Quote from AAAintheBeltway:
I think this is preferable on most matters. Obamacare however is a direct threat to our country and economy. It was passed on a purely partisan vote, is deeply unpopular and is undermined by the many waivers given to political cronies.
I think it is fair game for the republicans to go after in any way they can. At the end of the day, the voters will decide if it was appropriate or not.
Don't pretend this is the first time this process has been used. The democrats used it back in the 1970's to defund the vietnam war, to allow their communist pals in north vietnam to violate the peace treaty Nixon had negotiated and take over the south. Mass murder followed, but since it was communists doing it, the international human rights crowd looked the other way.
Yes, it was passed on an entirely partisan vote! And it was supported by a majority of the voting populace at the time (How quickly we forget!). In fact, Obama was swept into office largely because he promised to reform medical care and bring care to millions of uninsured.
Obamney care is less popular now because of the concerted campaign against it, but no one knows yet how it will work out. Certainly it will have to be tweaked. But Republicans can' t stop the funding for it right now. They only make themselves look like idiots to try and do something that is bound to fail. There is no possibility of either a government shutdown or a default being sustained. They badly need some adult leadership.
You certainly are entitled to your opinion of Obamney care. It was only passed after big compromises with a minor faction of the Democrats led by Baucus in the Senate, who apparently was in the pocket of the Insurance companies. That's why the public option was killed, and that seriously crippled the legislation. It wasn't either Reid or Pelosi, it was Max Baucus.
This is the nature of the democratic process, you are almost guaranteed to get something less than optimal, but better, in most cases, then the worst possible. It is , in a word, the mediocre that should be expected from democracy, but something really good comes out of it once and a while when you have cooperation. I'm not a Democrat or a Republican, I'm an educated observer.
If you are referring to the 1973 case-church amendment that prohibited U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos without prior approval of the Congress, you've picked a bad example. (I remember the Vietnam war as though it was yesterday. It was a dark hour for the U.S. because we were on the wrong side in that civil conflict; we had no business getting involved. We lied about the Tonkin Gulf incident, and continued the lies thereafter. We were war criminals!) That amendment passed by overwhelming bi-partisan majority in both houses, more than enough to override a presidential Veto. And thank goodness!
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N.B. -- little known fact. The U.S, paid for roughly 80% of the French war in Vietnam. Then when the French gave up, we moved in by provoking a conflict and installed our own guy, who had been living in the U.S., in South Vietnam. Like the Japanese, and the French before and after them, we wanted control of Indochina because of its rich resources -- agricultural, mineral (tin+other), oil. We were Ok with the French having control, but not with the Vietnamese having control of their own country. Our Ambassador to Japan, Edwin Reischauer, an expert on Indochina, advised us to not get involved or else support the North, because ho chi minh was friendly to American interests and would act as a bulwark against further Chinese influence in the region. He was right of course, so naturally we ignored his advice. (ho had asked us for help with famine in his country and we turned him away. We were assholes.)