Posted on 12/11/2013 8:00:53 AM PST by xzins
I am old enough to remember when the GOP said not to worry about it caving on Obamacare funding because, by God, it would hold the line on sequestration.
Hell, that was a month ago.
Amazing how much can change in a month. Congressman Paul Ryan and Senator Patty Murray have decided to give up the last thing the GOP was fighting for — spending restraint. “Don’t worry,” Paul Ryan says with his boyish charm designed to induce sweats and heart palpitations among conservatives, “it’s only a little less restrained.”
The budget deal puts discretionary spending over $1 trillion, which is higher than the sequestration deal of 2011, which was at $967. This is, in fact, a spending increase.
It funds Obamacare.
It does not impact the national debt. It does not reform entitlements.
And it raises taxes, but with the more acceptable euphemism of “user fees”, i.e. it only raises taxes on people who go through airport TSA checkpoints. For those of you who dispute this, let me put it this way, has the cost of the TSA grabbing our junk gone up? Will the TSA will be able to grab more junk per hour with the added revenue?
By the way, if this money is going to the TSA, I hope they’ll kindly be slightly more honest and refer to “abuser fees” instead of “user fees” if they aren’t going to honest and call this a tax increase.
So it raises spending, it raises taxes … errr … “user fees”, and it funds Obamacare. It’s the budgetary equivalent of being only a little big pregnant.
But then that’s the problem with Paul Ryan. In his run of the mill voting record, there is no question Paul Ryan is a conservative. It’s just he sees fit to lose his conservative bona fides when high profile votes are on the line. So his friends can cast aspersions on those who suggest he might not be what he appears while he goes on to prove he is not what he appears to be in these big votes.
As Matt Lewis has noted in the past
Ryan committed fiscal conservative apostasy on three high-profile votes: The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP (whereby the government purchased assets and equity from financial institutions), the auto-bailout (which essentially implied he agrees car companies – especially the ones with an auto plant in his district—are too big to fail), and for a confiscatory tax on CEO bonuses (which essentially says the government has the right to take away private property—if it doesn’t like you).While Ryan’s overall voting record is very conservative, the problem with casting these high-profile votes is that they demonstrate he is willing to fundamentally reject conservatism when the heat is on.
But by God, we kept the Democrats from extending unemployment insurance. Some victory that is! Yesterday, the Democrats began using the nuclear option in the Senate to confirm judges. Today, Republicans will help them increase spending and taxes . . . errrr . . . abuser fees.
Last month Republicans bailed on the Obamacare fight and declared sequestration their line in the sand. Now they are saying they’ll bail on sequestration, but they’ll hold the line on unemployment benefits.
Why should we believe them anymore? Is it any wonder that poll after poll shows Republican voters hate their Republican congressmen and Senators?
Bend over America, here it comes again.
Exit question: If Mitch McConnell votes against this, is he in favor of shutting down the government? That’s what he claimed last month about conservatives in the Obamacare fight.
The only deal that would have made sense for a conservative is a budget deal specifically spelling out where a sequester deal level of 967 billion would be spent and/or cut.
As usual, it looks like it won’t help us and Murray your makeover didn’t help.
GOP is a waste of time and money
More fire for November, 2014. The RATS will have their voter fraud machine in hyper-overdrive. We must overcome that.
Keep the House, take the Senate. Our battle cry!
Herman Cain’s analysis is dead on. He thinks it’s bunk but recognizes the DC party is convinced they have big gains in the bag in 2014 if they don’t screw up...and any stand-off with Obama and the machine will distract from Obamacare and the help the Dems out of their current hole.
He doesn’t like this deal, nor do I. I also recognize NOTHING good is going to be accomplished on entitlements or Obamacare while Obama and Harry Reid run Washington. Our side is simply not competent do get around their opposition’s efforts to attack and destroy. This deal is basically status quo, which is about as good as it gets until we can at least get both houses under our control. It sucks, and Cain doesn’t like it, but it’s probably not worth burning down the house over because a big fight won’t likely result in much different. Like Cain, I can hold my nose for 11 months and see if we can muster up a better makeup in the next term.
Yeah, I have zero faith in this leadership to lead a miraculous turnaround later either, but I have less than zero faith they can orchestrate a successful challenge in another showdown. For me, I will keep my powder dry until the bigger issues like immigration. This group has failed repeatedly, and expecting them to mount a successful campaign to change spending or entitlements is a fool’s errand at this point. Would I do things differently, yes, but we have weak leadership, not bold leaders in Washington, and that ain’t changing in the next 12 months.
One thing you can bet on in Vegas and win if you bet the GOP will fold.
Fold up like a cheap card table.
The GOP is controlled by a$$ licking RepubliCAN’Ts.
Ever since the shutdown the beltway GOP has doubled down on their loser tip toe to the next election strategy. Now they are attacking conservatives and trying to marginalize us.
Here Boehner & Ryan are saying trust us it was the best we could do. What have they done to deserve that trust from conservatives? Sorry, no sale.
What is really going on here is basically nobody on The Hill wants the sequester. So we get an old fashioned betlway deal. Deficit spending now for promises of cuts later. Another victory for the beltway surrender party and Main Street is left with the bill.
We don’t have a GOP that will fight.
It amazes me the way the Dems were able to advance their cause when they were in the minority by using every procedural ploy, using every propaganda ploy, every legal ploy and some not so legal, and the GOP was forced to buy them off in order to get anything done.
When the shoe is on the other foot, the GOP is helpless. As helpless it seems as they were when they were in the majority. Because they will not fight. Not when they are in the majority, not when they are in the minority, not when the republic is at stake, not for anything.
Our problems are moral. The GOP has already lost its moorings and has forgotten why they exist. Its bad enough that half the country has gone off the rails; when the other half has forgotten what they are fighting for we are past what politics can fix.
Ouch.
Well the Democrat assembly (both houses) kept sending him popular spending bills he was scared to veto like on education.
This led to some budget problems and bondholder threats so he cut a deal with the Dems to raise a bunch of fees and create some new ones that were litlle more than taxes.
Like a tax on water use that those who used well water had to pay.
Well Dems used his compromise with them to boot him out of office by calling him dishonest( Martin O Malley), then the AH tried to run again last year and again they ran commercials of him in past claiming they really were not taxes and that he kept his promise.
Now he is perfect example of a GOPe RINO who was born to lose.
Romney also raised “fees”.
A rose by any other ****ing name.
A tax on well water? Jeez. Sounds hard to enforce.
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