Defunding is DUMB!!!!

 As we have said the new Republican strategy of defunding Obamacare is looney. No one understands the Republican party dynamics like Karl Rove, like him or not. Here's his take.

 

Karl Rove: The GOP's Self-Defeating 'Defunding' Strategy

It will only strengthen the president while alienating independents.

By
• KARL ROVE
• CONNECT

In 2010, Republicans took the House of Representatives by gaining 63 seats. They also picked up six U.S. senators and 675 state legislators, giving them control of more legislative chambers than any time since 1928. The GOP also won 25 of 40 gubernatorial races in 2009 and 2010.
These epic gains happened primarily because independents voted Republican. In 2010, 56% of independents voted for GOP congressional candidates, up from 43% in 2008 and 39% in 2006.
Today, independents look more like Republicans than Democrats, especially when it comes to health care. In a new Crossroads GPS health-care policy survey conducted in 10 states likely to have competitive Senate races and in House districts that lean Republican or are swing seats, 60% of independents oppose President Obama's Affordable Care Act. If this holds through 2014, then Republicans should receive another big boost in the midterms.
There is, however, one issue on which independents disagree with Republicans: using the threat of a government shutdown to defund ObamaCare. By 58% to 30% in the GPS poll, they oppose defunding ObamaCare if that risks even a temporary shutdown.

This may be because it is (understandably) hard to see the endgame of the defund strategy. House Republicans could pass a bill that funds the government while killing all ObamaCare spending. But the Democratic Senate could just amend the measure to restore funding and send it back to the House. What then? Even the defund strategy's authors say they don't want a government shutdown. But their approach means we'll get one.
After all, avoiding a shutdown would require, first, at least five Senate Democrats voting to defund ObamaCare. But not a single Senate Democrat says he'll do that, and there is no prospect of winning one over.
Second, assuming enough Senate Democrats materialize to defund ObamaCare, the measure faces a presidential veto. Republicans would need 54 House Democrats and 21 Senate Democrats to vote to override the president's veto. No sentient being believes that will happen.
So what would the public reaction be to a shutdown? Some observers point to the 1995 shutdown, saying the GOP didn't suffer much in the 1996 election. They are partially correct: Republicans did pick up two Senate seats in 1996. But the GOP also lost three House seats, seven of the 11 gubernatorial races that year, a net of 53 state legislative seats and the White House.
A shutdown now would have much worse fallout than the one in 1995. Back then, seven of the government's 13 appropriations bills had been signed into law, including the two that funded the military. So most of the government was untouched by the shutdown. Many of the unfunded agencies kept operating at a reduced level for the shutdown's three weeks by using funds from past fiscal years.
But this time, no appropriations bills have been signed into law, so no discretionary spending is in place for any part of the federal government. Washington won't be able to pay military families or any other federal employee. While conscientious FBI and Border Patrol agents, prison guards, air-traffic controllers and other federal employees may keep showing up for work, they won't get paychecks, just IOUs.
The only agencies allowed to operate with unsalaried employees will be those that meet one or more of the following legal tests: They must be responding to "imminent" emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property, be funded by mandatory spending (such as Social Security), have funds from prior fiscal years that have already been obligated, or rely on the constitutional power of the president. Figuring out which agencies meet these tests will be tough, but much of the federal government will lack legal authority to function.
But won't voters be swayed by the arguments for defunding? The GPS poll tested the key arguments put forward by advocates of defunding and Mr. Obama's response. Independents went with Mr. Obama's counterpunch 57% to 35%. Voters in Senate battleground states sided with him 59% to 33%. In lean-Republican congressional districts and in swing congressional districts, Mr. Obama won by 56% to 39% and 58% to 33%, respectively. On the other hand, independents support by 51% to 42% delaying ObamaCare's mandate that individuals buy coverage or pay a fine.
The desire to strike at ObamaCare is praiseworthy. But any strategy to repeal, delay or replace the law must have a credible chance of succeeding or affecting broad public opinion positively.
The defunding strategy doesn't. Going down that road would strengthen the president while alienating independents. It is an ill-conceived tactic, and Republicans should reject it.

We're Going Backwards

This is indeed a disturbing trend. It is very easy and simplistic to blame it on Wall Street, or big business, or the prior administration (if you're Obama), but it goes much deeper than that. Ever since the onset of globalization, our economy has been undergoing massive changes. When agreements like NAFTA and LAFTA were put in place years ago, when tariffs were amended, when Japanese cars started to be better than American cars, the people who were most affected were the middle class. Gone are the days when a high school graduate with a good pair of hands could get a factory job that could support a wife, two kids, a house and a car. Yes, the politicians who favored and pushed globalization were convinced of the rightness of what they were doing. But, those annoying unintended consequences got in the way as they always do. It's not just in the U.S. The Euro Zone was going to be a smashing success. Well guess who got smashed. Ask the people in Greece or Spain how things have worked out.

This is what we are now experiencing, the unintended consequences of a globalized economy. People are frustrated because they are powerless to do anything about what is happening. Government is also powerless because the horse is out of the barn and too far down the road to get back in.

Wonder why people are worried about the unintended consequences of Obamacare? What is scary is that both political parties have their heads firmly ensconced in their rectums. The Republicans now seem fixated on the utterly impossible strategy of defunding Obamacare, and the Democrats are oblivious to what companies are doing and won't call a halt to fix some obvious problems with the law.

This may turn out to be the winter of our discontent.

US families make less than they did in 1989

America's middle class has seen its median income drop by $600 since 'The Simpsons' first went on the air.

By Jason Notte 29 minutes ago

The Census Bureau's poverty report issued earlier this week included some income statistics that were a bummer for middle-class families hoping for a return of the good old days of prosperity. Turns out that even in those days, families were bringing in roughly the same as now.

According to the Census Bureau, median household income in the U.S. in 2012 was $51,017, which is still beneath the 2011 median of $51,100. That 2011 number followed two straight years of decline and is nowhere near the $56,080 average salary from 1999. In fact, 2012's real median household income is still 8.7% lower than it was in 2007, just before the recession.

Even by those mileposts, the news is discouraging for the middle class. But before those relative boom years just before the crash of the early 2000s and the absolute cratering of 2008, median income in 1989 -- just before the recession of the early '90s -- was an inflation-adjusted $51,681, according to The Washington Post's Wonkblog.

That means middle-class families have not gained any ground in the last 24 years. Worse, they actually lost about 660 bucks over that time. The price of the average movie ticket then was $4 compared to $8 now. And the price of a gallon of gas hovered around a dollar compared to the $3.60 average now. But sure, why not dock middle-class families a few Benjamins and see how the economy likes it?

For members of Generation X wondering if all the angst they had as teens about being the first generation not to do as well as their parents was misplaced, fear not. It may be only a slight difference and the least of your worries. But middle-class Gen Xers are bringing home less than their parents were when they were sitting the family down for new episodes of "Doogie Howser," "Family Matters" and the first episodes of a little show called "The Simpsons."

That American incomes have changed roughly as much as the yellow, four-fingered, ageless cartoon family in the latter show should be cause for concern. Even with only Homer's salary at the Springfield nuclear power plant to support them, the Simpsons managed to grow from a Bart-led, "Don't have a cow, man" novelty to a Homer-supported national icon with a movie deal.

Republicans Out to Lunch

• I'm not the only one who thinks that the GOP has totally lost it's senses. Speaker Boehner has lost control of his caucus which has clearly been hijacked by the Tea Party fringe element. Defunding Obamacare is a kamikaze mission which truly does have the potential to utterly destroy the Republican party iif it leads to a costly government shutdown. This is the party of Lincoln?
• Fed Chairman Bernanke caught a lot of flak yesterday for not beginning the long awaited tapering, but as we previously commented, what is brewing in Washington has got to give the Fed pause about pulling back. There is way too much uncertainty. 
• Perhaps we're hoping against hope, but cooler heads have to prevail in the GOP or the mess will require FEMA to clean it up.

The GOP Is Threatening Murder-Suicide With New Shutdown Warnings

by Kirsten Powers Sep 19, 2013 5:45 AM EDT

If the president refuses to defund Obamacare, House Republicans are happy to retaliate with a government shutdown. What they’re really headed for is complete ruination, says Kirsten Powers.

The Republican Party is destroying America.

Harsh words, yes. But inescapably true. It’s a bit of a murder-suicide. House Republicans’ willingness to lay waste to the country to satisfy their fringiest faction will ultimately guarantee the GOP irrelevancy as a national party, unless they change their ways. In the meantime, they seem determined to take us all down with them.

Photo Illustration Newsweek Daily Beast

There isn’t even a feint toward decency. In what has become a recurring nightmare, House Republicans are using budget negotiations to play chicken with the stability of the American economy. This time, they want President Obama to agree to defund his signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act. If he refuses to strangle his own baby in the crib, Republicans are happy to retaliate. They’ll shut down the government. These are not people with whom one can work.

Last year, Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Thomas Mann of Brookings wrote a book about this dysfunction known as the new Republican Party. It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism makes a compelling case that the problems in Washington are not the result of “both sides”—the oft-preferred media frame—but of a GOP that has become all but unrecognizable to most Americans.

Ornstein and Mann, both widely respected as straight shooters, describe themselves as moderates and have had long careers working with both parties. In an interview this week, they expressed exasperation with the GOP’s behavior in the debt-limit and budget negotiations. Ornstein lamented that the title of the book today would be It’s Even Worse Than It Was.

Said Ornstein: “The bizarreness of this monomaniacal focus on Obamacare, given that it is fundamentally a Republican program from the 1990s mixed in with Romneycare,” says it all. “Obamacare relies on the private sector; there is no public option. That you are willing to bring the country to its knees to sabotage it … just shows this is a party that has gone off the rails.”

Just how damaging have the congressional Republicans been to the country? “If you look at what could have happened in a reasonable political system, with give and take … we would have been on a more robust path to growth,” said Ornstein. “We’ve gone from one credit agency downgrading us to a far greater likelihood that we will default. If sequester continues … it is a cancer eating away at national parks, food safety, basic research … it’s a terrible situation. No matter how much [Republicans] talk about how it was Obama’s idea … the whole idea was to create such awful consequences that no sane person would accept it. But these aren’t sane people.”

GOP stalwarts have framed criticisms of the party as attempts to make it more liberal. That is self-serving denial. The legitimate complaint about the new Republican Party, one you will hear frequently even from Republicans speaking privately, is that it is intransigent and beholden to its most radical elements. Having principles is fine. Imposing them on everyone else through destructive maneuvering that keeps the country constantly on edge is not.

‘There is one party that has lost its way and is being dominated by people who by historical standards are on the fringe.’

“You have to accept the legitimacy of the other side,” said Mann. Today’s GOP, which exists to oppose all things Obama, does not.

“One of the things we don’t want to see is the demise of the Republican Party,” he said. “We aren’t looking for a GOP that becomes a center left or even a party that is right in the center. It’s always going to be a conservative party. We tried to make the point in the book that you can be very conservative in your policy views and want to solve problems. Or you can be revolutionary and want to get bloodshed.”

Ornstein said the two aren’t taking sides. “We want a Republican Party that returns to problem-solving mode,” he said. “We are suggesting that what works in American politics and our system is when parties focus on how you can solve the big problems and how you can have some give and take. There is one party that has lost its way and is being dominated by people who by historical standards are on the fringe.”

Both men agree that the GOP will likely get worse before it gets better. How is that possible, you ask? Looks like we are about to find out.

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Kirsten Powers is a columnist for The Daily Beast. She is also a contributor to USA Today and a Fox News political analyst. She served in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 1998 and has worked in New York state and city politics. Her writing has been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, The New York Observer, Salon.com, Elle magazine, and American Prospect online.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.