Same question as above: must the House continue, in perpetuity, vote to fund the parakeet program as long as the Senate favors it?
Agreed. But the implicit assumption is that both sides agree that we ought to have a functioning, operating government, and that the way you work things out when neither party has full control over government is to propose alternatives, then negotiate the differences.
The GOP-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate have both passed budgets for FY 2014, and you know what? The House leadership doesn’t want to negotiate the differences. They simply want to go, “give us what we want, or we shut the whole thing down.”
I won’t argue that there’s never a time and place for that. There may be such a serious moral issue in the public sphere that an extraordinary step is called for to give the issue the attention it needs in order to rally public support to prevent grave wrong.
But as a routine tactic - tried repeatedly since the beginning of 2011 - it’s just the legislative expression of the belief that their getting their way on matters large and small is more important than the normal functioning of this democracy.
Apart from Obamacare and the debt ceiling – both matters more fairly called “large,” than “small,” I contend – on what other matters has the House GOP leadership displayed this recalcitrance?
Food stamps, the sequester, pretty much everything.
Remember, they haven’t been willing to go to conference to negotiate the House-Senate differences at all. Therefore, there is no evidence for their willingness to negotiate on anything.
Exactly. This is govt daycare-style - dealing with tantrums rather than having negotiations designed to benefit mutual interests. And I think much of that comes from not understanding where commonalities lie which in turn comes from people being too steeped in partisan politics. The us/them distinction eventually corrupts any hope of rational thought.
The sequester is the result of a compromise on the budget; I don’t understand how you can offer it as an example of unwillingness to compromise.
And – food stamps? That, I don’t recall. Can you refresh my memory?
If the R’s do force a shutdown, I hope they pay for it when their big money donors suffer financially and then let their rivers of cash to the GOP dry up.
No.
But Obamacare is not a parakeet research program in at least two respects. First, it is among the most debated and high profile policies in the last century of politics. It has been the focus of election cycle after election cycle. A majority of the public does not want it repealed, and neither does the President or the Senate. That difference matters to how negotiations over the program should proceed, as compared to some pork appropriation.
Second, a whole bunch of Obamacare remains whether it gets funded or not. It’s just that without funding, many of the requirements and laws will be actively harmful. Unlike defunding the parakeet program, defunding Obamacare is materially different from repealing the law.
I think what is required to earn the label of “good governance” here is reasonable effort at good faith compromise in recognition of where the power in Washington lies at the moment. I don’t agree that this strategy meets that bar.
They have been recalcitrant to tell the American people of their plans for the second part of their Obamacare “repeal and replace” strategy. It’s been several years, and they have only recently provided what they say is their plan for health care reform… only they haven’t released critical aspects of that plan, such as minor details like how much it costs or how they will pay for it. This is all that they’ve said to the public. Notice that great part on the right, about how the “fight continues” for replacing Obamacare? Shit, by their own measure, they’ve fulfilled the campaign promise to repeal Obamacare (see that green check?), so why are we talking about it now?
The House GOP recalcitrance is so deep that the party is sandbagging itself on health care reform.
First of all, we’re talking about this year’s negotiations (or absence thereof). The sequester was agreed to in 2011.
And I’d add that it was done so, not as a policy compromise, but as something that would presumably be so disagreeable to both sides that they’d come to the table and negotiate rather than accept the sequester.
In 2013, it’s a matter of contention between the parties. The Dems want to get rid of it, and the GOP wants to keep it. But there’s every indication that the Dems are willing to dicker on details. OTOH, those are the Republicans who have decided to have nothing to do with negotiations at all.
Food stamps: all you need to know is what you already know. The GOP has taken a different stand than the Dems, and that’s the GOP that has forsworn the negotiating table.
Given their absence from said table, I think it’s up to those who claim the GOP is willing to compromise to come up with for-instances.
I wonder if there are any Democratic members of congress who are on record as saying “I think the idea of compromise is the GOP coming over to our side,” which pretty much sums up the red idea of “compromise”. Finding any recent quote like that would actually be interesting but I’m not holding my breath.
I wonder if there are enough responsible, but disgusted Republicans in the House to break away from the howling nihilists and form a Coalition of the Sane, even an ad hoc one, with the House Democrats. Or at least enough to abstain and let the measure lose.
Yes. It’s called the Republican Study Committee’s American Healthcare Reform Act, introduced by, inter alia, Congressman John Fleming of Louisana, who interestingly enough is a medical doctor.
The post I was responding to:
Since the bill has a detailed summary here, among other places, the concept that it exists only in Cruz’s imagination doesn’t seem to pass the searching in good-faith test. Thus my response.
I think that’s one possibility: GOP’s from moderate districts will have to choose between losing business funding or a primary fight. Those from radical districts have already been primaried, so aren’t going to listen to business anyway.
How much of that analysis derives from your feeling that fundamentally, having Obamacare is better than not having Obamacare?
When I said “this recalcitrance,” I was referring to the unwillingness to go along with some sort of compromise. That was not an invitation to begin listing any examples of recalcitrance, of whatever magnitude, you might attribute to the GOP.
You’re suggesting those are post hoc distinctions? They’re not. Obamacare is not my favorite policy in the world. I don’t think I have a hard time being objective about it. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I?
ETA: For example, I also think de-funding the Iraq War was not a good governing strategy, for similar reasons.
I dunno, Bricker, this is a red herring. I would no more count a doctor as being competent to comment on healthcare economics than I would any of my broker colleagues to be competent at being regulators. Even if they were, putting them in charge of developing a system is a recipe for disaster.
In terms of Obamacare being better than not. I believe that it is. However, I also believe that it is because it’s a first step towards getting a single-payer system sometime in the next 20 years or so. I believe it’s a transitional product that will be reformed towards a better one over time. Because of that, I believe it to be better than where we were.
“Detailed”, you say? Still looking for that part. All I see the same shit stew of tax cuts, vouchers, refusal to fund women’s reproductive care, and lowest-common-denominator-state coverage requirements that deservedly got summarily rejected in the last election cycle. And only in soundbite form, at that.
Maybe that detail is in the Republican bill that’s finally in committee after three years, the bill which we’ll have to see passed in order to see what’s in it? No? There isn’t one *just *at the moment? I’m sure it’s just about to be filed, right?
For a result-driven definition of “good faith”, perhaps.
No, you cannot claim that an unwillingness to compromise on Obamacare and budget reform automatically means an unwillingness to compromise on any other subject.
You were the one that said the GOP was using this tactic for “routine matters” that were “large and small”. Pressed for citation, you named two large, very UNroutine programs, and one program that is fairly described as smaller and routine. But with no evidence for the food stamps, you try to retreat into the claim that because they won’t negotiate on the large, we should all assume they won’t negotiate on the small as well.
Doesn’t work that way. I say again: can you defend that claim that they are using this tactic on routine matters?