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To: i-node who wrote (746810)	10/15/2013 12:32:47 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1582750

What is the Tea Party really trying to get out of slimdown? Written by Brit Hume / Published Monday, October 14, 2013 / Special Report Veteran political observers on both the left and right are still trying to figure out what the House Tea Party caucus and its Senate pied piper Ted Cruz were thinking when they insisted on using the threat of a government shutdown to defund ObamaCare. It was a hopeless strategy that has not only failed in its stated goal, but helped send the Republican Party to its lowest favorability ratings ever. In conventional terms, it seems inexplicable, but Senator Cruz and his adherents do not view things in conventional terms. They look back over the past half-century, including the supposedly golden era of Ronald Reagan, and see the uninterrupted forward march of the American left. Entitlement spending never stopped growing. The regulatory state continued to expand. The national debt grew and grew and finally in the Obama years, exploded. They see an American population becoming unrecognizable from the free and self-reliant people they thought they knew. And they see the Republican Party as having utterly failed to stop the drift toward an unfree nation supervised by an overweening and bloated bureaucracy. They are not interested in Republican policies that merely slow the growth of this leviathan. They want to stop it and reverse it. And they want to show their supporters they'll try anything to bring that about. And if some of those things turn out to be reckless and doomed, well so be it. http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report-bret-baier/2013/10/14/what-tea-party-really-trying-get-out-slimdown

To: i-node who wrote (746810)	10/15/2013 12:51:16 PM
From: bentway	1 Recommendation Recommended By Celtictrader Respond to of 1582750

The House GOP Proposal Is Still Extortion October 15, 2013 Danny Vinik There seems to be some confusion over why the House GOP’s new proposal is still extortion while the Senate deal that Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell brokered yesterday isn’t so let’s break this down. In both deals, the continuing resolution lasts until January 15 and the debt ceiling is raised until February 7. As the White House has made abundantly clear, these are not concessions from either side. This is simply Congress doing its job. Here’s how the Senate proposal shapes up: Republicans get: Democrats Get: Income verification • Delay of reinsurance fee There will also be a budget negotiation that occurs under the McConnell-Reid deal. See how both sides get something from each other? Here’s the new House GOP plan: Republicans get: Democrats Get: Income verification Two-year delay of medical device tax Version of Vitter Amendment Ban on extraordinary measures So, what exactly do Democrats get out of this? Nothing. House Republicans are still demanding concessions in return for funding the government and not defaulting. It’s the same hostage-taking tactics they’ve been using all along. Boehner and Co. have reduced their ransom demands significantly, which is why there is a lot of optimism that a deal will eventually get done, but it’s still ransom. That’s why the White House and Senate Democrats are vehemently against this plan. They are adamant that they will not agree to any deal that sets a precedent for using the debt ceiling as an extortion device and the House GOP plan still does that.

To: i-node who wrote (746810)	10/15/2013 1:04:48 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1582750

Dems to House GOP: The answer is No By Greg Sargent October 15 at 11:53 am House Republican leaders, apparently desperate to prevent any House vote on the emerging bipartisan Senate deal to end the crisis, have rolled out a new plandesigned to reopen the government and lift the debt limit, but on their own terms. The House GOP plan would fund government until January 15th and lift the debt limit into early February, just as the Senate one does — but also require Dems accept significant changes to Obamacare, which they aren’t going to do. Dem Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a key ally of the Dem leadership and White House, told House Democrats at a private meeting today that a vote for the new House GOP plan is a vote for a deliberate Tea Party effort to sabotage the emerging Senate deal. In an interview with me, Van Hollen strongly suggested it will get no Democratic votes, which could call into question the ability of Republicans to pass this plan through the House, as some conservatives are already balking at it because it raises the debt limit “This has no Democratic support,” Van Hollen told me. “It is a recipe for default. The Democratic leadership told the caucus that a vote for this is a vote for default and for keeping the government shut down. Democrats understood that this is exactly what this was.” Van Hollen also ruled out the possibility of Dems accepting any middle ground between the House GOP plan and the Senate compromise — and again reiterated that anything that requires significant concessions from Dems under threat of default and economic havoc is a nonstarter. The House GOP plan includes a two year repeal of the medical device tax and the elimination of Obamacare subsidies for members of Congress and staff. Pressed on whether Dems would accept any compromise between the two, Van Hollen said: “No. The message is, let the bipartisan Senate effort work. Don’t sabotage it. The whole purpose of the Tea Party caucus’ plan is to sabotage any bipartisan agreement.” “Nobody gets anything for threatening to default on the debt and threatening the economy,” Van Hollen said. And so, all signs remain that Dems are sticking with the bottom line they laid out at the outset of this battle. The House GOP plan was accompanied by a lot of bluster today, but it represents yet another climbdown off of previous House GOP positions, which will only encourage Dems to continue insisting that Republicans will get nothing meaningful in a context where they presume the threat of further harm to the country should give them unilateral leverage to extract unrelated concessions. “The question from the beginning has been whether Speaker Boehner will stand up to the Tea Party faction,” Van Hollen said. “The question today is whether he will stand up to them now. This is a moment when level-headed voices in the House Republican caucus need to stand up. This is a moment of truth for Speaker Boehner.” At the GOP leadership presser today, at which leaders introduced their latest plan, John Boehner notably did not rule out a House vote on the emerging Senate compromise. So one possible endgame here could be that Boehner might make one last, heroic stand for the Tea Party, perhaps passing the new House bill, which will promptly be rejected by the Senate. Then, having shown a willingness to take us right up to the brink of catastrophe, Boehner might then cave to the inevitable need to let something reopening the government and lifting the debt limit pass (the Senate compromise, or a version of it that includes a face-saver for Republicans) with a lot of Democratic votes, making the Tea Partiers very, very, very angry, and suffering the consequences. That’s one way this could unfold, anyway.