I don’t know about you but I am sick to death with all the childishness and ideological grandstanding coming out of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The name calling and finger pointing have reached absurd levels and there seems to be a complete lack of real leadership from either side of the isle or from the White House.
The Republicans have an obsession with defunding Obamacare, even though they readily admit it will collapse on its own when implemented. Why they don’t step back and let that happen and then take the political advantages that come from having been proven right is beyond my understanding.
Why they would allow over 800,000 people to be put, even temporarily, out of work at a time when the country is suffering from drastically high unemployment and the economy is struggling in a slow recovery is nothing short of insane. The fact that a good many of those people work in jobs supporting our troops still engaged in a shooting war just makes it worse.
They claim that passing a clean CR to reopen the government gives them nothing and loses them their “last chance” to stop Obamacare. That’s just not being honest. Obamacare is already in effect and if it is as bad as many of us believe there will be massive calls for its repeal by Republicans and Democrats alike –and that will be happening just about the same time as the 2014 election.
As for the “clean CR” –well, there is one being proposed in the House right now that the Speaker won’t allow to come up for a vote. The President and the Senate Democrats have agreed to support it if the House passes it. That CR funds the government at lower spending levels called for by the Republicans –levels that would have never been agreed to by the Democrats without this crisis. That by itelf would be a major victory for the Republicans. But no. The extremists on the Republican right want to defund Obamacare will not settle for little things like lower spending and smaller government.
Now they are hinting that they will even allow the US to go into default by refusing to raise the debt ceiling without defunding Obamacare. They are beginning to try and tell us we have enough money to pay the interest on our debts without defaulting. Nonsense. We may have enough for that but it would mean not paying our other obligations, like national defense, Social Security, Medicare, Disability, Veterans benefits and on and on --and at some point even that would not be enough. You cannot pay the interest on a debt for long without paying on the principle. They are taking a page out of Obama’s playbook and not being candid about the consequences.
The Democrats are not going to give in on Obamacare. Period. Somebody has to be the adult and move the fight to winnable objectives. If the government remains shut down and the country goes into default the Republicans will be blamed. Their chances of taking control of the Senate in 2014 will be nonexistent. They will run the very real risk of losing control of the House and giving control of both houses and the White House to Obama for his last 2 years in office. That’s not a risk they should be taking –it’s just plain stupid.
We cannot hope for leadership on these matters from the Democrat side of the isle –but we should be demanding it from the Republicans. We should be telling the extreme right to shut up for a while and make what political gains are possible –put the government back to work, avoid the default and go back to forcing the administration to be accountable for Fast and Furious, the IRS behavior, the Benghazi disaster and the other outrages we have experienced since Obama took office.
There, I’ve had my say –I should feel better but I just turned on the news and saw Harry Reid calling the Republicans ‘arsonists’. I just want to step outside and yell “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” (but the EPA would probably cite me for noise pollution)
Todays Reflection:
Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace. --Buddha
Live Long and Prosper....
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