TomCADem
TomCADem's JournalBoehner: No ‘Clean’ Votes on Reopening Government or Debt Ceiling Without Negotiations with Presiden
Source: ABC News
Boehner said repeatedly that he does not intend to have the nation default on its debt. But he declined to guarantee that he’d bring a debt-limit bill to the floor of the House without concessions from Democrats.
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Asked by Stephanopoulos whether that no negotiations means the country will default on its debt, Boehner responded: “That’s the path we’re on. Listen, the president canceled his trip to Asia. I assumed, well, maybe he wants to have a conversation. I decided to stay here in Washington this weekend. He knows what my phone number is. All he has to do is call.”
Boehner acknowledged that the showdown over government funding, aimed at scaling back the Obama health care law, isn’t a fight that he chose. He also appeared to confirm that, in conversations with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, he had previously sought to ensure full government funding, only to be convinced to take a different course after consulting with his fellow House Republicans.
“I and my members decided that the threat of Obamacare and what was happening was so important that it was time for us to take a stand. And we took a stand,” he said. “I thought the fight would be over the debt ceiling. But you know, working with my members, they decided, well, let’s do it now. And the fact is, this fight was going to come, one way or the other. We’re in the fight.”
Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/10/boehner-no-clean-votes-on-reopening-government-or-debt-ceiling-without-negotiations-with-president-obama/
Boehner explicitly threatens to shoot the hostage!!! He will not raise the debt ceiling unless the President agrees to "negotiate" over the ACA. Boehner also acknowledges that he broke a deal with Harry Reid on a clean CR. Finally, while demanding that the President negotiate and compromise, Boehner also announces that taxes are definitely off the table.
And, in the end, Boehner insists that President Obama and the Senate are at fault while George S. sits there letting Boehner spout his talking points.
House Dems push for 'clean' CR vote
Source: The Hill
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Saturday vowed to rule out the Democrats' procedural options in exchange for a vote on the Senate-passed continuing resolution (CR) to reopen the government.
"The Speaker has said that's his concern, we want to take that concern off the table," she told reporters in the Capitol.
The offer is the latest effort by Democrats to entice Republicans to vote on a clean CR – something GOP leaders have refused to do in the face of opposition from conservatives insisting that provisions to scale back ObamaCare be included in the package.
Boehner's office was quick to refuse the Democrats' offer, arguing that the barriers to a spending deal are coming from Democrats in the Senate and White House, not Republicans in the lower chamber.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/house/326791-dems-offer-no-procedural-bombs-on-clean-cr
Republicans continue to go on TV and say without much challenge that they want to re-open government, and that the Whitehouse and Senate are refusing to do so, then they once against refuse to bring a bill that does just that to the floor.
Dennis Ross, GOP Rep: 'Pride' Is Why Republicans Won't Budge On Government Shutdown
Source: Huffington Post
WASHINGTON -- With the government shutdown in its fifth day, many Republicans have conceded the fight is no longer about Obamacare. Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) added his name to the list on Saturday, saying the matter now boils down to "pride."
“Republicans have to realize how many significant gains we’ve made over the last three years, and we have, not only in cutting spending but in really turning the tide on other things," Ross told The New York Times. "We can’t lose all that when there’s no connection now between the shutdown and the funding of Obamacare."
"I think now it’s a lot about pride," he added.
The fight over keeping the government open began with Republicans insisting that any funding bill include anti-Obamacare provisions, starting with a full-fledged campaign led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to defund the health care law. When that plan was rejected by the Senate, House Republicans offered a series of spending bills that continued to chip away at Obamacare; their final offer included a one-year delay of the law's individual mandate and a ban on federal health care subsidies to members of Congress and their staffs.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/05/dennis-ross-government-shutdown_n_4050231.html
Republicans repeatedly, repeatedly admit on the record that they shutdown the government in order to "get respect" or in this case, "pride," which brings to mind Gingrich being ticked about where he sat on Air Force One. Yet, the media bends over backwards to portray this in false equivalency terms even though Republicans are contradictory about what it is they want from a negotiation with the President. Now, Boehner just says he wants to sit at the negotiating table with the President. What for? A photo op.
I wish we were making this up, but Republicans are their own worst advocates. If only the media would just call this for the farce that it is.
Thousands Rally Nationwide in Support of an Immigration Overhaul
Source: NY Times
Thousands of supporters of an immigration overhaul held rallies on Saturday at more than 150 sites in 40 states, trying to pressure Congress, despite the partisan turmoil in Washington, to focus on passing a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants here illegally.
Hoping to display the wide reach of their movement, advocates held larger rallies in immigrant strongholds like Los Angeles, San Diego and Boston, with smaller demonstrations in places where immigrant groups have grown up recently, including Omaha, Neb.; Little Rock, Ark.; and Yakima, Wash. Organizers described the events, and a large rally they have planned for Tuesday on the National Mall in Washington, as their major show of force this year.
On what they were calling a “National Day of Immigrant Dignity and Respect,” supporters said they expected as many as 100,000 people nationwide. But the demonstrations came when few lawmakers on Capitol Hill were thinking about immigration, with the federal government shut down and the House of Representatives locked in a feud with President Obama and Democrats over health care and debt funding.
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Supporters contend there is already enough support in the House, between Republicans and Democrats, to pass a comprehensive bill including citizenship for unauthorized immigrants, if the speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, would bring it up for a vote.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/rallies-nationwide-in-support-of-immigration-overhaul.html?_r=0
While the media lets House Republicans claim with a straight face that they want to negotiate in the search of a bipartisan solution, here is a clear example of House Republicans refusing to allow any action on the Senate's bipartisan immigration bill.
Members of the media need to ask Boehner, "What about the Senate immigration bill? Its bipartisan! Why won't you allow a vote on that bill?"
"Bill Moyers Essay: On the Sabotage of Democracy" - Excellent Essay
This is a great essay discussing how there is more at stake in the shutdown and threat of default then the ACA or any other government program. What is at stake is the preservation of our constitutional democracy. Can a faction of party of a house of just on branch of government threaten to blow up the country's economy in order to insist on the broad acceptance of their agenda and policies?
President Obama not only owes a duty to Democrats to stand strong, but to all American people to take a stand against the slide toward anarchy and instability that validating the actions of House Republicans would hasten.
The essay below is excellent and the video that is available at the link is poignant as he highlight some of the rabid comments made by the right in their pursuit of a nihilistic outcome.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/bill-moyers-essay-shutdown-showdown/
BILL MOYERS: And now to the people who refuse to let democracy work. The people who hate government so much they’ve shut it down. Unable to abide by the results of democracy when they don’t win, they turned on it.
Republicans have now lost three successive elections to control the Senate and they’ve lost the last two presidential elections. Nonetheless, they fought tooth and nail to kill President Obama’s health care initiative. They lost that fight, but with the corporate wing of Democrats, they managed to bend it toward private interests.
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Once upon a time when I was a young man working on Capitol Hill, it was commonplace that when a bill became law, everybody was unhappy with it. But you didn’t bring down the government just because it wasn’t perfect. You argue and fight and vote and then, due process having been at least raggedly served, on to the next fight.
That was a long time ago. Long before the Tea Party minority, armed with huge sums of secret money from rich donors, sucked the last bit of soul from the Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln. They became delusional. Then rabid.
Thousands expected to march in Hollywood for immigration overhaul
Source: LA Times
Thousands of people are expected to turn out in Hollywood and in dozens of cities around the country Saturday to march in support of new immigration laws and a path to citizenship for more than 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.
The Hollywood event begins at 10 a.m. at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue, heading south on Western and west on Sunset before concluding at Hollywood and Vine Street. In Orange County, an immigrant rights rally will take place at the Irvine Spectrum at 10:30 a.m. Events are also planned for San Bernardino, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento and more than 160 cities nationwide.
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Earlier this week, House Democrats introduced a bill that mostly parallels one passed by the Senate in June. It would offer a path to citizenship who entered the county illegally, as well as expanding visa programs in an effort to eliminate current backlogs.
But many House Republicans do not support legislation that includes a path to citizenship, which they equate with amnesty.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-thousands-expected-to-march-in-hollywood-for-immigration-reform-20131005,0,1799053.story
If this was about a hundred people with Tea bags rallying in support of House Republicans, Fox News would be all over this, but it just thousands of folks throughout California rallying in favor an immigration overhaul that pass the Senate by overwhelming bipartisan support, which House Democrats have introduced, which House Republicans are also refusing to allow to reach the floor.
Do we hear a peep from the media? Of course not? Perhaps it is best, because it would be interesting to see how the media would push the false equivalency narrative on a bi-partisan Senate bill.
GOP whip can't corral tea-party lawmakers
Source: LA Times
Managing the GOP caucus, La Tourette said, resembles owning a pet alligator: "You feed and feed and feed it, thinking it will be grateful, and then one day, it bites your arm off."
GOP leaders have suffered a series of high-profile failures this year. A comprehensive farm bill they blessed fell short of the votes needed on the House floor. The leadership proved unable to muster a majority of Republicans to pass any of the bills, known as appropriations, that fund government agencies. And House leaders had to rely on Democratic votes to pass relief for Superstorm Sandy victims and a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
In some of those cases, Cantor, the majority leader, and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) seemed caught by surprise that their positions lacked majority support.
McCarthy, however, defends his performance and says the stubbornness of his conference has resulted in conservative wins at the bargaining table, however messy the process has been.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-gop-mccarthy-20131005,0,7794046.story
Here is Kevin McCarthy offering excuses why GOP leaders cannot control their caucus who often vote against them.
Maddowblog - "Republicans struggle to understand their own shutdown plan"
The scary thing is that Republicans have been watching Fox News and Brietbart so much that just like Karl Rove on election night, they really don't know what will happen if President Obama does not simply decide to repeal the ACA. Likewise, since defunding the government of the ACA does not poll well, watch how a Republican struggles to explain the whole point of the shut down:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/10/04/20818269-republicans-struggle-to-understand-their-own-shutdown-plan?lite
With this in mind, as Brian Beutler reported yesterday, "it was a big surprise" when Meadows told reporters this week that the government shutdown has nothing to do with Obamacare. "This fight now has become about veterans and about national guard folks that perhaps -- reservists that are not getting paid," the North Carolina Republican said. "That's where the fight is today."
In theory, this is excellent news. Republicans have spent the last several weeks making one demand: take away health care benefits from millions of Americans or the government's lights go out. If one of the far-right congressional ringleaders of this fiasco is arguing, on the record and out loud, that the fight is no longer about health care then the shutdown can end immediately.
This point was not lost on NPR's Tamara Keith, who asked Meadows why the House doesn't just vote on "a full CR if you don't care about Obamacare anymore." If you listen to the audio, there's an awkward silence that lasts about five seconds. Eventually, the congressman says, "Why not vote on, on a full CR?" Keith replies, "Yeah, sure. Because if you're, if Obamacare isn't the issue to you anymore..." At this point, Meadows tried this explanation:
"Because it, twofold.One is, is, that when you when you start to look, they say 'clean CR?' That it, it translates into into to truly a blank check, and, and so Obamacare is an issue for me and my constituents, but what happens is today is, we gotta figure a way to open it back up and, and with that, in opening it back up, when we start to look at these issues, it, it is critical that we make it, the decisions we, we make to be as least harmful as they possibly can be."
Think Progress - "How A Rand Paul Republican From Alabama Learned To Love Obamacare"
I do think it is surprising that so many folks, particularly those folks who have a bias against Democrats and President Obama, are signing up so soon after roll out. I have been holding off for a few days, because of the expectation that there might be some hiccups. Heck, I usually wait a few days or so before downloading the latest DLC expansion because there almost always some sort of opening glitch. Nonetheless, it is interesting to here how surprised some folks are the Obamacare actually helps them.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/10/04/2730801/joshua-pittman/
Joshua Pittman is a 31-year-old self-employed videographer from Montgomery, Alabama. A libertarian Republican who voted for Ron Paul in 2012 and believes that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is the future of the GOP, Pittman sees Barack Obama’s presidency as a “failure” who hasn’t lived up to the nation’s expectations.
But on Tuesday morning, Pittman logged on to HealthCare.gov and after some initial glitches and delays, successfully enrolled in a Bronze-level Obamacare health insurance plan. “It took me all day, really,” he says with a laugh. “It kicked me out and told me you have to try again, but I knew what I was getting into with so many people exploring it.”
Though he initially supported repealing the law, Pittman became curious about Obamacare in the days and weeks before it launched. For years, he had gone uninsured, thinking he’d be able to “get over anything with a bandaid and a six pack of beer.” But a lead poisoning incident earlier this year shook his confidence and bank account, leading him with tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. “I was a healthy person and it really depleted me financially, so it made me look at things in a different way than I would before. I understood the importance of people being insured.”
“I’ve seen first hand people hitting up the emergency room for free health care and then putting a burden on [everyone else] and that’s not something I would want to do, I want to take personal responsibility … By no means am I trying to take a government handout…it’s not a free handout, you’re paying for this health care, but it’s making it more accessible to more people.”
Ezra Klein - "How the White House sees the shutdown (and debt ceiling!) fight"
In this post, a hot mike caught both McConnell and Paul expressing surprise at the White House's strong stand, which McConnell said that Obama repeated in a closed door meeting. Rand Paul reviews his talking points and buzz words and ridicules the President for failing to poll test his refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014610675
The major problem appears to be that Republican leaders are like Karl Rove during the election starting to drink their own Kool Aid with respect to their views of the Democrats. In this story below, Ezra Klein notes that President Obama is trying to protect the office of the Presidency for himself and future Presidents. Afterall, if the Republicans are successful in extorting concessions, then shutting down the government and threatening default will continue to occur with increasing frequency. Thus, this fight is seen as one to protect American Democracy such that one faction of one party of one house of one branch of government cannot simply dictate terms by threatening to blow up the world economy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/03/how-the-white-house-sees-the-shutdown-and-debt-ceiling-fight/?tid=pm_business_pop
To the White House, the shutdown/debt ceiling fight is quite simple, and quite radical: Republicans are trying to create a new, deeply undemocratic pathway through which a minority party that lost the last election can enact an agenda that would never pass the normal legislative process. It's nothing less than an effort to use the threat of a financial crisis to nullify the results of the last election. And the White House isn't going to let it happen.
The Obama administration bristles at the idea that they've been unwilling to negotiate or compromise. They went on a widely covered "charm offensive" back in the spring. The president held multiple dinners with Senate Republicans. He invited over key House Republicans. The meetings were so frequent that the participants were nicknamed "the diner's club."
Nothing came of those meetings. Republicans still weren't willing to talk on taxes. And so the White House grimly accepted that they couldn't move the dial on spending. The CR, they note, funds the government at the GOP's number of $988 billion. It is, itself, a compromise, and one they don't like. But they made it, because they couldn't pass anything else through Congress. And then the Republicans decided to shut down the government because they couldn't pass a delay or defunding of Obamacare through Congress.
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Top administration officials say that President Obama feels as strongly about this fight as he has about anything in his presidency. He believes that he will be handing his successor a fatally weakened office, and handing the American people an unacceptable risk of future financial crises, if he breaks, or even bends, in the face of Republican demands. And so the White House says that their position is simple, and it will not change: They will not negotiate over substantive policy issues until Republicans end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling.
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