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
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