The House Republicans are hilarious. To avoid taking the blame for another debt ceiling fiasco, they have devised a plan that avoids the all-or-nothing feel of prior negotiations. The president can select from a menu and order a small, medium or large.
The large includes implementing Paul Ryan’s Medicare voucherization plan.
The medium includes taking the food out of poor children’s mouths by slashing the SNAP, block-granting Medicaid, and implementing Chained CPI.
The small would means-test Social Security and raise the retirement age, while getting rid of some agricultural subsidies.
If the president chooses the large, the House Republicans will authorize enough debt payment to cover the remainder of Obama’s presidency. If he chooses the small, they’ll authorize a few more months of debt spending.
The president says he won’t negotiate on debt payments since the debt results from spending authorized by Congress.
If the House wants to spend the rest of the year demanding that Obama privatize Medicare, block-grant Medicaid, raise the Social Security retirement age, and starve poor children, I don’t think the Democrats will object. “Please proceed, congressmen.”
Have House Republicans become so insular that they actually think slashing Medicare, Medicaid Social Security and SNAP are policy positions the public likes? Or is ideology trumping political popularity?
We heard from a lot of these Tea Party Caucus jackasses that they were sent to Congress to do the right thing, not the politically popular thing. Is this what they had in mind? I dunno; their old and angry white base is unlikely to believe that slashing these programs is “doing the right thing”.
The cynical wing of the Republican Party must be pissed at having to deal with the true-believers wing which just want to destroy it all.
They’re so unpopular that the GOP has a majority in the House, and bids fair to keep it.
They only hold that majority because of gerrymandering. Nationally, the Republicans lost the last Congressional elections by over 1,400,000 votes.
John Sides would differ.
The only thing that piece demonstrates is that the gerrymandering began earlier than 2010. He looks at districts drawn after the 2000 census, and Congressmen who were incumbents in districts drawn after the 2000 census.
Again, the Democrats beat the Republicans by 1.4 million votes. How, exactly, that electoral defeat turned into a majority of seats is irrelevant to the point that the Republicans have been proven to be significantly less popular.
You keep hammering this point as though it has any bearing on the discussion at hand. Individual House elections aren’t determined by nationwide popular vote but by who wins more votes within the district. A majority in the House is not determined by nationwide popular vote but by which party wins more individual House elections. Sorry if these points seem pedentically remedial but you’re waving around that feel-good popular vote talking point like it’s magic talisman that’s going to protect us from the reality of the situation.
Since the discussion at hand is whether the Republicans’ ideas make them unpopular, than yes, I am going to keep hammering the point about the Republicans’ unpopularity.
Individual House elections aren’t determined by nationwide popular vote but by who wins more votes within the district.
Districts which are drawn by gerrymandering, allowing them to control a majority of seats despite being significantly less popular.
Scroll back up. You seem to have lost the thread.
Memory refresher: They’re so unpopular that the GOP has a majority in the House, and bids fair to keep it.
I hope that posting this isn’t too remedial for you.
My sister is a Daughter of the Confederacy and buys all the Tea Party crap. I’ve asked her if she supports cutting Social Security. It just goes past her.
If their political brand hadn’t been so thoroughly crushed by Obama’s footwork in the last three rounds of this drama, the Republicans’ gambit might have actually worked.
But at this point, everyone sees them as the intransigent, irresponsible ones, and will blame them for another standoff.
How close are we to even hitting the debt ceiling? I thought we were good till September, which would force them to do this during election season.
September 2013, not 2014.
I was wondering the same thing; especially as tax revenue continues to increase through new hiring, and expenditures are cut through sequestration and the winding down of the Afghan war…is it possible that the debt ceiling increases won’t even be needed?
And if they are needed, is it possible that they will need less than previously thought?
A significant number of the House R’s think they can do whatever they please and are at no risk of losing their seats. Unless of course they do something constructive – then they got problems. Anger and spite are the fuel for the base, and their reps need to keep the mojo running.
It’s not just gerrymandering, or the baked-in pro-rural bias in Congress. A political party predicated on appeals to the worst in people begins every election cycle half-a-lap ahead.
Then why did they lose by 1.4 million votes?
There is one measure of a party’s popularity with voters – the vote count.
“A significant number of the House R’s think they can do whatever they please and are at no risk of losing their seats.”
And many of them are right in thinking that. Let’s not lose sight of that reality.
OK, if this were true, then why would they want to cut SS/Medi/Medi? I would concede that GOP majority Districts have plenty of voters who want to cut SNAP benefits even though that would undermine markets for their farmers, but there are very few in the GOP base who want to see their SS/Medi/Medi cut.
So, that comes to my question elsewhere in this thread: are these Republican House members so in thrall to their ideology that they actually believe cutting SS/Medi/Medi would benefit their base voters? If so, my God, they’re the blindest of the blind.
I’m confused by your point. If they want to do it for reasons other than a genuine belief that it’s what their voters want (as I’m guessing most of us posting here believe is the case) then a situation where they can do anything they want without electoral repercussions is the perfect situation in which to do that.
One has to keep all the pieces in mind when talking about their “plans” to cut Social Security and Medicare:
Roughly:
And so forth.
The story they’re telling isn’t that they’re going to cut their voters’ Social Security and Medicare.
Of course, each of those points is deeply misleading, but national Democrats seemingly can’t construct effective soundbites to counteract them for the Republicans’ retired voters.
The end result is that they would cut Social Security and Medicare in ways that would be much more destructive than the things Obama has talked about. But, by that time, the Republican voters that made it possible would be gone or they never would connect the dots as a result of confusion sewed by the Republican spinmeisters….
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
seniors on social security and medicare follow these things very closely. they won’t be fooled.
I agree with Errol here. I believe GOP House incumbents risk their seats if they come out in support of SS/Medi/Medi cuts. Yes, the usual astroturf supporters (Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity, etc.) will provide a lot of monied cover for them, but unlike ObamaCare people understand SS/Medi/Medi benefits very well. It’s much harder to create a smokescreen of bullshit to cover up unpopular cuts.
What kind of offer is that? “President, help us cut very popular programs or we’ll hurt the country’s credit rating on our own.” It’s very hard for the GOP to win with that message, no matter how many David Gregorys and Jonathan Karls are out there trying to help them.
“are these Republican House members so in thrall to their ideology that they actually believe cutting SS/Medi/Medi would benefit their base voters”
Not their voters, their funders. The Job Creators who make the world run.
Too bad that Gordon Ramsey can’t be sent to that restaurant.
So the debt ceiling and the need for the continuing resolution (on everything but Defense, natch) come at the same time.
Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmm. They really loves them some austerity, don’t they?
When the only ingredient in the kitchen is B.S. it doesn’t matter whether you bake it in a cake or serve it in a sandwich; no one’s buying it.
Politically, block granting Medicaid might gain some traction if progressives aren’t careful. The problem is it doesn’t sound as scary as cutting social security or Medicare. What’s so bad about turning it into a block grant? It’s just a different financing scheme right?
I know why it’s a bad idea, but I also have a degree in health policy. The idea just doesn’t provoke that same visceral reaction as some of the other republican ideas.
And that’s setting aside the fact that many Americans don’t care about the poor.
If Republicans really want to balance the budget so badly, they should propose a bill that caps the amount of Federal money that a state receives to the amount of Federal taxes that state spends.
It should be promoted as a way to stop the “taker” states from receiving all of the Federal taxes from the “maker” states.
For states like Maryland or Colorado, they could actually see an increase in the amount of Federal dollars they receive, whereas states like Alabama and Mississippi would see a reduction.
For many red states and their residents, it would be pretty painful. However if they truly want the stop the Federal Gov’t to stop spending so much, then they should be willing to make a sacrifice and not just hope that the “welfare queens” and other urban “moochers” be responsible for all of the cuts.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/02/is-your-state-a-net-giver-or-taker-of-federal-taxes/
Round every Republican up and send them to Gitmo for economic terrorism. For life.
It could happen. Or with a Republican President, it could go the other way.
The Republican Controlled or just Economic Terrorist, holding the American Economy hostage, every four to six months.
Food Stamps spending helps farmers as it increases the demand for their crops. I am just dumb founded that Ag.State Republicans want to cut SNAP.
the new crazy republicans don’t care about farmers- look what happened w the farm bill
These fools are idiots.
Watch Pete Peterson and the rest of the people who are the only reason the GOP even exists nowadays (read: moneymen on both coasts) bitch-slap these dumbasses into shape in a couple months.
Orange Julius is an embarrassment to his district, his state, and the delicious (if probably HFCS-fueled) juice chain.
So the end game is chained CPI, which the President supports, just in time to hammer Democrats for voting to cut SS. I’m sure that Boehner will gladly suspend the Hastert rule to allow the democratic caucus to hang itself, even as the tea-partiers refuse to vote to extend the debt ceiling at all.
It’s up to the Democratic caucus to nip this in the bud ASAP.
Over 100 in the House Democratic Caucus came out earlier this year in opposition to a switch to Chained CPI for SS benefit calculations when Obama offered that compromise. The Republican caucus demanding Chained CPI as a scalp necessary to raise the debt limit will only increase Democratic opposition to this bad, bad policy.
The “end game” has been Chained CPI ever since the deb ceiling talks in the spring of 2011.
Oddly enough, we’ve never gotten there, despite the Republicans wanting it.
So, clearly, President Obama wants it very, very much.
I didn’t say he wanted it, just that he offered support for it in the past, but we’re talking about what republicans think they can get bottom line. The other proposals are complete non-starters
What you said was “which the President supports.”
He does support it, has in fact offered it up as part of a bigger deal. Clearly Republicans aim to hold him to that, whether part of a debt-ceiling negotiation (which I doubt) or a grand bargain deal that ends the sequester, this will be their price. I don’t think 11th dimensional chess is what he’s playing, he’s already offered it up, if they want to deal. I think they might want to deal.
So now he does want it. Why do you keep going back and forth?
The 11-dimenstional chess theory is that he is offering it up, but only as part of deals that he knows the Republicans will never accept. Whether this theory is true or not, his offering such a deal doesn’t prove anything one way or the other.
By the way, a Texas rally today showcases the next Tea Party-style astroturfed Republican movement. Get ready to watch these spring up like mushrooms after a heavy rain between now and September.
It’s the “Open Carry Movement” — white middle-aged guys with assault rifles parading in a protest at public building.
(Where did the cops who policed Occupy with their pepper spray go?)
Gee, I remember the good ol’ days when open-carry meant carrying a beer can in public without the paper sack.
What break for Obama. Now he can have the SS cuts he wanted and claim the Republicans made him do it. And there will be plenty here that will defend his 11th dimensional chess.
Uh huh, President Obama really, desperately wants Social Security cuts. Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.
Don’t you think that knocking the 11-dimensional chess theory is something you should wait to do until something happens to disprove it? Especially since it’s been an accurate predictor of events every time this debate has happened?
Right on cue.
I’m only interested in the “right” part, while your life seems to revolve around the “on cue” bit.
Yes, please proceed. But I don’t have as much faith the next democratic president will be as clear thinking and to kick the issue down the road until they have fewer seats seems risky.
I don’t have a better idea.
Didn’t Obama already offer means testing and raising retirement age in a past “negotiation”?