So the Shutdown is Over. Now What?

Editor's Note: Sorry for the delay on this post. I started this the day after the government reopened but large amounts of school work prevented me from coming back and finishing. Also, this is my 50th published post!

After a 16 day partial government shutdown and a flirtation with our nation's debt limit, shortly after midnight Thursday morning, President Obama signed a bill into law that would reopen the government and fund it through Jan. 15, 2014, restore back pay for all furloughed workers and raise the debt ceiling through Feb. 7, 2014. So now that everyone is back to work and things are "normal" again, what have we gotten and where are we going from here?

We still have a law that 57 percent of Americans do not want. A law that spent millions and millions of dollars on a website that doesn't work. A law that is jacking up premiums for Americans in just about every state in the union despite our president's claim that premiums would decrease across the board. In a now infamous statement, President Obama also promised us that if we liked our health plan and our doctor, we could keep them. What a load of garbage! Thousands and thousands of people are having their health plans cancelled every day! A well-known example for Maryland residents came just the other day when Republican Congressional Candidate Dan Bongino (MD-06) received a letter cancelling his private health insurance plan.

Now let's be clear here. As I've said in a previous post, Republicans did not shutdown the government over Obamacare. In fact they couldn't shutdown the government. How can one-half of one-third of the government shut it down? It's not possible. But the media and Democrats want you to think that, even though it was Democrats' refusal to pass any bill the House passed that caused the shutdown and then prolonged it. Republicans pushed first to defund this train wreck of a law, then to delay it and then finally they changed tactics again to at least get rid of the congressional and presidential exemption. And then on Wednesday night they caved in and got none of it. Obamacare is going to fail. Let's just hope America doesn't crash too hard when it does.

In regards to the debt limit and spending, there have been absolutely no changes.Spending levels have been maintained and, in at least one case, boosted by over $2 billion for an Ohio River project that benefits Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R) home state of Kentucky as well as Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin. Sen. Lamar Alexander's (R) home state of Tennessee is also expected to see a benefit from this funding increase.

Funding the government at essentially current levels and agreeing to raise the debt limit has done nothing for this country other than simply "kick the can" another 12 or so weeks down the road. The ideas Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) mentioned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed about two weeks ago were completely ignored. Reforms to entitlement programs and other government spending are necessary if this country expects to be able to keep paying its bills. The budget must be balanced and hard choices must be made. Those are facts. What's up for debate is this: How painful and hard do we want these choices to be? The longer we wait, the more painful it becomes.

President Obama whines repeatedly to the media and the American people that, as a country, we're lurching from crisis to crisis. Well by signing this "deal" into law last week, he's complicit in that! Since nothing has changed, we're going to be in this exact mess after Christmas and New Year's, facing the potential of another government shutdown and the possibility that members of Congress, facing an election year, will vote to kick the can down the road again. That's dysfunctional. And make no mistake, BOTH parties are to blame for that.

Jimmy Williams

Putting Partisanship Ahead of the People

Editor's Note: I originally wrote this piece the day the partial government shutdown took effect a little over two weeks ago. Unfortunately I never logged on to actually publish it until this morning. Apologies for the delay and another post will be coming this afternoon about the end of the shutdown.
 
           In Congress Tuesday one party and its leaders put bitter partisan politics ahead of the American people and shut down the government.

            And it wasn’t Republicans.

            That’s right, I’m talking about President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.

            The sticking point of the failure to pass any legislation was, as we all probably know, Obamacare. Or, as the official euphemistic titles goes, the Affordable Care Act.

            Retiring Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Obamacare had the potential to become a “train wreck.” And what a train wreck it has become. Among numerous other failed promises, President Obama promised the American people that if we liked our health plans, we could keep them. That was a lie. Thousands and thousands of people are now having their health plans dropped under the law.

            Obama promised the American people that healthcare premiums would decrease by $2,500 for a typical family. That was a lie. Instead, across the country premiums will increase $7,450 for a family of four. In Maryland, the rate increase could be as high as 83-86 percent. In Tennessee, reports indicate that rates could increase as much as 190 percent. Read that again. It’s not a typo. And for Andy and Amy Mangione, a couple living in Kentucky, health care costs tripled literally overnight, going from $333 to $965 per month.

            Workers who had worked full time jobs have suddenly found those jobs cuts to 29.5 hours per week or, worse, these workers have been laid off. The exchanges in the majority of states were not ready for Tuesday's deadline and still aren't working right. Small businesses, the backbone of Main Street that Obama vowed to protect and restore, can no longer pay the health care costs they used to pay for their employees. And the list goes on.

            Repeated polling has shown that nearly 60 percent of Americans want to return to the healthcare system we had in 2009, before Obamacare was forced on the American people. A full seven in ten Americans now have a problem with some or all of the law. Even unions, the backbone of Obama’s political machine, have turned on Obamacare.

            Seeing all this outrage from the American people and the disastrous effects Obamacare is having on America across the board, last week Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a bill that would fully fund all government operations except Obamacare. Democrats in the Senate, led by Reid, then voted to strip the defunding measure from the bill.

            So House Republicans compromised. In the early hours of Sunday morning, the House passed a new bill that would fully fund the government, repeal the incredibly unpopular excise tax on medical devices and delay Obamacare for one year. This measure would have been on par with the wholly unconstitutional executive actions Obama has already taken to delay and rewrite Obamacare on his own. Except this time it would have been a legal change.

            Republicans showed remarkable flexibility on this issue. They did not want a government shutdown and they also knew the American people do not want Obamacare. But when they realized they would not get Obamacare defunded in the Senate, they instead substituted a one year delay that would have given both sides some of what they wanted while keeping the government open.

            But alas, it did not happen. Obama, Reid and Senate Democrats, in an absolutely stunning show of “my way or the high way” politics, rejected this compromise. With no other legislation in place, the government shut down.

            In choosing to shut down the government instead of compromising with Republicans, Senate Democrats put partisan politics and their insane need to cling to a law the American people do not want ahead of the American people. By taking this action, Democrats on The Hill have utterly failed the American people. Despite almost assured media attempts to frame it otherwise, this shutdown rests purely on the shoulders of President Obama and the Democrats, not Republicans.

            I hope Obama and his fellow party leaders are ready for the 2014 midterm elections because the American people will be out in force to make them pay for this incompetence.

Jimmy Williams