A few months ago, Eric Cantor was ready to bring his latest brainchild, the “Helping Sick Americans Now” bill, to the House floor. The move was pure Cantor—a smarmy, ultrapartisan ploy. The bill proposed to eliminate funds the Obama administration needs to set up and run the health-care exchanges that are the central mechanism in the health-care law, but then Cantor’s bill would use those funds to help a handful of sick people get health insurance. There was no chance this, or anything like it, would be signed into law, as Obama obviously would not agree to tear down a program to insure millions of Americans in return for insuring a tiny fraction of that number. It was a message vote whose purpose was “embarrassing Obamacare,” as one conservative activist gloated, by forcing Obama to deny immediate aide for the uninsured. As a soulless exercise in disingenuous spin, it was well conceived.

It failed, however, because a crucial faction of ultraconservative House Republicans threatened to vote against it. The trouble was that Cantor’s bill purported to “fix” Obamacare rather than eliminate it. “Why the hell do we want to fix it?” complained conservative pundit Erick Erickson. “We should want to repeal it.” Since they have already voted 37 times to repeal Obama­care, one might think that the House Republicans’ appraisal of the law’s general merits had been made sufficiently clear. But just the pretense of working to improve the law, even while actually crippling it, offended the right. In the face of unmoved conservative opposition, Cantor had to pull his pet bill from the floor. It wound up embarrassing the House Republicans, not Obama­care.

Read More: http://nymag.com/news/features/republican-congress-2013-7/

.
Attachments:

In varying forms, they've been at this for a long time.

Two that stand out in my mind during the current aministration:

-The threat to default on our national debt, which for a country with its own printing press was the only possible way to damage our "credit rating".

-They're currently trying to cut back IRS funding by as much as one quarter. It's one of the few government entities that actually returns money, and by hamstringing it, they'll reduce tax-code compliance and our revenues even further.

The whole "Mutually Assured Destruction" approach to government seems to happen on both sides of the aisle, but the Republicans seem to have less hesitation with regard to holding US Citizens hostage.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2013 09:59AM by Logical Liberal.

I don't care how they do it. Just put a stop to Obama.

True Blue Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A few months ago, Eric Cantor was ready to bring
> his latest brainchild, the “Helping Sick
> Americans Now” bill, to the House floor. The
> move was pure Cantor—a smarmy, ultrapartisan
> ploy. The bill proposed to eliminate funds the
> Obama administration needs to set up and run the
> health-care exchanges that are the central
> mechanism in the health-care law, but then
> Cantor’s bill would use those funds to help a
> handful of sick people get health insurance. There
> was no chance this, or anything like it, would be
> signed into law, as Obama obviously would not
> agree to tear down a program to insure millions of
> Americans in return for insuring a tiny fraction
> of that number. It was a message vote whose
> purpose was “embarrassing Obamacare,” as one
> conservative activist gloated, by forcing Obama to
> deny immediate aide for the uninsured. As a
> soulless exercise in disingenuous spin, it was
> well conceived.
>
> It failed, however, because a crucial faction of
> ultraconservative House Republicans threatened to
> vote against it. The trouble was that Cantor’s
> bill purported to “fix” Obamacare rather than
> eliminate it. “Why the hell do we want to fix
> it?” complained conservative pundit Erick
> Erickson. “We should want to repeal it.” Since
> they have already voted 37 times to repeal
> Obama­care, one might think that the House
> Republicans’ appraisal of the law’s general
> merits had been made sufficiently clear. But just
> the pretense of working to improve the law, even
> while actually crippling it, offended the right.
> In the face of unmoved conservative opposition,
> Cantor had to pull his pet bill from the floor. It
> wound up embarrassing the House Republicans, not
> Obama­care.
>
> Read More:
> http://nymag.com/news/features/republican-congress
> -2013-7/
Attachments:

True Blue Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A few months ago, Eric Cantor was ready to bring
> his latest brainchild, the “Helping Sick
> Americans Now” bill, to the House floor. The
> move was pure Cantor—a smarmy, ultrapartisan
> ploy. The bill proposed to eliminate funds the
> Obama administration needs to set up and run the
> health-care exchanges that are the central
> mechanism in the health-care law, but then
> Cantor’s bill would use those funds to help a
> handful of sick people get health insurance. There
> was no chance this, or anything like it, would be
> signed into law, as Obama obviously would not
> agree to tear down a program to insure millions of
> Americans in return for insuring a tiny fraction
> of that number. It was a message vote whose
> purpose was “embarrassing Obamacare,” as one
> conservative activist gloated, by forcing Obama to
> deny immediate aide for the uninsured. As a
> soulless exercise in disingenuous spin, it was
> well conceived.
>
> It failed, however, because a crucial faction of
> ultraconservative House Republicans threatened to
> vote against it. The trouble was that Cantor’s
> bill purported to “fix” Obamacare rather than
> eliminate it. “Why the hell do we want to fix
> it?” complained conservative pundit Erick
> Erickson. “We should want to repeal it.” Since
> they have already voted 37 times to repeal
> Obama­care, one might think that the House
> Republicans’ appraisal of the law’s general
> merits had been made sufficiently clear. But just
> the pretense of working to improve the law, even
> while actually crippling it, offended the right.
> In the face of unmoved conservative opposition,
> Cantor had to pull his pet bill from the floor. It
> wound up embarrassing the House Republicans, not
> Obama­care.
>
> Read More:
> http://nymag.com/news/features/republican-congress
> -2013-7/
Attachments: