balladofwindfishes
Member
there's a difference between fighting a bill and not even allowing the majority to pass something.Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
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PoliGAF 2011: Of Weiners, Boehners, Santorum, and Teabags
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TacticalFox88
Banned
And with that folks...we are officially fucked.Averon said:
Dr. Pangloss said:
Well, yes, Pell Grants are welfare. Like most welfare, they're designed to help citizens move into better lives and become more productive.
The problem is that America has turned the word welfare into a pejorative, while ignoring that most of us receive some sort of welfare at some point in our lives.
bodyofanamerican
Member
Abdication of a responsibility he's acknowledged his party/the gov't possesses, i.e., "I know we have to, but I'm a) not going to help you but b) allow you to take the blame for it".Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
Bulbo Urethral Baggins
Banned
Oh, I see. The same thing Obama and the Dems did in 2006.i_am_not_jon_ames said:
balladofwindfishes
Member
bodyofanamerican
Member
yeah, you know. the thing that didn't result in a default crisis.Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
there is a sensible reason to curb Pell grants, though - that they're partially to blame for the dramatic rise we've seen in tuition rates over the last decade. you remove that subsidy and many schools might be inclined to cut back. throwing more money in grants or scholarships only encourages colleges/universities to raise tuition and pocket the subsidy.Dr. Pangloss said:
Bulbo Urethral Baggins
Banned
Not a single Democrat in the Senate voted to increase the debt limit. Not one. All opposed it. Every single one.i_am_not_jon_ames said:
Why do they all support it now?
Was it political grandstanding?
Disingenousness?
Scumbaggery?
Particle Physicist
between a quark and a baryon
Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
Are you seriously comparing the two situations..... really? really?!
stop being completely disingenuous. please.
Particle Physicist
between a quark and a baryon
Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
Did they filibuster the bill? Because....................................... it doesn't matter that they didn't vote for it if the Republicans still had a majority vote.
Notice how Dems/Liberals are okay with the current Senate Republicans doing the same thing.
quadriplegicjon said:
This isn't the first time he's done it.
It must really suck the be a conservative and feel the need to defend the actions of these fucks.
Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
Meaningless protest votes. If they didn't have enough votes, Democrats would have spotted them. Stop with this bullshit, please.
dave is ok
aztek is ok
Giving banks giant bailouts and interest free loans didnt make them want to loan out any of that money...scorcho said:
The thing about Pell Grants that need to be fixed is what Universities can qualify for them. All those for-profit scam academies cranking out non-accredited or useless diplomas at ridiculous expense, all paid for by government grants and loans, are a cancer on education spending. They suck up tons of money for minimal if any improvement of their graduates' career prospects and utility in the economy. They swindle poor and vulnerable people into wasting years and their government grants and loans on a scam, only to leave them stuck with more debt and no career at the end. Their marketing materials blatantly lie and their recruitment is predatory but nobody has done anything to stop these companies from swindling billions of education dollars.scorcho said:
empty vessel
Member
Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
For my part, I don't object to a protest vote if a bill understood by both parties to be critical is going to pass. But Republicans aren't really off the hook, because they had the power to block the bill and in fact made political demands that they required to be satisfied before they would vote for it. So it's not actually the same thing Obama and Dems did in 2006, since they did not threaten to obstruct a bill that was admitted by them to be critical to the American people until certain demands were met. Importantly, note that Democrats had the power to do so: they had a sufficient number of people to filibuster in 2006. Why didn't Democrats threaten to block passage of the Republican bill to raise the debt limit until certain political demands were met?
Mr. E. Yis
Banned
LOL, so the savings in keeping their revenue would trickle down to actual college cost for the average student? I find it very hard to believe that tuition costs raising as much as they did have anything to do with grants except as an excuse.scorcho said:
bodyofanamerican
Member
That would be my guess, but the point I'm making is that we weren't almost driven off a cliff in that case, regardless of who voted for it or didn't vote for it.Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
TacticalFox88
Banned
And you still have to pay the bitch back, so it's moot.Chichikov said:
Bulbo Urethral Baggins
Banned
No. And that's my point. McConnell apparently said he wouldn't either. That's my understanding anyway....Did I misread that?quadriplegicjon said:
It's a well known political strategy to vote against bills you know are important but are unpopular, as long as you know it'll still pass. If the bill is actually in danger, the party members with the safest odds at re-election cross party lines and vote for it to ensure it passes for the good of the country. This has always been the norm.
This situation is different, because the critical bill in question is actually in danger. The moderate Republicans know they need to compromise on a bill for the good of a country, but the Tea Party is willing to throw the world economy into chaos to prove their stubbornness. Many moderates are also leaning towards the Tea Party because those extremists have seemingly taken over the party and their core voters so they're afraid compromising on a bill now will cost them their re-election.
The fallout of this mess is uncertain. Either the Republicans make epic gains in votes due to their unyielding stand next election, or they'll suffer epic losses for refusing to compromise. Either way, the world's confidence in US credit is permanently damaged because routine debt limit raising bills can no longer be counted on to be passed easily.
This situation is different, because the critical bill in question is actually in danger. The moderate Republicans know they need to compromise on a bill for the good of a country, but the Tea Party is willing to throw the world economy into chaos to prove their stubbornness. Many moderates are also leaning towards the Tea Party because those extremists have seemingly taken over the party and their core voters so they're afraid compromising on a bill now will cost them their re-election.
The fallout of this mess is uncertain. Either the Republicans make epic gains in votes due to their unyielding stand next election, or they'll suffer epic losses for refusing to compromise. Either way, the world's confidence in US credit is permanently damaged because routine debt limit raising bills can no longer be counted on to be passed easily.
empty vessel
Member
Zzoram said:
This is way too generous to Republicans, and I'm particularly referencing your use of the passive voice when you say that "the critical bill in question is actually in danger." What you mean to say is that Republicans have intentionally placed a bill that they concede to be critical to the American people in danger for the purpose of extracting significant political concessions. Note that Democrats could have done this in 2006. They did not. That is the difference between Democrats (representatives of the wealthy) and Republicans (rabid, reactionary extremists).
McConnell is sane. The Senate Republicans are sane and won't block the compromise bill the Democrats proposed. Theyll vote against it to grandstand but they know it needs to pass so they won't filibuster it.Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
The House Republicans are the only problem right now. The Tea Party is insane and Boehner is trying to get their support to save face. Working with House Democrats to get a compromised bill to pass is the only reasonable solution, and what will probably happen after he gives the Tea Party their stupid bill that will get immediately shot down in the Senate, so they can talk about that pointless bill as proof of their ideology during the next election.
Partially, yes. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~lsingell/Pell_Bennett.pdfChichikov said:
It increases the pool of lower-income students who otherwise might be priced out of college, but many private universities simply raised tuition rates to absorb the subsidy the government provides.
speculawyer
Member
That describes your posts. They did for the same reasons that Republicans have often voted against the debt ceiling when a GOP president was in office . . . a protest vote. But it is always done when they know that it is going to pass anyway. They Dems haven't used it to threaten financial destruction or else. You know this but you but you are just being an ass. (Or maybe you are that stupid . . . but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.)Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
Manmademan
Member
scorcho said:
and this is the argument against vouchers for K-12 public education.
Dems won no concessions in 2006 that I'm aware of. Playing around with the debt ceiling vote has always been bullshit political optics: we knew it would pass and people on the opposition side were simply using it to harvest campaign talking points. This is bad behavior, as it is behaving in a reckless manner on something that is a very simple budgetary obligation.
Bulbo Urethral Baggins
Banned
We were talking about the Senate dude. Specifically, McConnell's word not to filibuster and let the bill pass. Love you too.speculawyer said:
*Kisses*
PhoenixDark
Banned
Evlar said:
And there's a difference between playing politics with the debt ceiling and holding the global economy hostage to the last possible minute.
scorcho said:
I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but do you think it's likely that tuitions would go down significantly if pell grants were removed?
I think history shows us that "tax breaks" of this nature are not very effective. The savings are amortized as earnings. Being a non-profit institution like many colleges are might make that different, though. I've seen no studies on the subject.
empty vessel
Member
Bulbo Urethral Baggins said:
Except McConnell is referring to an already compromised bill! They already extracted political concessions. And they have those precisely because they did threaten to filibuster a clean debt limit bill. Incidentally, the 2006 bill was a clean debt limit bill.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53149.html
empty vessel
Member
scorcho said:
From the perspective of the university, pell grants and loans are indistinguishable. I think it's absolutely true that these things serve to increase tuition, but I think it's more fair to put the blame on corruption within our universities (which has skyrocketed along with our increasing income inequality) than on a government program that provides grants for people to attend college. Of course, the real solution is to have the government pay everybody's tuition like a civilized country.
Yeah, I've read Ryan's proposal.scorcho said:
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only study that supports that idea (and even that is a bit problematic, as it only show correlation for private schools).
Maybe it's just a limitation of my imagination, but I'm having hard time seeing how paying for less than a quarter of tuition can be a major driving force in the rising cost of higher education.
Especially when you remember that we had pell grants since the 60s.
Wow, I get online to get up to date and find out my Representative has been flipped from no to yes.
Jeff Flake, you just lost my vote when you run for Senate. I thought you were one of the reasonable ones.
Oh, and LOL @ Boehner. "I'm too weak a Speaker to pass anything more reasonable than C/C/B, so let's send that back and DEMAND that the Senate pass it. That'll fly for sure."
Jeff Flake, you just lost my vote when you run for Senate. I thought you were one of the reasonable ones.
Oh, and LOL @ Boehner. "I'm too weak a Speaker to pass anything more reasonable than C/C/B, so let's send that back and DEMAND that the Senate pass it. That'll fly for sure."
I really do feel like gradience has largley been lost in modern discourse of all stripes. If group A does [X] and is criticized for it, group A will point out that group B has also done something in the same basic category as [X]. For example, holding up a vote for the debt limit.
But being in the same basic category leaves enormous wiggle room. In our example above, the Democrats did not actually bring raising the debt limit to an emminent, we-will-default-in-less-than-a-week crisis; they did not extract demands for raising the debt limit, as the limit was passed cleanly.
Another example might be the political extremes. When the extreme nature of the tea party is commented upon (calling a moderate like Obama a socialist or a marxist), many people point out that there are extremist environmentalists and other extreme liberal groups that fit the same basic description, calling George Bush a Nazi. And that's true, I think they do fit the same basic category. But they are different in every other possible way; they differ in actual influence (extreme environmentalists have virtually none, while nearly 1/4 of the sitting republicans in house self identify as tea partiers) and they differ in size.
I think this sort of nuance -- very basic nuance, I might add -- seems to be lost in discussions. This is commonly referred to as "false equivalency," but I think it needs to be explained more fully. Things often differ more in degree than in kind, and degree matters quite a bit.
But being in the same basic category leaves enormous wiggle room. In our example above, the Democrats did not actually bring raising the debt limit to an emminent, we-will-default-in-less-than-a-week crisis; they did not extract demands for raising the debt limit, as the limit was passed cleanly.
Another example might be the political extremes. When the extreme nature of the tea party is commented upon (calling a moderate like Obama a socialist or a marxist), many people point out that there are extremist environmentalists and other extreme liberal groups that fit the same basic description, calling George Bush a Nazi. And that's true, I think they do fit the same basic category. But they are different in every other possible way; they differ in actual influence (extreme environmentalists have virtually none, while nearly 1/4 of the sitting republicans in house self identify as tea partiers) and they differ in size.
I think this sort of nuance -- very basic nuance, I might add -- seems to be lost in discussions. This is commonly referred to as "false equivalency," but I think it needs to be explained more fully. Things often differ more in degree than in kind, and degree matters quite a bit.
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