Harry Reid and Barack Obama want a government shutdown.

[unregistered]

 

[RobDownSouth]

Sloganeering with Vetteman!

Obama has amended the law 19 times illegally on his own. Congress has every right to fund or not to fund any government program if it sees fit. One Congress cannot bind another. The President is not a king.

a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush...
don't count your chickens before they're hatched...
"I want a fourth strike, ump! Three strikes isn't FAIR!"

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

Obama has amended the law 19 times illegally on his own. Congress has every right to fund or not to fund any government program if it sees fit. One Congress cannot bind another. The President is not a king.

Bullshit.
Your pal Tom Graves (R-Ga) was and is full of shit. Keep spewing those already debunked talking points though. Reality MAY just bend to your will this time, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[RobDownSouth]

It is you who are full of shit. You haven't debunked a thing.

Probably because you haven't proven a thing.

It's worth remembering that most everything that comes out of your mouth is a lie, spin, or distortion.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

It is you who are full of shit. You haven't debunked a thing.

Tom Graves R-Ga (and you since you're repeating his line of half truths) is full of shit.
link
Over the summer, Graves called the Affordable Care Act "destructive" and a "job killer."

"We need to make every effort to ensure Obamacare is never implemented," he said.

Graves said President Barack Obama’s actions highlight the law’s terminal flaws.

"Something very important has happened since the president did win the election," Graves said on ABC’s This Week. "He himself has amended, delayed, or repealed 19 components of his very own law. So if it's so good for America, then why he is delaying it for his friends in big business?"
*There's your talking point in a nutshell*

We wondered if in fact, Obama has made that many changes in the law.

Graves’ office pointed us to a letter from the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan think tank for Congress. The Congressional Research Service review listed 19 times the Affordable Care Act changed since it was passed in 2010. The report counted 14 public laws and five administrative actions that made a variety of modifications to the law.

For the record, we note that a dozen of those adjustments took place before the 2012 election, and not after as Graves said. The timing seems less important than the substance of what was done.

Changes to the Affordable Care Act

Some items on the list qualify as significant in the eyes of the health policy experts we contacted. One of the country’s leading authorities on health care law, Timothy Jost at the Washington and Lee School of Law, pointed to three:

* A one-year delay in requiring firms with over 50 workers to provide insurance

* Scrapping a long-term care insurance program (for nursing home care, for example) called the CLASS Act

* Lifting the requirement on businesses to file a form called a 1099 for a variety of business expenses

The administration acted on its own to delay the employer mandate, explaining that the systems were not in place to implement it. The other two changes came through votes in Congress.

"Congress couldn’t find a way to make the CLASS Act actuarially sound," Jost said, "so they repealed it and put the money elsewhere."

As for the business reporting rule, "businesses said this was a huge burden and Congress responded," Jost said. "There was strong bipartisan support, and you could find the votes to make those sorts of changes."

In addition to those three, a program to create consumer health insurance cooperatives was retained but lost $2.2 billion in funding.

Most of the items on the Congressional Research Service list, however, are less dramatic. Several clarified that certain government health insurance programs would count as coverage under the individual mandate. This included Tricare, which covers the military, and insurance through Veterans Affairs.

Other adjustments extended tax breaks, such as a tax credit for families that adopt a child. There were changes in the Medicaid federal matching formula (to keep money flowing to Louisiana after Katrina), and a tweak to the calculation of income that determines the level of premium subsidies in the insurance exchanges.

Such changes are common in Congress, according to our experts.

"Legislators aren't perfect," said Jost. "They don't get everything right the first time. That’s the nature of the legislative process."

It is also clear that Obama did not drive the majority of the changes. They emerged as Congress worked on various elements of a multi-faceted law. Still, Obama signed off on those changes as part of larger pieces of legislation.

We’ve been here before

Graves’ comments suggest that so many changes to the health care law means it's fundamentally flawed. Actually, major pieces of legislation rarely remain the same as the day the president signs them into law.

The Medicare prescription drug benefit, passed under President George W. Bush, was changed several times after its initial passage.

Both that law and the recent health care law lay a government program on top of a complex private market system, said Ted Marmor, a professor of health policy at Yale University.

"Patches on a patchwork mean making a coherent quilt very difficult," Marmor said.

Even though the country had about two years to get ready for the Medicare drug program, about the same as with Obamacare, some pieces were not in place when the program launched, said Jack Hoadley, a research professor at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University.

"States were worried that bunches of people would show up on Jan. 1, 2005, and not be able to get their prescription drugs," Hoadley said. "So some of them started picking up the tab."

Later, Hoadley said, the Bush administration pulled money from another fund to reimburse the states.

The law required insurance plans to set up systems to keep an eye on people who took many different medications. The goal was to make sure the drugs were compatible. The purpose was sensible but as of 2005, the technology wasn’t ready.

"The decision was made that while that requirement was still there, there would be no enforcement until they had time to get things up and running," Hoadley said. "It took several years of saying ‘Lets not focus on this; it’s not the most important thing’."

Our ruling

Graves said Obama "himself has amended, delayed, or repealed 19 components of his very own law." Based on the analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, Graves has the right number. However, he simplifies the way that many of those 19 changes came about, and by doing that, makes it seem as though the president were more directly involved.

Graves cited these changes as evidence that the law is fatally flawed but he glossed over the differences among them. Some of the changes were significant and some were technical or tangential to the health care law itself.

The basic number is right but there are lot of details of details missing from Graves' assertion.

We rate the claim Half True.

 

[landslider2000]

Failure to forge consensus was the problem.

Everybody has health or lack thereof, so Obamacare affects all Americans.

If anybody has been whining of late, it has been those proclaiming the potential greatness of socialized medicine.

But isn't the logic inexorable that 20,000 pages of federal regulations will impose vast new administrative burdens, increase waiting times, and inevitably lower the quality of health care?

 

[RobDownSouth]

Failure to forge consensus was the problem.

Everybody has health or lack thereof, so Obamacare affects all Americans.

If anybody has been whining of late, it has been those proclaiming the potential greatness of socialized medicine.

But isn't the logic inexorable that 20,000 pages of federal regulations will impose vast new administrative burdens, increase waiting times, and inevitably lower the quality of health care?

First of all, consensus WAS achieved via a majority vote of the House and the Senate. Your conjecture that there was no consensus is not borne out by facts.

Secondly your hypothesis that people's increased access to medical care will somehow result in "lower quality" presumes a status quo in the existing medical infrastructure. The number of doctors is not static in America, which is a free-market economy. Already, chains like Walgreens are hiring staff nurse practitioners, which is a wonderful, cost-effective method of triaging the minor aches and pains of a great many Americans.

I'm not sure why you feel that there is some sort of "new" administrative burden here...with a standard set of rules to follow now (No caps on coverage, certain procedures guaranteed, etc) I fail to see how this makes for a more complex environment. If anything, I believe there will be less complexity, as the system is geared towards preventing gaming the system.

Since I disagree with..and largely demolished... your major talking points in their entirety, I look forward to your inevitable dismissive reply.

 

[eyer]

Pardon me, vette, for interrupting you partisan hacks in the middle of just another bout of midget penile jousting...

...but, I'd like to turn serious and address an issue you obviously are unhealthily holding onto:

Hey Eyer, when will you ever get tall enough to pry your asshole up and off of Obama's cock?

...I know you wait breathlessly for Obama to return to the air, so that you can squeal in delight every time his ball sack paddles your well punished butt cheeks...

vetteman, you need to find the courage to forgive yourself and the shower mate in boot camp who seduced you out of your butt cherry...

...it's ok, dude - really. Let it go.

 

[renard_ruse]

No question about it, unlike in the 1990s when the media managed to twist things to blame the Republicans for the shut down back then (even though blame was clearly equal between them and Clinton), with this shutdown THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY THAT BLAME CAN BE PLACED ANYWHERE EXCEPT ON PRESIDENT OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Pardon me, vette, for interrupting you partisan hacks in the middle of just another bout of midget penile jousting...

...but, I'd like to turn serious and address an issue you obviously are unhealthily holding onto:



vetteman, you need to find the courage to forgive yourself and the shower mate in boot camp who seduced you out of your butt cherry...

...it's ok, dude - really. Let it go.

I am surprised you and Vetty aren't friends. You seem to have so much in common.....homoerotic male fantasies being first and foremost, obviously.

 

[renard_ruse]

Shame on President Obama and the Democrats in Congress for shutting down the government. What total asshats.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Shame on President Obama and the Democrats in Congress for shutting down the government. What total asshats.

Repetition isn't making your argument any more valid, Retard.
The majority of Americans, not surprisingly, reject your revisionist derp.

 

[eyer]

I am surprised you and Vetty aren't friends. You seem to have so much in common.....homoerotic male fantasies being first and foremost, obviously.

It's ok, Rub...

...no one else has to know that you were the shower mate.

Also...

...how cool is it that you and your shower buddy vetteman support Recidiva, an adult who knowingly cybered with a minor?

 

[RobDownSouth]

It's ok, Rub...

...no one else has to know that you were the shower mate.

Also...

...how cool is it that you and your shower buddy vetteman support Recidiva, an adult who knowingly cybered with a minor?

Still moar homoerotic fantasies.

Sorry eeyore, I don't swing that way. Ask Grace.

 

[eyer]

Still moar homoerotic fantasies.

Sorry eeyore, I don't swing that way. Ask Grace.

I believe that's about the 3rd time you've brought up "Grace" to me since Recidiva outed herself as a sex offender...

...evidently there's much more you'd like to post but, just as obviously, you're naturally stuck in your native eunuch mode.

So, c'mon, son: be brave and gossip like a little girl; you know you're dying to...

...tell us more about how "Grace" knows you - allegedly - didn't do quality shower time with your bunghole bud, vetteman.

 

[RobDownSouth]

I believe that's about the 3rd time you've brought up "Grace" to me since Recidiva outed herself as a sex offender...

...evidently there's much more you'd like to post but, just as obviously, you're naturally stuck in your native eunuch mode.

So, c'mon, son: be brave and gossip like a little girl; you know you're dying to...

...tell us more about how "Grace" knows you - allegedly - didn't do quality shower time with your bunghole bud, vetteman.

*grin* Ask her.

 

[eyer]

*grin* Ask her.

WOW...

...what a big surprise:

All jaw...

...no chomp.


btw, Rub:

I just read in another thread you posting derogatory comments about other peoples' kids and how unhappy they must be, and it just got me to wondering:

Where, exactly, are your kids right now, #dontdropthesoap?

 

[RobDownSouth]

WOW......what a big surprise:All jaw...
...no chomp.btw, Rub:I just read in another thread you posting derogatory comments about other peoples' kids and how unhappy they must be, and it just got me to wondering:Where, exactly, are your kids right now, dontdropthesoap?

*yawn* Eeyore's playing his patented passive aggressive game tonight.

 

[eyer]

*yawn* Eeyore's playing his patented passive aggressive game tonight.

You bring up others' wives and kids being unhappy, in your patented personal attack mode...

...but won't answer where your wife and kids are tonight.

Why's that, Rub?

You bring up Grace to somehow vouch for your imagined manliness...

...but won't elaborate on how exactly Grace would know that - or not.

Why you got such a big pie hole, Rub...

...but, as almost always, no filling whatsoever?

 

[RobDownSouth]

You bring up others' wives and kids being unhappy, in your patented personal attack mode......but won't answer where your wife and kids are tonight.Why's that, Rub?You bring up Grace to somehow vouch for your imagined manliness... ...but won't elaborate on how exactly Grace would know that - or not.Why you got such a big pie hole, Rub......but, as almost always, no filling whatsoever?

Whar is Grace? WHAR?

 

[eyer]

Whar is Grace? WHAR?

Did she break your heart when she left...

...as much as your ex-wife did?

It's alright, Rub...

...your girlybuds already told us back then how devastated you were; don't you think it's about time you let it all out so the healing processing can finally begin?

 

[RobDownSouth]

Derp?

Did she break your heart when she left......as much as your ex-wife did?It's alright, Rub......your girlybuds already told us back then how devastated you were; don't you think it's about time you let it all out so the healing processing can finally begin?

Eeyore is angry tonight. Lashing out at everyone.

He wants us to hurt just like he does.

 

[unregistered]