Republicans, Remember This When Democrats Now Urge ‘Bipartisanship’
- Thread starter JamesL
- Start date
you are right... he did sell out in the end and I did lose some respect for that.
That little comb-over dingleberry... sold out America for a ride on Air Force One. He should be tarred, feathered, and round out of town on a rail.
I left that wide open. These are attributes that only another can bestow.Are you admitting you're neither exceedingly articulate or charismatic?
Agreed, that is their job, to represent their constituents and to make decisions in the best interests of their constituents. I don't think they did as good a job of that as they did in representing the best interests of the insurance industry. They were marvelous in the latter regard! The Democrats were pretty good at that too, as a matter of fact.
The fact that you align your views with those of various senators and congressmen validates my point. But as for future appointees, as I said, once the farce is outed, you'll all go down in the history books as snake oil salesmen. That's good enough for me.
pie hole the snake oil salesman, huh? Doesn't exactly roll off your tongue, does it.
We all make predictions, but they often don't come true. I have my own prediction. I like to think it is more likely to come true than yours, but that's what you'd expect. I predict Bernanke and the Fed of his time will ultimately be lauded for the way they handled the financial 2008-9 crisis in comparison to the way the Fed and the government responded to the '29 crash. Further, I predict that ultimately it will be recognized that too little was done on the part of government to stimulate the demand side. Better results would have been obtained had the Congress given the President all he asked for including the 4% tax hike of the top marginal rate.
Let's reconvene in twenty years and see how our predictions came out.
Jem, Jem, Jem. Let's slow down here. Slow down at least long enough to realize that we agree more than we disagree (You're dead wrong about the structure of the Fed however. You've been totally suckered by the YouTube-Rothschild-chicken entrail story.)
OK, back to business. Yes of course your Pres had to go along with Baucus. He had no other choice. That was your President's strategy: to go along with Baucus, to go along with the Heritage Foundation, to go along with big phrama, to go along with the AMA, to go along with the AHA, to go along with the Insurance Companies, to go along with everyone, just so long as this damn thing passes! That's why, of course, the ACA is a disaster.
Your Pres. made medical reform a center piece of his campaign. Remember? He's a vain guy, just like you, and all presidents. (Washington was probably the very worst in that respect.) He's, Obama not George, got to get this thing through no matter if it's crap. He's got to make good on the promise. Get what he can, and hope nobody notices that he ended up giving in on every critical component and agreeing to a Republican think-tank inspired plan to get it through. (I know it's a stretch to use the word "think" in conjunction with the word "Republican", but hear me out, please.)
So now you're down to Harry, Nancy, Max and your Pres.. Just what do you think party leadership is for, for god's sake!? Their entire existence centers on deciding what they will push on through and then whipping their minions into submission. That's what they did, and a damn fine job, too. Now you want to criticize them by saying they were "selling out" when, actually, they were "buying in", and simultaneously fulfilling their job description magnificently. Max of course never had to buy in. He was an elephant dressed in a donkey suit from the beginning, but he never went so far as to start Hee Hawing.
Now Kucinich (lovely wife, by the way.) I'd like to give him a big kiss (her too!). God bless him. What's most refreshing is he seems to be entirely his own man. We need more of that! (Scat's portrayal of him is disgraceful and makes me think even less of Scat than I already did. But he's a lunatic. Scat, not Kucinich.) So what if Kucinich hasn't a clue what the Fed does or how it's organized, or why. He doesn't have to. He's a politician for god sake. He's not supposed to know anything!.
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1. I did not vote for him.
ignorant mushrooms did according to Obamacare's architect.
2. Here is reality... from PBS frontline...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamasdeal/view/
On March 23, 2010, after a bruising year of debate, negotiation and backlash, President Barack Obama finally signed the health reform bill that he had promised more than a year before. But at what cost to his popularity and to the ideals of bipartisanship and open government that he'd campaigned on?
In Obama's Deal, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk (Bush's War, Dreams of Obama) takes viewers behind the headlines to reveal the political maneuvering behind Barack Obama's effort to remake the American health system and transform the way Washington works. Through interviews with administration officials, senators and Washington lobbyists, Obama's Deal reveals the dramatic details of how an idealistic president pursued the health care fight -- despite the warnings of many of his closest advisers -- and how he ended up making deals with many of the powerful special interests he had campaigned against.
"The stakes couldn't be much higher," former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) tells FRONTLINE about what was involved in the landmark health care legislation. "We're talking about almost 20 percent of our gross domestic product today, $2.5 trillion. Literally tens, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on lobbying. Every special interest has their oar in the water."
To navigate the process of health reform, President Obama turned to his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a consummate deal maker, who helped stock the West Wing with an all-star lineup of congressional insiders. But almost immediately, a key member of the team was forced to step down, and the country's greatest champion of health reform, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), was sidelined with incurable brain cancer. The administration's hopes for reform rested with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the powerful head of the Senate Finance Committee, who also happened to be one of the Senate's top recipients of special interest money from the health care industry.
The White House encouraged Baucus to quietly negotiate deals with the insurance lobby, drug companies and other special interest groups, despite promises to run a different kind of White House. "The president said that having people at the table is better than having them throw stuff at the table," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tells FRONTLINE.
But the deals were often controversial. FRONTLINE investigates how, near the start of the health care reform process, Baucus and the White House negotiated a secret $80 billion deal with Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman who had become the pharmaceutical industry's top lobbyist.
"People who thought that the pharmaceutical industry was still reaping profits that were excessive were unhappy with that deal and were particularly unhappy that it got cut behind closed doors," says the co-chair of Obama's transition team, John Podesta.
The pact with Tauzin was only the beginning of a series of deals designed to win over potential opponents. The most notorious agreement, known as the "Cornhusker Kickback," was concluded only days before a vote on the health care bill in the Senate. In exchange for the support of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), the White House and Senate leaders agreed to spend $100 million to benefit Nebraska.
The administration argued the deals were necessary to secure health reform. But the deals backfired. "It's not a pretty process," says David Gergen, who's been an adviser to four different presidents, both Republican and Democratic, over the last several decades. "There is deal making -- that's the way it's been done for a long time. But those deals done in your front parlor can be pretty smelly. The public was already up to here with what they were seeing in Washington, and I think it just put them over the side."
The backlash grew across the country. The president's approval ratings sunk, the Democrats lost control of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, and the push for health care reform was suddenly in peril.
"The grassroots of America had turned against this," Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) tells FRONTLINE. "Health care was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back."
At the White House, the president was forced to come to terms with what looked to be his most significant failure as president, before a last push this winter -- and a last round of high-stakes, round-the-clock deal making -- finally pushed the bill through.
"The process was messy, and so it turned people off," says Communications Director Pfeiffer. "It ended up being behind closed doors. It was filled with partisan wrangling, people yelling at each other across the table. We ended up having a process that represented a lot of what the American people hated about Washington."
"There is a realism that it has come with a cost," veteran Washington Post reporter Dan Balz observes. "We don't know what's going to happen in the November elections. We don't know what's going to happen in 2012. But there's no question that this health care battle has put his party at risk. And how they deal with that is the next chapter. But this was a historic moment."
ignorant mushrooms did according to Obamacare's architect.
2. Here is reality... from PBS frontline...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/obamasdeal/view/
On March 23, 2010, after a bruising year of debate, negotiation and backlash, President Barack Obama finally signed the health reform bill that he had promised more than a year before. But at what cost to his popularity and to the ideals of bipartisanship and open government that he'd campaigned on?
In Obama's Deal, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk (Bush's War, Dreams of Obama) takes viewers behind the headlines to reveal the political maneuvering behind Barack Obama's effort to remake the American health system and transform the way Washington works. Through interviews with administration officials, senators and Washington lobbyists, Obama's Deal reveals the dramatic details of how an idealistic president pursued the health care fight -- despite the warnings of many of his closest advisers -- and how he ended up making deals with many of the powerful special interests he had campaigned against.
"The stakes couldn't be much higher," former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) tells FRONTLINE about what was involved in the landmark health care legislation. "We're talking about almost 20 percent of our gross domestic product today, $2.5 trillion. Literally tens, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on lobbying. Every special interest has their oar in the water."
To navigate the process of health reform, President Obama turned to his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a consummate deal maker, who helped stock the West Wing with an all-star lineup of congressional insiders. But almost immediately, a key member of the team was forced to step down, and the country's greatest champion of health reform, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), was sidelined with incurable brain cancer. The administration's hopes for reform rested with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the powerful head of the Senate Finance Committee, who also happened to be one of the Senate's top recipients of special interest money from the health care industry.
The White House encouraged Baucus to quietly negotiate deals with the insurance lobby, drug companies and other special interest groups, despite promises to run a different kind of White House. "The president said that having people at the table is better than having them throw stuff at the table," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tells FRONTLINE.
But the deals were often controversial. FRONTLINE investigates how, near the start of the health care reform process, Baucus and the White House negotiated a secret $80 billion deal with Billy Tauzin, the former Louisiana congressman who had become the pharmaceutical industry's top lobbyist.
"People who thought that the pharmaceutical industry was still reaping profits that were excessive were unhappy with that deal and were particularly unhappy that it got cut behind closed doors," says the co-chair of Obama's transition team, John Podesta.
The pact with Tauzin was only the beginning of a series of deals designed to win over potential opponents. The most notorious agreement, known as the "Cornhusker Kickback," was concluded only days before a vote on the health care bill in the Senate. In exchange for the support of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), the White House and Senate leaders agreed to spend $100 million to benefit Nebraska.
The administration argued the deals were necessary to secure health reform. But the deals backfired. "It's not a pretty process," says David Gergen, who's been an adviser to four different presidents, both Republican and Democratic, over the last several decades. "There is deal making -- that's the way it's been done for a long time. But those deals done in your front parlor can be pretty smelly. The public was already up to here with what they were seeing in Washington, and I think it just put them over the side."
The backlash grew across the country. The president's approval ratings sunk, the Democrats lost control of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, and the push for health care reform was suddenly in peril.
"The grassroots of America had turned against this," Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) tells FRONTLINE. "Health care was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back."
At the White House, the president was forced to come to terms with what looked to be his most significant failure as president, before a last push this winter -- and a last round of high-stakes, round-the-clock deal making -- finally pushed the bill through.
"The process was messy, and so it turned people off," says Communications Director Pfeiffer. "It ended up being behind closed doors. It was filled with partisan wrangling, people yelling at each other across the table. We ended up having a process that represented a lot of what the American people hated about Washington."
"There is a realism that it has come with a cost," veteran Washington Post reporter Dan Balz observes. "We don't know what's going to happen in the November elections. We don't know what's going to happen in 2012. But there's no question that this health care battle has put his party at risk. And how they deal with that is the next chapter. But this was a historic moment."