Category: Government
Right-Wing Conservative Boilerplate, Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.)
We know we shouldn’t have, but, we just couldn’t help responding to Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) opinion piece in THE HILL. A Trump surrogate and highly partisan right-wing conservative his boilerplate made our blood boil. Truth became stranger to republican party years ago and Trump and his surrogates have simply heightened and accelerated the falsehoods.
Below is quoted text followed by our harsh and often sarcastic criticism of his opinions.
I supported the American Health Care Act last Friday because it was the right vote. I didn’t begin as a big fan, but I ended up satisfied that America needed this bill to start a process to repair our healthcare system.
Yes, I’m a conservative. I pal around with those liberty-loving Freedom Caucus guys. I get better grades on conservative scorecards than I ever received in college. And frankly, if you asked the Speaker, I think he’d tell you I’m a bit of a right-wing rabble-rouser.
Well, that is your problem dude, you’re a partisan right-winger that simply happens to believe party and BS rise above what is right for the people of this nation. And, your primary interest, like that of 99.9% of partisan right wingers is to look out for big pharma, big insurance companies, and the very wealthy.
I supported the AHCA, and will continue to support it, because a yes vote is the principled, conservative position.
The repeal of ObamaCare stands as one of Republicans’ greatest, most enduring promises to the nation, the fulfilment of which matters to our livelihood and our country’s future. As ObamaCare continues its death spiral, families across the nation face unaffordable premiums and deductibles and severely limited healthcare choices.
Yup, number one reason you mention is because it is a conservative position. The mention that it is principled is simply right-wing boilerplate BS.
Since 2010, individual premiums have gone up 27 percent and deductibles have soared. Every day, my office fields calls from families who can’t afford to pay their $12,000 deductible, effectively making them uninsured. Meanwhile, several counties in my district only have one remaining insurer in the ObamaCare marketplace.
Much agreement that this is legal highway robbery. Something the republicans give a wink and a nod to. Between big pharma and insurers American’s are getting raped. And the bill you support does NOTHING to correct that. However, 24 million will be thrown off of the insurance they now have under the ACA. But, again, conservative really don’t give a damn.
Our mandate, our duty to the people, is to improve upon the current mess. And the American Health Care Act is an improvement, one that came with three parts.
The first part, a promising reform of the Medicaid program, should be cheered by all Republicans. The bill’s per capita allotment would force spending restraint and reform within the Medicaid system.
The next part was the actual repeal of ObamaCare, those strangling regulations of the insurance market that only help some of the people they’re supposed to help — another policy win for the conservative cause.
The final part of the AHCA was a replacement for ObamaCare, and it’s with this third part that Republicans disagreed.
Yada, yada, yada. Has anyone yet seen a credible source document showing that the bill you support is an improvement for the American people in any way shape or form? If there is one why not cite and link to it? We suspect it’s because it doesn’t exist.
You talk about mandate, well dude, there is NO MANDATE. You then mention a win for CONSERVATIVES, winning is the only damn thing you folks care about. Whether or not it is right and good for the people of America is really of no concern to you or the republican party.
I’ll be clear: I criticized the process we followed to arrive at this bill. We went too fast. We held hearings, but they were not recent and failed to create a consensus in this country. We left out important provisions.
But ultimately, this bill was worth supporting.
The president has been good to conservatives. In fact, much of his first several weeks in office have been a boon for the conservative cause: from a strong set of Cabinet picks to a rock star Supreme Court pick to a set of executive orders and regulatory repeals that undo the most dangerous parts of President Obama’s pen-and-phone legacy.
So, it’s about a “rock star” conservative SCOTUS pick, interesting choice of words, a strong set of cabinet picks, some like DeVos who are highly unqualified, and being good to conservatives, Dude, you’re simply a right-wing partisan signing onto a horribly flawed effort because of, Party Loyalty and Raw Ideology.
BTW, President Obama, as flawed as he may or may not have been stand heads and shoulders above your party’s leader and pretend POTUS.
Moreover, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has been good to conservatives. He negotiated in good faith and offered real, conservative changes to the bill. We won provisions that allowed states to impose a work requirement for Medicaid and choose optional block grant funding for the program. We added a roll-back of mandated essential health benefits.
Yup, all you point to above are items that will impact and hurt those least equipped to absorb the hit. Again, republicans, especially the most right-wing conservative ones modus operandi.
The president has earned our support. Our party leaders deserve our faith. The AHCA vote in the House would have been the first part of a three-pronged approach to repeal and replace ObamaCare, the first stop on a long journey towards a better, more conservative healthcare system. I trust President Trump to orchestrate a conservative final outcome.
LMAO! On what rational grounds can anyone make the above statements and keep a straight face? NONE is the answer. There is nothing rational or true about what you said above.
In fact, we have to trust the president and party leaders, because the law requires a meandering path through Senate rules and administrative action before we can arrive at a better system.
Why yes Rep Buck, republicans must have blind faith in the most arguably dishonest man and accomplished con artist to ever have run for the presidency and won. That and a republican majority that is even less trusted than our pretend POTUS.
We can’t take anymore of Buck’s boilerplate. Find the closing of the article HERE.
Trey Gowdy All In For Nunes (and Trump)…
Rep. Trey Gowdy, another Trump surrogate, has jumped up and on board in support of Chairman Devin Nunes’ refusal to name his sources. Sources he claims informed him the Obama administration spied on Trump’s campaign. Allegations for which no credible evidence has yet surfaced.
New Jersey’s Republican Governor Christie has casts doubts on the credibility of the allegations. Christie told Tucker Carlson on FOX News recently there seems to be no evidence of spying by the prior administration.
“There certainly doesn’t seem to be any evidence of that at this point.”
“I know from having spent seven years as a U.S. attorney that the FISA court and the way that works and foreign intelligence surveillance activities – it is very, very difficult to get that type of activity going. You have to go and convince an independent judge.”
“So I don’t see any evidence of that at this point in time. We’ll continue to listen, but I can tell you from my experience that kind of stuff is very difficult to get.” {edited for brevity}
Given Trump’s demonstrated propensity for lying whenever he deems it serves his agenda the greater likelihood is that Trump’s allegations are false and his surrogates know it.
For Trump and the present Republican party it is not about truth, America, or the best interests of the American people. It’s all about party loyalty and their reactionary agenda. One that heavily favors and benefits the very wealthy while it screws middle America.
This is nothing but a distraction from important issues facing the American people. Trump hopes that while he distracts the American people with BS they won’t be paying attention to his disastrous plan to dismantle our federal government and send it back to, well, you complete the sentence.
Republicans Control Washington, Are Fractured As A Party… Can They Effectively Lead?
As the failed attempt to repeal and replace the ACA made clear to the nation the party controlling Washington DC is nearly as internally divided has as America itself. Something Trump can take at least partial credit for.
Time is short tonight as prior commitments are consuming our time. So, following is an excerpt from The Washington Post that makes the point well.
President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan made it a binary choice: You’re either for their health-care legislation or you’re for “Obamacare.”
From Reps. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) to Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.), spanning the party’s ideological spectrum, the answer came back Friday: No, it’s much more complex. It was filled with several different options and possible routes ahead, and dozens of Republicans agreed with their sentiment.
That left Republicans well short of the votes they needed to fulfill a seven-year promise to destroy the 2010 Affordable Care Act once they were fully in charge, delivering a stinging defeat to both Ryan and Trump.
It also suggested a new dynamic in which both the right and left flanks of the Republican conference are emboldened to challenge leadership. And that could make each future negotiation more difficult as the issue matrix gets more complicated and the pockets of internal GOP resistance continue to grow, not shrink, in the new era of Trump’s Republican-controlled Washington.
Some parts of these botched negotiations looked a lot like the recent past. Franks and his House Freedom Caucus cronies played the role of obstructionists who will buck party leaders no matter if it’s John A. Boehner, Ryan’s predecessor, or now Trump. These ideologues gobbled up tons of attention, resulting in much care from Trump, Vice President Pence and top West Wing advisers.
By lunchtime Friday, Franks still would not commit to publicly supporting the bill — even though he admitted it was far better than current law. “Of course it is, yeah, it’s a lot better than Obamacare, of course it is. There’s not even any comparison,” Franks said a few hours before the legislation went down in flames.
Franks remained upset that conservative proposals were left out of the bill because they would have violated Senate budget rules, meaning that the proposal to replace the ACA was nowhere near to his liking.
“That still is like putting dirt in ice cream,” he said.
Other parts of the negotiation, however, were new and quite different from the previous six years of Republican control of the House. Nothing capped this off more than the stunning announcement Friday morning from Frelinghuysen, just three months into his hold on the coveted Appropriations Committee gavel, that bucked leadership.
“Unfortunately, the legislation before the House today is currently unacceptable as it would place significant new costs and barriers to care on my constituents,” he said in a statement.
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Democrats, who have been relied on in the past to backfill those lost conservative votes, have signaled they will not do so this time if the legislation includes funding for controversial measures such as Trump’s request for funding to build a border wall.
That messy task falls to Frelinghuysen’s committee — and it will become much more difficult for the new chairman to ask for loyalty votes on his legislation just a few weeks after he walked away from Ryan on the AHCA.
UPDATE:
Below is a definite must read. With video,
Trump’s path forward only gets tougher after health-care fiasco
Trump and Ryan Fail To Pass Repeal and Replace…
The ACA remains the law for the foreseeable future. Speaker Paul Ryan’s bill did not have the votes to pass, primarily due to the curmudgeon conservatives that felt the bill did not go far enough to hurt the less fortunate.
In spite of Mr. Art of the Trump’s arm twisting and threats that members who failed to support the bill would lose their seats in 2018 Ryan couldn’t muster the votes. Realizing his failure Trump told the Speaker to pull the bill keeping in character blamed democrats for it failing.
Trump further said democrats would come to him when the ACA explodes. Presumably on their knees.
ABC – House Republican leaders decided to pull their Obamacare replacement bill at the last minute at the request of President Donald Trump — capping a rocky series of weeks since the controversial measure was introduced and an order from the president for legislators to put their cards on the table today.
A GOP aide tells ABC News that Trump called Speaker of the House Paul Ryan at 3 p.m. to tell him to pull the bill. The next House votes are scheduled for Monday, so no further votes are expected in the House for the day or the week.
“We’ve got to do better and we will,” Ryan said at a hastily arranged press conference this afternoon. “This is a setback no two ways about it,” but GOP leadership is emerging from the day “motivated to step up our game and deliver our promises.”
Ryan said they pulled the bill because they couldn’t get enough “yes” votes for the bill to succeed on the floor. He said “I’m really proud of the bill we produced,” but later in his speech called it a “fundamentally flawed” piece of legislation.
“Obamacare is the law of the land,” Ryan said. It’s going to remain the law of the land until it’s replaced… And, so, yeah, we’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.”
The Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, has been in effect since President Obama signed it in 2010. Republicans have vowed to get rid of the bill since then.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called today’s developments a “victory for the American people.”
Trump blamed the failure on the Democrats, and said in a press conference that they will come to him when Obamacare “explodes.”
“It’s imploding and soon will explode and it’s not going to be pretty,” Trump said.
This failure was a good thing for the American people, especially the 24 million that would have lost health coverage.
Trump failed to guide his party to finding a workable replacement for the ACA that would ensure everyone would have heath insurance coverage. His promise that everyone would be covered was a lie and he knew it at the time he said it.
Trump’s credibility just keeps sinking lower and lower. So does the respect people have for him. If they ever had any to begin with.
Continue reading BENEATG THE FOLD.