Quote:robkelk wrote:If only we could get something like that to fly. Of course, an amendment like that would die a swift death because a lot of these people make careers out of being senators and representatives. Anything that may jeopardize their careers would be nuked from orbit.
Back to the "sequestration" thing...
Have you folks ever considered adopting the parliamentary rules for budgets? Specifically, the one that says voting down a budget is legally equivalent to voting "no confidence" in the current government, thus dissolving the session and forcing an immediate general election?
Quote:Bob Schroeck wrote:.... Yeah, methinks that there's three kinds of Senator/Representative: 1) the reasonable sort, which is very much in the minority; 2) the sort that has been around waaayyy to long and lost in the dreams of America's Old Glory; and 3) the sort that are entirely too new to this job and got elected only because there was a silent majority in their region that didn't show up at the polls.
BA,
part of it pure obstructionism -- there are vast swaths of the
Republican Party who would rather sink the country than allow a
Democratic president have any lasting positive legacy.
Part of it is a genuine and sincere difference in belief about the role
and scope of government in the lives of citizens (admittedly, cranked up
to 11 and wandering slightly off the scale at points, but still...).
And another part of it is tinfoil hat-level reactionaryism, fearing that
once the US joins every other industrial nation in having national
health care, the jackbooted thugs of the United Nations will come out of
the holes they've been lurking in all these years to take away their
guns and their Bibles, and impose Godless Communism(TM) and the NWO on
the oppressed rich white men who are the only true backbone of America.
Because a man is only free if he has a gun, a Bible, and a chance to go
bankrupt if his medical bills get too large.
No particular Republican in the House embodies all three of these, but
from what I can tell, a large number embrace at least two...
Quote:Foxboy wrote:+1
Sequestration was a bluff of the "They can't POSSIBLY be that stupid as to let it happen!" variety.
Sadly, like many, Obama found that they COULD be that stupid.
Quote:ECSNorway wrote:IIRC, wasn't the reason because the Republican-penned budgets had absolutely no concessions for what the Democrats wanted? Seriously. Republicans, and even a good number of Democrats, are treating words like 'compromise' like vile filthy taboos.
Factoid
of the day: It is the (Democrat-controlled) Senate, not the
(Republican-controlled) House of Representatives or the
(Democrat-controlled) White House that has voted down every single
budget bill submitted since Obama took office.
If you want to blame someone for the Sequester, now you have your culprit.
Quote:Rajvik wrote:Look, it worked in Vermont of all places, so I'm pretty damn sure that it would work for the other 49 states with a bit of tweaking. And I'm pretty sure the only reason why Mitt Romney was dead-set against it was A) a Democrat penned the bill and B) it wasn't going to be called Romney-Care. Romney didn't pen the bill. This was not going to be a feather in the cap for the Republicans.
BA its
very simple why the republicans are against it. We look to those who
have instituted it and it NOT work worth a flip because that is what
could and in the US, very likely to happen. To those who have
"Socialized Medicine" and it works we ask, "What did you do to make it
work?" we look at those and go "It wont fly in the US because the
liberals will cry every -ism in existance" so we dont try and when we're
forced to try we try and defund it to stop it
Therefore, they want demolish the Affordable Care Act just so they can pen their own bill, and ramrod that sucker through the House. The Senate will simply shrugg, go, "We tried," and sign off on it simply because there's sensible people there that know that Americans need some sort of healthcare bill.
And all simply to justify their usefulness to the public at large. "Huzzah! We saved American Healthcare! All hail the GOP!" etc.
And if you don't believe me, go corner the nearest Republican who'll give you a straight answer.
Oh, I'll caveat that they (mostly tea party members) think that we honestly need to be protected from ourselves, to keep ourselves from becoming more like those communist Euros or some BS like that. But it's that sort of thinking that gets you into the hot water in the first place. We went with a federalist government in hopes that we can find that happy-middle. I'm thinking more and more that the only way we can really get anything done these days would be if we went for direct democracy and and made certain that everyone was fully clued in - not the half-truths and outright lies some politicians prefer.