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Since the introduction of HR 3200, republicans have made a stand against it and all it’s various parts. They are against the employer mandate which would require businesses of a certain size te offer health care to their employees. They are against the individual mandate which would require everyone of legal age and citizenship to purchase a health care plan so they do not get their health care from the ER which is the most expensive place to get anything AND that taxpayers pay for if you cannot. They are against requiring insurance companies to stop dropping customers for seeking care they paid for. They are also against preventing insurance companies from carrying out recissions that drop people from coverage for no apparent reason. They are also against preventing insurance companies from using pre-existing conditions to deny coverage. Amazingly, they are against any remedies that would keep people from going bankrupt in an effort to get some kind of health care or treatment for what ails them. Lastly, in this short and incomplete list, they are against a low cost, government run option to compete with the insurance companies to help keep costs down and provide an alternative to the high priced coverage that exists everywhere AKA the public option.
After all this, you may be asking, what are they for? Tax cuts. They are in favor of using the tax code to cut some of your taxes so you can afford to buy the over-priced insurance that non-employer based plans currently make expensive and unaffordable. The trouble is, that even after the tax cuts, the overwhelming majority of people that cannot afford health care now would also not be able to afford coverage even with a tax cut. In essence, the republican health care plan is to force people to buy expensive coverage they cannot afford or go broke trying. Some plan. That free market crap they peddled to us for the last three decades that put us in this mess is what they think will cure this mess. What a load of shit.
It is very clear that the republican party is fresh out of ideas. They have no real plan for health care. They have no plan for the environment. They have no plan for our children’s education. They have no plan to solve the banking and mortgage crisis. They have no plan to get us out of fighting two wars and bring our troops home. They have no plans to start thinking of a way to come up with some new plans.
They are hoping you will not notice this by screaming about death panels, socialism, ACORN, and a thousand other things. Everything except what is important to everyday Americans. Everything except finding something that works.
26. NeoCons are not interested in bipartisanship. To them, bipartisanship is when the Democrats cave in and accept the NeoCon position. It doesn’t work any other way.
President Obama needs to wake up. Listening to the NeoCon-run GOP and their failed ideas only wastes his valuable time. Bipartisanship cannot take place while republicans refuse to compromise, insist on the same old tired tactics, and then crow to the press that they won the battle of ideas. They lost the election and somehow think they won the war of ideas. Have you seen the shape the country is in?
Tonight at his press conference, President Obama was still trying to placate disaffected republicans and reach across the aisle. All it’s gotten him is three GOP votes in the Senate. Admittedly, those three votes helped push the Democrats past a 60 vote total so they could vote on the stimulus package. I may be wrong here but I predict those votes will dry up once Al Franken is seated as Minnesota’s senator and there are 60 votes on the Democratic side. Then obstructionist republicans can appeal to their base by continuing to block the progress of legislation knowing how short the public’s memory is about these kinds of things.
Given that the majority of republican congress-slugs are hardcore NeoCons, they have nothing to lose by standing up to the President. It merely solidifies their base’s attitude and gives them a concrete sense of pride in having done so. History teaches NeoCons nothing. They are always right even when they are wrong. Back when Bill Clinton was trying to pass the Deficit Reduction Plan (the plan that solidified the eight years of positive growth the Clinton years are famous for) it passed Congress without one GOP vote. They were proud of that accomplishment for years and even won Congress back from the Democrats by running on that platform. Ignoring the effects of Clinton’s plan was SOP for the GOP and, from the looks of things, nothing has changed in the NeoCon/republican mindset.
They new Chairman of the RNC even praised the “beautiful goose egg” that the current bunch of clueless House republicans dumped on the President’s plan completely ignoring the fact that they had no real counter-response to the President’s Stimulus plan except that tired old “more tax cuts” mantra. If we followed their plan, taxes would soon be cut to the point that there won’t be enough money coming into the government to run anything. That is the REAL republican goal: starve the government of tax money so every social program gets eliminated and private sector companies can step in to take over. Again, history is not a strong republican subject because we tried that 100 years ago under republican presidents and it was a complete failure then. (See: The Guilded Age.) Nothing changes with these people.
My favorite Texas Senator, John Cornyn, spent the last two weeks getting all kinds of publicity bashing the Stimulus plan but when it came down to putting up or shutting up Senator Cornball was nowhere to be found. Even Senator Kennedy dragged his ailing body to the Senate chambers to vote on the plan but where was Loudmouth Cornball? Off in NYC for a meeting with rightwing media slimeballs and Wall Street money people, that’s where. That should tell you his real priorities and sum up the republican agenda in three cogent points:
1) Make as much media noise as possible but have no authentic counter proposals.
2) Congratulate each other on sticking together as the ship of state is sinking.
3) Chasing after re-election money is more important than doing the people’s business.
President Obama should make republicans earn any future concessions by offering up votes in exchange for a seat at the negotiating table. Giving them parts of the program free of charge just plays to their misguided sense of entitlement and gets you nothing in the end. Bipartisanship, my ass. Time to play hardball. The country’s future is at stake.
Black & White and Cardinal Red All Over 