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Post by ShivaTD on Aug 5, 2013 15:46:59 GMT
Americans are tires of Congress doing nothing predominately because of the Republican Party in the House. They can't even be unified within themselves and are certainly opposed to doing anything on a bi-partisan basis with the Democrats. I would suggest that we modify what Reagan said in the 1980's so that it is applicable to today.
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Post by JP5 on Aug 5, 2013 20:01:23 GMT
Unfortunately we have a president where issues are "his way or the highway." Look how often he goes out and demonizes the Republican point of view on issues....EVEN before negotiations start. If you've ever been in management, you know this is a horrible way to go about trying to get a consensus or compromise on anything. He had 2 years with control of everything....the presidency, the Senate, and the House. And he used that entire 2 years to shove down the throats of all of us a massive federal healthcare bill that already has his buddies in the unions--who claimed to support it when they helped elect him....are now trying to get to a carve out from. Instead of working WITH both sides to try and fix the economy, he spent his time on another massive federal spending program.....multi TRILLONS of dollars. He refused to listen to anything Republicans had to say on the issue....and he had Nancy Pelosi's office write the legislation.
Now....you might think that's the way great presidents do things.....but it's not. Think of LBJ and the Civil Rights legislation. It had heavy Republican input. In fact, without Everett Dirkson's Republican leadership and work with LBJ on it......it would have never passed. Had something that big been shoved down the throats one one side, it would have never worked. That's good leadership.
BTW, the IRS union also wants a carve out from Obamacare. And you notice that Pelosi left herself and the rest of Congress, the Senate and the Pres and VP out of this wonderful plan too!
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cubed
Scribbler
Consumate Snowball Artist
Posts: 9 
Politics: Center/Left of Center.
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Post by cubed on Aug 5, 2013 21:57:31 GMT
Uh, he did try and work with them. And they stonewalled him and almost every turn, to the point where it was clear that it wasn't about the subject matter, it was the fact that it was Obama who presented it. I remember 6 months into 08 reading as many political news stories I could and constantly wondering why Obama was always trying to offer things to get the Rs to the table to the point where he was cheesing off the Dems, when every time he offered one concession it was suddenly 'not enough'.
Yes he pushed it through because I believe he wanted it to be his legacy if he was (as Mitch McConnell put it) a 1 term president.
That being said, the plan itself, and the bloat added to it may or may not be an absolute disaster, but the idea that Obama rammed it through without attempting to compromise is absurd.
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Post by ShivaTD on Aug 6, 2013 7:28:06 GMT
...... he used that entire 2 years to shove down the throats of all of us a massive federal healthcare bill that already has his buddies in the unions--who claimed to support it when they helped elect him....are now trying to get to a carve out from. Instead of working WITH both sides to try and fix the economy, he spent his time on another massive federal spending program.....multi TRILLONS of dollars. He refused to listen to anything Republicans had to say on the issue....and he had Nancy Pelosi's office write the legislation.
While I'm not a particular supporter of Obamacare it was based upon previous Republican leadership and conservative think tank recommendations. The mandatory employer provided health insurance, the subsidies for low income workers to purchase insurance, the individual mandates, were all "conservative" proposals. In many respects it's a mirror image of Romneycare at a federal level. Republicans were actually arguing against many of their own proposals. I also have a problem with how Bush and Obama handled the recession. First of all Bush violating his promise in 2001 to cut the federal deficit and instead basically doubling it leaving the US government without the financial means to deal with the recession. Next Bush bailed out the Banks (mulit-millionaire investors) with TARP and should have let these banks fail. Obama, while spending on the infrastructure was fundamentally a good idea, didn't increase taxes to pay for the borrowing to pay for these projects. Of course the Federal Reserve's intervention by slashing interest rates was also a disastrous policy but I won't even go there as the Federal Reserve is an invidious tool of both Democrats and Republicans. Here's the fact. America is screwed regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge. The US would have been worse off under McCain/Palin in 2009 than we were under Obama/Biden but we were screwed either way. |
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Post by JP5 on Aug 6, 2013 20:23:27 GMT
...... he used that entire 2 years to shove down the throats of all of us a massive federal healthcare bill that already has his buddies in the unions--who claimed to support it when they helped elect him....are now trying to get to a carve out from. Instead of working WITH both sides to try and fix the economy, he spent his time on another massive federal spending program.....multi TRILLONS of dollars. He refused to listen to anything Republicans had to say on the issue....and he had Nancy Pelosi's office write the legislation.
While I'm not a particular supporter of Obamacare it was based upon previous Republican leadership and conservative think tank recommendations. The mandatory employer provided health insurance, the subsidies for low income workers to purchase insurance, the individual mandates, were all "conservative" proposals. In many respects it's a mirror image of Romneycare at a federal level. Republicans were actually arguing against many of their own proposals. I also have a problem with how Bush and Obama handled the recession. First of all Bush violating his promise in 2001 to cut the federal deficit and instead basically doubling it leaving the US government without the financial means to deal with the recession. Next Bush bailed out the Banks (mulit-millionaire investors) with TARP and should have let these banks fail. Obama, while spending on the infrastructure was fundamentally a good idea, didn't increase taxes to pay for the borrowing to pay for these projects. Of course the Federal Reserve's intervention by slashing interest rates was also a disastrous policy but I won't even go there as the Federal Reserve is an invidious tool of both Democrats and Republicans. Here's the fact. America is screwed regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge. The US would have been worse off under McCain/Palin in 2009 than we were under Obama/Biden but we were screwed either way. Republicans NEVER advocated for the federal gov't taking over the country's healthcare. They advocated for some changes to be made, but not a massive new federally-run program which will be administered by the IRS who will issue "fines" to people. Btw, Romney wasn't for a national healthcare system either. |
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Post by 12th on Aug 6, 2013 20:34:34 GMT
I sent my reps up there to fight the feds. Good to know they are doing what we voters sent them to do. I'm sick of having a choice between democrat and democrat-lite. "My big govt can beat up your big govt." Up to now, they've been very ineffective at stopping pbama's horrible unconstitutional agenda.
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Post by ShivaTD on Aug 7, 2013 9:42:28 GMT
Republicans NEVER advocated for the federal gov't taking over the country's healthcare. They advocated for some changes to be made, but not a massive new federally-run program which will be administered by the IRS who will issue "fines" to people. Btw, Romney wasn't for a national healthcare system either. Actually if we check history much of "Obamacare" was previously advocated by conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and top Republicans over the last 20 some years. The private health insurance exchanges, the individual mandate, and the employer mandate were all previously Republican/conservative proposals for a national health care system. Yes, I know that Romneycare was a state program but it was also based upon the identical Republican/conservative proposals of the past that had been advocated for a national health care program. I find the claim that "Obamacare" is a massive federally run program to be a gross exaggeration. It only affects about 10% of Americans that were uninsured to begin with. Expensive? Absolutely!!! But it's not very "massive" as most people are completely unaffected by it. The problem from my perspective is that any "fix" was inherently expensive. Much of what "Obamacare" attempted to do was to fix the historic underfunding of Medicaid so that it never fulfilled it's Mission Statement from the 1960's. The Mission Statement for Medicaid was that it was supposed to provide health care services for those that couldn't afford the health care they required. Why weren't all of the "uninsureable" with pre-existing conditions being covered by Medicaid? Why weren't low income individuals that couldn't afford health care being covered by Medicaid? That was what Medicaid was created to address but the problem was that the Congress and State legislatures refused to fund Medicaid adequately to accomplish it's Mission Statement. There are obviously other serious problems with Obamacare that I highly object to but much of what Republicans are objecting to is smoke and mirrors. What's worse is that the Republicans went off on a tangent and never addressed the real problems that existed. Not once did they offer any solution worthy of serious consideration. Limiting tort awards would not have reduced costs but would have screwed the victims of malpractice. Insurability across state lines would have helped but only minimally. The most significant proposal that wasn't made by anyone was to make all medical expendatures 100% tax deductable including health insurance premiums for private individuals and including this as a supplement line to the 1040EZ tax form that low income individuals use. We could go on and on with the "fixes" that were ignored though and there is certianly a lot of fixes that could be made to Obamacare today but Republicans are not advocating fixing Obamacare but instead they're insisting on repeal but too many Americans agree with too many of the key provisions to ever make that happen. If Republicans were smart they'd be working on chipping away at the bad parts of Obamacare as opposed to simply trying to repeal it without any serious proposals to replace it. |
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Post by ShivaTD on Aug 7, 2013 9:53:46 GMT
I sent my reps up there to fight the feds. Good to know they are doing what we voters sent them to do. I'm sick of having a choice between democrat and democrat-lite. "My big govt can beat up your big govt." Up to now, they've been very ineffective at stopping pbama's horrible unconstitutional agenda. The Republicans are also Big Government advocates and anyone that believes otherwise is being deceived. I have a simple proposition that would reduce the size of government. First we need to eliminate crony capitalism in our tax codes and I've previously addressed this on "another" forum that I will present here for review. Next is require the federal government to collect enough in taxation to pay for all authorized expenditures. If people aren't paying for the cost of big government, and we're not, then the people aren't going to demand reducing its size. One problem with reducing the size of government is, in some cases, it's going to cost quite a bit of money and time to actually reduce the size and scope of our government. Nothing is free, not even reducing the size and scope of our government. As for Constitutionality both the Democrats and Republicans advocate progressive interpretations of the US Constitution each for their own political agendas and I also have a proposal to address that problem. I've made it elsewhere and will present it here as well. I'll post my proposals in the Libertarianism forum in the next few days for review and comments. |
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Post by 12th on Aug 7, 2013 14:46:14 GMT
I sent my reps up there to fight the feds. Good to know they are doing what we voters sent them to do. I'm sick of having a choice between democrat and democrat-lite. "My big govt can beat up your big govt." Up to now, they've been very ineffective at stopping pbama's horrible unconstitutional agenda. The Republicans are also Big Government advocates and anyone that believes otherwise is being deceived....... Like I said, a choice of democrat and democrat-lite. "My big govt can beat up your big govt." |
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Post by ShivaTD on Aug 8, 2013 17:31:23 GMT
The Republicans are also Big Government advocates and anyone that believes otherwise is being deceived....... Like I said, a choice of democrat and democrat-lite. "My big govt can beat up your big govt." It can also be accurately stated that President Obama is closer to the political agendas and philosophies of President Reagan, an icon of the Republican Party, than the current Republican leadership. He's certainly much closer than the anti-tax Tea Party movement which is way out in right field advocating fiscally irresponsible government in the United States where authorized expendatures would not be funded. |
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Post by 12th on Aug 8, 2013 19:17:21 GMT
Bullcrap. Reagan's basic philosophy was that govt is the problem, not the solution. Pbama's basic philosophy is the opposite of that.
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Post by ShivaTD on Aug 8, 2013 20:17:33 GMT
Bullcrap. Reagan's basic philosophy was that govt is the problem, not the solution. Pbama's basic philosophy is the opposite of that. We need to address Reagan's actions and not necessarily his word. Reagan, for example, believed in a balanced budget. Today's Republicans don't and the Tea Party is actually advocating tax cuts when we have trillion dollar deficits. At least Obama has proposed both tax increases as well as expendature cuts, albeit not enough, to close the gap and reduce deficit spending. We can also note that Reagan endorsed pax-Americana just like Obama. In fact Reagan directly supported a known terrorist organization (the Contras) in an attemp to overthrow a democratically elected government. Not surprising because Nixon also supported overthrowing a democratically elected government. Reagan was huge on the US military just like Obama but then both Democrats and Republicans today support a US military that is 10-times larger than it needs to be to defend America from attack. And Reagan supported immigration reform that included amnesty for millions of hispanics that Republicans are fighting tooth and nail today to oppose. Based upon Reagan's record we can also assume he'd support marriage equality which most Republicans still oppose today. We can probably note that Reagan would have opposed the massive spying on Americans that both Republicans and Democrats tend to support under the Patriot Act today. So I beg to differ because the Republican Party today has little in common with Reagan except on issues that both Democrats and Republicans both support. |
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Post by 12th on Aug 8, 2013 20:35:39 GMT
Blah blah blah blah blah. There's only a couple of politicians that I like nowadays.....
But I am fixin' to get my first grandchild, so everything else is unimportant!!! I srsly cannot make a decent sentence! WL43TO87,sku76Q
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Post by ShivaTD on Aug 8, 2013 23:05:59 GMT
Blah blah blah blah blah. There's only a couple of politicians that I like nowadays.....
But I am fixin' to get my first grandchild, so everything else is unimportant!!! I srsly cannot make a decent sentence! WL43TO87,sku76Q Me too (seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, BINGO!) |
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Post by 12th on Aug 9, 2013 1:25:00 GMT
You can actually countdown like this 7 8 9 10.
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