Post by pjohns1873 on Mar 21, 2014 0:06:15 GMT
As for the House, it is clear to me that its desire to delay immigration reform until next year is due to the fact that it does not wish to anger any part of its base in an election year. Presumably, it will deal with the matter next year.
I am unsure what sort of tax reform has been proposed by Democratic lawmakers, that has (supposedly) been obstructed by the GOP.
As for "fixes" to ObamaCare, I would much prefer that we elect a Republican-controlled Senate in November, and a Republican president two years thereafter, and simply repeal the entire bill; and then replace it with something much better.
Perhaps, and clarify me if I'm wrong, the greatest complaint Republicans have related to President Obama's executive orders are those dealing with Obamacare. From my perspectived most if not all of these are due to the delays caused by the Republican lawsuit that wasn't settled by the Supreme Court until 2012. Basically all regulatory requirements had to be put off by the adminstration pending the outcome of that lawsuit as they had no idea how the Supreme Court would respond. So instead of having five years to create the necessary regulations (i.e. 2009-2013) the adminstration had only one year. Additional problems were even created by the Supreme Court decision where states could opt out of the Medicaid expansion leaving five million people that weren't provided for by law as well as the fact that many insurance companies decided to pull out of markets for business reasons. It was really complex and there are numerous reasons behind the delays in implementation of course and while I don't like the overall law I can understand the reasons for the delays. It didn't help that far too many (Republican) states also refused to set-up their own state insurance exchanges creating more of a burden on the federal government. As I've noted I don't agree with all of the executive orders related to Obamacare but I can certainly see the rational behind them and find them to be within the discretionary authority of a president.
A minor issue was the delayed prosecution of immigrant children that grew up in the United States so that the INS could focus on "criminal" aliens (i.e. illegal immigrants that committed felonies) but that was almost universally supported by both liberal and conservtive groups as being the right thing to do. I agree with that decision. At the same time border enforcement is the best it's ever been. I recall from a recent news story that the border patrol has stopped about 500,000 people trying to enter the country illegally across the border last year which is an excellent record.
With this said I'm not looking at whether I agree with the executive orders but instead merely look at them as to whether there was a rational basis for them and is there prior precedent based upon similar executive orders in the past.
As for immigration reform I'd ask why the Republican controlled House didn't address it in 2013? That wasn't an election year. I don't have any hopes that the Republicans will address it next year either. I've heard many Republicans state that they don't want to make the same mistake that Reagan did with immigration reform and the only mistake Reagan made was to retain a quota system. As long as we have a quota we're going to have illegal immigration especially when the quota is focused on keeping Hispanics out of the country. Excluding Canada and the US all of the North American nations, where most immigrants come from, are Hispanic.
While I don't believe that Democrats have been very good at addressing federal taxation their general issue is that the tax burden relative to income is highest on low income workers and lowest on high income investors. They refer to this as unfair taxation and it is unfair taxation. The tax burden on high income investors needs to be increased while the tax burden on low income workers needs to be reduced. Republicans in the House refuse to increase the tax burden on high income investors that currently have the lowest tax burden in America related to income. Personally I believe that my proposal for federal taxation is the best I've seen proposed by anyone because it addresses this very issue while also balancing the federal budget in it's very first year.
I've been following the various projections on the 2014 Senate races and it is probaby a better than 50:50 chance that Republicans will secure more than 50 seats but the probability of securing 60 seats is virtually nil. As for the 2016 presidential race it's shaping up to be the worst choice for America in my lifetime. Hillary Clinton would be the worst possible choice for American that the Democrats could put forward and someone like Rand Paul or, worse still, Ted Cruz would be worse than Hillary Clinton.
Need I remind you that the legislation passed when Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and White House in 2009 was perhaps the worst in US history and to simply change the tables and give Republicans this same control would also be the worst possible case for the United States. Allowing either party to have complete control always results in bad things for Americans.
BTW I've read that over 5 million people now have health insurance because of Obamacare and it cannot be repealed. The Repeal and Replace proposal by Republicans is not going to happen because they still don't have any proposal to replace it. It's been five years already since Obamacare was passed and Republicans have failed to put forward even one comprehensive proposal to replace it.
www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-18/republicans-don-t-replace-obamacare-again?cmpid=yhoo
For openers, I should probably note that it was not a good thing, in my opinion, for ther president to ignore the law as regarding illegal aliens, unless they had commited a felony while in the US. But given your view that the law against illegal immigration is constitutionally suspect, your conclusion is certainly understandable.
To assert that the (almost) two years since the SCOTUS ruling on ObamaCare is insufficient to set it up strikes me as downright disingenuous. And the Republican-controlled House merely requested that President Obama go through Congress to amend the law, rather than doing it unilaterally. Which seems to me reasonable enough.
I really do not know why the House did not take up immigration reform in 2013. Why didn't the (Democrat-controlled) Senate do so?
As for repeal-and-replace (of ObamaCare), it remains a very real possibility. True, the GOP has not yet coalesced around a single plan--its members have put forth several, but no one has been singled out, yet, as the GOP proposal--but that does not prove that this can never happen.
