Tag: Government shutdown

One of the best things written about the Tea Party yet.

What was I just saying about being a Paleoconservative? ConfusedThinkingI dont know

Well, here I go again, screwing up those credentials! Surprise

Peter Wehner writing over at, yes, Commentary Magazine (!) about those in the Tea Party that are feeling like the world is coming to end; in like the next few weeks:

This is not, from my vantage point, a particularly healthy approach to politics or one moored to reality. You can believe, as I do, that President Obama is doing great harm to America, that his agenda is having an enervating effect and that we face deep and serious challenges.

But some perspective is also in order. We are actually not on the verge of collapse and ruin. This period is not comparable to the Great Depression or the period leading up to the Civil War or the collapse of Ancient Rome. And tyranny is not just around the corner.

This is, rather, a difficult time in some important respects – one that requires sobriety and wisdom, public officials of courage and good judgment who are willing to act boldly but not recklessly. The truth is that our afflictions are not beyond our ability to address them, that our society is a complicated mosaic that eludes simple, sweeping characterizations, and America’s capacity for self-renewal is quite extraordinary.

Beyond that is the importance of understanding that the life of a nation, like the life of an individual, includes ebbs and flows; that almost every generation feels as though the problems it faces are among the worst any generation has ever faced; and that setbacks are inevitable and that progress is often incremental.

A final thought: There is no question that a great deal of repair work needs to be done. But the growing sense among some on the right that a curtain of darkness is descending on America is both unwarranted and can lead people to act in ways that are self-destructive.

Without understating our challenges for a moment, I rather hope a figure will emerge from within the conservative ranks who is not only principled but also winsome, who possesses an open and flexible mind and has not learned the art of being discontent. A person who doesn’t find fulfillment in amplifying anxiety and anger. Who doesn’t dwell in the lowlands because he’s too busy aiming for the uplands. And who knows that this fallen world is not a world without hope.

You see up there, where I underlined, that is important. We can be fiscal conservatives, but we do not have to be reckless about it. We want to slow down socialism, but we don’t want this to happen:

The biggest mistake the house Tea Party Conservatives made, was picking this fight so close to a debt ceiling deadline. Wrong battle, wrong strategy, wrong methods. This is why it failed. I wrote this before, but it does bear repeating again.

The Showdown is over, House Approves Senate Budget Deal

Finally. My friend John can get back to work.

The Story:

Moving with stunning speed, Congress voted Wednesday to end the 16-day-old government shutdown and avert the potential for the first major debt default in U.S. history in a deal that gave President Obama most of what he sought — an open government and more borrowing authority without denting Obamacare.

The Senate voted 81-18 to approve the deal and sent it over to the House, which quickly followed suit with a 285-144 vote on the measure — amounting to an almost complete surrender for the GOP.

Mr. Obama signed the bill immediately early Thursday.

“There’s a lot of work ahead of us, including our need to earn back the trust of the American people that’s been lost over the last few weeks,” he said. “With the shutdown behind us and budget committees forming, we now have the opportunity to focus on a sensible budget that is responsible, that is fair and that helps hard-working people all across this country.”

House Republicans saw the vote chiefly as a way to bring an end to a bruising fight that saw the GOP sink to historic lows in approval ratings, and that exposed deep party divisions over tactics and policy.

“This legislation must be supported, but it should not be celebrated,” said Rep. Charlie Dent, Pennsylvania Republican, who had been begging his party to end the shutdown. “It’s not a win for anyone — not the institution of Congress, nor the president, for that matter.”

Still to be seen is whether the deal subdues the tea party, which had helped push Republicans to take a stand that in hindsight appears to have been futile.

via Shutdown over: House approves Senate budget deal; avoids debt default – Washington Times.

Blogger reactions can be found here and here.

 

Obama rejects House offer to end shutdown

Remember the possible deal that I wrote about? Well, no dice says Obama.

Via Politico:

Speaker John Boehner told House Republicans Saturday morning that his efforts to strike a deal with President Barack Obama are at a standstill.

There is no agreement, Boehner said in a room in the Capitol Saturday, and there are no negotiations between House Republicans and the White House, since Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government while setting up a budget negotiating process.

With that, a familiar dynamic has resurfaced 12 days into the government shutdown and five days before Treasury says the nation runs out of borrowing authority: The pendulum has swung back to Senate Republicans, who now look more likely to cut a deal with Obama to end the first government shutdown since 1996, and avoid the first default on U.S. debt in history.

After the news that talks between Boehner and Obama have broken down, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) emerged on the floor to emphasize that the nation’s eyes are firmly fixed on the chamber.

“I was happy to see the Republicans engaged in talks with the president, the House Republicans. That’s over with. It’s done. They’re not talking anymore,” Reid said. “I say to my friends on the Republican side of this Senate, time is running out.”

House Republicans are, for the first time, acknowledging that reality. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told the closed meeting of GOP lawmakers that, “Senate Republicans need to stand strong and fight,” according to sources in the room.

“It’s all good,” Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) said. “It’s now up to the Senate Republicans to stand up.”

House Republican leaders met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Friday to receive a briefing on the state of play in the Senate.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) are circulating a 23-page draft bill that would increase the nation’s borrowing limit through January and reopen government until March.

Meanwhile the House Republicans are not too happy. Via NRO’s Corner:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan lashed out at Senate Republicans for interfering with the House GOP’s talks with the White House to reopen the government and lift the debt ceiling, suggesting his colleagues on the other side of the Capitol were betraying Speaker John Boehner.

“They’re trying to cut the House out, and trying to jam us with the Senate. We’re not going to roll over and take that,” Ryan told reporters. When asked if he felt “double crossed,” Ryan said “you look at the facts and draw your own conclusions.”

Senate Republicans, led by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, are negotiating with Democrats on a package to reopen the government and lift the debt ceiling into next year with relatively modest concessions for the GOP.

Ryan said House Republicans only learned the details about the plan this morning, and added that he strenuously objects to it. When asked which parts of the plan he objected to, Ryan said there are “too many to go into.”

Two things here:

  • I do believe that Paul Ryan just took the bait of the Obama administration to divide and conquer the GOP.
  • This is not a good way to get elected in 2016 as President. Ryan must have forgotten the 11 commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”

Either way, I believe this is going to drag out for a very long time.

Military family needs our help

There are times, when this blog is used for good. This, is one of those times.

Video:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Story is via NBCNews.com: (H/T to HotAir.com)

In what veterans call an outrageous slight after the ultimate sacrifice, the shuttered federal government is withholding a $100,000 payment normally wired to relatives of fallen soldiers — including the families of five killed in Afghanistan over the weekend.

The payment, known as the death gratuity, is typically sent to families of the fallen within three days to help them cover funeral costs or travel to meet the flag-draped coffins of their loved ones.

“It is upsetting because my husband died for his country, and now his family is left to worry,” said Ashley Peters of Springfield, Mo., whose husband, Jeremy, was a special agent assigned to the Army’s 5th Military Police Battalion and was among the five killed. “My husband always said if something happened to him we would be taken care of.”

Sad Part:

“It is upsetting because my husband died for his country, and now his family is left to worry,” said Ashley Peters of Springfield, Mo., whose husband, Jeremy, was a special agent assigned to the Army’s 5th Military Police Battalion and was among the five killed. “My husband always said if something happened to him we would be taken care of.”…

“If Congress were trapped in a car that sunk down in a river, I would swim to the window, and I would look them all in the eye and say, ‘Suck water,’” said Randall Patterson, the father of Private [Cody] Patterson. The father used an expletive to characterize members of Congress who “are still getting paid.”…

The mother and brother of Peters, the special agent from the 5th Military Police Battalion, said that they were too upset to talk. His step-grandfather, Peters Jerry, said that the sergeant was getting out of the military after this tour, so that he could be home more with his 20-month-old son.

“It will be devastating,” Jerry said of the delay in the death gratuity. He said that he blamed Republicans and the Tea Party…

Also suspended is a year’s worth of housing allowance, typically paid in a lump sum to the surviving spouse or dependent children of a soldier. For a sergeant in the Washington area with dependents, it amounts to more than $2,000 per month.

Blackfive reports:

Update 4: To help the wounded in the recent attacks, you can visit the following to help:

http://americasfund.org/
http://semperfifund.org/
http://www.soldiersangels.org/

Ranger Up has a blog posting up too. 

Seeing the Government and basically both parties do not give a crap about our Military; let’s try to give a little. I cannot, I am out of work right now. But, I can use this blog, and what little of a bully pulpit that I have here to spread the word around.

Also too, and I believe this one is most important: For all of my criticisms of the neoconservatives and wilsonian foreign policy;  this one thing I will never criticize and that is the United States Military and its fighting Men and Woman. That might be Lew Rockwell and the militant libertarian’s bag; but it is not mine at all. Those guys put their lives on the line at the behest of the United States Government and they never question the actions at all. They do it, for simple love of Country — and I God Bless them for it.

At the risk of sounding like a fascist: I have always and will always say that anyone who says a unkind word about the men and women of the United States Military; is nothing more than an Anti-American buffoon and an unpatriotic person. Just the way that I feel about that one.  

I never was able to serve in the United States Military, I never graduated from high school; due to having A.D.H.D. and my math not being that great. However, I did do will in English and in History. So, it’s because the History of the Military and because my respect for what they do, which is keep us safe is why I do what I do here on this blog. God Bless the families of our fine Military and may he keep those who have lost loved ones on the battlefield. Praying

The White House blinks?

(H/T Ace)

Depends on who you ask.

Via HotAir.com:

After weeks of insisting it won’t negotiate on either the budget or the debt ceiling, a top White House adviser said this morning that Barack Obama would sign a short-term lift in the latter to gain more time for a longer-term agreement.

Via WaPo:

President Obama would accept a short-term increase in the federal borrowing cap , rather than one lasting a year or more, a senior White House official said Monday. The statement was an acknowledgment by the administration that it may not be possible to reach a deal on a long-term increase in the debt ceiling before a critical Oct. 17 deadline.

Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, said members of Congress ultimately have the responsibility to decide how often they want to raise the debt ceiling, although he argued that an extended hike is preferable. …

The Treasury says it will run low on cash in as little as 10 days, placing the nation at risk of a historic default. Some Republicans have suggested that if Congress can’t reach an agreement by Oct. 17, they might try to forge a coalition to support an interim measure to increase the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling for as little as six weeks.

Sperling’s comments Monday suggested that the White House would accept such a measure. The statement was notable because administration officials had rejected a short-term debt ceiling increase during a similar impasse in the summer of 2011, when the White House insisted that the debt limit be increased to cover borrowing through 2012.

Boehner is staying on message. Check out this video via CNN, and notice how they attempt to make the Republicans look like the bad guys?:

National Journal explains why Obama and the democrats have to work with the Republicans:

Obama has at least two incentives to talk. First, there is the matter of optics. Voters want to believe that their leaders are open-minded, a trait they particularly expect in a president who promised to change the culture of Washington. Obama simply undermines his credibility by stiff-arming the GOP. Their obstinacy is no excuse for his. During the last protracted government shutdown, President Clinton talked almost every day with GOP rivals Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole.

Second, Obama has an opportunity to deftly steer an embattled and divided GOP away from Obamacare and to an issue worthy of high-stakes negotiations: The nation’s long-term budget crisis. While it’s true that the deficit has dropped in recent months, nothing has been done to secure Social Security and Medicare beyond the next 10 years. Punting this red-ink quandary to the next president would mar Obama’s legacy.

In April, I wrote that both the White House and the GOP House had incentive to strike a deal that would both raise taxes and trim entitlement spending. The story traced the outlines of such a deal, but the moment was lost. Boehner doesn’t trust Obama and is worried about a revolt from his no-compromise caucus. Obama doesn’t trust Boehner and is worried about a revolt from his no-compromise caucus. The House speaker reportedly raised the idea of a so-called grand bargain at a White House meeting last week, and got laughed at. That is the exact wrong response.

So, we’ll see. Hopefully this shut down ends quickly. As I am sure these people; like my friend John —- would like to get back to work. I say this because of this right here: I am all for political principles. However, stopping Government for the sole purpose of furthering those principles is just unacceptable in the real world. James Antle has it correct; Republicans need to play the long game, and not this sort of stupidity. It is only hurting people that have nothing to do with the political process.

There is a fine line between political principles and blatant idiocy; wise is the man that knows the difference between the two.

Republican Hypocrisy on Obamacare?

Hmmmmmmmm…..

Via the Nation:

Even before President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, Republicans were vowing to repeal it. It’s no wonder, because polls showed that the basic elements of the ACA were quite popular, and there was a real danger that it would become more so as people found out that the plan denounced as a “monstrosity” by the National Republican Senatorial Committee would not trample on their liberties so much as help protect their health. Desperate to avoid this, the GOP-controlled House has voted no fewer than thirty-seven times to repeal Obamacare in the three years since it was enacted.

Now letters produced by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that many of these same anti-Obamacare Republicans have solicited grants from the very program they claim to despise. This is evidence not merely of shameless hypocrisy but of the fact that the ACA bestows tangible benefits that even Congress’s most extreme right-wing ideologues are hard-pressed to deny to their constituents.

As I reported here last September, Congressman Paul Ryan, who as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012 called for its repeal, sent a letter requesting ACA money for health clinics in his district two years earlier. The Nation has obtained documents revealing that at least twenty other Obamacare-bashing GOP lawmakers have similarly pleaded for ACA funds on behalf of constituents. Among them are Kristi Noem, a Republican lawmaker from South Dakota likely to run for the Senate next year, as well as Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who has been touted as a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2016.

In one of two letters sent by Portman to the Department of Health and Human Services, the senator requested ACA funds to help a federal health center in Cleveland, where the money could help “an additional 8,966 uninsured individuals” to receive
”essential services,” in his words. In Noem’s case, the congresswoman requested ACA funds to construct a community health center in Rapid City to provide primary services to the uninsured. Both Noem and Portman won office in 2010 campaigning vigorously against the law and have since worked to repeal it.

Though notably less transparent, the behavior of these GOP lawmakers parallels that of GOP governors like Arizona’s Jan Brewer, who blast the president’s health reform package while embracing the millions in Medicaid funds that it provides.

Here’s the letters, read it and weep for that Party:

Video: Democratic Party Senator public relations FAIL!

When I saw this, I simply said one thing: HOLY MOSES! 😯

The quote, via the Washington Free Beacon:

DANA BASH: You all talked about children with cancer unable to go to clinical trials. The House is presumably going to pass a bill that funds at least the NIH. Given what you’ve said, will you at least pass that? And if not, aren’t you playing the same political games that Republicans are?

HARRY REID: Listen, Sen. Durbin explained that very well, and he did it here, did it on the floor earlier, as did Senator Schumer. What right did they have to pick and choose what part of government is going to be funded? It’s obvious what’s going on here. You talk about reckless and irresponsible. Wow. What this is all about is Obamacare. They are obsessed. I don’t know what other word I can use. They’re obsessed with this Obamacare. It’s working now and it will continue to work and people will love it more than they do now by far. So they have no right to pick and choose.

BASH: But if you can help one child who has cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?

REID: Why would we want to do that? I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force base that are sitting home. They have a few problems of their own. This is — to have someone of your intelligence to suggest such a thing maybe means you’re irresponsible and reckless –

BASH: I’m just asking a question.

Right about now; if I were anything closely related to the Democratic Party — leadership, strategist or whatever — I would be ordering a double of some very strong liquor. The Democrats will never, ever live that one down; ever.

Update: Now a memeorandum thread.

Others: Weekly Standard, Hot Air and The Lonely Conservative