Now that the Tea Party has taken its ball and gone home, leaving the government of the United States in shutdown, we sadly must all admit that, while awful, this closure is far from the worst thing to befall us. OK–perhaps “befall” is inaccurate, in that it implies something happening to us, when in reality this whole farce is self-inflicted. It is a strike, simply, by a childish minority in the House which refuses to accept that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has three times carried the day: Congress did pass it, after all, the Supreme Court upheld it, and the president was re-elected. The time for discussing it has passed. I suspect what really stirs the Tea Party hearts is how lamentably they have failed. Not only will the ACA wade forward into our collective mindset, it will become as accepted and successful as Social Security. And from the start these people thought to slur the President’s efforts by referring to the ACA as Obamacare–as if some Kenyan socialist was meddling with the world’s best health care system. Just think if the Republicans of a couple of generations ago were as short-sighted as these we’re presently saddled with. We wouldn’t have Social Security–we’d have, after FDR, something like Roosecurity: a popular program that, if nothing else, would serve to further FDR’s name in history. They should let it go.
Not so the debt ceiling, which we are set to hit the day this paper comes out. It verges on the treasonous that we are, without a resolution to raise it, yet again so perilously close to default. The last time we toyed with not upping our debt limit, in 2011, the result was a downgrade of our credit rating for the first time in this country’s history and a cost to the taxpayer of an estimated $1.3 billion in increased interest. Of course, we did raise the ceiling, but in approaching it so closely the damage was done. Again, self-inflicted. And this from the party that has traditionally billed itself as that of fiscal responsibility!
This isn’t America–or is it? Is this what we’ve become?
Are we the globe-leading superpower, which after World War II imposed a pax Americana on a broken world, or are we 300 million hostages to some fifty-odd House crackpots? Yet it’s not merely our own citizenry in the balance: Where is the “full faith and credit” of the United Sates if it defaults, and where does that leave the global economy?
This is the handgrenade that the Tea Party has rolled under the dinner table. Yes, it’s a huge problem for every economy, and ours in particular, but it may be an extinction event for the Republicans–who are predominantly blamed for the current impasse. In failing to reign in the Tea Party, the Republicans have become controlled by them–and now, with Congress enjoying an historically low 13% approval rating, the future of the right in this country looks to be fracturing. I see a more traditional, if toothless, Republican minority hedged in Congress by Tea Party ideology on one side and by a Democratic majority on the other.
This is how the 2014 mid-term elections look to me: The Republicans will be routed. They are dragging behind them a legacy of blackmail and obstruction which has finally, with this federal government shut down and looming debt crisis, showed itself to be untenable and will likely cause the U.S. taxpayer billions. It’s incalculable what it will cost the world as a whole. Picture it like this. If you took a long road trip with a group of friends, only one of whom was allowed to drive, and this friend had to stop every five miles to legislate your route, he’d be out of the car before the car got out of the county.
It’s time to throw the Tea Party out of the car.
Tea Party live on to fight other day, lol! Go! Tea Party
The president lied about his lies about keeping your health plans and doctors. And when he did finally apologize, he didn’t really say he was sorry. It’s also possible that we’ll see 10 million more insurance cancellations, leading to much higher premiums, bigger deductibilities, and more cutoffs between patients and their doctors. And employer-based cancellations will compound this disaster, with the whole process stretching across most of next year. It will be a killer for the Obama Democrats.
But while my conservative-Tea party colleagues are out thrashing Obama death care, I want to raise a critical point: Don’t forget economic growth.
The Pew Research Center’s Andrew Kohut recently wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “The GOP Is in Better Shape than You Think.” It provides an unbelievable statistic: Independents favor the GOP on handling the economy by 46 to 30 percent. Unbelievable. Overall, according to Pew Research, a plurality of all voters gives the GOP a 44 percent to 37 percent edge on the economy.
So I want to make a pitch that Republicans not lose sight of the importance of economic growth in the months leading up to next year’s midterms. And that suggests the importance of a program of pro-growth tax reform and simplification. Keep the spending-cut sequester and budget caps in place. Push deregulation that will help small and large businesses grow more and hire more workers.
The Obama economy is not keeling over. Despite the government shutdown, nonfarm payrolls increased 204,000 in October, private payrolls jumped 212,000, and jobs for the prior two months were revised upward by 60,000 to 70,000. The numbers were higher than expected.
No, these are not fabulous numbers. But they are decent. Of course, 7.3 percent unemployment is still too high, participation rates are way too low, and we need to traverse a multimillion-job deficit to get back to the prior historical trend. So Republicans should keep up the mantra on this, talking jobs and take-home pay. In other words, talking economic growth.
Obama was either flat out ignorant of how the new health care program would impact people’s insurance premiums, or he flat out lied over and over to the American people. Take your pick. There aren’t too many other possibilities, and it’s hard to figure which is worse.The President knew that Obamacare would be repealed if the American people knew they were going to lose their health coverage and that premiums would skyrocket. Sebelius knew this. The whole White House team knew. Pelosi knew. A good part of the media knew
The problem the Democrats face is that when Obama promised Americans they could keep their insurance he was either wrong and didn’t know it or he is claims were flat out misleading? so why should Obama not be call out for and pay a price for misleading a nation for three years? ( if you like you plan you can keep it,) that mean you keep it. and did know it; an incompetent know-it-all, or an incompetent liar. When they said we’d have more choices under Obamacare, we know now what they meant.
It’s a problem with all the Democrat policies: They either are wrong or what?
Because, now we know that you can’t keep your policy if you like it. You have to get a new policy that more often than not will cost you more because you are paying for someone else’s benefits.
“Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that [you could keep your insurance if you liked it],” writes the New York Times Editorial Board.
But what difference does it make they continue?
Those policies weren’t worth keeping anyway say the Manhattan liberals who think that $541 is a reasonable sum to pay monthly for parking.
“By law, insurers cannot continue to sell policies that don’t provide the minimum benefits and consumer protections required as of next year”
So what? [I]nsurers are not allowed to abandon enrollees?
They must offer consumers options that do comply with the law, and they are scrambling to retain as many of their customers as possible with new policies that are almost certain to be more comprehensive than their old ones.”
And MORE expensive.
It’s simple math: Cover more people, cover more things and you have increased costs. Someone pays, even if perhaps it might not be you. But if you’re insured already, it probably is you who does pay.
And in that case you were the very people who were promised that if you liked your insurance you could keep it.
That’s the dirty secret that Obama and the Democrats have tried to keep from Americans since they first introduced the Obamacare legislation.
It’s why they didn’t want anyone to read it.
It’s why they didn’t want anyone to debate it.
It’s why they shouted from the top of the rooftop amid Republican doubts: “But it’s the law!”
It’s simple math: Cover more people, cover more things and you have increased costs.
At first we were told that thousands of people would have their policies cancelled for “more comprehensive” and more expensive ones that offer benefits that most people didn’t ask for.
Then it was estimated –a few days later—Obamacare would affect in the hundreds of thousands policies in an insurance bait and switch that under any state’s laws would land a real insurance agent in front of a disciplinary body.
Now it’s estimated that at least 1.5 million and perhaps as many as 93 million people won’t be able to keep their insurance.
It’s simple math: Cover more people, cover more things and you have increased costs.
the administration itself on page 34,552 estimated “that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” and thus become illegal under Obamacare.
“How many people are exposed to these problems?” asks Forbes, “60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance…. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.”
But, hey, what difference does it make?
We only have four dead Americans, said Hillary.
Or 93 million Americans without the insurance they liked, says the Times.
They’re just numbers after all.
Yeah, as we know now—-much to our sorrow–Liberals are THAT bad at math.
And it’s just that simple.Obama mislead a nation for years and you are defend it, It’s time to throw the un out of the car.