Obama Has Slammed Door on Opening Government

Obama Has Slammed Door on Opening Government   

By Todd Beamon

House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday blamed President Barack Obama for the first partial shutdown of the federal government in 17 years, blaming his "scorched-Earth policy of refusing to negotiate in [a] bipartisan way on his health care law, current government funding or the debt limit."

"The president isn't telling the whole story when it comes to the government shutdown," the Ohio Republican said in an op-ed piece in USA Today. "The fact is that Washington Democrats have slammed the door on reopening the government by refusing to engage in bipartisan talks. "And, as stories across the country highlight the devastating impact of Obamacare on families and small businesses, they continue to reject our calls for fairness for all Americans," Boehner said.

The federal government shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday after the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House refused to reach an agreement on a proposal to temporarily finance the government through mid-December. The last time the federal government closed was for a total of 28 days between November 1995 and January 1996. The current impasse came over House GOP insistence that funds not be included for Obamacare, the president's signature healthcare law that also took effect on Tuesday. Throughout the weekend, House proposals evolved from a total defunding of Obamacare, to delaying the healthcare proposal for individual Americans for one year.

Still, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repeatedly said that the upper chamber would only pass a "clean" continuing resolution to keep the government operating — stripped of any language regarding Obamacare — and the president said he would veto any legislation that defunded or delayed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act .

And on Tuesday, Obama blamed Republicans for an "ideological crusade" aimed at his healthcare program and urged legislators to keep government operations running without conditions. "They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans," the president said in the White House Rose Garden. "Many Representatives have made it clear that had they been allowed by Speaker Boehner to take a simple up or down vote on keeping government open with no strings attached, enough votes from both parties would have kept the American people's government open and operating," Obama said.

But in his op-ed, Boehner carefully detailed Republican efforts over the weekend to keep the government operating and blasted the Democrats and Obama for their refusal to negotiate on any spending plan that included Obamacare language. "As of this morning, Senate Democrats, acting in concert with President Obama, have rejected four different proposals from the House of Representatives to keep the government running and fund basic services," Boehner said.  On Friday, for instance, the Speaker said, "the House of Representatives passed legislation to keep the government running — funding Medicare, Social Security, veterans benefits, and more — while removing funding for the president's health care law, which is driving up costs and hurting our economy.

"The Democratic-controlled Senate rejected this measure," Boehner said. The next day, Saturday, "the House passed another measure to keep the government running, delay the president's health care law for one year, and permanently repeal Obamacare's tax on pacemakers and children's hearing aids," he added. "Senate Democrats rejected the measure on a party-line vote." Boehner further noted that the House also voted to continue paying the nation's military personnel should the government shut down. "Thankfully, that measure was adopted by the Senate and signed by President Obama," he said.

Then, on Monday, another measure to keep the government operating was passed by the House — and it also sought to "ensure fairness for all Americans under the president's health care law," Boehner added. "President Obama delayed the law's mandates on big businesses and insurance companies; this bill would delay the law for everyone. "The Senate rejected this measure too."

And later on Monday, the House sought "a formal conference committee with the Senate to come to an agreement on legislation that provides funding for the federal government and delays the president's health care law for all Americans," the Speaker said. "That is the system the Founding Fathers gave us to resolve differences between the House and Senate. The Senate then opposed that measure as well, so Senate Democrats and President Obama got their government shutdown."

Looking ahead to the negotiations on extending the federal government's borrowing authority to avert the first-ever default on the nation's credit obligations, Boehner said, "Congress must act to raise the debt limit to pay the tab for President Obama and Washington's out-of-control spending. "There is no way Congress can or should pass such a bill without spending cuts and reforms to deal with the debt and deficit and help get our economy moving again. But President Obama refuses to even talk about negotiating such a bipartisan agreement.

"For years," Boehner added, "the president has said that in a divided government, no one gets 100 percent of what they want. "But when will his words match his actions?" he asked.  The Speaker concluded by reiterating his longstanding position on how the House Republicans would work during these negotiations. "We will continue our efforts to keep the government running and deal honestly with the problems we face," he said. "We hope that Senate Democrats, and President Obama, change course and start working with us on behalf of the American people."

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Left Wing Rant; Enough, Tea Party!

ENOUGH, TEA PARTY - E.J. Dionne

The following article is authored by our favorite Left Wing extremist and Obama apologist - Bolded text is to demonstrate his altered reality.  You can insert your response to these as you wish!

The tea party Republicans should hang a “Mission Accomplished” banner across the House of Representatives. They could flank it with large portraits of Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who has in fact, if not in name, replaced John Boehner as speaker of the House. The right-wing extremists got exactly what they wanted. Now, what will the country do about it?

In blundering into a shutdown, Boehner has lost any claim to authority. Helpfully, the speaker-in-name only underscored this fact himself on the House floor when he mocked the way President Barack Obama talked. Does anyone remember a real speaker going to the well of the House and making fun of a president of the United States? Can anyone now doubt who is responsible for Washington’s dysfunction? The Republican right still does not accept the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency. This is why much of the government shut down.

The issue here is not that Congress failed to reach a “compromise.” The Democrats already have compromised, lopping about $70 billion off their budget proposal, to the dismay of many liberals. That was meaningless to a tea party crowd that seems to care not a whit about the deficit, despite its fulsome talk. It will be satisfied only if Congress denies health care coverage to about 25 million Americans, which is what “repealing Obamacare” really means.

It needs to be said over and over as long as this stupid and artificial crisis brewed by the tea party continues: Financing the government in a normal way and avoiding a shutdown should not be seen as a “concession.” Making sure the government pays its debt is not a “concession.” It’s what we expect from a well-functioning constitutional system. It’s what we expect from decent stewards of our great experiment. The extremists who have taken over the House do not believe in a normal, constitutional system. They believe only in power.

There’s a profound irony here, since no one talks more about the Constitution than the tea party. Before the Civil War, John C. Calhoun and a variety of nullifiers and future secessionists spoke incessantly about the Constitution, too. We know where that led.

In the course of things in a constitutional and democratic republic, parties win elections on the issues that matter to them. They pass laws or repeal them by majority vote. The tea party could not muster such a majority to repeal the Affordable Care Act because Democrats held the White House and the Senate in the 2012 elections.

Lacking a majority, the extremists chose force. “Do what we want,” they said, “or we will render the country ungovernable.”

That’s what they have done. Everyone says Boehner knew better and did not want this outcome. But he was so fearful for his job that he let it happen.

My conservative colleague Michael Gerson had it exactly right Tuesday: “We are no longer seeing a revolt against the Republican leadership, or even against the Republican ‘establishment’; this revolt is against anyone who accepts the constraints of political reality.”

I would only add: This is also revolt against anyone who accepts majority rule and constitutional constraints.

The burden now is on Republicans who know how deeply radical and, indeed, crazy the tea party has become. These genuine, non-radical conservatives know how irresponsible this shutdown is. They know that playing around with the debt ceiling later this month would be a fundamentally unpatriotic act.

“It’s a dead end,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said of the shutdown strategy.

King, along with Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., had the courage to stand up against the lunacy by voting against Boehner’s last in a series of obstructionist proposals Monday night. Dent told CNN that as many as 200 Republicans were secretly hoping there would be a vote on the Senate’s continuing resolution so the government could stay open. But if those Republicans exist, they are paralyzed, unwilling to stand up to the far right.

There is only one way for this to end: Republicans fed up with hysteria need to tell the far right, “Enough.” They need to overcome their abject fear of Republicans who are under Cruz-control and their cheerleaders in Rush Limbaugh’s world. They need to exit the Boulevard of Self-Inflicted Wounds.

We now know where the tea party’s political experiment leads. If this shutdown does not end the tea party’s reign of intimidation, we will face one unnecessary crisis after another as extremists keep ripping up the roots of our great constitutional system.

Not a Shut Down,Hardly a Slow Down

Not a Shut Down, Barely a Slow Down

Major networks are reporting that 82% of government is still operating.  So, the dreaded Shut Down is merely a tiny bump.  Not true for the families that are doing without a paycheck, but hardly the Armageddon predicted.   The fight has just begun.  Never forget, the real losers in the manufactured fiasco are the American people. - WCM

US Taxpayers To Help Detroit While They Spend Millions On New Hockey Arena

US Taxpayers To Help Detroit While They Spend Millions On New Hockey Arena

Harry Reid's Shut Down

Harry Reid's Shut Down

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You have surely seen the media, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, President Obama, and the ruling elite in Washington try to pin the blame for a government shut down on the Tea Party. These allegations simply aren't true. You can see the timeline of events below. The evidence clearly shows that this shut down belongs to Harry Reid and the fact that the Senate Democrats are relentlessly refusing to compromise.

For now, our work is still not done. Pressure is already mounting on the Republicans in the House to cave and give Barack Obama and Harry Reid everything they want. Even though just the other day the President acknowledged that no one gets 100% of what they want.

Harry Reid even had the nerve today to continue to call the Tea Party anarchists on the floor of the Senate. He then went on to try to lecture us about the proper budget process of the Federal Government. This is after he failed to pass a budget in the Senate for 4 years!


Time Line of Continuing Resolution Debate:
Friday, 9/20/13 - The House of Representatives passed a Continuing Resolution that would fully fund the government (including things that Republicans don't like) while at the same time defunding Obamacare.
Result: House Republicans compromised on spending that we'd like to see cut in exchange for defunding Obamacare.

Friday, 9/27/13 - The Senate stripped the defunding language out of the House passed Continuing Resolution and sent it back to the House.
Result: Harry Reid and Senate Democrats refused to compromise.

Saturday, 9/28/13 - The House of Representatives added two amendments to the Senate revised Continuing Resolution to delay Obamacare for one year (far from what we were originally willing to agree to) and repeal the medical device tax.
Result: House Republicans compromised away from defunding to delaying Obamacare for one year.

Monday, 9/30/13 - The Senate stripped the two amendments from the House passed Continuing Resolution and sent it back to the House.
Result: Harry Reid and Senate Democrats refuse to compromise one inch on Obamacare.

Monday, 9/30/13 - The House of Representatives responded by adding language to the Continuing Resolution to delay the individual mandate for a year and to take away the health care subsidies Members of Congress and their staffs received from the Office of Personnel Management ruling earlier this year.
Result: House Republicans compromised away from delaying Obamacare for one year to delaying the individual mandate for a year and requiring that Congress live under Obamacare just like the rest of the American people.

Monday, 9/30/13 - The Senate voted to table the House passed continuing resolution.
Result: Harry Reid and Senate Democrats refused to compromise.

Monday, 9/30/13 - The House appointed conferees and sent a message to the Senate requesting a conference meeting to resolve their differences.
Result: House Republicans were still willing to compromise and reach a solution.

Tuesday, 10/1/13 - Midnight - No Deal is reach and a temporary shut down begins.

Tuesday, 10/1/13 - The Senate votes to table the House's request for a conference to resolve differences.
Result: Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats refused to compromise. 

Historical Words - From whom to Whom?

Who Wrote These Words?

• Refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• he has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 
•  for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. 
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. 
•  He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation. 
•  For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent. 
•  For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: 
• We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. 
•  They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. 
•  We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States. 
•  Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. 
• Near the end of his life, Jefferson explained his goal in writing the Declaration of Independence. In a letter to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825 he stated: 

This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular or previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All of its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day . . .",