Obama blasts ‘Republican shutdown,’ defends Obamacare

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-to-make-12-25-p-m--statement-134130294.html

President Barack Obama on Tuesday defiantly declared that “this Republican shutdown” risks hurting the fragile economy and pressed the House GOP to abandon its “ideological crusade” against Obamacare.

“This Republican shutdown did not have to happen,” Obama said in the Rose Garden, surrounded by a dozen Americans who stand to benefit from his landmark health care overhaul.

“They’ve shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans,” he charged. "This, more than anything else, seems to be what the Republican Party stands for these days. I know it's strange that one party would make keeping people uninsured the centerpiece of their agenda, but that apparently is what it is."

Obama pointed to the last partial government shutdown, in 1996, and warned that a closure will hurt the economy.

“And we know that the longer this shutdown continues, the worse the effects will be — more families will be hurt, more businesses will be harmed,” he said. “So once again, I urge House Republicans to reopen the government, restart the services Americans depend on and allow the public servants who have been sent home to return to work.”

Obama directed those listening to www.healthcare.gov if they want to apply for health care exchanges where they can buy insurance, saying it’s time to “get America covered, once and for all.”

The president allowed that the site had suffered glitches — but portrayed it as victim of its own success, saying more than 1 million people visited the site before 7 a.m.

“We're going to be speeding things up in the next few hours to handle all of this demand that exceeds anything that we had expected,” Obama said. “Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it. I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't. That's not how we do things in America. We don't actively root for failure.”

But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R.-Calif., said the problems showed the law's underlying failures.

"Americans are attempting to purchase health insurance on Obamacare exchanges and are being met with crashing websites, missing price information, confusing forms and in some cases, exchanges that had to delay their start date because they aren’t ready yet," Issa said in a statement. "These ‘glitches,’ which the President is trying to brush off, reveal how totally unprepared the government is for this launch even with three and a half years to prepare. This is nothing, however, compared to the potentially irreversible damage the law threatens in the long term."

As he began his remarks, Obama’s microphone generated feedback, leading him to worry about a technical glitch. “Can everybody hear me? Mic work?”

 

Wait Kingspeed said the House Voted this in?

 

Talk about Ironic. Everything that Mr. President says about the shutdown is exactly what the affordable care act will do to this country.

 

government shutdown.. Park a forklift in the entrance of the Lincoln memorial to keep people out, "Close" The WW2 memorial and deny citizen access..yeah, all at the discretion of the president..

This government needs to be shut down..

 

The White House refers to the R's as terrorists with bombs strapped to their chests, and won't negotiate with them. I wonder why they would be saying FO to the Prez?

(Never mind he doesn't bat an eye at negotiating directly with Al Qaeda in Syria. In fact, he is willing to take their side in an armed conflict.)

Go Blazers

 

don't you know. those Muslim brotherhood guys are freedom fighters..

 

The Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular" and they eschew violence, according to James Clapper, President Obama's Director of National Intelligence.

Yeah, the rebels in Libya, too. Negotiate with all those fine folks, but fuck them terrorist republicans.

(I am a little puzzled that we don't bring our guys home from Afghanistan, if the government is shut down. How does that work?)

Go Blazers

 

Or that says that the Al Qaeda fighters and the Iranians are more reasonable that Republicans.

 

In the 70s a judge said EVERYTHING has to stop. Then a few years later a shutdown occurred again and he said OK OK The President gets to decide if somethings can be exempt in the case of them being vital to our country functioning.

 

For the record, let's just examine the way laws work. They pass both parts of congress and the president signs them into law. Then the supreme court could rule these laws unconstitutional (which they ruled they were constitutional). Then if congress doesn't like an old law, they can repeal the law (which they couldn't). So when in doubt, the President clearly has to compromise and let the temper tantrum go and concede, NO F'ing WAY.

 

I can and nothing happened when Clinton did this years ago.

 

You mean all 30 or so representatives should control the 400 something house of representatives aka one half of one branch of government?

 

The ACA was pushed through during Obama's first term when the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate. The President said repeatedly that elections have consequences and steamrolled the bill through without any compromises to include provisions suggested by the Republicans. The bill was passed without a single Republican vote in favor. In 2012 the Republicans were able to regain control of the House. In the intervening time, the President has told the Republicans to pound sand on any suggested modifications to the ACA, has given delays and exemptions to corporations to ACA provisions through executive fiat, which is most likely illegal, and yet won't give any delays on the individual mandate despite there being major flaws and confusion in the roll out of this major piece of social engineering. So the President shouldn't be surprised this pissing match is going on. Elections do have consequences and I suspect that the Democrats would be doing exactly the same thing if the situations were reversed and a Republican president and Senate had shoved an unpalatable piece of legislation down their throats.

In my view, both sides are guilty of putting their individual agendas above the public good. The problem is that we have far too many extreme left and extreme right representatives in the House and Senate for there to ever be a bipartisan approach to really coming up with a good health care system. A Great Compromise for these clowns would be deciding to refer to each other as m'fers or honorable m'fers. I think that ultimately this mess works to the Democrats favor and the Republicans are busy blowing of their own toes instead of just waiting for this unwieldy mess to simply blow up in the Democrats face as the costs and inequities become apparent.

 

Firstly, I want to say I think we basically agree on the overall points you made.

Isn't this literally how the Nazi party came to power?

I agree it's not fair to let the rest off the hook; I think it's fair for the tea party representatives to stand up for their caucus, that is their job. But there has been attempts to get that half-plus-one bill passed and Boehner is not allowing it to come to a vote, as far as I have heard.

 

I think that this is different from Medicaid in that it directly impacts a smaller segment of the population. Everyone who lives long enough will eventually retire and fall under Medicare provisions and benefits. The ACA only directly provides coverage for about 10% of the population. When those who aren't receiving benefits start to realize that they're paying for it in higher insurance premiums or, worse yet, start getting their hours reduced so their employers don't have to cover them, there will be a lot of pissed off people. Other messes such as an inadequate supply of doctors who will accept patients on ACA plans, concerns that the out of pocket costs are still higher than most people can bear, screw-ups in what is and isn't covered, etc. will all work to undermine the thing.