6 ms·

Metrics are cool and all, but this glosses over the really important story here, which unfortunately seems to elude much of the general public: that a small min

Metrics are cool and all, but this glosses over the really important story here, which unfortunately seems to elude much of the general public: that a small minority of republicans are subverting the budget process because they don't like a law. They cannot be allowed to do this. I can only assume the rest of the RNC is going along with it because they are stupid or cowards.

jeremybencken 13y ago
The budget process is also a law.
- trothoun 13y ago
  Yep. Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other ones.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Which is why we have a Federal Republic.
    - trothoun 13y ago
      I'll be sure to pass your criticism on to Winston Churchill.
    - philwelch 13y ago
      Our federal republic also happens to be a democracy.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  You could have a law that disallows the entire civil federal budget being held to ransom, such as declaring that the final date for a funding vote for an established government service must come at least 3 months ahead or else the service is automatically assigned funds. That way, all the sections of the budget that are not under contention would have been assigned funding 3 months ago and the worst that could be done would be a delay on sections of government business, not the shutting down of random stuff like parks.
  - bmelton 13y ago
    There are currently laws that require the executive branch to submit a budget every year (the Budget Control Act of 1921), which the president violated for a few years consecutively, forcing the past few years' continuing resolutions (and in part, the sequester). There are additional Budget Acts (passed in the mid-70s, 90s, etc.) that require those budgets to be acted upon by Congress or reconsidered, which have all been routinely violated for the past few years as well. The issue with these bills is that they are only enforced by those with the power to break them, which means that they are de facto never enforced.
    - ewoodrich 13y ago
      Here is a portion of the summary of the President's 2013 budget proposal. [1] I don't know where you get the idea that the President is violating the Budget Control Act. The issue is that the Senate and the House refuse to conference, due to the remote possibility of an actual revised budget being passed. Therefore CRs are used to maintain funding without dealing with the seemingly intractable partisan disputes in the current split Congress. (and the Budget Control Act of 2011 was attempt to move this debate from the full floor to the Supercommittee, which promptly failed and resulted in the sequester) I'm not sure how that's relevant. [2] [1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/tables.pdf http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress_Joint_Select_Committee_on_Deficit_Reduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress_Joint_Se...
      - bmelton 13y ago
        When I spoke of the president's violations of the Budget Act, I wasn't referring to them in the present tense. Regardless, his violations have been numerous, though you are correct that he is not currently in violation of the budget act.
bmelton 13y ago
> a small minority of republicans are subverting the budget process because they don't like a law So, not to get into a partisan argument (because I'm not a Republican), but the Supreme Court battle for the individual mandate imposed by the ACA circumvented the House's budgetary authority here, and that's why we're log-jammed at the moment. The Constitution prescribes that all spending bills must originate in the House. This is called the 'Origination Clause' (Article 1, §7), and states that "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills". The ACA originally imposed fees, but as the Supreme Court challenge (NFIB v Sebelius) declared imposing fees would be unconstitutional, but that could be easily circumvented by imposing the fees as a tax, for which Congress has authority. In that process though, taxes are at the discretion of the House, and the Senate ignored that -- then neglectfully failed to pass even a single appropriations bill over the past five years that could have headed this off. Yes, I know that blaming Republicans is cool and all, and fits the current media narrative, but in this particular case, it bluntly ignores the absenteeism of the Senate for the past five years, and both parties, and indeed both wings of Congress are at fault.
- guelo 13y ago
  None of what you say makes sense. Obamacare is constitutional because the Supreme Court said it was constitutional, that's how our system works. The Republicans are dead set against the law and are prepared to burn the government down to stop it. Simple as that. It's not some techinical procedural legality as you make it out to be.
  - readme 13y ago
    The republicans are willing to take jobs away from families in order to make sure the poor and sick don't get equal access healthcare. That's how simple it is.
    - o0-0o 13y ago
      Equal access to healthcare? You have got to be kidding me. This is a state by state argument, not a federal one. In fact, it's even more local than that. Anyone poor as you say already gets free healhcare in every state. What more do you want? Fact it, this is just another redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the poor. The rich (which you infer are Republican, although most wealthy people vote Democrat to keep the poor there) are not impacted by this anyway. I love how you can boil down an 11,000 page bill to two sentences. Ignorance must be bliss. Tell us what it's like, and in the meantime save those finger movement keystrokes for something enlightening. Win-win, that.
aaronblohowiak 13y ago
>I can only assume the rest of the RNC is going along with it because they are stupid or cowards They are not stupid; they are self-interested. With gerrymandering making many seats stable in terms of which party will win, the competition then comes from within the party; moderate GOPs face competition from the far right. If they don't tow the line, they risk losing their power. This is the end-game of gerrymandering playing out. Rubio is the coward of the hour: http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/what-happened-to-marco-rubio-20131003 http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/what-happened-to-marco-...
- shrikant 13y ago
  OT, but I've been seeing this around a lot lately. It's "toe the line", and not "tow the line": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line
  - joe5150 13y ago
    It truly does not matter.
    - daned 13y ago
      Words matter. source: George Carlin
      - joe5150 13y ago
        Oy vey. I don't know what George Carlin has to say on the subject of idiomatic constructions in English, but if we lived in a world where phrases could only be used in the most literal understandings of the literal definitions of their component words, idioms like "toe the line" wouldn't exist in the first place. The handy thing about it being an idiom is that it works even when the literal meaning, the context, and the history are forgotten. The difference between "toe" and "tow" is nil in terms of how it affects the meaning of the phrase, since the meaning of the phrase is not derived from adding together the meanings of the words.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Aqueous 13y ago
Not just subverting the budget process, but inflicting economic damage targetted at not just a single party or a single individual but all of us. It's like threatening to blow a hole in the boat you are on with others, or shoot the glass out of an airplane window if x, y, and z demands are not met.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
nhebb 13y ago
> They cannot be allowed to do this. Government shut downs are practically the norm since the 70's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_United_States#Federal_government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_Unit... The federal government shut down once under Ford, five times under Carter, eight times under Reagan, once under Bush Sr., and twice under Clinton. Both parties have been responsible over the years.
o0-0o 13y ago
Are you aware the Democrats shut down the government eight (8) times during the Reagan administration? In case you were unaware, the House of Representatives is responsible for funding. They can choose what they want to fund. Not the President. Not the Senate. In fact, the Senate and President do not even get to sign off on funding. If you want a system where the President chooses what gets funded, you'll have a happier time in Cuba or such.

jeremybencken 13y ago

The budget process is also a law.

trothoun 13y ago
Yep. Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other ones.
- bmelton 13y ago
  Which is why we have a Federal Republic.
  - trothoun 13y ago
    I'll be sure to pass your criticism on to Winston Churchill.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    Our federal republic also happens to be a democracy.
moocowduckquack 13y ago
You could have a law that disallows the entire civil federal budget being held to ransom, such as declaring that the final date for a funding vote for an established government service must come at least 3 months ahead or else the service is automatically assigned funds. That way, all the sections of the budget that are not under contention would have been assigned funding 3 months ago and the worst that could be done would be a delay on sections of government business, not the shutting down of random stuff like parks.
- bmelton 13y ago
  There are currently laws that require the executive branch to submit a budget every year (the Budget Control Act of 1921), which the president violated for a few years consecutively, forcing the past few years' continuing resolutions (and in part, the sequester). There are additional Budget Acts (passed in the mid-70s, 90s, etc.) that require those budgets to be acted upon by Congress or reconsidered, which have all been routinely violated for the past few years as well. The issue with these bills is that they are only enforced by those with the power to break them, which means that they are de facto never enforced.
  - ewoodrich 13y ago
    Here is a portion of the summary of the President's 2013 budget proposal. [1] I don't know where you get the idea that the President is violating the Budget Control Act. The issue is that the Senate and the House refuse to conference, due to the remote possibility of an actual revised budget being passed. Therefore CRs are used to maintain funding without dealing with the seemingly intractable partisan disputes in the current split Congress. (and the Budget Control Act of 2011 was attempt to move this debate from the full floor to the Supercommittee, which promptly failed and resulted in the sequester) I'm not sure how that's relevant. [2] [1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/tables.pdf http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress_Joint_Select_Committee_on_Deficit_Reduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress_Joint_Se...
    - bmelton 13y ago
      When I spoke of the president's violations of the Budget Act, I wasn't referring to them in the present tense. Regardless, his violations have been numerous, though you are correct that he is not currently in violation of the budget act.

bmelton 13y ago

> a small minority of republicans are subverting the budget process because they don't like a law So, not to get into a partisan argument (because I'm not a Republican), but the Supreme Court battle for the individual mandate imposed by the ACA circumvented the House's budgetary authority here, and that's why we're log-jammed at the moment. The Constitution prescribes that all spending bills must originate in the House. This is called the 'Origination Clause' (Article 1, §7), and states that "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills". The ACA originally imposed fees, but as the Supreme Court challenge (NFIB v Sebelius) declared imposing fees would be unconstitutional, but that could be easily circumvented by imposing the fees as a tax, for which Congress has authority. In that process though, taxes are at the discretion of the House, and the Senate ignored that -- then neglectfully failed to pass even a single appropriations bill over the past five years that could have headed this off. Yes, I know that blaming Republicans is cool and all, and fits the current media narrative, but in this particular case, it bluntly ignores the absenteeism of the Senate for the past five years, and both parties, and indeed both wings of Congress are at fault.

guelo 13y ago
None of what you say makes sense. Obamacare is constitutional because the Supreme Court said it was constitutional, that's how our system works. The Republicans are dead set against the law and are prepared to burn the government down to stop it. Simple as that. It's not some techinical procedural legality as you make it out to be.
- readme 13y ago
  The republicans are willing to take jobs away from families in order to make sure the poor and sick don't get equal access healthcare. That's how simple it is.
  - o0-0o 13y ago
    Equal access to healthcare? You have got to be kidding me. This is a state by state argument, not a federal one. In fact, it's even more local than that. Anyone poor as you say already gets free healhcare in every state. What more do you want? Fact it, this is just another redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the poor. The rich (which you infer are Republican, although most wealthy people vote Democrat to keep the poor there) are not impacted by this anyway. I love how you can boil down an 11,000 page bill to two sentences. Ignorance must be bliss. Tell us what it's like, and in the meantime save those finger movement keystrokes for something enlightening. Win-win, that.

aaronblohowiak 13y ago

>I can only assume the rest of the RNC is going along with it because they are stupid or cowards They are not stupid; they are self-interested. With gerrymandering making many seats stable in terms of which party will win, the competition then comes from within the party; moderate GOPs face competition from the far right. If they don't tow the line, they risk losing their power. This is the end-game of gerrymandering playing out. Rubio is the coward of the hour: http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/what-happened-to-marco-rubio-20131003 http://www.nationaljournal.com/daily/what-happened-to-marco-...

shrikant 13y ago
OT, but I've been seeing this around a lot lately. It's "toe the line", and not "tow the line": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toe_the_line
- joe5150 13y ago
  It truly does not matter.
  - daned 13y ago
    Words matter. source: George Carlin
    - joe5150 13y ago
      Oy vey. I don't know what George Carlin has to say on the subject of idiomatic constructions in English, but if we lived in a world where phrases could only be used in the most literal understandings of the literal definitions of their component words, idioms like "toe the line" wouldn't exist in the first place. The handy thing about it being an idiom is that it works even when the literal meaning, the context, and the history are forgotten. The difference between "toe" and "tow" is nil in terms of how it affects the meaning of the phrase, since the meaning of the phrase is not derived from adding together the meanings of the words.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Aqueous 13y ago

Not just subverting the budget process, but inflicting economic damage targetted at not just a single party or a single individual but all of us. It's like threatening to blow a hole in the boat you are on with others, or shoot the glass out of an airplane window if x, y, and z demands are not met.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

nhebb 13y ago

> They cannot be allowed to do this. Government shut downs are practically the norm since the 70's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_United_States#Federal_government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_shutdown_in_the_Unit... The federal government shut down once under Ford, five times under Carter, eight times under Reagan, once under Bush Sr., and twice under Clinton. Both parties have been responsible over the years.

o0-0o 13y ago

Are you aware the Democrats shut down the government eight (8) times during the Reagan administration? In case you were unaware, the House of Representatives is responsible for funding. They can choose what they want to fund. Not the President. Not the Senate. In fact, the Senate and President do not even get to sign off on funding. If you want a system where the President chooses what gets funded, you'll have a happier time in Cuba or such.