Moderator: Chef Mongo
tj wrote:Adopting blocking tactics is not solving problems.
From budgets and taxes to Syria and Iran, this president has shown that he will negotiate on almost any issue, with anyone, at any time. But he will not—he cannot—negotiate with a roving band of anarchists who say, “Build our oil pipeline or the troops don’t get paid. Give us tax cuts for the rich or seniors don’t get their Social Security checks. Let insurance companies do as they please or the economy gets it.”
That isn’t democracy. That isn’t America. Throughout history, politicians of both parties have been able to argue their agendas fiercely, even nastily, but then accept the Election Day judgment of voters without resorting to extortion that threatens the economic destruction of their own country. A small faction of Republicans who represent an even smaller fraction of Americans has now decided to reject this bipartisan legacy in favor of nihilistic madness. As citizens, we can call on our president to give in to their demands, thereby setting a precedent that will permanently and fundamentally alter the nature of our democracy for future leaders of both parties. Or we can finally call these people what McConnell once gleefully acknowledged they are: hostage takers, unrepresentative of the once-proud Republican Party and unfit to govern the greatest nation on Earth.
Thats one of the things I love about you, as I'm an optimist, too.ABwannabe wrote:I'm eternally an optimist, to a fault sometimes.
A FEDERAL BUDGET CRISIS MONTHS IN THE PLANNING
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MIKE McINTIRE
Published: October 5, 2013
WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.
Catherine wrote:I don't know what the answer is. Everyone vote for the third guy in the next election? In my book, both sides are equally culpable.
Steve G wrote:Just to update.haleoalau wrote:The families of military KIA who were denied the death & burial benefits due them ( I believe Congress was suppose to address this today...)
LA Times: Private charity to restore death benefits for U.S. military familiesIn a surprise move, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced that the Pentagon had reached an agreement with Fisher House Foundation, a nonprofit charity that assists military families, to begin paying the survivor benefits until the government can resume them. The foundation will be repaid after the stalemate ends.
Hagel's announcement came slightly more than an hour after the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill, 425 to 0, to restore the benefits and sent it to the Senate. It appeared, however, that the Democratic-controlled Senate might not act on the bill after the Pentagon moved to pay the benefits through the private foundation.
If the Senate fails to act, Republicans would have a harder time claiming credit for restoring the aid to military families.
The Senate did not take up the bill.Senate Chaplain, former Navy Rear Admiral Barry Black wrote:“Lord, when our federal shutdown delays payments of death benefits to the families of children dying in far-away battlefields, it’s time for our lawmakers to say enough is enough. Cover our shame with the robe of your righteousness. Forgive us, reform us, and make us whole.”
The Pentagon infuriated congressional Republicans and Democrats and touched off a national firestorm when it said that a law allowing the military to be paid during the partial government shutdown did not cover the death benefit payments. Congress passed and Obama signed that measure into law before the government shutdown last Tuesday, and lawmakers insist that the benefits shouldn't have been affected.
In stepped a charity, the Fisher House Foundation, which Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday would cover the costs during the shutdown. Hagel said the Pentagon would reimburse the foundation after the shutdown ended.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Thursday that the organization is "extraordinarily generous and they do very good work," but he pressed for Senate passage of the benefits bill to ensure the Defense Department and Fisher House wouldn't have to figure out a special work-around.
The government could not actively solicit funds from private organizations but could accept an offer.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the Pentagon had essentially resolved the problem and the issue was moot, but he didn't object to passage of the bill.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the arrangement with Fisher House means "the legislation is not necessary" because the issue has been resolved. He would not say whether Obama would sign the bill.
Families of fallen troops will be assured of receiving death benefits under legislation President Barack Obama signed Thursday amid a national firestorm after the Pentagon suspended the roughly $100,000 payments during the partial government shutdown.
Obama signed the bill into law after it won final passage in the Senate earlier in the day.
But his chief spokesman, Jay Carney, had said the measure was unnecessary because a military charity had stepped in to continue the payments. Carney also had declined to say whether Obama would sign the bill, which reinstates benefits for surviving family members, including funeral and burial expenses, and death gratuity payments.
October 9, 2013
Business Groups See Loss of Sway Over House G.O.P.
By ERIC LIPTON, NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
WASHINGTON — As the government shutdown grinds toward a potential debt default, some of the country’s most influential business executives have come to a conclusion all but unthinkable a few years ago: Their voices are carrying little weight with the House majority that their millions of dollars in campaign contributions helped build and sustain.
Their frustration has grown so intense in recent days that several trade association officials warned in interviews on Wednesday that they were considering helping wage primary campaigns against Republican lawmakers who had worked to engineer the political standoff in Washington.
Such an effort would thrust Washington’s traditionally cautious and pragmatic business lobby into open warfare with the Tea Party faction, which has grown in influence since the 2010 election and won a series of skirmishes with the Republican establishment in the last two years.
“We are looking at ways to counter the rise of an ideological brand of conservatism that, for lack of a better word, is more anti-establishment than it has been in the past,” said David French, the top lobbyist at the National Retail Federation. “We have come to the conclusion that sitting on the sidelines is not good enough.”
Some warned that a default could spur a shift in the relationship between the corporate world and the Republican Party. Long intertwined by mutual self-interest on deregulation and lower taxes, the business lobby and Republicans are diverging not only over the fiscal crisis, but on other major issues like immigration reform, which was favored by business groups and party leaders but stymied in the House by many of the same lawmakers now leading the debt fight.
Joe Echevarria, the chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, said, “I’m a Republican by definition and by registration, but the party seems to have split into two factions.”
While both parties have extreme elements, he suggested, only in the G.O.P. did the extreme element exercise real power. “The extreme right has 90 seats in the House,” Mr. Echevarria said. “Occupy Wall Street has no seats.”
Moreover, business leaders and trade groups said, the tools that have served them in the past — campaign contributions, large memberships across the country, a multibillion-dollar lobbying apparatus — do not seem to be working.
“There clearly are people in the Republican Party at the moment for whom the business community and the interests of the business community — the jobs and members they represent — don’t seem to be their top priority,” said Dan Danner, the head of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, which spearheaded opposition to President Obama’s health care law among small businesses. “They don’t really care what the N.F.I.B. thinks, and don’t care what the Chamber thinks, and probably don’t care what the Business Roundtable thinks.”
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