http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=230635128 Quite a bit of interesting info in this article: Drudge trumpets the bit about Obama's job approval rating at 37%. 4 in 10 republicans identify with the tea party. GOP takes more share of the blame for the impasse. Ted Cruz 36/16 favorable/unfavorable; close to Obama's job approval. 82% of democrats see the shutdown as a big problem. Less than 60% of the rest of us don't. I quote: More than 4 in 5 respondents felt no personal impact from the shutdown. For those who did, thwarted vacations to national parks, difficulty getting work done without federal contacts at their desks and hitches in government benefits were among the complaints. (Seems I'm with the 80%). And unrelated to the shutdown is the methodology of the poll. Called people to get their desired random sample, then got them to read and answer the poll questions online. I like this because there's less chance of the pollster influencing the people being polled, via voice inflection or relating to the callee due to similar characteristics.
A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning The media narrative treats the current crisis as some sort of breakdown in both parties, a generic "Federal Government" problem, with a "shame on both your houses" inflection. Now we find out that this "crisis" is exactly what it has seemed to many of us all along: a deliberate, orchestrated attempt to wreck the government by a number of well-funded conservatives
The media narrative has been very negative on republicans. Not a lot of press saying Harry Reid's or Nancy Pelosi's rhetoric being uncivil as well as ridiculous. Or not giving much ink to the fact the House has passed several Bills to fund things like national parks and military funeral expenses. The very things mentioned here. To lay this at the feat of Republicans and along with a silly conspiracy theory flies in the face of Reason. Unless you missed them erecting fences around open air monuments and other blatant PR moves. But whatever.
If you make a bigoted comment, you're a bigot. If you hold the country hostage, you're a hostage taker.
Republicans chose this as the battle ground for ACA months ago. This isn't the proper venue for disagreements over a law.
The first sentence may be true. Fine. But last time I read the constitution, spending bills must originate in the House. Seems to me they're well within their rights to dictate where money is to be spent. It's not like Obama said he wouldn't negotiate. Oh yeah, he did say that. He gets an equal share of the blame for that alone. In fact, I think he wanted the shutdown so he could use the national parks for PR value in an attempt to gain seats for Democrats in the next election. If having government services were more important, he'd be asking Reid to pass whatever spending bills the House has already passed so at least those services could be back online.
So that the House can pass piece meal everything they want, and OOPS I guess you're stuck without ACA and SS and Medicare.
SS and Medicare are trust funds. The taxes collected for those are separate. See your latest paycheck stub, if you have one The trust funds are authorized since day 1 to pay out benefits. So no, they can't defund SS and Medicare. However, they can absolutely fuck with SS and medicare benefits. Talk of means testing, Clinton taxed SS benefits, and so on.
Why can't they just change it? It's not like it's a law or something. You can't just defund a law, can you?
Yeah, they can fund whatever they want, basically. The exact same spending bill has to pass both House and Senate and be signed by the President. They're normal Bills like they do all the time. In fact, before Obama, the House and Senate worked each year to pass 13 spending bills, to authorize spending piecemeal style for the next fiscal year. FY is like October 1 to October 1. So they would have to pass continuing resolutions to keep govt. running if they didn't make their deadline to pass them all. Since Obama's first year, all govt. spending has been authorized by CR (continuing resolution), which is just utter bullshit if you ask me. The 13 bills: 1. Agriculture, FDA, etc. 2. Departments of Commerce, Justice, and state. 3. Defense 4. D.C. 5. Energy 6. Foreign operations 7. Homeland security 8. Interior 9. Labor, HHS, Education 10. Legislative Branch 11. Military construction/housing/bases 12. Transportation/Treasury/Post Office/Executive branch 13. VA/HUD
You do understand that lots of people don't get paychecks, right? You could be a professional poker player, or otherwise self employed. A 1099 employee. Capiche?
http://www.nationaljournal.com/cong...ing-resolutions-is-a-common-practice-20120911 What? Where did you get the idea that they were only used starting in the Obama years?
Read your first link. They have not passed a single one of the required 13 spending bills. In the past, CRs have been used to bridge the gap from Oct.1 to Oct 10 or whenever they needed a little extra time to get the bills done. In the Obama years, they have not passed a single budget except his first year. The house passes the Ryan budget, the senate doesn't vote on it. The president submits his budget proposal and the senate the past two years has voted it down 100-0. CRs is all we've had to keep the govt. running. http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/23/politics/senate-budget-bill/index.html Senate passes its first budget proposal in four years (CNN) -- The Democrat-controlled Senate passed its first formal budget proposal in four years early Saturday after hours of non-stop voting that started Friday evening. The non-binding plan for the 2014 budget calls for a trillion dollars in tax increases and passed 50 to 49. No Republicans voted for the bill, and four Democrats voted against it. It now goes to the House, where it is expected to be shot down. Senators recently voted down a budget proposal passed by the Republican-controlled house. The two budget proposals and a third one to be offered by the president will likely be used as a basis for future negotiations between the parties. (If we had a budget or CR, the govt. would not be shut down)
My link before shows that in the past there were multiple CRs with 30+ day gaps. It hasn't been just a week long stop gap... http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/163307-senate-votes-down-ryan-budget-medicare- The senate did vote on the Ryan plan and it failed 40-57. Five republicans voted no on it. Obama budget: "Democrats voting against the Obama budget argued the president had essentially abandoned it when he presented new proposals for reducing the deficit in March." Not sure if you're misremembering things or just misrepresenting them on purpose... It seems to me that all of this is due to the polarization in congress right now. Democrats didn't have the balls to stand up like this to the Republicans when Bush was president, but now this kind of non-functioning government might be the norm since the Republicans are setting the precedent... Really, the Republicans should just let Obama do whatever he wants since Bush claimed a mandate when he won in 2004. Obama won in 2012 (and 2008 obviously) with higher percentage of the popular vote and a wider electoral college margin than Bush did either time.
I wrote that all government spending since Obama's first year has been authorized by CR. If you have anything to refute that, feel free. You haven't so far, no offense intended. I have seen presidents submit budgets in the past that were declared DOA (all of Reagan's submitted to democrat congress), but they managed to get the 13 spending bills passed and a real budget enacted. As far as time between bills, it only takes one to fund the govt. for the following year. If they have two 150 days apart, who cares? Or ten 30 days apart...
Apparently, those who got furloughed got a really good deal out of this. They apply for and get unemployment benefits. When they come back, they'll get back pay. Double dip! And all that pay for not working. Like getting a paid vacation and a bonus to boot. Are there any non govt. jobs with that kind of benefit?
