"...

But I agree that repetition isn't doing anything to help his point...

ETA:

I've gone back and edited my earlier post to include those other options.

[Guinevere]

ETA:

It may turn out that the one who comes out of this looking the best on the GOP side is Paul Ryan, who had the good sense to stay completely away from the "end Obamacare or we'll shoot the economy in the head" crowd, and who now looks like the guy who may have gotten the ball rolling to end this mess...

Not if you've been paying close attention -- Ryan is the nutbagdoucheasshole all of the aformentioned calling for the "conscience clause" to allow employers to cease playing for birth control as part of the ACA (where however, are the parts calling for the cessation of payments for Viagra and vasectomies?):

But instead of absorbing this painful reality, some rank-and-file Republicans grew visibly excited about the prospect of opposing such a deal, said one person in the room. This defiance was fed by Ryan, who stood up and railed against the Collins proposal, saying the House could not accept either a debt-limit bill or a government-funding measure that would delay the next fight until the new year.

According to two Republicans familiar with the exchange, Ryan argued that the House would need those deadlines as “leverage” for delaying the health-care law’s individual mandate and adding a “conscience clause” — allowing employers and insurers to opt out of birth-control coverage if they find it objectionable on moral or religious grounds — and mentioned tax and entitlement goals Ryan had focused on in a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

Ryan’s speech appeared only to further rile up the conservative wing of the GOP conference, which has been agitating the shutdown strategy to try to tear apart the health-care law.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... print.html

[Big RR]

guin--is coverage for viagra mandated under the ACA? Right now many drug plans already exclude it; not certain about vasectomies.

IMHO inclusion of coverage for vasectomies and birth control pills (as well as voluntary female sterilization) makes perfect sense and would go a long way to cutting future costs (you would think that this would be attractive to those who bemoan the program as fiscally irresponsible). Viagra? IMHO it treats a medical condition and should be treated as any other medical condition and examined for therapeutic and cost effectiveness in deciding whether it should be covered.

A conscience clause makes no sense, especially since it is never the employer but the employee who pays for the coverage. True, the employer is forced to divert some of the money which would otherwise be paid to the employee as salary to pay for the coverage, but it is always part of the total compensation package the employee earns. In no way is an employer forced to fund any therapy, and the feelings of the employer on any therapeutic regime are not at all relevant.

[dgs49]

O&W, who, exactly, do you suppose is going to push for these common-sense innovations?

Government employees vote in blocs. In many municipalities, particularly in corrupt states like New York, they can virtually determine the outcome of elections, which is why Republican office-holders are essentially non-existent. Except for self-appointed divinities as in NYC. No current politician will work to bring about rational reform, because it would be career suicide.

Municipal bankruptcy is the ONLY scenario that bodes well for people who actually work for a living in the private sector. The sooner the better.

[Big RR]

If that were true, how would republican Rudy Giuliani get elected mayor of the biggest municipality in the state of NY, NYC?

[Guinevere]

Since I actually represent and work closely with many municipalities, there is pretty much only one response to Dave's "statement" about the voting habits of municipal employees: bullshit

Oh, and by the way, municipalities in Massachusetts are required to have a balanced budget , and may not borrow to fund regular municipal expenses (they can bond for capital projects, but the bond payments must be made through the regular appropriated budget).

Big RR, *I* agree with you. It seems many of the Congressional Republicans do not.

[Big RR]

No, I don't think most of the republicans in congress endorse such a clause at all. I think the so-called conscience clause is just another way to try and throw a wrench in the workings of the ACA.

[liberty]

The 14 th amendment requires the debts be paid. Social security has its own dedicated funding, to use any of that money that is not in surplus for any other purpose would be misappropriation, an impeachable offense. To refuse to use available tax income to pay the debts is all so an impeachable offense. Constitutionally the president is in a box. He could be impeached in the house but he would never be convicted in the senate.

[Scooter]

So House Republicans would impeach the President for failing to pay debts when they refused to authorize the means to pay them? It would certainly be completely in character.

[Big RR]

The point is that their failure to act does not suddenly give the president new powers. I agree the house repubs 9particularly) are acting like idiots, but I still don't think the president has the power to do what some are suggesting, and maintain it would be a very bad thing to give him that power.'

As for impeachment, that s solely the province of the legislature and bringing such an action need not be something that is "Fair".

[Lord Jim]

It looks like the final pieces are falling into place:

Senate leaders announce tentative budget deal

Senate leaders on Wednesday announced a bipartisan agreement to end the partial government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, teeing up a string of votes which could start later in the day.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell announced the "important agreement" on the floor.

Senators have been scrambling since Tuesday night to hammer out a proposal, following the collapse of a plan in the House of Representatives.

Talks were led by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who planned to discuss the framework with members of his caucus late Wednesday morning.

The framework on the Senate side would raise the debt ceiling through Feb. 7, and include a spending bill meant to last through Jan. 15. The plan would not include any provision relating to the ObamaCare medical device tax, as prior plans did; instead it would include a single provision meant to verify the income of those receiving ObamaCare subsidies. It would also instruct a bipartisan budget committee to report back on a broader plan by mid-December.

The House could be preparing to move the measure quickly, with a Thursday deadline to raise the debt ceiling looming.

On Tuesday, House Republicans failed to move on an alternate budget plan. House GOP leaders, after initially planning to vote on their plan sometime before midnight, shelved the proposal after leaders struggled to round up the votes. "It is over," one GOP aide told Fox News late Tuesday.

With that decision, focus shifted back to the Senate.

Amid discontent on the House side, conservatives were also unhappy with the Senate version and raised concerns that Senate Republicans would go along with it.

But with House Speaker John Boehner losing support for the latest House plan, the odds increased that the chamber could be left taking up whatever the Senate might send over.

Some Democrats urged Republicans to throw in the towel. "You have two options -- you can get bowled over by the Senate or you can get bowled over by the Senate," said one House Democratic aide.

Senate negotiators are racing against a Thursday deadline to raise the debt ceiling.

While the Senate had originally been crafting a bipartisan bill to address the budget impasse, House Republicans surprised Senate negotiators earlier Tuesday when they announced they were pursuing their own framework. Moving quickly, Boehner's office announced late Tuesday afternoon that the chamber would vote by the end of the night.

But a vital meeting of the House Rules Committee, which prepares bills for the floor, was then postponed -- a signal that House leaders were lacking the necessary votes.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10 ... cels-vote/

Cruz has also announced that he won't filibuster, (that doesn't surprise me at all; he's smart enough to know that he's already milked this for all the money and publicity he could get and there's no percentage in it for him to delay it for 30 hours and put it past the default deadline)

It's also being widely reported that Boehner will go ahead and put the Senate bill on the House floor (much as he did with the "fiscal cliff" legislation on New Year's after having gone as far as he could trying to placate the Kookaboo Caucus) where it will pass easily with both Democratic and Republican votes.

If the reports about Boehner are correct, (he hasn't announced it officially) , it will pass the Senate later today, go to the House and pass sometime this evening prior to the midnight deadline...

The way this has gone, probably about five minutes before the deadline...

[Scooter]

The point is that their failure to act does not suddenly give the president new powers.

I don't think it frames the question correctly to claim it is about giving the president new powers. I think the question is whether it is constitutional for the legislative branch to get two kicks at the cat, first by having to authorize appropriations, and then by being able to hold up the spending they authorized by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. I think it raises issues similar to those raised by the line item veto, which was deemed unconstitutional, in that both of them allow for picking and choosing between which authorized appropriations can be spent and which cannot, when there is nothing in the Constitution which would appear to create any sort of hierarchy of authorized appropriations.

[Big RR]

Well I think that it is part of the power of the legislature, and one of the checks and balances vis a vis the executive. But I would welcome a constitutional ruling. Would the courts rule here? I'm unsure, they might just punt it as a political question.

[liberty]

Well, we could avoid default by the president taking the tax income we have coming in and using it to pay the interest on the debt first, but that would not leave much for everything else. One thing we could do would be to stop all foreign aid, but most of that money is already spent, but there is next year. I generally approve of foreign aid but when one is desperate to save one’s own family you do what you must.

[Lord Jim]

Well, we could avoid default by the president taking the tax income we have coming in and using it to pay the interest on the debt first, but that would not leave much for everything else. One thing we could do would be to stop all foreign aid, but most of that money is already spent, but there is next year.

Lib, there's so much wrong with that I hardly know where to start...(And after posting about the whole Nazi religion thing, at the moment I have neither the time nor the energy to go into it)

Suffice it to say:

Foreign aid and diplomacy – which includes the State Department budget – together account for around 1 percent of all federal spending, or about $56 billion in President Obama's fiscal 2013 budget.

http://nationalpriorities.org/blog/2012 ... reign-aid/

56 billion dollars, in a 3.5 trillion dollar budget...

If you think we're going to make any meaningful dent in the deficit by eliminating foreign aid, (which would be foolhardy for any number of reasons) then please pass that pipe and let me take a hit...

[Lord Jim]

It's a done deal...

(It may go a couple of hours beyond the technical deadline, but it's a done deal)

The Senate began to vote Wednesday on a short-term bill to end the partial government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, as House Republican leaders indicated they were ready to back down on their demands that the legislation rein in ObamaCare.

The bill, to the dismay of some conservatives, does not include any major provisions pertaining to the health care law. But, with the House a day earlier unable to muster support for an alternate GOP plan, bipartisan Senate negotiators stepped up with the new proposal Wednesday afternoon.

The text of the plan was released shortly before the Senate started the vote series. The series will include one test vote, followed by a final vote. As the votes began, the White House released a statement saying the president would support the bill.

If the Senate and House approve the bill, it will go to President Obama for his signature -- and put an end, for now, to the historic showdown that has kept the government partly shuttered for more than two weeks. Putting additional pressure on lawmakers to reach an agreement, Congress was facing a Thursday deadline to raise the debt ceiling.

House Speaker John Boehner said earlier that the House "absolutely" will take up the Senate bill, even if he has to rely on mostly Democrats to pass it, and that he expects the partial government shutdown to end by Thursday.

"We fought the good fight. We just didn't win," he said in an interview with Cincinnati radio station WLW-AM.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10 ... -block-it/

[Long Run]

Cool, now we can get back to pointing out the myriad problems with the ACA, which even liberals are declaring are declaring to be a disastrous rollout.

[Lord Jim]

Cool, now we can get back to pointing out the myriad problems with the ACA, which even liberals are declaring are declaring to be a disastrous rollout.

That's the ultimate irony of this...

If the Kookaboo Caucus within the GOP House Caucus hadn't compelled all of this drama, all of the media attention would have been on this Obamacare roll out fiasco, (which continues to this very day)....

And now the focus will shift to this because it continues...

The argument that the House GOP has fatally destroyed the Republican brand by this process is false...

By mid January, there will be a strong public view that Obamacare is not ready for prime time, and that will assist the GOP...For another short term deal...

My personal view is that that there will not be a long term deal until sometime next spring or early summer, after the primaries and primary filing deadline dates...

When there are no more fears of primaries and primary challengers, and the focus is on the general election,that might create a brief window of opportunity for actually getting something done...

[liberty]

If you think we're going to make any meaningful dent in the deficit by eliminating foreign aid, (which would be foolhardy for any number of reasons) then please pass that pipe and let me take a hit...

Well Jim, what else can we do. I am willing to pay more taxes how about you? Unfortunately most people are not willing to pay more. We can either pay more taxes or cut spending but we can’t continue to borrow more money at the current rate. It just can’t last; we can’t last; the fall will come.

Our responsibility as a nation is to take care of our own people; foreigner are not our people, they belong to other nations. Am I wrong ?

Tel me if am wrong Jim: If a trillion is ten hundred billion. Would not fifty billion be one twentieth of a trillion? Perhaps I am wrong I have never been great at math and those kind of numbers do make me dizzy, but to me that does seem like a significant amount of money.

Jim please be patient and explain to be me why ending foreign aids would be foolhardy for us?

[Lord Jim]

Jim please be patient and explain to be me why ending foreign aids would be foolhardy for us?

Okay Lib, I'll go through the math with you on this...

[Just as I did when The Traitor Snowden revealed that we were only paying a comparable amount...about 52 billion dollars a year, for all of our intelligence agencies, and I had this exchange with Dave:

52 billion out of 3 trillion dollar budget?

Wow, I didn't realize what a good deal we were getting. We should probably increase it.

You consider this a good ROI?

The minority view, I would wager.

In the past 12 years, the country has suffered exactly one significant terrorist attack, (The Boston Marathon Bombing) while dozens have been foiled...

And this record has been achieved at a cost of less than 2% of the federal budget....

Yeah, I consider that an excellent ROI, and if that's a minority view, I'm good with that...

I can't be responsible for the ignorance of the majority...

Lib, I don't think you really understand what's achieved with "foreign aid" nor how small a part of the US budget it represents...[that 50 billion dollar figure doesn't just represent "foreign aid" it represents the entire cost of the State Department...and it's miniscule, when you look at the total budget...]

Of all the things the federal government spends money on, "foreign aid" is an area where we probably get the most bang for the buck...

Unless of course you are a head-in-the-sand neo-isolationist, who believes that the United States can simply walk away from it's role in the world and everyone will leave us alone...

If you believe that, I have a twin tower I'd like to sell you...