Posted on 03/12/2017 12:33:39 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Don’t forget his FAcebook page.
60 vote rule is the filibuster majority.
2/3’s is the veto override majority.
For most of the republic’s life, the 2/3’s vote for ending a filibuster was in effect. It was attempted several times to be changed to a simple majority.
It was changed to 3/5’s shortly after the 17th Amendment was ratified (how convenient to wait until after the 17th).
Part of the comfort level in ratifying the 17th was wrapped in the 2/3’s rule which was old, respected, venerable, customary, well-used and well-known, and had withstood attacks to its existence crossing many generations of Americans.
The filibuster rule is a large part of defines the United States as a republic and not as a democracy. Changing it for convenience steers the United States towards a mob-ruled democracy.
If the democrats had changed the filibuster rule in 2009, the United States would today have single payer universal healthcare. Think about that.
Conservatives are now in a bind because Congress is not holding the cards for repeal of ACA. They are holding cards for reconciliation measures. Through reconciliation, ACA can be made defunct. However, it still exists, it is still there.
President Trump wants a chance to create a really great market-based healthcare system.
There are two ways he can do it:
1. Play hardball by having AG Sessions prosecute criminal democrats who stole ~130 billion from mutual funds to prop up Obamacare subsidies without authorization from Congress. It was purely criminal. This is what I favor because the democrats like totalitarians everywhere understand the fist. Everything else to them is fun and games.
2. Defund and wreck the ACA through reconciliation. Refuse to allow Cruz to blow up Senate rules to force through substantive changes to ACA, instead INTRODUCE A NEW BILL FOR THE SUBSTANTIVE CHANGES while carrying people’s health concerns on a continuing resolution CR under the ACA.
#2 is really hard to do. It allows the ACA to remain while the President is readying new legislation that will be much better for Americans. The President is, fortunately, a great salesman and he will need to deploy those skills with great energy.
The healthcare marketplace is presently controlled by monopoly interests. The President wants those monopoly fences taken down because healthcare costs will come down without question. But this is a substantive reform and cannot pass under reconciliation unless Cruz is allowed to wreck the Senate. Cruz as a wrecking ball is not worth it.
The better approach is for Sessions to prosecute while at the same time the President presents his sales pitch to Americans.
The beauty of Sessions prosecuting the Obama admin criminals is that it clearly exposes that Obamacare could never sustain itself unless money was stolen from private mutual funds to keep it afloat. This prosecution campaign needs to be ramped up with maximum face time.
In the meantime, while the public digests the criminality involved in propping up Obamacare, President Trump can be presenting his new market-based policies.
The takeaway for the public is that the Obama people committed crimes to keep Obamacare running with illegal payments to cronies while the President is presenting a positively sensible policy that fits with how the republic was founded.
It won’t be easy but the President will definitely take the moral and legal high ground.
Since the SCOTUS ruled obamacare was a tax, Why not use reconciliation to put in some on the segments from phase III. Goes through with 51 votes
Obamacare is NOT a normal bill it is a tax bill.
Nearly ~$130 billion were siphoned out of the general fund for Obamacare subsidies. The Secretary of the Treasury effected this transfer. That would be Timothy Geithner.
But Geithner had to have knowledge from HHS, from CBO, from HUD, from DOJ. All these inputs could coordinate under Obama.
A federal court order was in place (Judge Collyer’s decision) to stop any fund diversions for the 1402 subsidies. This was in 2012, Obama and the democrats needed votes from low-income folks by following through with Obamacare subsidies. So they opted to steal from Fannie and Freddie investors who were mostly mutual funds.
Geithner resigned (convenient) and Jack Lew took over and must have known what was going down.
The Secretary of Treasury transferred those funds or had knowledge of their transfer. This was surely done under the full knowledge by Obama.
“The investors maintain that the government’s action was an improper taking of private property. Some legal experts also contend that the action also violated state laws.”
Not only state laws but federal laws as well.
The way forward is for a criminal prosecution to be opened and pursued to alert the public that Obamacare was illegally executed in the stealth of ~$130 Billion from the US Treasury and that the criminals involved will be brought to justice.
Paint Obamacare as a criminal vote-buying enterprise which it was.
At the same time, the President should present a positive stable and sound plan for changing regulations, laws, and funding mechanisms that are opposite of the criminality behind Obamacare.
This approach will bring the 60 votes because the democrats in the Senate are highly vulnerable in the 2018 election season.
I know all that. And you may be surprised to learn that it came from exactly the same playbook that FDR used to ram through his Social Security bill which became the Social Security tax. Same thing, hardly any difference.
The democrats knew the republicans (stupid republicans) would chase the Commerce Clause red herring argument while Obama’s lawyers prepared to present a tax argument inside SCOTUS, just like FDR’s lawyers did in the 1930s. The democrats were aware of the FDR playbook and were following it to a tee.
And you may be surprised to know that the democrats had prepared to pass a universal health insurance in the 1930s as well but held off because ‘too many things’ were getting rammed through. As it was, the health care law the 1930s socialists were working on was put on the shelf for a later date because the public tide was finally beginning to turn against FDR. Americans started to smell ‘dictator’ in him and they didn’t like it. He was smart enough to see the winds change direction.
For more than 70 years, the old socialist healthcare plan was sitting on the shelf but discussed in democrat socialist circles just waiting for the right timing. They found the time in 2009 when Obama was told this was his number one priority, not the financial collapse or the Wall St. fraud, the socialist healthcare plan from the 1930s was a bigger priority. Because they knew they would never have a chance again in a long, long time.
Now, this is a lesson for us today. We have a great chance to repair the Obama damage, to renovate the marketplaces. But if we move too fast because we are scared, because we are insecure, we may experience the same that today’s democrats are experiencing which is a wrecking of their precious socialist healthcare.
That’s why we need repeal and that’s why we cannot let a wrecking jihadist like Cruz from blowing up the Senate even though it might feel good for a season or two. We have to be more disciplined and realize these are totalitarians we are facing, no different that the German army in WWII, we need flanking movements and a sound moral argument.
More on that here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3534079/posts?page=84#84
Patience and fox-like smarts will corner these criminals. We need to have the public move with us and understand what is up.
It’s still in litigation but there was never any criminal probes because, Obama.
We repealed socialized medicine !! We will will not replace with socialized medicen— FREE MARKET!! We will not pay for someone else’s insurance premiums!! ABSOLUTELY NOT. Trump better step up soon. This is a disaster in our party. REPEAL THAT CRAP NOW!! FREE MARKET!!! or go to the ER — “Freedom of CHOICE” Dammit!!
No new congressmen are going to help us.
No one is but us.
That’s what it’s coming to.
Trump or not. May have bought us a decade. But it will end the same way. There will be blood.
These douchebags can’t even take the healthcare.gov website down.
All that takes is switching off the servers.
Pathetic bastards.
Hillary knows how to wipe a server clean, maybe our pathetic congress could ask her
And repeal RINO Ryan too.
No it won’t. More people will vote Republican because of repeal.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.