You seem like the sort that would appreciate Harper’s Magazine’s take on Obama, namely that he’s our Herbert Hoover:
The bill itself was finally passed 54-44 on November 25, 2003, and was signed into law by the President on December 8.
I was sure it was passed by reconciliation but it looks like I’m wrong. So I’ll ask you the same question except changing the Medicare bill for Bush’s tax cuts, which did. How come Bush passing tax cuts fits within the parameters of deficit reduction but Obama’s bill doesn’t?
I don’t know. That’s the honest answer. From what I can tell, the reconciliation rules specifically disallow bills that would reduce revenue and increase the deficit. Perhaps the argument was that the tax cuts would actually increase revenue through supply-side economics? I’m not saying I agree with that, but perhaps that was the argument made, and if it couldn’t be disproven, it couldn’t be disallowed?
Congress has a long history of ignoring laws it doesn’t like, or skirting around the spirit of them through various shenanigans. How many ‘deficit control’ acts have been passed? How many hard targets have been set and ignored? Looking back at the history of reconciliation, it appears it’s even been used for other modifications of Social Security, although the strict reading of the act specifically says you can’t use it to modify Social Security in any way. For that matter, I think the current health care bill also includes modifications to Social Security.
It does appear that the 10-year limit has teeth, because both of Bush’s tax cuts had to be limited to 10 years because they were passed through reconciliation. Does that mean the health care bill also has to be renewed in 10 years? It would appear so. But God only knows.
Let me ask you honestly - you’ve got a 1,900 page bill in front of you. We all know that this thing is a mass of compromises, payoffs to various commercial and political special interests, the results of backroom dealings, etc. This bill could literally change the life of you and everyone you know. It could destroy the American economy, or save it.
Do you really think it’s appropriate to pass this with only 20 hours of debate? That’s a time span short enough to guarantee that no one will have been able read the thing and spot its flaws. Are you so confident in the abilities of the people in the House and Senate that you’re willing to let them modify 1/6 of the country’s economy without any real public debate whatsoever?
I mean, I know Democrats want public health care really badly. I know they think this is their one shot to get it. And they may be right. But is that goal so important that you’re willing to throw all caution to the wind and buy whatever pig-in-a-poke a Congress with a 24% approval rating is selling you? Are you not even remotely worried about the devils that may be living in the details?
If so, you’ve got a hell of a lot more faith than I do.
Sure, but I figure we can fix it if need be. Pencils have erasers, mistakes can be corrected, tinkering is possible, even likely. Do we have to sign a blood oath that whatever we install today, we must live with for one hundred years, without any chance of correction? What irrevocable disaster are you warning us about?
And what if we’re right? Do you recall no instance when we were right and you wrong? Could happen again, don’t you think? Or don’t you?
OK, now you don’t know if what you were arguing before is correct.
And can you manage to make one post without endless concern for whether the Democrats are doing the right thing? It’s all irrelevant nonsense anyway. When does anybody ever read any bill? If congress actually read a bill it’s be the first time in history and 99% of them wouldn’t understand any of it. The whole “read the bill” thing is just bs GOP propaganda.
In politics, a low approval rating is generally a sign that you’re doing something right.
The health bill has been gone over for months. It has been hashed and rehashed. The floor leaders have been gathering votes for some time. I doubt there are any surprises. The public option which was dead has been reconstituted. Everybody is aware of that. It is not like a repub energy bill. It is not like the repubs trying to jam the" Paulson make me god bill "instantly. There has been tons of info on the internet too.
That’s a pretty low opinion you have of a Congress that you are entrusting with your health care. Strange.
And I have no idea what you mean by , “now you don’t know if what you were arguing before is correct.” If you mean that I was arguing that reconciliation was inappropriate for this, I still think so. The fact that it appears to have been used in the same way in the past doesn’t change that. This is a process that intentionally limits debate and transparency, and it’ll be a really bad thing if it slowly becomes the norm for passing any contentious bill. It’s especially hypocritical for an administration that rose to power on a promise of transparency to wholeheartedly embrace such an abuse of process, but it would be wrong no matter who did it, even if it’s been done before.
Do you have any idea how destructive such legislating tinkering is? Businesses cannot make plans without a stable environment to operate in. If this turns into a multi-year ‘corrective’ process where the rules are constantly changing, it will be very destructive to the health care industry.
What if you’re right about what? Do you even know what’s in the current bill? Do you even know who wrote it, and for what reasons? We do know that the Congress and the administration have been madly cutting deals with all kinds of special interests - all behind closed doors. The White House has invoked executive privilege to prevent disclosure of who it has met with. Remember how you hated that when Bush did it?
All I’ve seen so far is a huge stack of paper. You want to vote on that now, using an expedited process, before anyone even has a chance to read it. It’s the process that’s broken in this case. This is no way to run a government.
You’d also better consider the ramifications of passing something under rules that are so limiting. Passing this bill under reconciliation likely means it can be revoked by a Republican Congress for any number of reasons. It’ll have the same 10-year cap that Bush’s tax cuts have. And if I’m reading the rules correctly, the government can only use reconciliation once per year, which means cap-and-trade is dead, the education bill may be dead, and the next budget may be harder to pass and have to have more compromises for the Republicans in it.
The bottom line is that you really, really own health care now. Forget about whether I think you’ve been right in the past - you’d better hope that in this case you are right, because you’ll be paying the price. If this plan blows up the budget, the Republicans can undo it, and heap all the blame on you. If people find their health care getting worse, they’ll blame the Democrats. Hell, even if the system as a whole gets better or at least no worse than it does, there are always ‘losers’ who will be treated poorly. And they’ll blame you.
On the other hand, if it all works out, and health care spending declines and the budget is balanced and support for the new plan is at 80%, you can use that as a big stick against those nasty recalcitrant Republicans. So, you’re going to live or die by this one. What I think is irrelevant.
Funny, that’s not what Democrats were saying when approval ratings were low and the Republicans were in charge.
Of course not. However, you know as well as I do that politically unpopular moves (Bush I’s tax hike, for example) are often the correct decision.
ETA: In this instance, of course, Congress is clearly not making the correct decisions, nor has it for at least a decade. I’m simply pointing out that their approval rating is meaningless- especially considering their incumbency rate.
So… Your explanation for Congress’s low approval rating is that they’re doing a whole bunch of really good things? And that it was true of Republicans as well? That’s an interesting take on the situation.
Sam, are you seriously suggesting that Americans don’t want health care reform, based on a few polls about Congress’ popularity? Polls that don’t differentiate between the parties, and when they do, show the Dems popular and your GOP not? Polls that can just as honestly (if not more so) reflect impatience that Congress has not yet passed such a bill in over a half a century, and impatience that the party you support has done nothing but obstruct? Do you really expect to have that “argument” taken seriously by anyone whose views are not defined by partisan alignment?
Or is that just, once again, just another pile of your talking-point Democrat-bashing?
Congress has a low approval rating because :
The GOP have the lowest approval rating ever, still. That’s because their legislative agenda for the years they controlled congress was gaay marriage, flag burning, wedge issues on religion in the public sphere, Terry Schiavo etc. etc. Basically six years of wedge issues and nothing substantive.
The Democrats, and this is the crucial bit, aren’t doing what voters elected them to do! No universal healthcare, no hanging the bankers up by their balls, continuing to prosecute dumbass wars etc. etc.
It’s not because the Democrats are pursuing radical left policies that they’re losing support, it’s because they’re the GOP without the culture war wedge issues.
Sometimes people quote someone else merely to show what they are starting from to prompt what they are about to write. Sort of, “I want to expand on this while not directly addressing the person who wrote it.”
Whichever way you would have it though, three pages into a thread, people will have associated/dissociated themselves with the premise in the OP. That has happened here albeit in a generally more thoughtful/readable manner than the OP started with.
As such your sweeping generalizations cover others who were in agreement with the OP. As such I feel safe in feeling caught by those generalizations.
Further, I do not see someone as being a Pollyanna because they vote someone in and expect them to work towards the goals their constituents put them there for in the first place. Apparently this is not a few people either who are disillusioned. It is widespread.
What is pollyannaish or naive about that? Apparently the Republicans got what they expected when voters gave them a majority. Why was it dumb for Dems to expect the same?
Read my post again.
Reconciliation specifically disallows bills that would increase the budget deficit, yes. But that explicit rule was only instituted after Democrats took back control of Congress. As I recall, changing that procedure was one of the first things they did, having firmly in mind the then-recent memory of the Pubbies’ fiscally irresponsible antics.
It’s worth pointing out that the current House version of health care reform (subject to change, of course) would reduce the deficit by $100 billion over ten years according to the CBO. That’s a start to bending the cost curve and should work under the current reconciliation deficit guidelines.
And who’s going to point out these devils? The people who are complaining about non-existent death panels? The people who are bitching about deficits, when they didn’t make even a peep of complaint when their own dude was spending and can’t even acknowledge that 85% or more of Obama’s current deficits are inherited? The people who wanted to cut Medicare, until they immediately flipped position and started “defending” Medicare after the Democrats started trying to institute some cost savings? The people who want to restrict competition and deny more choice for Americans by denying their ability to choose a public health insurance option? The people threatening that a public option will kill Americans? These sorts of empty lies are all that the GOP has to offer.
I’ve seen more honest back-and-forth about the advantages and disadvantages of health care reform from individual blog posts from wonky liberals than I have from the entire conservative movement. Even a generally respected libertarian like Tyler Cowen has only been saying, at core, that the reform won’t be a universal benefit, that some people will be less well off in the short-run. That’s worth keeping in mind, but even so, it’s not enough to stop reform. The problem is too large, and growing all the time.
There is no dodging this any longer. We need to change course. So yes, I’m personally going to listen to the people who actually are discussing plans instead of the soulless, disgusting, parasitic, dishonest ghouls of the GOP leadership who want us to do nothing so that they can blame the Democrats for having done nothing. Even considering the problems of the Democrats (and there are many), the GOP Congressional delegation* is without even the slightest bit of intelligence, integrity, leadership, or ideas.
*With the possible exception of Ron Paul, who does seem to have some integrity and ideas. His intellectual principles seem flaky, fringe, and ignorant, but they appear to be genuine principles nonetheless.
And that my friends is why they would vote for Ron Paul. Had the media given them chance to learn about him, they would have discovered a candidate that didn’t just want change, but one who was specific about his goals, and one who had a proven track record of fulfilling his campaign promises. Had they given Ron Paul the attention that they gave Obama it would have been no contest. What little attention they did give him was filled with ridicule. But if they would have just done one thing, show the population Ron Paul’s track record, that alone would have won him the Republican Nomination. Everyone wants an honest politician and Ron Paul has proven time and again that he is nothing if not honest.
Ron Paul’s campaign promises completely overshadowed Obama’s. Ron Paul said in the first week he would eliminate the Federal Reserve. The second week the IRS. And he swore up and down that he would pull all of our troops from Afghanistan. Healthcare reform? Compared to eliminating the IRS? Shoot! No contest.
You were obviously not aware of Ron Paul.
Obviously, we were aware of him.
What with all the magic-markered scraps of cardboard taped to telephone poles across America it was very hard not to be aware of Ron Paul.