The portrayal of the Tea Zombies as anything other than unwilling to accept any tax increase even if that resulted in a US default is not nonsense, it's what happened - and Republicans like John McCain have confirmed that.
Ms. Pelosi would not accept a cut to Medicare and SS benefits? Have you been paying attention? The deal includes cuts to them...but....what is it missing? I don't know...oh wait! I got it...any new taxes.
You can spin this all you want but the bottom line is everyone -- the President, the Speaker, the IMF, the heads of European banks, S&P, Moody's, etc. -- wanted a deal about 3-4 dollars in cuts to every 1 new dollar in taxes. We got cuts. Tea Zombies win.
Let me educate you a bit on health care reform.
It's been proposed by nearly every President since Teddy Roosevelt, and has morphed over time. The idea of an insurance mandate, essentially what the Germans and Swiss use, apparently first popped up in the 70s under....Nixon. It was dismissed as too conservative.
It popped up again in 92-93 from.....Newt Gingrich. As an alternative to a national health care system as proposed by the Clinton Administration.
When President Obama first started working with the Republicans on "health care reform," the vision from the left was a system that had a robust public option for those who could not afford private insurance. The Republicans simply demanded nebulous "market reforms."
The Democrats moved to instead offer a mix of a private insurance mandate with a limited public option for the least well off. The Republicans simply demanded nebulous "market reforms."
Finally, the Democrats offered a version of the plan first proposed by Nixon and the Mr. Gingrich. The Republicans? They just continued to say "no."
So the Democrats passed the least palatable (to them), most compromised version of health care "reform" that has ever been put to paper in this country. And yes, the Republicans knew full well what was "in the bill" the unfortunate and stupid statement from Ms. Pelosi notwithstanding. Nice talking point for the uninformed to use, but just does show how uninformed they are when they use it.
Exactly. This is exactly what the Republicans refused to do with health care, and would have refused to do with a Boehner/Obama deficit deal.
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Jeff, where is the document summarizing the "deal"? I’ve previously quoted Mr. Boehner saying it never existed. Like Nancy Pelosi would have cut Medicare entitlements? Come on, the portrayal of the Republicans as the only hard liners is nonsense. Obama said he would veto anything that didn’t extend the deficit ceiling until after his election. He also said his health care bill was off the table. Pelosi adamantly refused to consider entitlement cuts. That’s why Mr. Obama went back to Boehner doubling the tax increases effectively ending the negotiation in a way to appease the left and try to shift blame.
As far as your lamenting bipartisanship on health care, maybe the Republicans didn't want to find out what was in the heal care bill until after they passed it. Just maybe they wanted to know beforehand. Anything that suggests that the Republicans were "allowed" to meaningfully participate in the Obamacare legislation is purely fiction. But there was bipartisan support of sorts on it yesterday.
"This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them repurchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives," the majority said in its 207-page opinion.
That opinion was jointly written by Judges Joel Dubina, who was appointed to the appeals court by Republican President George H.W. Bush, and by Frank Hull, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.
