While president, Barack Obama said, “Elections have consequences.” It turned out he was wrong.
The American people went to the polls last November and rejected the policies of Obama. The people elected a Republican president, a Republican House and a Republican Senate.
All these Republicans just agreed to a continuing resolution, which is swamp talk for a budget deal. And who is crowing about it? House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. They got exactly what they wanted and the Republicans got nothing.
Trump either needs to declare war on Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or get rid of them. I know they are elected by their respective bodies, but if the president of the same party expresses no confidence in them that should get somebody’s attention.
In fact, why should Trump deal with Ryan and McConnell at all. If Trump wants to get anything done during his term, he has to deal with Pelosi and Schumer because it’s obvious they are running the show.
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After 100 days with Trump in the White House, the result is that Trump is governing much like Obama, in that when he wants to get something done he has to do it by executive order.
The problem in Washington, as it turns out, is not the president, it is Congress – and appears more specifically to be the House of Representatives. It doesn’t appear Ryan can get a bill through the House without Democratic votes.
The Senate Republicans came together and approved Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, but in the first 100 days of the Trump administration, what has the House done?
It seems the members of the House Republican Caucus like to argue with each other and not enough Republican House members are willing to make a deal to pass any meaningful legislation.
The voters of the country elected Republican majorities to the House and the Senate and elected a Republican president. Many people see that as an indication that the people of this country want the federal government to pass Republican legislation, but evidently the House has not received that message.
There isn’t any difference between this continuing resolution and one that would have been passed during the Obama administration. There is no funding for the wall that Trump promised. Planned Parenthood, by contrast, is funded. Despite the fact that National Public Radio (NPR) ran an all out campaign against Trump, the bill has the audacity to continue to fund NPR. All that green initiative stuff, which makes people like Al Gore filthy rich, is funded.
Trump is the president and he needs to do something because it’s clear that the Republican leaders in Congress are not only Republicans in name only, but leaders in name only.
When the Republicans controlled only the House, they claimed they couldn’t do anything to block Democratic initiatives because they didn’t have the Senate.
When the Republicans controlled the House and the Senate, they said they had to go along with whatever Obama wanted because otherwise he would shut the government down.
Now Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House and we find out they still can’t do anything, evidently because they are unable to do anything.
If the Republicans don’t learn really quickly how to pass Republican legislation, in the 2018 elections they are in for a rude awakening. People didn’t vote for Republicans because they liked the Democratic agenda. It won’t take much for the voters to decide that if the Republicans are going to pass Democratic policies they might as well go ahead and elect the Democrats.
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The Republicans have been promising a repeal of Obamacare ever since it was passed in 2010. The latest word is that amending the proposed legislation to get the Freedom Caucus on board has caused moderate Republicans to drop off in the same numbers, so the Republicans still don’t have the votes.
Ryan doesn’t want to bring the bill to the floor without the votes to pass it. He either needs to twist some arms, hand out some goodies to get the votes or put the bill on the floor for a vote and see what happens.
It’s hard to believe, given the choice of voting for Obamacare or against Obamacare, that Republicans would decide to vote for Obamacare.
The perfect bill is never going to be written. As Ryan might find if he had the intestinal fortitude to put the bill on the floor, there is a considerable difference between Republican members of Congress saying that they will vote against the repeal of Obamacare and actually voting against the repeal, knowing that they will have to go back to their constituents in 2018 and explain why they believe Obamacare is better than whatever the Republicans proposed.
The Republicans won their majorities largely running against Obamacare. They won’t be able to run against it if the reason it still exists is because they failed to repeal it.
The repeal bill is always going to have problems. But the Republicans have control of Congress for at least another year and a half. If the repeal bill needs fixing they can tinker with it for the next 18 months. But they can’t do that if they can’t even summon up the courage to repeal it in the first place.
They don’t call the Republican Party the Stupid Party without reason.
What the Republicans are very slowly learning is that being the opposition party is easy – you simply vote against everything. What’s tough is being the ruling party, where you actually have to create and pass legislation even when you know that a better bill could be written.
The Republicans should have had at least the outline of the repeal bill last year, and before any Republican candidate got a penny of national money from the party, the House Republican Committee or the Senate Republican Committee, they should have been required to sign a statement in support of repealing Obamacare.
Unfortunately that wasn’t done. But another election is coming up next year. The Republican leadership needs to make it crystal clear that anyone who votes against the bill is no longer considered a Republican and will face a well-funded Republican opponent in the primary. And not just that, but all the popular Republicans will make campaign appearances in the primary.
They should be removed from any choice committees they are on and any leadership positions should be taken away. House and Senate rules should be changed so that they are forced to wear a dunce cap whenever they appear on the floor. The funding for their offices should be cut so they have to answer their own phones. If Republicans don’t vote like Republicans they shouldn’t be treated like Republicans.
Pelosi – who isn’t even sure who is president and can hardly get through a single press conference without making a major gaffe – does a much better job of leading the Democrats than Ryan does on his side. Maybe the secret is massive injections of Botox and Ryan needs to start each day with enough shots so that his face looks like it’s made of stone. It’s worked for Pelosi, it might work for Ryan, because whatever he is doing isn’t working.
Perhaps if he would ask, Pelosi could teach him how to be a successful speaker. Weirder things have happened in Congress.
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I don’t understand the threat of a government shutdown. Obama controlled the Republican in Congress with the threat of a government shutdown.
The government shut down once under Obama; it wasn’t bad for me. If I hadn’t read about it in the news, I wouldn’t have even noticed that there was a shutdown.
There were eight government shutdowns while Ronald Reagan was president and he is considered by Republicans to have been a great president. There were two under President Bill Clinton.
What’s the big deal? Let the federal government shut down for a few months. The American people can figure out what parts of the government are necessary and get rid of the rest.
It appears the fear of a government shutdown is an excuse for the Republicans to do nothing and give in to whatever the Democrats want, which is always more government spending.
It might make you think that the Republicans in Congress really don’t want to cut spending. What they want is to spend just as much as the Democrats do, but they don’t want to admit it.
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Here’s an idea for Trump. Ryan didn’t support Trump when Trump was running for president. Why should Trump support Ryan now? Why doesn’t Trump see if he can’t oust Ryan and get someone in as speaker who is willing to take action?
Tip O’Neill, Newt Gingrich, those guys were speakers who knew how to get passed what they wanted to get passed – not what every single Republican in the country agreed with, but what they thought would be best for the country.
What has Ryan done as speaker so far? Is there one accomplishment anyone can name? He folded every time he came up against Obama and now he is folding to the Democratic minority.
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Evidently one of the reasons the Republicans give for not being able to repeal Obamacare is that fewer people will be covered by health insurance if Obamacare is repealed.
Yes, fewer people will be covered by health insurance if the government doesn’t require that people buy health insurance. That’s the idea. People should be able to choose whether or not they want health insurance and what kind of coverage they want.
I thought that was one of the big complaints against Obamacare, that Americans should have the right to choose. If Americans are given the right to choose, some are going to choose no. If they have to choose yes, it’s not a choice, it’s a mandate.
Ryan may be in an untenable position, but it is his job to get Republican bills through a House with a heavy Republican majority. It appears that if Ryan where Senate majority leader instead of speaker, Gorsuch would still be waiting in the wings for Ryan to find the votes.
Maybe Ryan’s too nice to be speaker, or likes to be liked too much. I don’t pretend to know what the problem is, but if Ryan didn’t want to force Republican bills through the House, he shouldn’t have taken the job – because that is the job.
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The left seems to be making a huge deal out of the wall, which they never wanted built in the first place.
It’s typical mainstream media hype. If Trump does build the wall he is a xenophobic, racist monster, and if he doesn’t build it then he is a liar because he promised he would during the campaign.
I’ve even seen lists of promises that he hasn’t kept that include the wall because it wasn’t built in his first 100 days.
If they had started pouring concrete at noon on Jan. 20 and had 10,000 people working on the project it wouldn’t be finished, and according to these pundits he wouldn’t have kept his promise.
I’ve never cared one way or the other about a physical wall. If illegal immigration can be controlled without a wall, then I’m all for it. If we need a wall, then build it. The idea is to control illegal immigration, not build a structure.
I’ve also seen reports in the mainstream media about how it will be nearly impossible to build a wall across some of the rougher terrain along the border. If it’s an area that only mountain goats can operate then there isn’t any need for a wall.
And, yes, I know that even the biggest, baddest wall is not going to stop all illegal immigration. But prison walls don’t keep everyone inside and still most people believe that a prison without walls would be a mistake.
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I heard a long interview on government funded radio about what a business failure Trump was before he became president. According to this reporter, one Trump business after another failed and Trump kept declaring bankruptcy. The reporter didn’t mention a single business success.
Trump is worth somewhere between $5 billion and $10 billion, largely depending on how you price the real estate he owns. How does a man who has failed at every business he has ever started end up worth billions?
It’s like saying that Tom Brady is a bad quarterback and then listing all the interceptions he’s thrown and the fact that last year he was suspended for four games and never mention that, despite all of that, Brady has led his team to five Super Bowl victories.
One could look at Trump’s failures as Trump not being scared to try something different. It doesn’t matter how many times you go bankrupt – if, in the end, you’re worth $5 billion, you’ve had a successful business career.
But the mainstream media, and in particular government funded radio, paint Trump as a loser. They even talk about how if Trump loses in 2020 then his presidency will have been a failure. Amazing. He’s just over 100 days into a four-year term and they are already branding him a failure for not winning an election when they don’t even know if he will run. Trump will be 74 in 2020. No one could fault him for not running for reelection because he had decided to retire.
One thing is certain about the Trump presidency: Even if the economy shows 10 percent growth a year, Trump brings peace to the Middle East and North Korea joins with South Korea in one large democracy, the mainstream media are going to talk about what a failure Trump has been as president.
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I was listening to four liberals discuss independent contractors on government funded radio this week. What I couldn’t believe is that they didn’t even recognize that there are benefits to the worker for being an independent contractor, which is why a lot of people choose to be independent contractors.
The reason people prefer being independent contractors is that they can set their own schedule, and usually they get paid by the job, which means if they are really fast they can make more money. If they want to work intensely for 16 hours one day, get all their work done and then take two days off, they can. They don’t have to go sit at a desk in an office and surreptitiously surf the web or play a video game because they have nothing to do but have to be at their desks.
Some companies abuse the independent contractor laws and have people doing jobs that should be employees – there is no question of that. But you also have a lot of workers who choose to be independent contractors. From what I know, Uber is a good example of this. Uber drivers can work when they want to work, and people like that.
It’s a two-way street. Independent contractors don’t receive benefits or the protections of employees but they have a lot more freedom than employees. The far-left panel I heard didn’t discuss that aspect of independent contractors because it doesn’t fit with their worldview that government knows best.
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Some Yale graduate students have come up with the best hunger strike ever. They only eat when they get hungry. Wow, that’s really sacrificing.
What they want is what most people want, more money, but they are willing to go on a hunger strike where they eat as much as they want.
They want more money but they currently receive $30,000, free health care and free tuition worth $40,000 a year. So they are looking at compensation that is worth about $80,000 a year for being students and they want more.
They also want more food because they might get hungry soon.
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I’m assuming that the US intelligence services have information that leads them to believe that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is more serious about attacking somebody than he has been in the past.
It doesn’t appear that the rhetoric coming out of North Korea is any more hostile than it has been for years, but evidently the US, Japan and South Korea are all taking his ravings more seriously.
If Kim Jong-un is actually planning to attack the US or one of our allies, it is something to be worried about because he does have nuclear weapons and he is crazy.
One important question is whether he is just crazy or smart crazy. If he is both smart and crazy that is even worse because he might just be trying to get the world to pay attention to his missile program while he loads some nuclear device too large for a missile on to a ship or a submarine and sends it our way.
Or he might be purposefully failing at some of his missile tests to make it appear he’s not as far along as he is. What if he blew up his own recent missile launch because he had all the information he needed and wanted it to appear a failure when in reality it was a success?
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The Democrats are calling for bipartisan legislation at both the national and the state level. If you can’t laugh at politics then you must be angry all the time.
But to have people like Pelosi even mention the word bipartisan should have the press howling with laughter. Unfortunately for the nation, instead of laughing at the absurdity they are mostly angry.
When Obama took office in 2009, the Democrats passed the trillion dollar stimulus package without a single Republican vote. The next year Obamacare was passed without a single Republican vote.
When Republicans complained about being run over, Obama told them that elections have consequences.
Of course, the Republicans are just as absurd as the Democrats. Back in the Obama era, they were demanding bipartisanship and the Democrats paid no attention, and now they ignore the Democrats when the Democrats demand the same thing.
It’s the same song at the state level. The Democrats completely ruled the state for over 100 years and didn’t give a hoot about the Republicans. Now the Republicans have a veto-proof majority in both houses and they are just as callous about the rights of the Democratic minority as the Democrats were about the Republican minority.
