Pretty much all of what you said is in play.
Revenue or deficit neutrality has always been something one could wave a hand of dismissal at by trying “Oh, you idiots don’t factor in the spectacular gains in economic this or that when you cut taxes”, or you can dismiss it with CBO is never neutral, they will always hate conservative blah blah.
In a world where the Federal Reserve created 4+ Trillion dollars via Quantitative Ease (that’s 25% of GDP, in about 6 yrs), it’s probable that one doesn’t really need to worry about budget arithmetic. Which is why the Obamacare will Implode crowd are just delusional. It’s fully funded in the budget, with inflation indexing, and no way to stop it without 60 votes or Ryan’s bill for Reconciliation. The fully funding mechanism will grow and consume money, but who really cares if you can create money with QE. Essentially it CAN’T implode. The Fed will stop any systemic threats. About 99% of Congress doesn’t understand what the Fed did, so they think they have a sanctuary to retreat to (letting it implode).
And yeah, precisely, Ryan didn’t want the job. It was Paul Ryan that maneuvered Obama into the Sequester and slowed govt spending while the Dems had a sitting popular president. Genius.
He took the job because no other member of any ideology could get a majority. Only he could. That will likely remain so.
Obamacare-lite is a crap sandwich, and if it passes it could well be the end of a meaningful conservative movement.
If we have to pass this trash to get “tax relief” when we have a trillion $ deficit, then the tax relief will need to wait. As for border security, the wall is important, but the President can send a very large national guard contingent down there right now, while we figure out how to build it. my personal preference is that the seed money come from private sources until the feds pony up.
We are in a culture war and many of us are sick of half-measures which seem to always end up doing less than nothing to reverse socialism.
Your passionate defense of the Speaker is noted.
If this is some master plan to bring down Ryan, what is Trump’s end game.
Obamacare exists. He’s totally kneecapped the man responsible for shepherding his agenda through Congress. And - as we learned 18 months ago - there is no one to replace him.
He’s only declared the most conservative group in Congress heretics on Twitter. He can’t go to the Right.
Where do you think he goes for help next?
Everyone should have known that this populist/Reaganite fault line would be rupture at some point during the Administration. I did not plan on two months during the first real piece of legislation.
Here is the fundamental problem we have right now. We have three parties. Democrats. Republicans. And Populists. And it’s possible the only member of the Populist Party is Trump.
Basically, we are seeing what would have happened in 1992 if Perot had won - with the exception that the Democrats actually knew how to run the House and probably could have gotten a year of something out of him before it all went to hell in a handbasket.