Coldheartedtruth

While there are some fairly bad "subject matter" arguments being made in support of the recent Health Care Reform bill, there are some equally bad logical arguments being made as well.

The first one that stands out is the ever-popular "They oppose our plan without proposing an alternative" argument. It's simply wrong on so many levels. First and foremost, the GOP "does" have an alternative plan. No, it doesn't do nearly what the Democrats plan does, nor does it actually cost anything of significance. But having a less robust and less costly plan is not the equivalent to not having any plan. Secondly, the argument assumes that an alternative plan is necessary to oppose a different plan. The reality is that at this point in time, public polling suggests that a majority oppose passing the Democratic plan. They would prefer that they either start over or do nothing depending on the wording of poll question and the pollster in question.

Next. On a similar theme... there is an argument that there is something inherently wrong with being considered the "Party of no". While there is little question that being the "Party of no" cost the Democrats early on in the Bush administration, the situation was much different. The Democratic Party was "obstructing" mostly popular legislation and "obstructing" up and down votes on Judicial nominees (something that the public thought was inherently wrong). On the flip side, the GOP is standing up (with several Democrats) on an issue where the public agrees with them. And in spite of an obvious effort from Democratic leadership to frame the reconciliation process as a simple "up or down" vote, the public is rejecting it as a procedural trick.

Lastly is the argument that too much time and effort has been put into the bill to "start over" now. This is inherently the silliest and most insulting of all of the arguments. If you look at this argument realistically, what they are saying is that the don't want to waist all of the bribes, pay offs, and back room deals that pushed the bill to the edge of passage.

They have not "seriously" negotiated in good faith with anyone. They have not listened to, much less tried to placate a skeptical public. More to the point, the original House bill was passed very late on a Saturday Night when likely none of the members had even read it. The Senate Bill passed only after back room deals were negotiated. There was no formal committee negotiations. Up until just recently there was no engagement from the White House. Worse yet, the Speaker of the House is on record as saying that everyone will find out what is in it (likely including those voting for it) once it is passed.

How about this? Why not at least have your 530 members of congress at least understand the bill before rushing it through on the pretense that too much work has gone into it already? Imagine turning in a 2400 page essay to your teacher and not being able to explain the contents. Think you would get an "A" for effort?

The irony is that the only real reason that these lame arguments are even being made at this point is because the Democrats have lost all of the subject matter arguments. Problem is that making these arguments only makes matters worse.

A news item today reports that both Israel and Syria have announced their intention to develop peaceful nuclear energy programs.

I see this as an opportunity for resolving part of the current Middle East debacle. I suggest that Israel should offer to work with Syria in developing nuclear energy.

How would this be helpful? I can think of two ways:

1. Syria is already suspected of working on a secret, non-peaceful nuclear program in association with Iran and North Korea. The Syrian facility bombed by Israel in 2007 is believed to have been part of this program. Cooperating on nuclear energy would allow Israel unprecedented access to Syria's nuclear infrastructure, allowing Israel to ensure that what Syria is announcing as a peaceful nuclear energy program remains peaceful.

2. This could create a turning point in relations between Syria and the West. The prospect of developing a peaceful nuclear energy program with Israel could serve to finally pry Syria away from Iran's axis of evil. Why be the nuclear whipping boy for a rogue state when you can develop your own peaceful nuclear program with the blessing and assistance of the international community?

Syria, of course, may reject such an offer from Israel, or they may prefer to have it both ways, maintaining both a peaceful public nuclear energy program and a secret military nuclear weaponization program. But I think the possibility of cooperation with Syria is something Israel and her allies should seriously consider.

Emanuel Cleaver, who calls himself the Midwest regional "whip" (even though he doesn't appear to be officially listed as a whip) is suggesting that some within the ranks put the number of yes votes currently at 201 votes... Cleaver holds out hope that some "pressure" from Pelosi and Obama might change things, but his "tone" suggests that at this point he is almost making excuses why HCR might just fail.

Interesting...

Link to Audio

I was reading through old posts this evening and came across this post from exactly seven months ago. It was a post on how badly Obama and the Democrats had managed the effort to craft health care legislation. Now, here we are, seven months later, and Obama and the Democrats are still spinning their wheels on the health care legislation. And while they do this, there's little attention being paid to other areas of concern. Banking reform, job creation, foreign policy, closing Gitmo, environmental legislation, and many other priorities (or presumed priorities) have largely been placed on the back burner while Obama and the Democrats are focused on health care. Even the mundane but distasteful requirements of Congress - extending unemployment benefits, raising the debt ceiling - are being put on hold so long that these critical pieces of legislation are having to be passed in crisis mode.

America, in effect, is being held hostage by the health care impasse.

To be fair, it isn't just Obama and the Democrats that are holding America hostage. Republicans have done their best to hold America hostage through nonstop obstructionism since the very start of the Obama Administration. The divisive health care bill is simply the most visible and prolonged example of Republican obstructionism. Republicans are on a pace to force twice as many cloture votes in the Senate during the present Congress than they did during the previous Congress, when they forced about 50% more cloture votes than Democrats did during either of the previous two Congresses. For Republicans in Congress, the path is simple and clear: obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. It's all about electoral victory in 2010, and to hell with America in the meantime. In fact, the more hell the better. Like Milton's Lucifer, Republicans would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.

But the Republicans aren't in charge now, the Democrats are, and they deserve the lion's share of the criticism for where we are now. Obama, before he took office, promised that he would focus like a laser beam on the economy. America took that to mean a steady, narrow focus on correcting the structural problems in the economy and on getting people back to work. Instead, America got a short burst of attention before the focus shifted to health care.

The state of affairs that Obama inherited when he took office gave him many opportunities to pick from in choosing where to act decisively. A crumbling economy, a global financial crisis, two wars, and an Iran that was building nukes were all areas where the president could have focused and make a huge difference. His initial efforts did help prevent a collapse of the global financial system, but then his focus shifted to health care. Health care, unlike the issues noted above, was not in a state of crisis that required immediate attention. Worse, it wasn't an issue that there was significant agreement on the course of action to take. And thus, America has now been held hostage for more than a year while Obama and the Democrats squabble over health care.

It is very uncertain whether Obama and the Democrats will be able to enact any health care legislation. And the more time and effort they spend flailing away at this issue is that much less they can spend addressing the really critical issues. None of the fires that Obama inherited when he took office have been put out yet, and there is a good chance that any of them could turn into a raging inferno. Obama, enrapt in the tune of the health care debate, risks becoming a modern day Nero should that happen.

If President Obama's 2011 budget were put into effect as proposed, the U.S. federal government would add an estimated $9.8 trillion to the country's accrued debt over the next decade, according to a preliminary analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.

he CBO cited two big contributors to the jump in debt.

One is the president's proposal to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the majority of Americans. The other is the proposal to protect middle- and upper-middle-income families from having to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

Together those proposals would cost $3 trillion between 2011 and 2020.

Let's be clear here about a couple of things here. Once this President extends the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, they cease to be "Bush tax cuts" or the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Secondly, that still leaves nearly $7 Trillion in debt (OR 70%) that has nothing to do with tax cuts. Thirdly, the concept that tax cuts "costs" the government money makes the distorted assumption that this money is the Government's money rather than the people to begin with... not to mention, the fact that it assumes that if the government doesn't receive the money that it somehow drops into a black hole and provides "no" help on the revenue side (something that 99 out of 100 economists would dispute). Reality is that people spend this money which provides for a multiplication effect in the economy which drives GDP and ultimately revenue. In fact a decent percentage of your economists believe that tax cuts actually increase revenue (rather than decreases it), which makes the concept of treating them as an expense even more absurd.

Lastly... and probably the most important. It's time for the government to budget their spending based on the revenue that comes in, and accept the fact that if the spending goes $10 trillion over the revenue, that they are spending $10 trillion too much. Stop making tax cut excuses, as if "that" (and not ridiculous overspending) is the reason that the current budget is on pace to add nearly $10 trillion to the budget.