Why Republicans should be blamed for the government shutdown

[josephpalazzo]

Seems to me like it's one of the huge drains on the budget, and ending it might fix part of the budget issues.

The final tally of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan will reach at least $3.7 trillion, and could go as high as $4.4 trillion, according to a study done by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies. Borrowing the money needed to fight the wars will cost an estimated additional $1 trillion through 2020, according to the study.

Read more: http://nation.time.com/2011/06/29/the-5 ... z2glkF8coo

Then again, we don't know what the cost would have been had we not fought those wars. It's like having an alarm system. You know the cost of that. But how do you gauge the cost if you hadn't as you don't know how many home invasions the alarm system prevented.

[entropy]

Six months ago, Boehner promised Reid that if Reid could get the Democrats in the Senate to agree to a budget amount that was close to the amount in the budget the House passed (the Ryan budget), then he would make sure the House Republican caucus would vote for the Senate bill. Reid twisted arms and got liberal Democrats in the Senate to swallow hard and vote for what is essentially a Paul Ryan level budget. When it came time for Boehner to deliver on his promise, he couldn't get the Republican House caucus to go along with what he had agreed with Reid to do. Instead, they decided to go after defunding the ACA which will not help reduce the budget (doing so would probably make the budget deficit slightly worse).

After Boehner didn't follow through quickly on his promise to have the House vote to pass the Senate bill, for six months after passing their budget bill the Senate asked over 80 different times for the House to form a joint committee to hash out a budget. The House refused. Now that the government is shut down, the House Republicans are all of the sudden saying, "Hey, let's have a joint committee" and saying they are SO willing to negotiate and that the Democrats are the ones who don't want to negotiate and compromise. But the Democrats already have made significant compromises and the time for what should be unneeded additional negotiations was six months ago, when there was adequate time for give and take discussions. The Republicans in the House didn't want that - they wanted the leverage of a crisis of their own making. They screwed up and now they need to pass a resolution to keep the government going. There are enough Republicans who would vote to do that along with the Democrats in the House. Boehner should allow that vote.

[josephpalazzo]

Six months ago, Boehner promised Reid that if Reid could get the Democrats in the Senate to agree to a budget amount that was close to the amount in the budget the House passed (the Ryan budget), then he would make sure the House Republican caucus would vote for the Senate bill. Reid twisted arms and got liberal Democrats in the Senate to swallow hard and vote for what is essentially a Paul Ryan level budget. When it came time for Boehner to deliver on his promise, he couldn't get the Republican House caucus to go along with what he had agreed with Reid to do. Instead, they decided to go after defunding the ACA which will not help reduce the budget (doing so would probably make the budget deficit slightly worse).

After Boehner didn't follow through quickly on his promise to have the House vote to pass the Senate bill, for six months after passing their budget bill the Senate asked over 80 different times for the House to form a joint committee to hash out a budget. The House refused. Now that the government is shut down, the House Republicans are all of the sudden saying, "Hey, let's have a joint committee" and saying they are SO willing to negotiate and that the Democrats are the ones who don't want to negotiate and compromise. But the Democrats already have made significant compromises and the time for what should be unneeded additional negotiations was six months ago, when there was adequate time for give and take discussions. The Republicans in the House didn't want that - they wanted the leverage of a crisis of their own making. They screwed up and now they need to pass a resolution to keep the government going. There are enough Republicans who would vote to do that along with the Democrats in the House. Boehner should allow that vote.

As I have said before, and will say again: the Republicans are MASTERS at LYING. This is just one more incident among many where they deliberately lie and lie. Even when they are confronted by the media, they counter with their own ( HINT: FoxNews). First, in the early shutdown, they said repeatedly, program after program, that the sky didn't fall -- Boo Obama for scaring everyone. Now they lament that veterans couldn't visit their favorite museums. Of course, all the fault of the "liberal" shutdown.


See Jon Stewart on some of the faux outrage by the GOP: http://aattp.org/must-see-jon-stewart-e ... americans/

[josephpalazzo]

Here's another lie from the nutjobs on the right. The polls at Fox News showed this on who is to blame for the shutdown:

•25%: Republican leaders, such as John Boehner
 •17%: Tea Party Republicans, such as Ted Cruz
 •8%: Democratic leaders, such as Harry Reid
 •24%: President Barack Obama
 •20%: (All/Combination)
 •5%: (Don't know)
 
So the headline was: "Americans blame Democrats as much as Republicans", never mentioning that the tea party in  Congress is part of the GOP. So actually, it's 42% for the Republicans vs 32% for the Democrats.

[Colanth]

Colanth, obviously you know how its' done.  You aren't by chance a buddy of Boehner's, are you?

Seriously though, would the Speaker of the House screw around with millions in the country just to make his friends a few million dollars?  I mean we are talking about the Speaker of the House.

<snip more of the same>

#-o  

I was going to respond to this in a serious manner.  Almost got me.

[LikelyToBreak]

Colanth wrote in part:

I was going to respond to this in a serious manner. Almost got me.

Darn.  And I was so close. 8-[

[entropy]

Rand Paul says that the shutdown is a temporary inconvenience necessary to achieve necessary reductions in the budget deficit:

http://www.gopusa.com/news/2013/10/02/r ... nvenience/

"I think I was elected to stand up and say, 'You know what, the emperor has no clothes,'" Paul said. "And we have to point that out. So really when people get caught up in the shutdown, I try to tell them, 'Well look, this isn't just about a shutdown. This isn't just about temporary inconveniences of the government shutdown. This is about whether or not a society or a civilization can borrow a trillion dollars every year without ramifications.'"

So, hundreds of thousands of people are left wondering if they will get the check they need to avoid some significant hardship (not to mention the myriad other difficulties that come from shutting down the government) and that's a "temporary inconvenience"?

Aside from that patrician attitude, there are a lot other problems with what he is saying here. He is claiming that the shutdown is necessary to force the Democrats into getting rid of the ACA because of budget deficits. But getting rid of the ACA will not reduce the budget deficit. So this is either a gross misunderstanding of something that is essential to his argument - IOW, he is being incompetent here - or he is being disingenuous (or, as josephpalazzo might say, "he's lying"  ). He says that we are having budget deficits of a trillion dollars every year but the budget deficit for this year is ~$750 billion. The deficit this year is ~$400 billion less than last year. The deficit last year was ~$200 billion dollars less than the year before. And here's the real kicker - the Democratically controlled Senate passed a bill that would fund the government at only a bit above the levels that were in the bill that the Republican controlled House passed. So if the Republicans had passed the Senate bill in unchanged form, the budget deficit would have been only a little bit higher than it would have been if the Senate had passed the House budget bill.

This whole shutdown show isn't really about the budget deficit! What it is about is that the House Republicans want shut down the government and then add back just the pieces they want. It's not about the amount of the budget deficit, it's about the House Republicans wanting to be able to throttle all the regulatory and social programs they don't want and increase funding for some programs like defense that they favor. I'm not saying that they don't care about budget deficits but that in this case their actions have not been about reducing the budget deficit significantly, what they are doing is about causing all this angst just so that they can strangle government activities THEY don't like while they are more than happy to open the funding spigot for government activities they like. In this case, a lot of people are being hurt because the House Republicans have chosen this particular tactic to gain more political power to impose their priorities. To impose their priorities, not to reduce the budget deficit.

What's worst of all is that we are overly worrying about the size of the budget deficit in the short run - the empirical evidence from the performance of economies that went deeply into austerity mode, compared to economies that did not, strongly shows that austerity really holds back economic activity. But I guess that's a whole other topic...

[Colanth]

This whole shutdown show isn't really about the budget deficit! What it is about is that the House Republicans want shut down the government and then add back just the pieces they want. It's not about the amount of the budget deficit, it's about the House Republicans wanting to be able to throttle all the regulatory and social programs they don't want and increase funding for some programs like defense that they favor. I'm not saying that they don't care about budget deficits but that in this case their actions have not been about reducing the budget deficit significantly, what they are doing is about causing all this angst just so that they can strangle government activities THEY don't like while they are more than happy to open the funding spigot for government activities they like.

IOW, the shutdown is just a different method of doing what they've been doing for about 35 years.  So nothing's changed.  They're still screwing us, but this time, instead of using a slot-head screw, they're using a Philips-head screw.  Don't worry, though - we're going to get just as screwed.

[entropy]

IOW, the shutdown is just a different method of doing what they've been doing for about 35 years.  So nothing's changed.

But this method has much more dramatic consequences for a lot of people that the other more frequently used tactics do not. And if the Republicans are successful in using this tactic - and especially if they are successful at getting the Democrats to cave to their demands by using the debt limit to take the world economy hostage - then these kinds of tactics will become common. Why not use it more - it works! The Democrats would be dumb not to use these tactics when they have the chance if Republicans are successful using them now. The Republicans being successful with these tactics now would set an extremely bad precedent that you can be sure would be used again and again. The political system would become much more dysfunctional than it has been over the last several decades (which, I agree, has been plenty bad enough).

[lumpymunk]

Here's another lie from the nutjobs on the right. The polls at Fox News showed this on who is to blame for the shutdown:

•25%: Republican leaders, such as John Boehner
 •17%: Tea Party Republicans, such as Ted Cruz
 •8%: Democratic leaders, such as Harry Reid
 •24%: President Barack Obama
 •20%: (All/Combination)
 •5%: (Don't know)
 
So the headline was: "Americans blame Democrats as much as Republicans", never mentioning that the tea party in  Congress is part of the GOP. So actually, it's 42% for the Republicans vs 32% for the Democrats.

This poll changes pretty frequently, they're trying to measure the change over time... not present one poll as definitive.

Also, there is kind of a rift in the republican party.  Conservatives and Neo-Cons are not as accepting of the Tea Party republicans yet... and are very willing to turn on them on a moments notice.  Politically they're cautious about jumping on board... so I think separating them into two categories makes sense.

[josephpalazzo]

IOW, the shutdown is just a different method of doing what they've been doing for about 35 years.  So nothing's changed.

But this method has much more dramatic consequences for a lot of people that the other more frequently used tactics do not. And if the Republicans are successful in using this tactic - and especially if they are successful at getting the Democrats to cave to their demands by using the debt limit to take the world economy hostage - then these kinds of tactics will become common. Why not use it more - it works! The Democrats would be dumb not to use these tactics when they have the chance if Republicans are successful using them now. The Republicans being successful with these tactics now would set an extremely bad precedent that you can be sure would be used again and again. The political system would become much more dysfunctional than it has been over the last several decades (which, I agree, has been plenty bad enough).

Now the discussion is around the Dems giving some concessions so that the GOP won't lose face. Someone should tell these idiots we don't live in China.  

[Colanth]

My wife spotted this on Facebook.  I'm paraphrasing.

1: "Can we discuss my burning your house down?"

2: "NO!"

1: "Then can we discuss my burning down just the second floor?"

2: "NO!"

1: "Then can we discuss which part of your house I CAN burn down?"

2: "NO!"

1: "You're not compromising!!!"

[josephpalazzo]

:rollin:  :rollin:  :rollin:

[entropy]

The narrative that Democrats don't want to compromise is a ruse. To get a budget past Republicans in the Senate they already had to compromise. In fact, they compromised all the way to agreeing to the spending levels the Republicans wanted (just not on the spending priorities). The Republicans may not have voted for the bill, but the bill would have never gotten past a filibuster if they Republicans in the Senate hadn't voted to allow the vote on the bill to proceed. (That's right, Senators can not only filibuster to not allow a direct vote on a bill, they can filibuster the process of bringing the bill up for a vote.) Boehner agreed that he would have a "clean" vote (no amendments) in the House on the Senate bill if the Democrats agreed to the funding levels the Republicans wanted. That was a huge compromise on the part of Democrats. If Boehner had followed through on what he promised, we would not be having this mess now.

But then Cruz decided that there was political advantage for him to throw a monkey-wrench in the whole thing. He started pushing the House Republicans to insist on dropping Obamacare as a condition to voting for the budget (with funding well below what the Democrats wanted). The Tea Party House Republicans followed his lead. Arguing to hold the budget vote hostage to get rid of Obamacare was a loser just like most people expected. Cruz is a really smart guy, but it's hard to know whether or not the evaporation of support for the getting rid of Obamacare condition was something he factored into his tactics or not. I suspect he did know that would happen and his next planned move was then to have the House put forth micro-budget bills funding just little parts of the government. It's a clever move because then the House Republicans could then basically determine the whole shape of the government by putting it back together one piece at a time to their liking. The idea was to sell this piecemeal approach as being one of the Republicans being open to negotiation and compromise and the Democrats would either have to go along or be seen as not wanting to compromise.

But for that tactic to work, it has to rely on people not realizing that the Democrats already did a large compromise. It's like, "see, the Democrats don't want to give up anything, we're the one's open to compromise" - even though they refused to meet with joint committee with the Democrats for six months after the Senate passed its compromise budget. I think understanding that goes a long way toward understanding why there is so much strength to the Democratic resistance to what the Republicans are trying to do now.

So I would say that what's going on is more like the somebody threatening to burn down your house and you agree to give up a lot of the furniture inside the house for them to not burn down the house and then they try to conveniently forget that you gave up your furniture and are now saying that if you don't let them burn down at least part of the house, then you aren't willing to compromise.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The crass, petty, vindictive, creepy, anti-people Master of the Shutdown

The Shutdown Government: Powerful, Punitive And Petty

With only a small portion of the government actually shut down (who knew the drug war was an essential service?) the choices of what to shut down and what to keep open (executive choices) seem designed to cause as much pain to the average person as possible.