Senate The Future of the Republican Party

Well it's certainly a serious matter...It's just that it sits somewhere between "no big deal" and "fire is going to descend from the sky and engulf the entire world." That was my point. Seriously...you're throwing concepts like martial law and privatization out there like there really is no tomorrow. The US is a dual federal/state system of government. For the federal government, hitting the debt ceiling doesn't automatically trigger a default. It's just that. A ceiling. Congress could authorize that all the existing revenue be used to pay the debt, and there wouldn't be any default at all. It's just that the ceiling means that something else would then have to give. We're talking about billions of dollars, so it all depends on the priority given. It's certainly not easy, but it's not the end of the world either. The situation would be somewhere in the middle.

Which brings us to the dual fed/state system. If federal social security payments are reduced, then a state's elderly services agency could certainly make up the difference or offer other support. A County hospital might suspend medicare collections for low income patients until this is resolved. The point is there are all sorts of other options that exist long before troops start marching down the street shooting zombies and nationalizing banks by force, which is what you're not acknowledging at all. Some states would fare better than others. Some states are more prepared than others. States that derive a lot of their income from the federal government would obviously have a tougher time. V, Remember Y2K? Remember when planes were "going to fall from the sky?" and non-Y2k compliant toasters were going to rise up and enslave the population? Your post might as well be taken verbatim from the year 1999. Except none of that happened, because there were options, and the system adapted.

Shinjo, the problem with your post is that as always, one can just swap the two parties around, and your logic would apply to either. Why, if the democrats just agree to a minor year delay in Obamacare (which makes sense because implementation isn't fully ready anyway), the entire country would have a budget tomorrow, right? Default could be avoided. Why not? Because Obamacare is so flawed, and so unpopular that the democrats know that any delay will ultimately kill the law, so they aren't willing to negotiate in good faith at all. What is it about the law that forced the democrats into a corner to the point that the party embraces bad law instead of reform? Is that the crux of your reverse argument? Because you're not examining the situation, you're just sitting back and attempting to blame....blame....blame...

 

The government and independent organizations/people have repeatedly said they're not sure this is possible or legal. You know this, right?

 

And just to add, the RSC, which is probably the most conservative subgroup within the GOP, at least for the House, just announced that they were putting together a plan to raise the debt ceiling as long as the democrat side agreed to larger spending reform. That certainly sounds like a plan to me? What has to happen though is that if another stop-gap measure is agreed to, then real long term debate has to happen. The country can't go through a series of 6 month temporary budgets only to have the same dire deadlines keep coming up and up and up...

The ironic thing is, at least in relation to many people in this thread is where's Harry Reid on the Congressional side except sitting back saying "no negotiations?" Obama called for a meeting with the GOP, even as he repeated "no negotiations." On its face, it looks like the GOP are ones focusing on long term solutions even as they are obviously taking the heat for their short term brinksmanship, vs the wisdom or lack of wisdom in taking such a course.

 

You mean it's the dreaded "government and independent organizations!" But the issue is that like anything else, being "not sure if something is possible.." is just that until it actually comes up and/or is tried as an option. Since Congress makes the laws, it's rather silly to precognitively debate what is or isn't possible until it's enacted and the legal framework presented based on the situation.

 

A couple points...

First, the delay is an ideological point - not a policy one. They are demanding it to serve an ideological point that they 'got something' out of the fight. It serves no policy goal. Josh Barro explains better than I can why it actually doesn't make sense - policy wise - to delay the individual mandate.

Second, you (and the GOP) seem to be overestimating it's unpopularity and using that as a justification for the disaster the GOP has caused. The latest poll put it at something like 40 approve, 51 disapprove. Oh the horror! Do you know what's more unpopular than Obamacare? Shutting down the government in order to defund it! Yes, shut down the government and breach the debt ceiling because of this travesty. It was popular enough to get Obama elected again, was it not? It's not like Democrats demanded Bush resign or they'd shutdown the government when his approval rating dipped down to 33. Because that would have been stupid.

Third, you can't really reverse the logic around without perverting it. The Democrats didn't purposely tie the funding of Obamacare to raising the debt ceiling/funding the government. It was already there because it's the law and they passed it (through normal democratic measures a couple of years ago).

Fourth, again, I have no problem with the Republicans wanting to make alterations to Obamacare, repeal it, defund it, delay whatever bits and pieces of it they want, etc. But it needs to be done the same way everything else gets passed into law. They had their chance in 2012 and the voters rejected them. There is a reason that, in every previous Congress, they didn't re-debate every single program and provision and require everyone to re-agree on it before everything got funded again. Something only got repealed/stripped out of the budget if all three agreed. Imagine if the Democrats did this in 2006 over the Bush tax cuts, the Iraq War, or Medicare Part D.

Fifth, the votes are in the House to pass a clean CR by most independent whip counting. Boehner is choosing not to allow a vote on it because he doesn't want to anger the Tea Party. Or lose.

Sixth, yes, the GOP is now offering a "grand bargain" on spending/taxes in order to avert the debt default. But this is still insane: they're proposing a solution that eluded both sides, twice, for months on end a week out from doomsday? I'm all for a "grand bargain" where both sides give something (as is Obama). But negotiating while the atomic bomb is ticking in the red is insane. Release the hostage and then negotiate. Call me crazy and partisan, I know, but that's how I see it.

 

Their only dire because the GOP has decided to now use them as a means of getting what they want and policy concessions that they cannot get through elections. What part of this is so hard for you to comprehend? If they were treated as they were during every other President (except when first tried this in the 90s) then they wouldn't be "dire."

If you have it all figured out, then you should probably tell Treasury and Wall Street how to do it. Seriously.

About 2 million invoices per day are sent over to Treasury and, after their computers validate the amount, the payment is authorized. This happens dozens of times per second. The Treasury's computers are designed to authorize payments when they come due. Here is a Treasury official explaining this better than I can: "The U.S. government’s payment system is sprawling. It involves multiple agencies. It involves multiple interacting computer systems. And all of them are designed for only one thing: To pay all bills on time. The technological challenge of trying to adapt that to some other system would be very daunting, and I suspect that if we were forced into a mode like that the results would be riddled with all kinds of errors." I would say that's discomforting, but it seems like you and a couple novice GOP representatives know how to do it so hey.

So you're telling me that the government will be able to configure the entire electronic payment system that the government relies on to prioritize one type of payment over the other? In a matter of weeks? With many of the workforce, you know, not at work?

As for the legality of it, it's not entirely clear it would be constitutional to pass a law saying bond repayments are more important than everything else. Steve Bell, a Republican at the BPC, says that "Anyone who says they know for sure whether this is legal is not telling the truth."

And this is still ignoring the other questions of what impact this would have on our economy with such a huge drop in spending and the logistics of every other payment (who still gets paid?).

 

Guys, I'm getting a bit worried about you.
Michelle Bachmann thinks the End Times are near.
"We need to rejoice".

More worryingly: she pronounces 'terrorists' as 'terrace'.

 

Eh Shinjo, I would disagree with large swaths of your post. I'm not one to be beholden to polls to the detriment of doing what is right vs wrong. Yeah, I agree that shutting down the government is stupid, assuming that both sides negotiated in good faith, which hasn't happened. In a previous reply to a point I made you said the reality that the democrats haven't agreed to a full budget since 2009 was a scapegoat. But it's precisely the larger issue that brought the government to this point. When is the right time to negotiate a complete budget then? Would you be comfortable with the democrats never agreeing to a larger budget framework? Are you satisfied with the current system of stopgap budgets? Should the federal government simply produce endless supplies of money, precisely which the "budget ceiling" was designed to prevent? Someone has to light a fire under the Senate to get these larger issues worked out. This shutdown is an extreme way to do it, but it doesn't mean it is solely the GOP's fault, and it's something that needs to be addressed. Here are your points:

1st point: Except it is a very important policy point. Obamacare is flawed. It needs to be fixed. It has the potential to interfere in areas that weren't vetted when it was passed. Both Congress and the President have to sit down and fix it. The time to do that is before it is implemented. Obamacare doesn't need to be scrapped, it needs repair for some fatal flaws. Except the President's side isn't doing that. Since Obamacare is supposed to be Obama's legacy, his party has declared that it will be hands off, to the point that bad law is embraced over reform. This is why this situation exists. It would be the simplest of things to tie a delay for the individual mandate to coincide with the delay on the business side that is already in place. Already in place. You can't have one party sit back and say "we will never negotiate over Obamacare," and then when that refusal comes to a head, blame the other side for letting things go so far...

2nd point: Again, I'm not beholden to polls vs what is just right, so I don't really have an answer here. I would just suggest that you look internally and find some issue that you feel strongly about, and then ask yourself how would you react if someone told you not to stand up for it.

3rd point: I would disagree with this for precisely the reasons contained in your 1st point above. It's true that the Democrats didn't tie Obamacare to any specific issue, they just refused to tie it to any issue, which is what half the problem is.

4th Point-But what you are illustrating happens in government all the time. If you think there was no debate over things like the Iraq War, I would suggest you either have amnesia, or you just spent the last decade living on Mars. Multiple times the democrats threatened to withhold funding while troops were still deployed and there was a constant back and forth debate over things like troop levels and mission creep and such. But your own point works against you here. Just imagine if Bush treated the Iraq War like Obama is treating the ACA? Imagine if Bush declared that since Iraq was supposed to be his legacy, he refused to listen to any debate over how it was being handled. Clearly, the Bush administration was committed to Iraq, but the administration also continually allowed examination over it. Iraq was routinely debated, so it never had to be brought to a level like this. All Obama has to do is sit back and say "I understand that there are grave concerns over Obamacare. Let's work together to fix them." Instead, he refused negotiation, and then blamed the other side for being well...so one sided.

5th point-Your assessment is just not true, but I'm not sure how it fits within the overall issue anyway.

 

Obama has managed to find some acceptable workarounds for the sequester, and Congress has pulled its punches as well a bit, but the economic effects are noticeable, likely slowing economic growth and hiring well below what it might otherwise have been. No matter what kind of "workaround" we come up with to deal with a default, and no doubt if it happens the executive branch will scramble to minimize the consequences, it will likely slow the economy beyond the amount by which it has already been slowed by the shutdown, beyond the amount by which it has already been slowed by sequester. The effects pile up. No one with any sense is discounting the possibility that at a minimum the cumulative effects will result in a domestic recession and a market downturn. So, we're weighing the real threat of a recession against some kind of imagined catastrophic consequence of giving people access to health insurance. Although it's not even that. It's an ideological stance against the very idea of people getting health insurance.

 

Well, it is. This entire situation is occurring because the GOP tied the delay/defund of Obamacare demand to the CR. Simply because it's a CR and not a budget doesn't make a difference as to why it's shutdown and not because the Democrats haven't passed a budget. I'm fine with the stopgap CRs - they work fine until the GOP uses them as leverage to get accomplished what they can't through normal legislative means. It has absolutely nothing to do with it being a stopgap vs. actual budget and everything to do with the GOP decided to use the threat of a shutdown as a way to force the Democrats to concede what they want. What you're saying is delusional.

First argument: what are the policy reasons for delaying the individual mandate? The GOP made it one of their demands based on ideological, not policy grounds. As Barro explained in my link, it's the glue that holds the system together; without a mandate people will wait until they need health care to buy it.

I understand that you and the GOP think it's a bad law but that isn't a justification for what they have caused in order to fix it. Never before in our democracy has it worked like that. Myself and most Democrats thought Iraq was terribly flawed and awful policy; we didn't demand the debt ceiling not be raised and the government shutdown until Bush corrected it. We waited until we controlled the government in order to accomplish our goals. And we're going to see this differently, obviously, but when have Republicans ever been willing to negotiate in a reasonable way over Obamacare? Their entire mission since it started has been to repeal and destroy it. And you wonder why Obama won't talk about it with them?

Second argument: There are plenty of issues that myself and most Democrats feel passionately about: health care, Iraq, same-sex marriage, the Bush tax cuts, etc. But never before have they brought government to a stop and threatened economic harm if they didn't get what they want. We felt passionately about health care reform during the 90s and 00s. When Clinton couldn't get it passed, we still argued for it. But we didn't pull these stunts to get what we wanted. We campaigned for it and waited until the voters elected a Democratic Congress and President and then we passed health care reform.

And the main point of my argument there was you and many other Republicans keep justifying what the GOP is doing by citing the unpopularity of Obamacare when it's (a) not that unpopular and (b) shutting down the government is actually more unpopular than Obamacare.

Third argument: I actually have no idea what you just said here.

Fourth argument: I never said there was no debate over the Iraq War, so I have no idea where you got that point from.

It is true that some Democrats wanted to withold funding but it never got anywhere, did it? I must have missed when the government shutdown under Bush and we almost breached the debt ceiling because Nancy Pelosi wouldn't pass either until she got her way on Iraq. If she did, then I'm unaware of these battles and you should point me in the direction of them.

As for your insistence that Republicans are actually authentic in their desire to positively reform the ACA: what substantial issues have they proposed, out of good will, to improve the law? As I said earlier: their entire basis since it was passed has been to destroy it. They've offered nothing to positively change it for the better other than to demolish it. And you wonder why Obama won't work with them?

Fifth argument: Okay, well I'm going by most whip counts from news agencies based on what some GOP Representatives have said publicly. Why won't he allow an up or down vote on a clean CR? The worst that would happen is that it'd fail (like he claims).

 

Shinjo, I'm trying to piece together your point. So you're fine with a piecemeal budget process...You're fine with the Senate (democratic party majority) not passing a full budget for more than 4 cycles....That is "until the republicans use them as leverage...." The entire reason why the stopgap budget can be used as leverage is because a full budget hasn't been negotiated for 4 years now. Can't you see the contradiction there?

As far as the individual mandate, I'd say you have your perceptions reversed. I mean something basic, like the government computer system used to enroll people is far from ready. So from a practical standpoint, delaying the individual mandate for a years makes sense from an IT/technical standpoint. It's not like this was a surprise. Is there any reason why the administration that championed health care reform was caught off guard when it came time to, you know, actually allow people to enroll? Why do you think it is? The lack of technical infrastructure should be enough of a reason to delay the reform on its own without even going into the policy negatives like improper focus, lack of oversight, lack of legal clarity to ensure compliance, barriers to economic growth, and any of a number of other issues. The GOP objections to Obamacare are just about exclusively policy-based to the point of being emotional-less. It's the administration who is sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling "legacy! legacy! Hands off!" and making nothing but ideological rebuttals, even as the administration isn't prepared to handle its implementation.

Shinjo, with your other points, you're missing the larger issues, and you're making my point for me. For example, you say "Pelosi didn't threaten a shutdown over Iraq." YES! That's my point. Pelosi didn't have to threaten a shutdown, because either good or bad, the Bush administration allowed all sorts of debate over the issue. Troop levels were constantly explored and modified. Casualties were constantly looked at to be minimized. Resources were constantly being scrutinized. Failures were risk managed. At the end, the successful "surge" was the result of negotiation and debate. Even though Bush owed Iraq, Iraq was transparent to a fault, and both the pro and anti sides had equal voice. Remember, Bush was elected while Iraq was in full swing. I'm quite sure had he sat back and exclaimed "I got re-elected, so there will be no further debate on how I run the invasion," Pelosi probably would have assassinated him herself, and a shut down would be the least radical option she looked at.

This is the exact opposite how the Obama administration has handled Obamacare debate. Even your own assessment is that since Obama won re-election, Obamacare shouldn't be examined. That's um...unique....to put it mildly. The flaws are well known, but the administration shuts down any debate. Both Obama and Reid have said there will be no negotiation over the issue. Obama's one concession was delaying the small business aspect, but that only happened because the government was so ill-prepared to implement it, I don't think the administration knew where to start. Obama seems to be quite willing to throw out all of these gauntlets, but then is absolutely unwilling, or unprepared to actually follow through with the solutions. Like his infamous "red line in the sand" against Assad, Obama basically dared the GOP to follow through against Obamacare by repeatedly exclaiming there would be no debate or negotiation. Then, when the GOP had no choice, the administration is sitting back puzzled on why things progressed so far, while at the same time professing that it's not their fault.

 

I would add the Senate hasn't proposed a budget because the former majority (51) is now 61 thanks to their Republican colleagues. Also the House...yeah...that bunch of freaks isn't going to pass anything that's formed by the Democrats. So where's the incentive to propose one? If your opposition were rational players then it'd be easy to do things, but the House is somewhere between Arkham Asylum and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest at this point.

 

I would be all for delaying registration on the exchanges for the likely 1-2 weeks it should take to fix the website's IT problems. If that's the concession House Republicans are asking for I don't see why Obama wouldn't agree to it.

 

Because they'd be demanding a ransom again after that 1-2 weeks?

 

Yeah, we’re going to get nowhere on this. My point is that the Democrat’s failure to pass a budget is not related to the current mess on hand. The current mess is caused by the GOP’s demand that Obamacare be defunded/delayed in order to continue to fund the government. It is not related to the funding of the government coming from a continuing resolution or an actual budget. Maybe I’m the dumb one, but I simply don’t understand your logic of justifying shutting down the government because the funding comes from a CR and not a budget. Your argument is that a kidnapper is justified in holding someone hostage because the abductee was alone and therefore there was an opportunity.

The basic premise of my argument is: since when were CRs allowed to be used as a hostage? You whine that I shift the blame a lot – here you’re shifting the blame to an irrelevant side-point. Bush passed dozens of CRs when he was President – Democrats didn’t them hostage until they got concessions they wanted. Thank God; it’s pathetic and embarrassing.

Glitches (which are a problem) mean it should be postponed for a year? Their demands to delay/defund it came before Healthcare.gov was even up and running.

The individual mandate is the glue that holds the system together. If it were suspended for a year, people could stop paying for their health care plan for a year without punishment because they could simply buy it again if they got sick or in an accident. The entire purpose of the GOP’s demand to delay it for a year is to undermine the system and destroy it.

Yes, so emotional-less. Death panels! “Obamacare is going to destroy America, and everything in America, and we need to stop it.” Communism! Socialism!

As for Iraq, in what instances did Bush cater to Democratic demands over Iraq? At least Democrats debated about how to fix the mess in Iraq; their only demand wasn’t to pull out and defund it. But I can’t think of many instances Bush caved and gave them what they wanted. You seem to be confusing “debate” with “concessions.” What measures have Republicans introduced to improve the law?

Again, Obama has been open to debate on Obamacare. It’s simply that they’ve offered nothing in good faith that will positively improve the ACA. Their only desire is to get rid of it. What have they offered to improve it? They’ve been demanding it be defunded/repealed since it was passed. Where are their rational and normal suggestions for improvements to the law? Please show me.

And again, I don't understand why it's such a hard concept to grasp that using a government shutdown/debt ceiling breach as leverage to get what you want is insane. Take, for example, the medical device tax. I support repealing it. But I don't see why it can't get repealed without holding a gone to the government/economy's head.

Also, I’d like to, once again, point out that you start off by complaining that I’m blaming the Republicans. Then you spend your entire time blaming Obama… So, yes, I absolutely despise the Republican Party and think that they are entirely to blame for our current situation. So spare me - please. At least I don't try and hide it.

 

ya, the sheer number of times the house has quixotically voted to repeal it is overwhelming evidence that there is no room for "negotiation."

 

Somehow I missed this earlier today, but Fidelity Investments sold off U.S. Treasury bonds that come due soon (i.e., around the time of the debt ceiling). So, turns out Ted Yoho is wrong.

 

Social security, Medicare providers, and government contractors, to name a few. Our society will rapidly grind to a halt if this happens. I hope to G-d they fix this before the deadline.

Peace,

V-03

 

There's a great article today on CNN's money site about China and Europe signing a direct-currency trading pact. China has been pushing to replace the dollar for years; while they can't do it yet, default would give them a perfect excuse to sharply curtail not only holding dollar assets, but conducting trade in the dollar, as well. The dollar has fallen precipitously since '08, and even more so with this crisis in the works.

It needs to stop. Either we can choose to solve our collective problems, or the rest of the world will solve them for us by shunning our currency. A default will very much lend credence and weight to calls for a new reserve currency, or at least a basket of them.

Peace,

V-03

 

The current rumor is that a 6 week DL hike will be passed - still nothing for the shutdown, though. While a 'grand bargain' is worked out. What could go wrong?

To show how in utter disarray the House GOP is, here are tweets this morning from Robert Costa at National Review. Boehner's entire caucus basically has to go along with what the Tea Party wants as to not offend them; and they take their calls from Heritage and Red State and the Club for Growth.

The hard thing for leadership, esp during open mic now, is that a large # of Rs are simply unhappy w/ anything that's not a BIG WIN

It's not so much about ideology inside the rm right now, but about "team." Who's a team player, who's not, and who doesn't care.

Boehner trying to escape default. Ending govt shutdown is, 4 now, a secondary concern. He's not sure if he has votes for fmr, let alone a CR

Tea party types now taking mic in House GOP conf mtg, saying the usual things, darkening the mood as leadership looks on...

Why Boehner is moving fast: Heritage Action, RedState surprisingly okay w/ short-term debt-limit hike, so he can't dawdle...

They think leadership was trying to play them w/ combo DL+CR, so they're going to give Boehner 6-wk DL, but push to keep gov't shutdown

Heading into conference, conservative aides emailing/texting, say if Boehner tries for a 6-wk ext, their bosses won't back...

 

Shinjo, the problem with your statement is that it completely ignores reality. Again, just once...One time....Today only...How about you drop your endless calls for blame, especially being so one sided, and realize that both sides are the cause, and at the same time, have the solution to this.

Of course the failure to pass a budget is a contributory cause for the current mess. Shinjo, do you know the facts behind why the US has a "debt ceiling" in the first place? Basically during WWI, Congress instituted the debt ceiling process because of the HUGE build-up of the military to go fight over in Europe (and the costs incurred). In a nutshell, such expenses had to be justified, and if they weren't, the "debt ceiling" would act as the ultimate limiter. Because the assumption is that such expenses would be worked out in the budget process. The debt ceiling doesn't impact deficits, but rather, it kicks in against things that are already laid out during the budget process. In a perfect world, Congress would look at the budget in relation to the ceiling, and then say "Ok, we have X amount for defense. We have X percentage for Social Security.." and so on... until it reached 100%. Except the US has been spending something like 120% of the budget for years now. So for you to say "the democrats failure to pass a budget has no bearing on the current situation" is either incorrect, false, or both. It's a bit like not putting a roof on your house because it's sunny, and then when it rains, only blaming the rain, and while sitting in the puddle of water that used to be your living room, confidently declaring that your failure to build a roof has nothing to do with your current situation. It seems rather silly doesn't it?

Like it or not, the debt ceiling is currently acting as it was intended to. And besides, there are two issues at play here, and you're kind of improperly linking them. One is the GOP's insistence that Obamacare reform be tied to passing the latest temporary budget, which led to the shutdown/slimdown/whatever one wants to call it. The "debt ceiling crisis" is only now coming into play because Congress-that is both chambers, and both parties, waited until the last minute precisely because a true budget doesn't exist. If this was August, and the same thing was unfolding, the slimdown would still happen, because the temp. budget was held up, but defaulting on the ceiling wouldn't be an issue. This is precisely why a true, full budget needs to be worked out, so this doesn't keep happening every couple of months.

This is what I would like to see happen:

1)Head off potential default by agreeing to raise the debt ceiling right now, but only if it's tied to requiring a binding full budget in a set amount of time.

2)Shinjo, the US's debt is currently at about 17 Trillion dollars. Yes, that's with a "T." The US's debt is larger than the operating budget of most countries. The US can't just keep throwing money that it doesn't have, and adding money to programs it can't pay for, especially through stop gap budgets that only intensify the problem.

3)The debt ceiling has to return to why it was installed in the first place. It has to act as a dedicated ceiling for US spending even if it means that sacred cows are paired down.

4)Obamacare needs to be looked at from both sides. The GOP has to accept that it is going to exist in some form, so repealing it or defunding it is not an option. However, democrats have to stop treating it as the golden child of the administration, and allow debate to take place in order to fix its flaws or it is going to end up doing more harm than good.

 

I don't actually understand the logic you used and my brain kind of hurts from trying to understand your point in the first half, but from what I can decipher you still haven't addressed why it's justified for the Republicans to extract policy concessions in exchange for keeping the government open and raising the debt ceiling.

It appears that because funding is coming from a CR and not a budget, it's fair game to take the economy/government hostage. So, yeah, I don't understand and we'll leave it at that.

 

(1) I understand that, but how's this relevant to the current discussion? I know we have a debt problem, but shutting down the government and especially not raising the debt ceiling are only going to exacerbate that problem...no?

(2) How is a CR to blame for this and intensifying the problem? The Senate Democrat's CR, because of the sequester, is $300 billion less than what Obama originally wanted in a budget, and is only $20 billion higher than what Paul Ryan wanted in his budget (and the House GOP proposed).

As for Obamacare, sure, we can debate it and fix it. But if you can offer one instance where Republicans in good nature acted to improve the law, then I'd like to see it. As Jabba showed (in a great post), one of their only minor efforts to improve it was thrown out because it didn't destroy it.

 

Because those "concessions" haven't happened up until this point. It's really not that complicated. Congress hasn't agreed to a full budget in years. The sequestration is another consequence of that reality. if you remember, the last stopgap budget was supposed to bring about a full budget discussion, but it never did, so the automatic sequestration cuts kicked in per agreement.

You're looking at it in the sense that the GOP just needs to pass another temp budget to keep government open. But that act in itself doesn't solve anything, it just keeps punting the problem down the line.. Let me ask you this: How many temporary budgets would you be comfortable with? I think, while I might be slightly off, this is the country's 3rd budget for this cycle on its own. It just doesn't make sense for Congress to keep funding the government in 3-6 month blocks if nothing else ever comes of it. Even if this one is signed off on, then Congress will be in the same boat in another 3 months. Then another 3 months, rise, lather, repeat. At some point, the short term has to give way to long term thinking. Long term thinking is what the GOP is forcing here, even if it is to the determent of the other.

I guess this is the time when the GOP made the decision to stop "co-depending" the government. I don't agree with all of the methods, and I don't think that government should be shut down, but I also don't agree with the democrat's traditional mindset of just throwing more and more money around without actually solving anything. The point where those 2 mindsets meet is the point where the solution sits at.

Again, in a perfect world, Congress would go back to the 1918 rationale behind the "debt ceiling." Both sides would look at revenues vs expenditures and come up with a workable budget based on that. If that means that the military needs to be cut. So be it. If it means that some social program needs to be cut, then so be it as well. Or rather, each of these areas have to be looked at in their own percentage of the overall budget, because if one thing occupies that slice of the pie, then something else has to be cut. That's how you come up with a workable budget.

I agree with you that the GOP is being overly harsh here, but you have to understand the flip side of the argument. The Senate and Obama himself aren't doing anyone any favors here. For example, Harry Reid gets up and gives a speech that says "There will be no negotiation..." Well, supporters like you cheer him on, but "no negotiation" means exactly that. It's a two way street. Obama has been less firey than Reid, but even in Obama's last speech he said "there will be no discussion until I get what I want." Well, the problem with that is that there is then no incentive for the GOP do give up anything. Again, it is a two way street, and the result is a stalemate. Both sides are acting spoiled, but there is no logical basis for you to continue to pretend it's all the fault of one side over the other.