US Federal Government Shutdown | Shutdown Shutdown, Debt Ceiling Raised

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They only added provisions exempting themselves and big business from the mandate while sticking it to citizens.

Can you describe these provisions and perhaps link to documentation explaining their effects and their passage? I've never heard of them.

I have heard of the Grassley amendment, which deprived all Congressional staffers of their government-provided healthcare, amounting to an inexplicable pay cut of several thousand dollars, and I know that OPM was working to compensate for that unnecessary screw-up caused by a Republican amendment, but I don't think I'd call that "exemption!"

But don't take my word for it: here's the National Review Online: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/359742/obamacare-non-exemption-patrick-brennan

And here's Politico describing the efforts of one John Boehner, Speaker of the House, to put into place the "exemption" he just tried to amend away: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/john-boehner-hill-obamacare-subsidies-97634.html?hp=t1_3

And I'm really not sure on what you're talking about with "big business" at all, unless you mean the employer mandate? Which is funny, because it has essentially no impact on big businesses, since they almost all already provide health care. As I recall, the GOP complained that it would unjustly penalize small businesses!

So please, can you document your allegations? I'd really appreciate the opportunity to learn.
 
The time for compromising on ACA was three years ago when it up for debate for an entire year. Through the normal and legal democratic process, the bill was signed into law and upheld by the Courts. That's it.

If the Republicans don't like it, they are free to win elections and repeal it, not hold the gov't hostage until they get their way. That is entirely UN-democratic. If that becomes the normal process, where the minority gets to veto anything it doesn't like, the government will become no more effective than the UN Security Council.

There is NO equivalency on this issue....ALL of the blame lies with the conservative wing of the Republican party.
You are right about 3 years ago but the law has changed. Democrats have granted exemptions to big business and congress from the mandate and also applied a 75% subsidy to EVERYONE in congress regardless of how much they make. It was passed as a law equal to everyone, not a law that caters to themselves and big business - which is unconstitutional since they made provisions based on inequality hooray! Dems have fucked up just as much as the Reps.

How is it under that rock of yours?
 
Since we have two active shutdown threads, I decided it'd make sense to have one focused on the news-politics angle and one to be a sort of personal this-is-how-I'm-affected / are people doing <x> affected / I'm forced to work for no pay hangout. Both conversations were happening in both threads, so if you wouldn't mind on a go-forward basis try to match the conversation with the thread. This is the thread for discussing news, politics, debate, etc. No big deal if you accidentally mis-post. Just edit out your post and mind the title of the thread you're in. This isn't an effort to squelch discussion and obviously there's overlap.
 
There you go. That's the problem right there. There is NO budget process any more. Just continuing resolutions of current funding levels. No debate allowed. By not drafting budgets, the Democrats have completely broken the system. And that's coming from a non-partisan.

Funniest thing in this thread. Good job.
 
If you stopped me on the street and asked me about Obamacare, I would come out against it because I dont think it's progressive enough. But if you ask me if I prefer status quo over Obamacare, then I would say no. I prefer Obamacare over status quo. It all depends on how you phrase the question.
This is me too.

Perhaps the most reprehensible part of this whole "debate" is that the GOP refuses to acknowledge that having tens of millions of uninsured Americans is a problem. They have no alternative to the ACA, they just want to shut it down so Obama and the Dems can't claim political victory in future elections.

Truly pathetic.
 
Um...did you read what I posted or did you think I'm dumb because I didn't just outright blast republicans for all the issues congress has had over the past several years?

Neither side will compromise...on anything.

The Affordable Care Act is a duly enacted law passed by Congress, signed by the President, upheld by the Supreme Court, and reaffirmed through President Obama's re-election. You do not get to repeal, defund, delay, dismantle, destroy, or endanger a law through extortion. That is not a democratic norm in this country – it is no way for a democracy to operate – nor is it written as a legitimate legislative tactic in the Constitution. Reid and Obama know that giving an inch to Republicans will legitimize and set a precedent of negotiation through hostage-taking, and that is something that cannot happen.

This is not a case of "both sides are to blame." This is not situation where both sides have to compromise. This is Obama and Reid forcing the Republicans of the House to re-obey the democratic norms of the United States. They will not budge.
 
Yes, the shutdown is pretty benign, but it's symbolically pretty huge... and hilarious.

Incidentally: Obama said that we'd keep super important things like the NSA - but stop nonessential things like NASA, or veterans' benefits.

What a joke the federal level of government is.

VA benefits? Really? What an ignorant and obtuse thing to say.
 
Congress has been dysfunctional for a long time. No one portion of congress should be holding the rest hostage. I agree. If you look at what I was stating, neither side comes to the negotiation table until the last minute because congress has been inherently flawed by partisan rulers who decide to not budge on issues and come across party lines. The dysfunction is not just limited to the current issue with the house holding up issues over ACA. Both sides of congress have failed to do their jobs over several years and have passed fewer and fewer bills due to a lack of compromise on both sides of the isle.

Every 3-6 months we get to see more and more issues just with the debt ceiling. Issues with college loans, immigration, healthcare reform, medicare, minimum wage; numerous issues that affect the lives and well being of the American people. Democrats and Republicans are both equally to blame for the events leading up the our current economic issues and it is idiotic to place blame on one party over the other. The current system of checks and balances have failed and now we are in shutdown for the first time in ages.

I agree there is plenty of good that ACA will do. I'm not sure of the specifics, but is it bad that we delay penalties on those who don't sign up in the first year? Is that a bad thing? Why didn't we just call ACA what it really is? It's a tax on the American people because there has to be some way to pay for it. Everyone pays and everyone gets healthcare. It's pretty simple as that. No loops or issues, just pay and get healthcare. This was pulled because no one wants to increase taxes because people want everything for nothing.

Where's talk on actually pulling funding from the military? Why do we spend over a trillion dollars a year just for the military? Why is healthcare defunct as it is and where are the issues coming from? Privatization or government involvement? Why isn't congress trying to find the roots of the problem and fixing it?

They care too much about staying in office and saving face with constituents and blaming everyone else but themselves for the issues that plague the country. They are unable to put aside their differences and work together to make this country better. They are far too short-sighted to be any good to anyone and have failed us time and time again. There is no reason why we should be in this situation. There should be no reason why a small group of individuals should hold up the debate.

If the group is so small, why are they even holding up the proceedings anyway? Why aren't senate and house leaders not working together and instead are drawing lines in the sand, pointing fingers and blaming the other right now? The system is broken because the people in office are, and have been in the past, proven incapable of doing their damn jobs.
 
I love this bullshit being thrown around that the Democrats need to "compromise" and they are at least "partly" to blame.

Compromise on what? Raising the debt ceiling should never come with any sort of stipulations. That argument holds zero weight. If anything, we shouldn't have a debt ceiling to begin with.
 
whats going to be the results of this shutdown? more presidential power to allow something like this to never happen again?
 
I suppose it's just a wacky coincidence that the only times we've seen this level of legislative dysfunction since 1932 have also been the only times the GOP has controlled the House but not the Presidency for more than two years, daveo42
 
Just read the washingtonpost link that was posted earlier and this is bigger than I thought. I was too young to know anything about the 95-96 shutdown. It's pretty crazy that this could go on for more than a week. The piece did a good job of explaining this in a way that a layman could understand.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...-about-how-the-government-shutdown-will-work/

This is what happens when I don't get my morning coffee lol.

Still gonna stick with tea today though. Expect many more errors.

Thanks. Broke it down wonderfully.
 
Yea, boehner is pretty fucking useless. He's holding the country hostage for what reason? Because he wants to retain being speaker. He gives 0 shits about the country. I'm happy republicans are gonna get smashed next election for this
 
The Affordable Care Act is a duly enacted law passed by Congress, signed by the President, upheld by the Supreme Court, and reaffirmed through President Obama's re-election. You do not get to repeal, defund, delay, dismantle, destroy, or endanger a law through extortion. That is not a democratic norm in this country – it is no way for a democracy to operate – nor is it written as a legitimate legislative tactic in the Constitution. Reid and Obama know that giving an inch to Republicans will legitimize and set a precedent of negotiation through hostage-taking, and that is something that cannot happen.

This is not a case of "both sides are to blame." This is not situation where both sides have to compromise. This is Obama and Reid forcing the Republicans of the House to re-obey the democratic norms of the United States. They will not budge.

Yup
 
You're completely missing the point here. Both sides refuse to compromise on anything. This situation is essentially no different than pretty much any other issue they have faced because the house and senate will not work together to get legislation passed. Both sides are to blame for their inaction because neither side will budge. Is it right that the house is trying to dictate a delay on the rollout of ACA at the expense of its employees? No. Is it right to not budge at all, even in the face of default? No. Both sides are incompetent and if you can't see that, then you've missed several years of late night deals and close calls on issues that should have been reviewed and fixed long ago.

In the face of a default? We are only facing a default because the GOP wants to use the debt ceiling as an issue to extort gains out of Democrats. This is not an issue of compromise. It is not compromise for me to ask you for something and promise not to burn your house down in return. After reading your posts it seems like you haven't been following this all that closely and are resorting to just generalizing what is happening.
 
Clearly Democrats should have held the government hostage after 2006 and demanded that the US pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Then slightly change their demand and only ask that we pull out of Afghanistan. Then we could have blamed President Bush and the republicans for not compromising.
 
I know people have commented on public schools but what about public universities? My public university is the biggest in my state but it does receive federal funding. Will it close or anything?
 
And "compromise"? The Democrats already compromised to the current status quo by passing a clean CR in the Senate with sequestration-level funding still in place; a compromise from the Republican end did and does consist of passing that same goddamn CR and nothing less.
 
Yea, boehner is pretty fucking useless. He's holding the country hostage for what reason? Because he wants to retain being speaker. He gives 0 shits about the country. I'm happy republicans are gonna get smashed next election for this

Pretty much this. Republicans control the house, which means they decide what gets put up for a vote. That said, if he were to put this (clean CR bill) up for a vote, they'd get a lot of democrat votes and enough republican votes to pass it (not all republicans are boneheads. we still have some responsible ones). As a consequence, Boner would probably lose his speakership. He's making real people suffer because he has such a hard on for "power".
 
I suppose it's just a wacky coincidence that the only times we've seen this level of legislative dysfunction since 1932 have also been the only times the GOP has controlled the House but not the Presidency for more than two years, daveo42
What's even more funny is its looking more and more like boehner and company are making the same miscalculation that Gingrich and the republicans did in the 90's, ie, thinking that a government shutdown will actually achieve a worthwhile policy goal and the blame will be put on the democrats/president. With the consequences for that error being losses in the subsequent elections and the blame shouldered almost exclusively on them.
 
Clearly Democrats should have held the government hostage after 2006 and demanded that the US pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Then slightly change their demand and only ask that we pull out of Afghanistan. Then we could have blamed Presdent Bush and the republicans for not compromising.

Nancy Pelosi should have threatened to not raise the debt ceiling unless President Bush repealed his tax cuts!

Clearly the right thing to do!
 
I love this bullshit being thrown around that the Democrats need to "compromise" and they are at least "partly" to blame.

Compromise on what? Raising the debt ceiling should never come with any sort of stipulations. That argument holds zero weight. If anything, we shouldn't have a debt ceiling to begin with.

Has there been any kind of positive results or outcomes when it comes to stipulating some kind of agreement when it comes to raising the debt limit?
 
Clearly Democrats should have held the government hostage after 2006 and demanded that the US pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Then slightly change their demand and only ask that we pull out of Afghanistan. Then we could have blamed Presdent Bush and the republicans for not compromising.

Uhhh...

They came dangerously close to holding the budget hostage in 2007 to defund the Iraq war... which would have been the stupidest thing.
 
whats going to be the results of this shutdown? more presidential power to allow something like this to never happen again?

Directly after? Nothing. It'll just be like the other times the GOP held the government/economy hostage in order to force their way through. Eventually some compromise will take place and things will get back working again. I doubt we'll see any policy changes to prevent this going into the future.

In the long term, my hope is the constituents of the House members that forced this to come to pass get fed up and kick these guys out. I don't expect it to happen, but one can hope.
 
What's even more funny is its looking more and more like boehner and company are making the same miscalculation that Gingrich and the republicans did in the 90's, ie, thinking that a government shutdown will actually achieve a worthwhile policy goal and the blame will be put on the democrats/president. With the consequences for that error being losses in the subsequent elections and the blame shouldered almost exclusively on them.

There's another reason why I edited my cutoff date in that post to 1932 from 1950: because Joe Martin (the Speaker of the House in the 80th Congress) made precisely the same miscalculation, and in conjunction with Truman campaigning against his (and Majority Leader Vandenberg's) caucus wound up giving the Democrats a majority 20 seats larger than the one they held previously.
 
I love this bullshit being thrown around that the Democrats need to "compromise" and they are at least "partly" to blame.

Compromise on what? Raising the debt ceiling should never come with any sort of stipulations. That argument holds zero weight. If anything, we shouldn't have a debt ceiling to begin with.

The best is how that perspective is supposed to be wise and above the fray, like it's some deep understanding gleaned from stepping back and taking the 5,000 ft view, and in reality it's just plain stupid.
 
Democrats get absolutely no blame for this. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Anyone who pretends that this is the fault of someone other than House Republicans and their leadership is either being disingenuous or is hopelessly misinformed. The GOP is trying to re-ignite a debate that they lost not once, not twice, not three times, but on at least four separate occasions! First with Obama getting elected in 2008 on a platform that included health care reform as a top priority. Second when the bill was legislated on and passed through both houses of Congress. Thirdly when it was upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court. And finally, in 2012, when Obama won re-election by 5 million votes against a man who said he'd repeal Obamacare on day one of his Presidency. Congress, the courts, and the people all overwhelmingly took the Democrats side on this issue. There is no more debate to be had, it's over, they lost. What's happening now is you have a bunch of sore losers acting like spoiled children who are throwing a tantrum in a manner that is now doing substantive damage to the nation. There is literally no other way to interpret what's going on here. No diverging opinions. No room for debate. The Republicans are 100% in the wrong here and anyone who believes otherwise is, in no unclear terms, showing their true colors as a partisan hack who is completely out of touch with reality.
 
Uhhh...

They came dangerously close to holding the budget hostage in 2007 to defund the Iraq war... which would have been the stupidest thing.

They "came dangerously close"... but didn't actually follow through, because leadership knew it was a dumb as hell idea and wasn't inexplicably prostrating themselves to a 50-member minority in their own caucus to cling to their leadership positions.

(Well, technically the Senate leadership wound up prostrating themselves to a 50-member minority across both chambers in the next Congress, but that's a different story.)
 
Since we have two active shutdown threads, I decided it'd make sense to have one focused on the news-politics angle and one to be a sort of personal this-is-how-I'm-affected / are people doing <x> affected / I'm forced to work for no pay hangout. Both conversations were happening in both threads, so if you wouldn't mind on a go-forward basis try to match the conversation with the thread. This is the thread for discussing news, politics, debate, etc. No big deal if you accidentally mis-post. Just edit out your post and mind the title of the thread you're in. This isn't an effort to squelch discussion and obviously there's overlap.
This mod tyranny is unconstitutional and will not stand, man.
 
They only added provisions exempting themselves and big business from the mandate while sticking it to citizens. "Congress shall make no law blah blah"

Nope. Nothing wrong at all. Totally legit. Republicans probably made them do it, anyway. Its probably a "phony scandal", anyhow.
Whether this is fair to context or not in no way justifies the current actions being taken by republicans nor does it justify trying to blame shift onto democrats for it.
 
Has there been any kind of positive results or outcomes when it comes to stipulating some kind of agreement when it comes to raising the debt limit?

Not that I can think of when the actual fallout will always be a thousand times worse.

The best is how that perspective is supposed to be wise and above the fray, like it's some deep understanding gleaned from stepping back and taking the 5,000 ft view, and in reality it's just plain stupid.

Modern-day Socrates. All of them!
 
whats going to be the results of this shutdown? more presidential power to allow something like this to never happen again?

All that would be necessary to prevent this shutdown would be to give the Minority Leader the right to bring up three bills a year for a vote. Boom, done. As noted, there's no constitutional reason the Speaker is the only one who can move votes -- that actually happened as part of the process of disempowering the Rules Committee!
 
And "compromise"? The Democrats already compromised to the current status quo by passing a clean CR in the Senate with sequestration-level funding still in place; a compromise from the Republican end did and does consist of passing that same goddamn CR and nothing less.
Come on, man.

Things would be so much easier if the Dems would just compromise and do whatever the Tea Party wants.
 
This is me too.

Perhaps the most reprehensible part of this whole "debate" is that the GOP refuses to acknowledge that having tens of millions of uninsured Americans is a problem. They have no alternative to the ACA, they just want to shut it down so Obama and the Dems can't claim political victory in future elections.

Truly pathetic.

It's the gun control debate all over again. "This law is bad, so let's focus our attention on the *real* issue, which we have no intention of addressing anyway."
 
Congress has been dysfunctional for a long time.

It's essenctially a function of gerrymandering (which btw happens on both sides of the divide although the GOP is way more dependant on it)

When political representatives will get reelected no matter how bad of a job they're doing, it's over. A result of this disfunction is the Tea Party itself - since there's no risk of losing to democrats, the only risk is losing in the primary and that's why those 30-odd reps control the Republican house.

The allmighty wise Supreme Court has empowered this practice after their 2004 decision concerning the gerrymandered Texas districts.
 
Congress has been dysfunctional for a long time. No one portion of congress should be holding the rest hostage. I agree. If you look at what I was stating, neither side comes to the negotiation table until the last minute because congress has been inherently flawed by partisan rulers who decide to not budge on issues and come across party lines. The dysfunction is not just limited to the current issue with the house holding up issues over ACA. Both sides of congress have failed to do their jobs over several years and have passed fewer and fewer bills due to a lack of compromise on both sides of the isle.

Every 3-6 months we get to see more and more issues just with the debt ceiling. Issues with college loans, immigration, healthcare reform, medicare, minimum wage; numerous issues that affect the lives and well being of the American people. Democrats and Republicans are both equally to blame for the events leading up the our current economic issues and it is idiotic to place blame on one party over the other. The current system of checks and balances have failed and now we are in shutdown for the first time in ages.

I agree there is plenty of good that ACA will do. I'm not sure of the specifics, but is it bad that we delay penalties on those who don't sign up in the first year? Is that a bad thing? Why didn't we just call ACA what it really is? It's a tax on the American people because there has to be some way to pay for it. Everyone pays and everyone gets healthcare. It's pretty simple as that. No loops or issues, just pay and get healthcare. This was pulled because no one wants to increase taxes because people want everything for nothing.

Where's talk on actually pulling funding from the military? Why do we spend over a trillion dollars a year just for the military? Why is healthcare defunct as it is and where are the issues coming from? Privatization or government involvement? Why isn't congress trying to find the roots of the problem and fixing it?

They care too much about staying in office and saving face with constituents and blaming everyone else but themselves for the issues that plague the country. They are unable to put aside their differences and work together to make this country better. They are far too short-sighted to be any good to anyone and have failed us time and time again. There is no reason why we should be in this situation. There should be no reason why a small group of individuals should hold up the debate.

If the group is so small, why are they even holding up the proceedings anyway? Why aren't senate and house leaders not working together and instead are drawing lines in the sand, pointing fingers and blaming the other right now? The system is broken because the people in office are, and have been in the past, proven incapable of doing their damn jobs.

that's a whole lotta nothing there
 
Democrats and Republicans are both equally to blame for the events leading up the our current economic issues and it is idiotic to place blame on one party over the other.

fucking LOL
 
Looks like markets have decided the current debate woes are already priced in.

The question is, what happens if we approach the debt ceiling deadline without having even resolved this impasse?

I like the soulution someone proposed on NPR, the Treasury just ignores the debt limit and have the courts deal with it.
 
It's essenctially a function of gerrymandering (which btw happens on both sides of the divide although the GOP is way more dependant on it)

When political representatives will get reelected no matter how bad of a job they're doing, it's over. A result of this disfunction is the Tea Party itself - since there's no risk of losing to democrats, the only risk is losing in the primary and that's why those 30-odd reps control the Republican house.

The allmighty wise Supreme Court has empowered this practice after their 2004 decision concerning the gerrymandered Texas districts.

Yeah, I think the vlogbrothers were the ones who did a nice video on it. All gerrymandering has allowed is radicalization rather than winning elections. Most of the gerrymandering is unnecessary so instead it's just republican vs. republican or democrat vs. democrat so now they have to appease a fringe that is more powerful since there aren't other challengers.
 
Congress has been dysfunctional for a long time. No one portion of congress should be holding the rest hostage. I agree. If you look at what I was stating, neither side comes to the negotiation table until the last minute.

Please, stop with this "Both sides are bad" excuse.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/01/budget-conference-republicans_n_4020621.html

For Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, the move is ironic. She has been trying for more than a half-year to go to a conference to work out dramatic differences between the Senate budget and the House version. Senate and House Republicans have objected, repeatedly.

Indeed, Murray and her colleagues asked 18 times. They have been blocked by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and a group of tea party Republicans led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
 
Question, can the president issue an order to put congress wages into the "non essential" group? Because it is my understand that congress is deciding what goes where, right?

Congress controls the purse strings of government. (That's why Guantanemo is still open, congress made it illegal to use any federal funds to close it or facilitate the transfer of its prisoners to the civilian court system. It's literally illegal for Obama to close Guantanemo)
 
You are right about 3 years ago but the law has changed. Democrats have granted exemptions to big business and congress from the mandate and also applied a 75% subsidy to EVERYONE in congress regardless of how much they make. It was passed as a law equal to everyone, not a law that caters to themselves and big business - which is unconstitutional since they made provisions based on inequality hooray! Dems have fucked up just as much as the Reps.

How is it under that rock of yours?

As if the Republicans were actually concerned about some relatively routine regulation implementations. Every big piece of legislation has reams of regulations attached to it. The Administration was slow getting the "big business" mandate published so they delayed it. Congressional staffers are getting a subsidy because they don't get the market benefit of their employer (OPM) giving them more salary instead of health insurance premium payments. Complicated, yes, but nothing to get you panties in a bunch for if you are actually concerned.

The Democrats have the burden of successfully implementing an extraordinarily complex law, over sometimes intractable political opposition.

The Republican are straight up saying "Fuck you!" to people who aren't under Medicare or have private employer based insurance.

It is easy to see who is fucking up worse here.

And what's up with the ad homonym attack? Thought PolitiGAF was better than that.
 
Looks like markets have decided the current debate woes are already priced in.

The question is, what happens if we approach the debt ceiling deadline without having even resolved this impasse?

Not really surprising at all. The dow has been dropping last couple of days and considering how the other debates have gone, people shouldn't be surprised there was a shutdown unless they were living under a rock. Most people saw this coming form a mile away.
 
"if only both sides would compromise!!!!!"

oh, shut the fuck up with this shit. Obamacare has been a compromise since day-fucking-one by being a heritage foundation monstrosity rather than proper single-payer
 
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