^Agree with Higg. Just stop targeting Obamacare. It makes the Reps looks awful, like sore losers. Instead focus on budget cuts elsewhere.
Congress gets healthcare through their employer (the federal gov’t) so they should not have to go through an exchange for coverage, period. I can’t believe they were stupid enough to change the rules for themselves and their staff. As expected it came back to bite them in the ass.
Republicans haven’t been particularly good at cutting the budget either.
:The real reason for gov’t shudown
^Awess.
Republicans know they don’t have a chance of stopping implementation of the ACA.
So what is this all about? It’s about a faction of the Republican party wanting to show how hardcore they are to the subset of hardcore Republican voters who vote at primaries. That’s it. The ACA is the favorite Republican windmill to tilt at these days. Even though they’ll never hit the windmill, they think there’s a benefit to talking big about hitting it. And the benefit is that no even crazier radical will dare to go against you in the next primary.
+2. It passed the Senate, the House, and was signed into law by POTUS. It was deemed consitutional by the Supreme Court. If you want to target it, win a supermajority and repeal it.
^ I do find it interesting that whenever democrats mention that the SC upheld the law’s constitutionality, they always forget to mention that the SC only did so under the theory that the individual mandate is a tax.
Note: I’m not calling Greenie a democrat.
Didn’t POTUS make a very adamant and specific point that it was NOT a tax? I think it was a “mandatory fee” or something.
Believe it or not, this “it’s not a tax” thing pops up more frequently than you might believe. For example, the Oklahoma Dept. of Revenue has a “busness fee” that is equal to your Oklahoma state franchise tax. All businesses have to pay it, and it’s payable to the same regulatory body that collects taxes. But it’s not a tax.
If it were a tax, it would have to be voted on by legislators, deemed constitutional by the courts, and then the proceeds would have to be divvied up in accordance with lawmaker’s wishes.
A fee, on the other hand, doesn’t have all these burdens. You can charge a fee to anyone anywhere for any reason.
Democrats have been adamant that it is not a tax, but the only grounds the SC could find for upholding the individual mandate (without which the ACA cannot exist) was to deem it a tax and therefore within the powers granted to congress.
I want it to stay shut down. I want it to break. We need to start from scratch again.
You don’t talk about Project Mayhem.
They didn’t call it a tax because they didn’t want to have to run for office after supporting a new tax. The heart of the individual mandate rests in the tax on non-compliance. The gov’t can’t force you to buy a product (health insurance) but it can raise taxes on everyone and allow a tax rebate if you can prove that you bought health insurance (which is what the ACA does). I agree with the SC that it’s a tax but I’m surprised that they didn’t push it back to pres and make him take the political hit – he basically had his cake and got to eat it too.
Yup. Minorities in 2006 and 2008 before getting a majority in 2011. The next election has already been fixed for October 2015. Fixed elections work when you have a majority government but cannot be implemented with minority governments.
So I’ve been trying to get on the healthcare.gov site all day just to see what the options are out of sheer curiosity, since I’m assuming like most people on here we have good work provided coverage.
I can’t get on it. It has said all day “sorry too many visitors, site not working” though the error message says it a bit more politely. This bodes well. They can’t even get the website to handle day 1 traffic.
a mate of mine is convinced that 1 or more states will start to seek independence soon
There are only a few states that could actually make it as independent countries, but they’re too important to the US so they will never be let go.
Texas, California, and Alaska could all do it fairly easily. And I’ll throw North Dakota in there too. Just a couple years ago that would have been laughable, but now with all the fracking going on up there, I think they’d be fine.
I see the market is responding favorably to this government shutdown with futures only down 80 points today. Think of the multiple they would be down had the gubmint been open and operating!
Stay closed my friends!
Markets will get scared as we approach October 17th debt ceiling debate. Gov shutdown is a nonevent for the market. Raising the probability of a Treasury default is huge.