Thursday, October 3, 2013

Want Obamacare, this is what your gonna get!



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Harry Reid is holding our government hostage

“It’s my way or the highway.”  That’s the message D.C. Democrats are sending to America. “I will not negotiate,” says President Obama.
“There’s no need for conversations,” says Harry Reid. “We’ve spoken loudly and clearly, and we have the support of the president of the United States.”
The minority leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, didn’t even bother to show up for the House vote to keep the government open. 
Reid, who calls advocates of defunding the dysfunctional ObamaCare “anarchists,” took the weekend off. 
Those of us trying to fix Washington may be “anarchists” in the eyes of the Democrats’ Senate majority leader, but at least we show up for work.
Must be nice. Those of us trying to fix Washington may be “anarchists” in the eyes of the Democrats’ Senate majority leader, but at least we show up for work.
Talking heads have been painting hyperbolic imagery of a shutdown Armageddon for weeks.
Cars speeding off fiscal cliffs, cans getting kicked down roads of economic destruction, chaos in the streets, pure pandemonium -- all because of those Tea Party “wacko birds” – as the distinguished Republican Sen. John McCain called his colleagues – and their “dangerous game of political chicken,” according to former Republican U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette.
This could have all been avoided, of course. The House has already sent three bills to the Senate that would fully fund the government.
The first continuing resolution would have permanently defunded the president’s broken health care law. The second would have delayed it for a year, while the third would have delayed just the individual mandate and included a version of the Vitter Amendment (named for Sen. David Vitter) which subjects Congress to the same ObamaCare costs and restrictions as the rest of America.
All three were rejected by an obstinate Democrat-controlled Senate, unwilling to move forward unless Harry Reid gets everything he wants.
So instead of pursuing defunding ObamaCare, House Republicans offered to simply delay it the wildly unpopular individual mandate.
According to my scoreboard, that puts the count at three Republican compromise solutions to the Democrats’ zero. House Republicans have already come to the negotiating table. They shouldn't negotiate with themselves anymore.
Republicans should wait until the president and the Senate majority leader show up to work, to negotiate common ground in good faith. 
They may have to wait a while.
The Democrats seem hell bent on feeding into the slimdown scare in the public eye, rather than being cooperative and helping House Republicans to put the fire out.
Where, exactly, is that spirit of compromise and bipartisan solutions that the Democrats keep talking about these days?
In a desperate attempt to preserve the last remnants of the president’s wilting legacy, Harry Reid is holding government funding hostage.
The problem is, everyone is beginning to see the president’s poorly designed health care takeover for the train wreck that it is.
If the Senate majority leader believes that he could just take the weekend off, quietly plant the political hot potato back in the House at the last minute, and then wave his arms in melodramatic disgust on C-SPAN for all to see, he is greatly mistaken. This is not your grandfather’s shutdown showdown.
Unlike 1995, grassroots America is paying close attention, and they’re doing it in real-time. Citizen activists, armed with social media and a community of principle-driven peers, have fundamentally changed the power structure in Washington.
Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that a decentralized network of individuals nationwide could out-muscle the lobbyists and Washington’s political class to successfully pass a spending plan that fully defunds ObamaCare.
These are the same activists that helped elect the conservative heroes leading the charge on this fight, including Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.
Over the last few weeks, FreedomWorks activists alone drove over 60,000 calls to Congress demanding a continuing resolution that funds every part of the government without funding ObamaCare, with no sneaky procedural strings attached.
The House did its job – three times, actually.
Now it’s time for the Senate Democrats to meet them halfway.
No matter how many ways he tries to spin it, Harry Reid is holding the hot potato. And if he’s not careful, Democrats will have to explain to a lot of angry Americans why preserving Obama’s legacy was worth shutting the government down.

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Leaked Emails: Boehner Worked With Reid to Save Lawmaker Subsidies

House Speaker John Boehner Monday called on colleagues to ban an exemption lawmakers and staff receive for health insurance, but he and his aides had worked for months with Democratic leaders to save the subsidies, leaked documents and emails show.

The documents were provided to Politico, which revealed Tuesday morning that Boehner and aides were working closely with Democratic rivals to protect the payments.

Roll Call had earlier reported
that Democrats were mulling divulging the private communications between Boehner Chief of Staff Mike Sommers and Reid Chief of Staff David Krone as proof that Boehner was trying to protect the payments.

Urgent: Do You Support Sen. Ted Cruz's Efforts to Defund Obamacare? Vote Here.

The revelations are sure to cause more friction between Boehner and more conservative members of the House of Representatives, who have been pressing for all Obamacare exemptions for Congress to be scrapped.

The documents show Boehner and his aides discussed the matter with the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and others. Further, the documents show that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell knew of the discussions.

A possible legislative solution was drafted, the documents show, and they continued to push for a solution from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Further, Boehner and Reid asked for a meeting with President Barack Obama to lobby him for help, the documents show. The meeting never happened, but a senior Boehner aide was able to speak to White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough about the Speaker's wish to retain the employer subsidy.

Obamacare requires lawmakers and staff to join insurance exchanges, and the debate over whether they should continue collecting the employer contribution from the federal government has been the source of many heated discussions.

The OPM ruled that lawmakers and their staff could not receive employer payments once they went into the subsidies. The office reversed its decision, saying the employer payments could continue.

But Boehner put the issue into the government shutdown debate, attaching an amendment ending the subsidies to a House GOP funding bill.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told Politico the White House should solve the problem, and that "we always made it clear that House would not pass any legislative fix."

He said Boehner was aware that Reid and the White House had been discussing the issue and that the speaker's "fix is repealing Obamacare."

Boehner's office said the leak shows how concerned Democrats are.

"Any emails from Mr. Sommers will reflect the Speaker’s position: he voted against ObamaCare, and he wants to repeal Obamacare," Steel said. "If the Senate Democrats and the White House want to make a ‘fix’ to the law, it would be their fix. The Speaker’s ‘fix’ is repeal. This is just a desperate act by Harry Reid’s staff to protect their own subsidy."

ObamaCare: You Can Win With The Facts

Reid communications director Adam Jentleson, meanwhile, said his boss worked closely with Boehner and was grateful for his help.

Roll Call reported the communications could back up Democrats' claims that Boehner's decision to add an amendment revoking the contributions was a shot at vulnerable Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2014, such as Kay Hagan of North Carolina or Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

House Speaker John Boehner

Boehner is a weak cry baby, that will ended up selling out the Republicans. He has in the past and he'll do it again on this issue of Obamacare. People like him are bringing down the Republican Party. He should step down and let a real man or woman take over.
 

Obama just as responsible for government 'slimdown' as Republicans

President Obama, as much as House Republicans, shut down the government. He is not willing to compromise on just about any issue, leaving the GOP with no other options.
In 2008, Obama won 53 percent of the popular vote and commanding Democratic majorities in congress.
Faced with an economic crisis and carrying a mandate to accomplish universal access to health insurance, Obama was justified to take bold actions. However, as the leader of a democracy, he had the obligation to weight the views of the 47 percent who voted for Senator McCain and forge consensus where possible.
The president’s refusal to accept any changes in the ACA and special treatment for politicians is tyranny.
Yet, over Republican objections, the president abused a fund established to aid troubled banks to bail out GM and Chrysler. To reward autoworkers for campaign support, he confiscated private property by awarding 55 percent of the stock to the union health care trust instead of Chrysler’s creditors as U.S. bankruptcy law requires.
He rewarded Wall Street bankers who supported his campaign with new lending regulations that help them acquire regional banks.
Now, more than half of the nation’s deposits are concentrated among a handful of Manhattan casinos, middle class Americans can’t get decent rates on savings, and small businesses can’t get adequate credit.
Obama imposed other regulations in manufacturing and energy production that reward his constituents, punishing his opponents and slowing growth in an economy increasingly challenged to create enough well-paying jobs.
Prior to the Affordable Care Act, every major piece of social legislation was accomplished by seeking a bipartisan consensus.
Instead, Democratic leaders Pelosi and Reid wholly excluded Republicans from deliberations, and created an unpopular system that compels businesses to purchase health insurance for employees, and individuals lacking employer polices to purchase plans through government-run exchanges.
Through town meetings, polls and a senate election in Massachusetts, Americans expressed opposition. Yet, Democratic leaders packaged the final legislation into a budget reconciliation bill, avoiding the need to win any GOP votes in the Senate—an unprecedented maneuver for such a major piece of legislation.
The individual mandate also raised serious constitutional challenges, but Obama proceeded to warn Chief Justice Roberts not to mess with his law at the 2012 State of the Union Address. Caving to pressure, Roberts wrote a decision whose legal reasoning few ideologically neutral legal scholars could approve.
Micromanaging one-sixth of the U.S. economy is proving to be a nightmare. Facing huge rate increases and burdensome regulations, businesses are dropping insurance coverage Obama promised ordinary Americans they would be able to keep.
In 2010, Republicans won control of the House on a platform to curb spending and repeal ACA. Obama’s 2012 reelection was hardly a mandate to implement the law without substantial changes, because Republicans again won the House on promises to repeal the law.
Congressional Republicans behaved badly—demanding wholesale repeal of the law, when they simply don’t have the votes in the Senate and Obama is still president.
However, in the more recent effort to craft a continuing resolution to keep the government funded, they have indicated significant willingness to deliver what Americans expect—compromise.
Asking the president to postpone the individual mandate one year, as he has done for the employer mandate, and requiring the Congress to obtain their health insurance on the same terms the ACA requires for ordinary Americans are quite reasonable. The president’s refusal to accept any changes in the ACA and special treatment for politicians is tyranny.
Terms Republicans have laid down for raising the debt ceiling—more development of offshore oil, rethinking financial reform and changes to other regulatory policies—are broadly consistent with the public sentiment for a focus on jobs creation.
If the debt ceiling is not raised by October 17, the United States need not default on its debt as the president threatens.
The Treasury continues to collect taxes, and the president will simply have to prioritize what bills he pays, what services he suspends, and place interest payments ahead of other items.
Realizing presidents shape the public dialogue in crises, he is pressuring House Republicans to deny their obligations to constituents lest he put on them the blame for a government shutdown and perhaps a default.

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