what do the Republicans have to negotiate with?

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@magellan01

But it is a special case. Can you point to ANY legislation near this scope that has been passed with zero votes from the minority party? If you can’t come up with even one, I can’t see how you can claim that it is not a special case.

Okay, one of the political parties is against this sort of thing as a matter of principle. So what? That party was voted out of office en masse in 2006 and 2008. The democrats were able to pass the bill because they won a super majority in the senate, a majority in the house, and the presidency. Bitching about this is like complaining about the New York Yankees beating the Podunk minor league team 90-2. May not seem fair, but that’s how the system is meant to work - the Yankees were simply infinitely better equipped to succeed. What the republicans have pulled is, in this analogy, breaking the legs of every member of the Yankees lineup, then asking for a rematch or they kill their wives.

Fact Check - Reps are also working within the rules of the same system.

Yes, but in only one of the two situations are we seeing a complete breakdown of said system and a clear flaw. A party winning a clear majority and mandate in every branch of government, then unilaterally passing a major reform? This is kind of how democracy works. A party with a majority in one house of congress and no executive support demanding that they get their way or the government cannot function at all in its roles? This is the sign of a fundamentally broken system. There is absolutely no reason why the republicans couldn’t sit on their hands and say “we won’t re-open the government or raise the debt ceiling unless impeachment proceedings are passed”, save for the public voting them out en masse… a whole year and a half later.

Also, while the Dems were in their rights to pass this bill the way they did, their are ramifications for doing so. It’s almost as if they thought they’d never lose control of anything ever again. They gambled and lost.

How the fuck would this work?

Oh, please. If that were the case right now you’d have the same people on this board spouting the same “How dare they. It’s a law. Give it a chance. Etc.” Some of the more moderate Reps would have less to complain about, but that’s about it.

Yes, and they’d at least not be completely right. The republicans would have every right to repeal Obamacare, because that’s how a democracy works. But they didn’t exactly win, did they? No, they haven’t had the senate, and won the house in '12 despite having less votes. I’d be right up there bitching, but at least my complaint wouldn’t be “the republicans are abusing a loophole which, when abused, makes America’s government completely non-functional, and are undercutting the democratic process”. No, it would be a simple “the Republicans are practicing bad policy”, which is perfectly within the bounds of the political system to deal with.

Look, the fact is, this goes beyond “unprecedented”. Major reform passing without a single vote from the opposing party? That’s unprecedented, but what are the democrats supposed to do when they’re voted in with a mandate to pass health reform and the republicans have made it completely clear that they are going to oppose any such action regardless of how it turns out? That’s right - pass it on their own. But that’s okay! That’s how democracy works! This republican hostage-taking is not just “unprecedented”. It’s also completely crippling the government, hurting the economy, and demonstrating that the American system, as it currently stands, is non-functional. And that’s the problem here. If the democrats had done this to a republican bill, I’d still be in here screeching my head off, because it’s just as much proof that the government is non-functional, and just as much the minority making forced demands of the majority. And that goes far beyond “unprecedented”.

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

Oh? What do you – yes, you, personally – think will happen as the last minute approaches?

Picture it: time’s almost up; Boehner says “we’ll keep offering strings-attached bills filled with our demands”; Reid says “send us a no-strings-attached bill or no go”; Obama says “and even if the Senate backs down, I’ll veto anything but a clean bill.”

Who, in that scenario, do you think (a) is bluffing, and (b) will back down as the deadline looms ever closer?

Boehner. Reid and Obama have the advantage of being in the right. There is no argument where this is not clearly the republican party’s fault, and if Reid and Obama cave, they’ve essentially legitimized hostage tactics, with the implication being that it’s perfectly fine to threaten to blow up the world to get what you want. I think Obama and Reid have learned from the debacle in 2011, where republicans got what they wanted with the unstated promise to not pull this shit again… And then went and pulled this shit again immediately.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@BobLibDem

The special case is a party that meets in secret on Inauguration Day and vows never to support a single thing that the new president may want to do.

I heard this claim before, but what’s the citation?

@iiandyiiii

Probably not a delay on the mandate, which most supporters see as a critical part of the bill.

With the requirement that insurance companies not judge on pre-existing conditions, not having the mandate means not having an insurance system at all in the USA. It’s not just “seen as critical by supporters”, without it, Obamacare is completely unsustainable, and only results in a death spiral of the insurance industry in America for all buyers.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/report/2010/08/05/8226/health-care-reform-is-a-three-legged-stool/

The truth is that all three legs of the stool are necessary to assure affordable coverage. The first “leg” is regulations that require insurance companies to offer insurance to any applicant with premiums based on age (and tobacco use) and not on underlying health status. Insurance companies are also prohibited from excluding coverage due to preexisting illnesses.

This is a highly popular reform, but it doesn’t work in a vacuum. If insurance companies must charge the same price to people whether they’re sick or healthy many healthy people will view this as a “bad deal” and not buy insurance. This results in higher prices that chase even more people out of the market. The result is a “death spiral” that leads only the sick to purchase insurance at very high prices. Several states tried such community rating reforms—offering health insurance policies within a given territory at the same price to all persons without medical underwriting—in their nongroup markets over the past two decades, and sharp rises in insurance prices ensued along with rapidly shrinking market size.

[BobLibDem]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

I heard this claim before, but what’s the citation?

That’s pretty well documented.one citation.

“If you act like you’re the minority, you’re going to stay in the minority,” Draper quotes McCarthy as saying. "We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.

[magellan01]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Okay, one of the political parties is against this sort of thing as a matter of principle. So what? That party was voted out of office en masse in 2006 and 2008. The democrats were able to pass the bill because they won a super majority in the senate, a majority in the house, and the presidency. Bitching about this is like complaining about the New York Yankees beating the Podunk minor league team 90-2. May not seem fair, but that’s how the system is meant to work - the Yankees were simply infinitely better equipped to succeed. What the republicans have pulled is, in this analogy, breaking the legs of every member of the Yankees lineup, then asking for a rematch or they kill their wives.

No. Both breaking someone’s legs and killing their wives is illegal. What are the Reps doing that is illegal. Answer: nothing.

Also, let’s not forget the Republican success in the House in 2010.

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Yes, but in only one of the two situations are we seeing a complete breakdown of said system and a clear flaw. A party winning a clear majority and mandate in every branch of government, then unilaterally passing a major reform? This is kind of how democracy works. A party with a majority in one house of congress and no executive support demanding that they get their way or the government cannot function at all in its roles? This is the sign of a fundamentally broken system. There is absolutely no reason why the republicans couldn’t sit on their hands and say “we won’t re-open the government or raise the debt ceiling unless impeachment proceedings are passed”, save for the public voting them out en masse… a whole year and a half later.

But they didn’t. They asked for a year’s delay on the mandate, that congress subject itself to the ACA and the elimination of a medical device tax that has large bipartisan support. You might want to say that’s as unreasonable as insisting on impeachment proceedings or breaking legs or threatening to kill wives, but that just undermines your position.

@Budget_Player_Cadet

How the fuck would this work?

Not sure what you’re asking. How would what work? My point is that telling one party to go fuck themselves and we don’t care if even one of you votes for this, and no, we won’t give you time to even read the 2,000+ page FINAL bill might have ramifications. What a surprise!

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Yes, and they’d at least not be completely right. The republicans would have every right to repeal Obamacare, because that’s how a democracy works. But they didn’t exactly win, did they? No, they haven’t had the senate, and won the house in '12 despite having less votes. I’d be right up there bitching, but at least my complaint wouldn’t be “the republicans are abusing a loophole which, when abused, makes America’s government completely non-functional, and are undercutting the democratic process”. No, it would be a simple “the Republicans are practicing bad policy”, which is perfectly within the bounds of the political system to deal with.

So, you admit that there is, at the very least, a loophole in which they are operating. I assume you view activities that operate within loopholes to be legal and within the rules. Correct?

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Look, the fact is, this goes beyond “unprecedented”. Major reform passing without a single vote from the opposing party? That’s unprecedented, but what are the democrats supposed to do when they’re voted in with a mandate to pass health reform and the republicans have made it completely clear that they are going to oppose any such action regardless of how it turns out? That’s right - pass it on their own. But that’s okay! That’s how democracy works! This republican hostage-taking is not just “unprecedented”. It’s also completely crippling the government, hurting the economy, and demonstrating that the American system, as it currently stands, is non-functional. And that’s the problem here. If the democrats had done this to a republican bill, I’d still be in here screeching my head off, because it’s just as much proof that the government is non-functional, and just as much the minority making forced demands of the majority. And that goes far beyond “unprecedented”.

What they’re supposed to do is negotiate to the point that they do get some bipartisan support. That’s good governance. Not only is it good for the governing bodies for future legislation, but it means that the final bill is not just one side imposing its will on the other. When you have at least some support from the other side, both sides own it. That’s a good thing.

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Boehner. Reid and Obama have the advantage of being in the right. There is no argument where this is not clearly the republican party’s fault, and if Reid and Obama cave, they’ve essentially legitimized hostage tactics, with the implication being that it’s perfectly fine to threaten to blow up the world to get what you want. I think Obama and Reid have learned from the debacle in 2011, where republicans got what they wanted with the unstated promise to not pull this shit again… And then went and pulled this shit again immediately.

Admitting that things aren’t ready yet would have been reasonable. Because they’re not. Granting the exemption for one year would have been reasonable, due to all the other exemptions Obama has handed out. Getting rid of the medical device tax is reasonable and smart, and has large bipartisan support. Making congress live under the legislation they crafted is very reasonable. But one cannot entertain these reasonable positions when one, wanting to be viewed as a tough guy, first feels the need to open his yap and state, unequivocally, “I will not negotiate.” You would have thought that the owner of the yap in question would have learned his lesson with his tough tai about red lines. But, you’d be wrong.

[magellan01]

@BobLibDem

The special case is a party that meets in secret on Inauguration Day and vows never to support a single thing that the new president may want to do.

So, I assume you can site then that not one republican congressman never voted for anything that Obama voted, right. I’ll wait.

If you have a difficult time you might want to entertain the reality of, well, reality. That they 1) wanted him to be a one-term president (SHOCKING, I know) AND that 1) they did not approve of the final version of the bill.

[iiandyiiii]

@magellan01

Admitting that things aren’t ready yet would have been reasonable. Because they’re not. Granting the exemption for one year would have been reasonable, due to all the other exemptions Obama has handed out. Getting rid of the medical device tax is reasonable and smart, and has large bipartisan support. Making congress live under the legislation they crafted is very reasonable. But one cannot entertain these reasonable positions when one, wanting to be viewed as a tough guy, first feels the need to open his yap and state, unequivocally, “I will not negotiate.” You would have thought that the owner of the yap in question would have learned his lesson with his tough tai about red lines. But, you’d be wrong.

All of these things would be negotiable if the Republicans were not causing a shutdown and threatening default. It’s the tactics, not the demands- the tactics are unacceptable. As Greg Sargent says in WaPo: “There was never any compromise that could prove acceptable to both Tea Party conservatives on one side, and Obama and Senate Dems on the other. One side believes it must reserve the threat of widespread damage to the country as leverage to cripple the Obama presidency before it destroys the country. The other wants to end use of that as leverage for good. That core difference was inherently unbridgeable.”

The Republicans planned for a shutdown, executed a shutdown, and many even celebrated the shutdown. They have no one to blame but themselves for the shutdown. And they’ve done nothing whatsoever to avoid default. This is all on them, and all on Boehner. No one else.

[magellan01]

@iiandyiiii

All of these things would be negotiable if the Republicans were not causing a shutdown and threatening default. It’s the tactics, not the demands- the tactics are unacceptable. As Greg Sargent says in WaPo: “There was never any compromise that could prove acceptable to both Tea Party conservatives on one side, and Obama and Senate Dems on the other. One side believes it must reserve the threat of widespread damage to the country as leverage to cripple the Obama presidency before it destroys the country. The other wants to end use of that as leverage for good. That core difference was inherently unbridgeable.”

The Republicans planned for a shutdown, executed a shutdown, and many even celebrated the shutdown. They have no one to blame but themselves for the shutdown. And they’ve done nothing whatsoever to avoid default. This is all on them, and all on Boehner. No one else.

And you are entitled to that opinion. But given the way the ACA was passed I think it was a safe assumption for the Reps to make that the Dems were not going to negotiate. anything. And it’s kind of hard to see things differently when one of the major players states: “I will not negotiate.”

[BobLibDem]

@magellan01

So, I assume you can site then that not one republican congressman never voted for anything that Obama voted, right. I’ll wait.

If you have a difficult time you might want to entertain the reality of, well, reality. That they 1) wanted him to be a one-term president (SHOCKING, I know) AND that 1) they did not approve of the final version of the bill.

Can you point to any other instance where a party met on Inauguration Day to vow to oppose everything that the new president wanted to do? Can you point to any other instance where a party leader in the Senate said that his number one priority was to make sure the new president didn’t win re-election? Can you show me other cases where Senators refused to even make recommendations to fill court vacancies in their states, preferring them to remain vacant rather than let the president choose someone? Can you point to any instance where Democrats threatened to shut the government down because it didn’t like a law passed by a previous Congress? Didn’t think so.

[elucidator]

…And it’s kind of hard to see things differently when one of the major players states: “I will not negotiate.”

People say shit like that all the time. And then they do it. Why would you simply take their word that they won’t negotiate? How big an effort does it take to offer a chance to negotiate to see if they will? And if they do, who cares that they swore they wouldn’t?

Republicans hardly ever believe anything the Dems say. Why, all of a sudden, do they take it as Gospel?

[Marley23]

@magellan01

that congress subject itself to the ACA

Since you’ve repeated this a couple of times… no, they did not request that Congress subject itself to the ACA. Republicans made that request in 2010, thinking there was no way the Democrats would agree to get their own insurance under the provisions of this obviously horrible law. They were wrong: the Democrats immediately agreed. This is about a temporary subsidy that helps Congressional staffers and others buy insurance on the health care exchanges over the next few years. My understanding is that the subsidy exists because the exchanges are intended for employers that are much smaller than the federal government, so for a couple of years, the costs will be higher for federal employees. It was agreed that it was unfair to burden Congressional staffers this way. Vitter proposed eliminating that subsidy last year and tried to make it a story about Congress being exempt from the law. He failed because there’s no hypocrisy angle here; it’s a technical issue. So nobody is exempt and this is not even a new idea. (Bonus: the shutdown helped bury the story about all the difficulties the websites have had in the last couple of weeks.) Had the rule been adopted it would have forced a bunch of Congressional staffers to quit their jobs and go work in the private sector because it would have made their health insurance unaffordable. What a nice fuck-you from Republicans to their own staffs.

Granting the exemption for one year would have been reasonable, due to all the other exemptions Obama has handed out.

The other exemptions were minor. This one was not. And as I’m sure other people have pointed out, there is zero reason to think Republicans would have let the mandate go into effect a year from now.

But one cannot entertain these reasonable positions when one, wanting to be viewed as a tough guy, first feels the need to open his yap and state, unequivocally, “I will not negotiate.” You would have thought that the owner of the yap in question would have learned his lesson with his tough tai about red lines. But, you’d be wrong.

I hate to break this to you, but he was right and his negotiating strategy worked. If these were reasonable positions Republicans would have chosen to present them in a reasonable way. They didn’t because they understood they couldn’t pass them under normal circumstances. That’s not incidental. The debt ceiling/shutdown negotiating tactic itself is unprecedented and it was hysterically unreasonable. That’s part of why Obama and the Democrats told them to go fuck themselves: they understood that it would set a terrible precedent if minority parties were able to hijack the government this way. If you want to change or repeal a law, this is not how you do it. You use the legislative process instead of shutting down the entire government and denting the economy. It’s that simple. Reasonable legislators understand that.

And by the way, the Republicans are getting nothing out of this deal. No repeal of the ACA, no delay in the individual mandate, no repeal of the medical device tax, no Vitter amendment. There will apparently be some additional income verification for people getting their health insurance over the ACA exchanges, but there was already some verification in place.

[Terr]

@Marley23

And by the way, the Republicans are getting nothing out of this deal. No repeal of the ACA, no delay in the individual mandate, no repeal of the medical device tax, no Vitter amendment. There will apparently be some additional income verification for people getting their health insurance over the ACA exchanges, but there was already some verification in place.

That’s correct. If Republicans pass this, then they caved like Democrats’ little bitches, and I hope this will be remembered at election time.

[Ravenman]

@Terr

That’s correct. If Republicans pass this, then they caved like Democrats’ little bitches, and I hope this will be remembered at election time.

It is interesting that your immediate concern is the electoral fortunes of Republicans who vote one way, and not the economic consequences to the entire United States if they vote the other way.

[elucidator]

…If Republicans pass this, then they caved like Democrats’ little bitches, and I hope this will be remembered at election time.

Just remember, we are here to comfort you in this dark hour. There, there. It’ll be all right. There, there.

[Marley23]

@Terr

That’s correct. If Republicans pass this, then they caved like Democrats’ little bitches, and I hope this will be remembered at election time.

It was inevitable that they were going to cave. Their demands were insane and they had nothing to negotiate with. And yes, at the polls they’ll be punished for it because their own base doesn’t understand the situation. I bet it’s a fun time to be a Republican in Congress.

[BobLibDem]

Finally, someone has figured out a way around the whole mess. Just take Obamacare, don’t change a thing, call it Reagancare, and nearly 2/3 of Republicans would support it.

[Terr]

@Ravenman

It is interesting that your immediate concern is the electoral fortunes of Republicans who vote one way, and not the economic consequences to the entire United States if they vote the other way.

Obamacare is another (pretty big) step on screwing up United States beyond all recognition. Stopping it was beneficial to the United States. Allowing it to proceed isn’t. Of course you think otherwise.

[Evil_Captor]

@Terr

That’s correct. If Republicans pass this, then they caved like Democrats’ little bitches, and I hope this will be remembered at election time.

I suspect the people who are going to be remembered are the ones who drove the country to the brink of economic disaster. But hey, you keep drinking that Kool-Aid.

[Marley23]

@Terr

Stopping it was beneficial to the United States. Allowing it to proceed isn’t.

They couldn’t have stopped it, and they were idiots for letting their supporters believe that was a possibility.

[BobLibDem]

@Terr

Obamacare is another (pretty big) step on screwing up United States beyond all recognition. Stopping it was beneficial to the United States. Allowing it to proceed isn’t. Of course you think otherwise.

What the fuck? Allowing people with pre-existing conditions to get health insurance screws up the US? Allowing people to get affordable health insurance who aren’t part of a group is toxic to the nation? Removing the lifetime cap on benefits undermines our sovereignty? Specifically, what is the big fucking problem?

[iiandyiiii]

@Terr

That’s correct. If Republicans pass this, then they caved like Democrats’ little bitches, and I hope this will be remembered at election time.

The Republicans strategy was doomed from the beginning. It was an unbridgeable divide- not because of the demands about the ACA, but because of the tactics used. As Greg Sargent said in the WaPo (linked earlier):

“There was never any compromise that could prove acceptable to both Tea Party conservatives on one side, and Obama and Senate Dems on the other. One side believes it must reserve the threat of widespread damage to the country as leverage to cripple the Obama presidency before it destroys the country. The other wants to end use of that as leverage for good. That core difference was inherently unbridgeable.”