Stoked, you need to check "Factcheck" and other apologists for the "progressives". The links cited did not actually address the issue. The issue is not whether the law as written gives an exemption, but whether President Obama outside of the law issued an exemption under executive disgression/administrative decision/executive order. I don't think Obama's "legislative powers" fall under the written law. . . . it's an issue of what goes on behind closed doors and within the enforcement of laws under the executive branch. . . .
Obama Government Shutdown?
- Thread starter ema
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Stoked, you need to check "Factcheck" and other apologists for the "progressives". The links cited did not actually address the issue. The issue is not whether the law as written gives an exemption, but whether President Obama outside of the law issued an exemption under executive disgression/administrative decision/executive order. I don't think Obama's "legislative powers" fall under the written law. . . . it's an issue of what goes on behind closed doors and within the enforcement of laws under the executive branch. . . .
All this back door stuff is just another reason to distrust DC.
As far as I've heard via various commentators in the media or even radio talkshows, this issue came up last spring when congressional staffers/interns were realizing that they couldn't afford to keep their relatively low-paying jobs because they would have to be personally buying in under Obamacare. . . . cash out of their pockets making their personal budgets unworkable under their current pay.
You have to understand that these staffers/interns are actually sorta making some personal sacrifices in many instances to take these jobs, and they do so under a philosophy of it being something like an apprenticeship or foot int he door to start a career in government/politics.
I look at this under that light as something of a non-issue. Whatever their reasons for taking these jobs, their pay is already "in the marketplace" with their career objectives on the table as part of their benefits package. . .. and we the taxpayers are actually paying 100% of their pay and benefit package. If these folks bail from their jobs, our elected representatives will appropriate more money for their staffs and negotiate a pay/benefit package that will fill their needs for staff. . . . and we will still be paying 100% of that combo.
Come on now, babe, you got to be a little more thorough than that. The fact of this matter is members of the US Congress were specifically required to purchase care on the exchanges even though they previously had insurance. Now no other group of Americans were subject to such frivolities but we have this Senator Grassley fellow and now it is law and true.
With the situation as it were, the October deadline requiring Congress to purchase ACA from an exchange that was not yet up and running necessitated this exemption you speak of. The American people were not in need of such a waiver because they were not required to purchase insurance prior to the exchange being functional.
Your right wing spin is precisely the reason the US populace no longer looks upon the Tea Party with anything but disdain. They will stop at no lie when pushing their irrational rhetoric. As is always the case, the truth eventually shines through.
I'm willing to absorb this as credible just because you say so, pending further research which I lack time at this moment to do. Facts be what they may be, it still seems to me that the DC folks will take care of their own, and at our expense, one way or another.
Few of us outsiders. . . . outside the Beltway more or less. . . . have our hands on the levers of government to make things work out for us. Businesses en masse across the country are cutting hours for folks who used to have full-time jobs with some benefit package or another, moving them into postions without those benefits and into the class of folks who have to pay the tax themselves to pay for Obamacare.
Be careful about your anti-citizen rhetoric. Surely in our system the citizens do have an inferior knowledge base on which to discuss the problems and effects of government. Surely it is a learning process for me or anyone else to come up to speed with every effect of legislation, and surely we need legislators who actually give a rat's *** about what they are doing to us.
I'm not even sure you understand what you just said there, so I'm going to ask you to look at it from a different perspective.
Are you entirely sure that you don't think the government itself should cover benefits like any other employer? Yes, they get a hand in saying what is/isn't, but you can't argue that what they do is a full time job, even if they're awful at it.
Your compliment is much appreciated. I will now proffer an additional notion for you to research if your interest is reasonably piqued.
Congress, from what I have been told and what little else I have gathered, had a health package full of bells and whistles that would make the "Cadillac" union plans blush. Forcing them onto Obamacare will in fact decrease their coverage and increase their out of pocket expenses.
If a pound of congressional flesh is what you're after, well, there you have a good seed to start sowing.
That is the downside, as everyone knew well enough in advance. You and I struck up a rather marginal discourse on the subject of not dealing with our issues prior to ACA, and I can't help but accept the consequences of our own refusals.
I also maintain, as communistic as I might be labeled, that if you force me to pay for the healthcare of others in need then I have the right to force them to pay into the system when they are capable of doing so. I maintain a similar work provision position for those on long term unemployment and expect you do as well, even though neither of us are going to see any move on that front any time soon.
I do not consider either one of those communistic. I agree.
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a real free-marketer would not blush at government paying the best possible overall compensation on the theory that they need the best people. The reason I'm not such a thinker is just because I think that for a "market" to work, it has to be free of significant "corruption", using this last term specifically to describe failures of "arm's length" contracts which are actually determined by market principles. People in our government have a lot of ways to feather their own nests and butter their own bread a lot better than the folks outside of government can ordinarily do. They also have the power to tax, with no brake on that power except our usually uninformed perception of things and our level of compliance training/submission to government authority/voting competence.
when you use the term "communistic" around me, please remember I've had good friends who were real communists. .. ideologues who treated Das Kapital like a bible. . . . who hated our statists/socialist/phony communists with an undying antipathy and fought them like they were Satan incarnate. . . . We all throw our terminogy around alike clowns doing some juggling show that nobody can really follow with anything better than stupefied amazement. . . .
I can't see you as a "communist" while you effectively assert a need for good management of public affairs. You strike me as more of communicator seeking to promote public welfare on the strength of good ideas. That might be what we have in common.
a real free-marketer would not blush at government paying the best possible overall compensation on the theory that they need the best people. The reason I'm not such a thinker is just because I think that for a "market" to work, it has to be free of significant "corruption", using this last term specifically to describe failures of "arm's length" contracts which are actually determined by market principles. People in our government have a lot of ways to feather their own nests and butter their own bread a lot better than the folks outside of government can ordinarily do. They also have the power to tax, with no brake on that power except our usually uninformed perception of things and our level of compliance training/submission to government authority/voting competence.
when you use the term "communistic" around me, please remember I've had good friends who were real communists. .. ideologues who treated Das Kapital like a bible. . . . who hated our statists/socialist/phony communists with an undying antipathy and fought them like they were Satan incarnate. . . . We all throw our terminogy around alike clowns doing some juggling show that nobody can really follow with anything better than stupefied amazement. . . .
I can't see you as a "communist" while you effectively assert a need for good management of public affairs. You strike me as more of communicator seeking to promote public welfare on the strength of good ideas. That might be what we have in common.
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OK, sir. I've decided to sidestep the blow if you mean to defend "Factcheck" or any other pet source of information bearing an established bias and an inherently false claim to a name. I understand that partisans cloak themselves with the colors they need to disarm our sensibilities, whether they are "fer" or "agin" anything.
You're entitled to your doubts about whether I understand what I say, as I may doubt your understanding of what I am trying to say, or your willingness to consider it.
In response to this question, I think I did cover this very well in one of my posts between the one you're responding to, and this one. I think this issue is irrelevant in regard to the goodness or badness of Obamacare, or the "government shutdown" which this thread is supposedly about. The pay and benefits of congressmen is not a market-determined expense either before or after the Obamacare or ACA legislation. Congressmen themselves vote on their pay, with only a token effort at separating the self-interest of the politicians from their power to appropriate public funds to themselves. It is only the perception of voters that has any effect on their impulse to take care of themselves.
This is true without regard to party or which "side" the politicians are claiming to favor.
They, and their staff, are not "paying" anything. . . . we are paying for everything they get.
This was true before the ACA, and is true now, and always will be true. . . . until they start refusing to take pay. On that point, it is also true that some politicians might be earning better money in the private sector, but those cases today are very rare, the only exceptions being very wealthy persons whose private businesses and interests are most likely getting a good suck on the public teat as well.
You are right that it is a good public policy to keep our politicians and their staff on some plan of medical care, maybe even a premium plan, while they are in our "pay". But it is a better policy for them to decide that they are no better than we are, and not seek special or favored treatment. Then maybe we would not be fools to re-elect them.
As things stand, we have gerrymander political districts all across this country, where Reps and Dems politicians have made a deal between themselves, giving themselves "safe" seats and reducing our ability to displace them from public office. Under this circumstance, it is high time we citizens should demand accountability from them, and take a very critical look at what they are doing.
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Here is a question for you all.
Does this shutdown and looming debt defualt change the way you are organizing your finances? Are you taking any extra measures to prepare for that rainy day? Especially since the reported Senate plan only kicks the can down the road till after Christmas.
It is for me. It is leading me to storing food, goods, money and other essential items.
Does this shutdown and looming debt defualt change the way you are organizing your finances? Are you taking any extra measures to prepare for that rainy day? Especially since the reported Senate plan only kicks the can down the road till after Christmas.
It is for me. It is leading me to storing food, goods, money and other essential items.
I'm just glad its look like a deal is going to get passed. I can't be out of a job.
I just got off work, and was told if there is no deal we are officially closed as of tomorrow. That came straight out of the blue.
There were maybes, and some rumors, but bam it came hard and fast today. Tomorrow no deal, no job. So I hope it sticks as it's looking right now.
I just got off work, and was told if there is no deal we are officially closed as of tomorrow. That came straight out of the blue.
There were maybes, and some rumors, but bam it came hard and fast today. Tomorrow no deal, no job. So I hope it sticks as it's looking right now.