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The over-reachers didn't learn from the previous over-reachers..
http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/1...backfiresongopNEW YORK – Not only are Republicans wasting time with the Paul Ryan proposal, their cynical gambit on the even more drastic House Republican Study Committee came back to bite them. They may be under pressure to keep campaign promises about balancing the budget—but they're running a huge risk of electoral disaster with their overreach.
While Republicans are chiding President Obama for lacking leadership, they are wasting precious time pushing an agenda to nowhere.
On Friday, we were forced to endure a day of debate on the Paul Ryan budget, which everyone knows is dead on arrival in the Senate. The centerpiece of the congressman's grand plan—turning Medicare into a voucher program—is opposed by the majority of the population. He offers more tax cuts for the wealthy despite the public's overwhelming support for taxing the rich.
What gives?
According to some Republican strategists and commentators, the GOP is terrified of a backlash from its base if its members don't deliver on their ambitious campaign promises. Former White House press secretary Dana Perino told me: "The message the GOP [voters]—including the Tea Party—sent to the Republicans was that inaction was probably more politically risky than proposing something that might make some people uncomfortable."
Says one senior Republican strategist, "There is a new level of accountability with the party's base that is going to hold them to reform. People are cognizant of the political risks. They will tell you they see the polls; many voters in the electorate are reflecting unease about doing something with Medicare. But risk of not acting and not doing big things is even bigger."
If this is true, Republicans had better pray that their base doesn't hear about the House gambit on Friday, when lawmakers pretended to support the House Republican Study Committee budget, which would balance the budget through even more drastic cuts than are found in the Ryan plan.
Please don't make us listen to the people who kept two wars off the books to make spending look lower than it was lecture us about fiscal responsibility.
House Republicans brought it up for a vote expecting Democrats to oppose the plan. But the Dems had a little surprise for them: They organized to vote "present," and suddenly it looked like the RSC budget would pass.
Pandemonium ensued as the Republicans panicked. At the last minute, the GOP leadership forced a handful of Republican members to switch their votes to "no" and disaster was averted. It was all an elaborate exercise in political cynicism.
I find the RSC budget draconian and counterproductive, but the difference between the House Republicans and me is I won't lie to you and tell you that I support it just to get credit for doing something I never wanted to happen.
President Obama alluded to this point in what he thought were off-the-record comments to supporters last Thursday night: "When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure he's just being America's accountant, that he's being responsible, I mean, this is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health-care bill—but wasn't paid for. So it's not on the level."
Republicans have been whining about what a big meanie Obama is for stating the obvious: Washington Republicans only became obsessed with cutting the deficit when Democrats came to power and it was time to clean up the spending mess created during the Bush years. I make the distinction "Washington" Republicans, because many Republicans outside the capital were disgusted by the spending done on the GOP's watch; they have the moral authority to complain now. But please don't make us listen to the people who kept two wars off the books to make spending look lower than it was lecture us about fiscal responsibility.
This approach is likely to be politically disastrous for Republicans. What the public has said over and over to the GOP about more tax cuts for the rich is a firm "no thanks." In a recent Gallup poll, 60 percent of independents said that the next budget should include raising taxes on those making more than $250,000. As for revamping Medicare, this is an across-the-board stinker. Gallup found that "support for revamping Medicare is essentially no higher among Republicans than among Democrats, 34 percent vs. 30 percent."
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel is licking his chops over the prospect of making the GOP pay for its overreach. He told The Washington Post's Greg Sargent on Friday, "When we win back the majority, people will look back at this vote [for the Ryan plan] as a defining one that secured the majority for Democrats."
A Republican strategist conceded to me, "There is a lot of truth to the argument that this is a big risk for Republicans. Everyone here sees Steve Israel's comments… But Republicans on the Hill are under pressure to do big things."
Yet even the pugnacious Newt Gingrich told The New York Times that Ryan's plans to overhaul Medicare is "a dangerous political exercise."
When Newt Gingrich is urging caution, you know you are on thin ice.
Pure schadenfruede on my part.
The GOP has long since been taken over by its more and more extreme ideological purists. This will have some long term consequences.
The over-reachers didn't learn from the previous over-reachers..
Nah, I reckon it was a brilliant political move. Now that their extreme position has been staked out, Obama will go for the Grand Bargain.
How sad is it as a political party that you are opposed to the bills you propose?
It's a little early to call game over...
Barry's been tricked and trapped into the false Repug crisis about the deficit.
The real crisis is mortgages and jobs and down economy, and all the lost tax receipts lost which knocks over into crises in public services.
Repugs aren't addressing those, at all.
Yeah, that definitely made them look like jackasses.
I seem remember the GOP (and members of this board) mocking pelosi for not having the dems united....
WaPo/ABC Poll: 84 percent oppose GOP Medicare plan
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/0...28Daily+Kos%29
Anyone have the details of the amendment under consideration? I didn't see a numeric reference on a quick search.
Reid to force Senate vote on controversial Ryan budget
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will hold a Senate vote on Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) controversial budget plan, Raw Story has confirmed.
The plan, recently approved by the House, has virtually no chance of passing the Democratic-led Senate. The vote would serve to put Senate Republicans on the record in favor of slashing taxes on the rich while replacing Medicare with a voucher program.
"There will be an opportunity in the Senate to vote on the Ryan budget to see if Republican senators like the Ryan budget as much as the House did," Reid told reporters on a conference call. "Without going into the Ryan budget we will see how much the Republicans like it here in the Senate."
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/2...e+Raw+Story%29
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/op...rssnyt&emc=rssIT is obvious that the nation’s desperate fiscal condition requires higher taxes on the middle class, not just the richest 2 percent. Likewise, en lement reform requires means-testing the giant Social Security and Medicare programs, not merely squeezing the far smaller safety net in areas like Medicaid and food stamps.
Unfortunately, in proposing tax increases only for the very rich, President Obama has denied the first of these fiscal truths, while Representative Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has contradicted the second by putting the entire burden of en lement reform on the poor. The resulting squabble is not only deepening the fiscal stalemate, but also bringing us dangerously close to class war.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsev.../20110427a.htmThe Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate for an extended period.
means-testing is bull , like calling SocSec payments an en lement.
If you pay in to Soc Sec and Medicare and unemployment/disability insurance, you have the right, not en lement, to use it, no matter what your means.
I think that's the first time you admit it's an insurance, not a tax.
slimey, nit-picking, obfuscating, evasive semantics, you're forte. GFY
Lots of delicious sauce being served.
Time to end the subsidy.At the same time, the nearly untaxed windfall gains accrued to pure financial speculators, not the backyard inventors envisioned by the Republican-inspired capital-gains tax revolution of 1978. And they happened in an environment of essentially zero inflation, the opposite of the double-digit inflation that justified a lower tax rate on capital gains back then — but which is now simply an obsolete tax subsidy to the rich.
WaPo/ABC Poll: 84 percent oppose GOP Medicare plan
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/0...28Daily+Kos%29
Go figure. People want benefits, and want somebody else to pay for it.
Shocking.
Fat, diseased, self-inflicted Human-Americans need medical care, but the for-profit-only sick-care industry has priced itself, even just its insurance, out of reach 10s of Ms of people's reach.
Notice that NOBODY is even talking about reducing sick-care costs, never mind doing anything about it, because the sick-care industry owns, is part-owner of, the government.
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