When elected to office the state republicans have proven to be corrupt souls who steal the tax payer blind and show no regret for their actions when caught red handed. Lets hope Bob McDonnell gets indited and serves time for his lack of ethics and while we are hoping, lets hope republicans see beyond Ken Cuccinelli's lies. Ken has ripped off Virginia citizens in exchange for campaign contributions from energy companies in addition to copying everything Bob McDonnell did. Bob did a Job on Virginia.
All the above being true and known by all who can read or understand spoken English, republicans voters still rush to the ballot box to vote for these GOP slime masters. Why?
Every time since Bill Clinton had to deal with Newt Gingrich on a government shutdown the republicans have tried to destroy the government each and every time they were running anything. Why do the voters continue to allow this to happen? At some point the voters must accept responsibility for their wasted and poorly thought out votes. For the voters of Amherst County that time arrived years ago and was unheeded then and every vote since then.
For 22 years the voters in Amherst County have sent Bob Goodlatte to Washington. Goodlatte is a bottom rung, do nothing, free rider who in all that time has done nothing for the 6th district, still republicans keep on doing the same thing over and over and getting nothing for their efforts. The 6th district was formed with just that in mind. State republicans have rigged the system in each district to lean republican. The state of Virginia went Blue 8 years ago but it will be a long time before the lay of the backwoods changes.
So now the republicans in the House (Bob Goodlatte) are planning to shut the government down. Over 40 times the republicans have voted to cripple or kill the American Health Care Act (ObamaCare).
The GOP ran the last presidents election on killing Obama Care and Obama was re-elected by over 5,000,000 votes (5 Million). The Supreme Court ruled on the Health Care Act and certified it good to go. The Act has been law about 4 years and parts of it have already gone into effect. It was passed by the House and by the Senate and signed by the President.
Republicans haven't come to grips with the law yet. The GOP battled social security for 50 years trying to destroy it over and over and they will still take a shot at killing social security and medicare whenever they get a chance. Republicans don't represent the working man or small normal voters. Republicans represent big business and folks like the Koch brothers who slide big money their way. Look for the GOP to fight health care and insurance for everyone for as long as they can get money from the rich and votes from dummies.
Here a truth the GOP won't tell you. You can shut the government down but Obama Care will not be affected. Tuesday of next week the exchanges open normally no matter what the House republicans do. You can hurt a lot of other things with a shutdown but you can't touch the American Health Care Act. A Congressman should be smart enough to know that or he or she shouldn't hold the office. A Congressman should also be honest enough to tell you the truth but don't hold your breath waiting for the truth to cross the lips of a republican. Keep electing big business tools with an R by their name and watch the middle class disappear.
If you see an R by someones name running for office you should think rattle snake. For this country to function effectively republicans cannot be allowed to control anything. Even if you are a slow learner you will at some point get it. When the big businesses that want no rules or regulations standing between them and a quick buck get to run the show the economy, the worker, the planet and your children's future all fade to black.
Oh My God, Louie Gomert and Ted Cruzis are speaking on tv, Larry, Moe and Curly must be in the on deck circle and the fat lady is clearing her throat. Vote Democratic while it still matters.
What The GOP Has in Mind for YOU
Their proposal calls for amendments to a bill designed to keep the government open for a few more weeks. The changes would include a one-year delay in the health-care law, which is set to take effect next month. The GOP plan would also repeal, permanently, a medical-device tax included in the law.
The advantage of that plan — for Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and his team — is political. After being criticized by GOP hard-liners for not doing enough to undermine the health-care law, Boehner has taken a far more aggressive position. Instead of seeking to take away some of the money to implement Obamacare, the House GOP’s new plan would push back the whole thing.
The disadvantage is more practical: This plan is far more likely to result in a government shutdown. It may pass the House — and it may even pass Saturday. But it is not likely to pass the Democratic-held Senate or be signed by Obama.
On Saturday, in fact, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said the House’s new plan was “pointless.”
“The Senate will reject both the one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act and the repeal of the medical device tax,” Reid said in a statement, referring to the health-care law. “After weeks of futile political games from Republicans, we are still at square one: Republicans must decide whether to pass the Senate’s clean
CR, or force a Republican government shutdown.”
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement that the House Republican plan is a move “to shut down the government.”
“Any member of the Republican Party who votes for this bill is voting for a shutdown. It's time for the House to listen to the American people and act, as the Senate has, in a reasonable way to pass a bill that keeps the government running and move on,” Carney’s statement said.
The Senate might act as soon as Sunday: senior aides said it was possible senators could be called back then, a day ahead of schedule. If the Senate acts, then the next move would be up to the House again. And it’s not clear what that would be.
"It comes back to us, I guess," said Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) after the Republican meeting on Saturday. "We really didn't talk about exactly what the plan would be then."
Late Saturday, senior aides said House Republicans planned to meet again shortly before the House is expected to begin voting on the spending measure. It was not immediately clear if the meeting signaled potential problems in securing sufficient GOP support for the bill, or was being called for other reasons.
A senior GOP aide said, "Leaders just wanted to huddle members before the vote to give an update on scheduling and give them a bite to eat."
Republican leadership already seemed to be planning to minimize the political fallout of a shutdown.
Their new proposal also includes a measure that would continue to pay U.S. military forces, eliminating one of the most politically sensitive impacts if a shutdown comes.
“The American people don’t want a government shut down, and they don’t want Obamacare,” Boehner and his lieutenants said in a statement, after Republicans met in the basement of the Capitol. “We will do our job and send this bill over, and then it’s up to the Senate to pass it and stop a government shutdown.”
The new, more confrontational GOP plan has a chance of picking up Democratic votes--but probably just a few.
There are a handful of moderate Democrats who usually face difficult reelection races who may break off and vote with Republicans to delay the new health-care law and repeal the medical device tax.
Last week two Democrats, Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.) and Jim Matheson (D-Utah), voted with Republicans to approve a short-term spending plan that repealed the health-care law.
For the most part, this a Republican effort. Which means that House Republicans might become the public face of a shutdown.
Even before Saturday’s meeting began, it was clear that senior Republicans understood these possible consequences. Some rank-and-file Republicans said they now see no way out of the shutdown.
Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.) said a shutdown was now “likely.”
“What’s going on that would make you think otherwise? Maybe I’ll hear something in there that will change that,” he said before going into the GOP meeting. “I doubt it.”
Before the meeting of the entire House Republican Conference, Boehner gathered his leadership team in his second-floor Capitol office to go over the GOP’s final options. Aides said the Republicans were still considering all their alternatives and were searching for maneuvers that would allow them to walk an
incredibly fine line — appeasing a bloc of 30 or more far-right conservatives who are demanding an aggressive posture against Obamacare and also finding something that could be acceptable to Senate Democrats.
At this stage, Boehner and his top lieutenants, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), are refusing to entertain the prospect of seeking out Democratic votes to keep the government open, according to advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks.
The rare Saturday session followed the Senate’s passage Friday of a stopgap government funding bill and promptly departed, leaving all of the pressure to find a solution on House Republican leaders.
On Saturday, as this drama played out on Capitol Hill, Obama played golf at Fort Belvoir in Virginia.
The day before, Obama had sternly lecturing GOP leaders that the easiest path forward would be to approve the Senate’s bill, which includes money for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the president’s prized legislation achievement, which he signed into law in 2010.
But a far-right bloc of House and Senate Republicans banded together to leave Boehner virtually powerless to act.
“My message to Congress is this: Do not shut down the government. Do not shut down the economy. Pass a budget on time,” Obama said in the White House press briefing room.
With a stroke-of-midnight deadline Monday, Reid said Democrats would reject any conservative add-ons that Boehner might attach to the funding bill. That would further delay passage, and given the staunch opposition from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who has suggested that he will not help move the process along, the slow-moving
Senate would require up to a week to approve something, even if Reid were amenable to the changes. That sets the stage for a shutdown Tuesday.
“We’ve passed the only bill that can avert a government shutdown Monday night. I said this on the floor, I say it again: This is it, time is gone,” Reid said Friday after the midday passage of the funding bill on a party-line vote.
Before that final roll call, Cruz’s attempt to delay the legislation was throttled in a bipartisan 79-to-19 vote, but the first-year senator drew support from nearly half the rank-and-file Republicans in defiance of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Cruz confirmed reports that he has been huddling with House conservatives to help plot their strategy to force Boehner’s hand on Obamacare. “I am confident if the House listens to the people, as it did last week, that it will continue to step forward and respond to the suffering that is coming from Obamacare,” Cruz told reporters Friday, saying he has had “numerous conversations” with House Republicans.
Those Republicans upended a strategy crafted by Boehner and Cantor to first advance legislation related to the federal borrowing limit, including more demands to delay Obamacare, then allow government funding to be approved.
That plan required the GOP leaders to draw all votes from their side of the aisle — 217 of the 232 Republicans — and instead the Cruz-backed contingent holds more than enough votes to sabotage any moves by Boehner and Cantor. Those House Republicans offered their version late Friday of what they want attached to the funding resolution and sent back to the Senate: an amendment delaying until 2015 implementation of all the health law’s taxes, mandates and benefits, as well as its provisions aimed at squeezing savings from Medicare.
“A simple and reasonable way to ensure fairness for all is to provide every American the same one-year Obamacare delay that President Obama provided for businesses and others,” Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), the bill’s author, said in a statement.
He has more than 60 co-sponsors.
Although the health-care law has had some provisions delayed amid a wobbly rollout, Obama and Democrats oppose any effort to strip funding or delay implementation of the law as it begins a critical new period next week.
The president warned that demands to delay Obamacare were even more reckless in connection with the raising debt limit, because the Treasury will run out of maneuvers to continue borrowing Oct. 17 and will head toward a first-of-its-kind default on the nearly $17 trillion debt. Economists have warned that a default would send a shock through global financial markets and would jolt interest rates.
"I don’t know how I can be more clear about this: Nobody gets to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States just to extract political concessions,” Obama said Friday.
Meanwhile, House leaders delayed consideration of their initial proposal to raise the federal debt limit until at least next week.
It was unclear Friday whether the debt-limit bill would require additional surgery, senior GOP aides said, since most of those who objected to the measure were concerned primarily about timing. However, a separate bloc of lawmakers complained that the bill — a grab bag of conservative agenda items ranging from tax reform to the rollback of environmental regulations — would do too little to cut spending. As written, the measure contained only around $200 billion in spending cuts over the next decade. Meanwhile it would suspend the debt limit through Dec. 5, 2014, permitting the Treasury Department to borrow an additional $1 trillion.
The bill has no hope of passing the Democratic-controlled Senate.
After a few noncontroversial votes naming federal buildings, the House adjourned Friday morning amid deep uncertainty about its next steps. Boehner and Cantor have called a noon Saturday caucus meeting in the Capitol basement to try to forge ahead.
For the moment, GOP leaders have given no indication they were willing to simply approve the Senate legislation. Such a move, some Republicans privately fear, could lead to a collapse of support among GOP lawmakers and result in the legislation passing largely on the strength of Democratic votes. That would leave Boehner, already the weakest speaker of the modern political era, even more politically wounded heading into the debt ceiling talks.
Several Republicans said Friday that they favor a “stick” approach — an amendment so distasteful to Democrats that they might feel compelled to return to the negotiating table. Others favor a “carrot” approach, attaching an item Democrats would find hard to refuse — including possibly delaying sequestration cuts for a year in exchange for delaying implementation of Obamacare for a year. They did not detail the specifics of either approach.
However, with Graves holding potentially several dozen votes, no Republican could offer a sound explanation for how they would avert a shutdown next week.
Before the Senate votes, Reid denounced as “anarchists” the Cruz-led Republicans who he said were driving the country toward economic devastation.
“Today the Republican Party has been infected by a small destructive faction,” Reid said. “These extremists
are more interested in putting on a show, as one Republican colleague put it, than legislating.”
The situation is in such flux that some of the most strident conservatives cast votes to filibuster the government funding bill — effectively endorsing shutting down the government — and yet immediately after warned it would not succeed in hindering the health law.
“Obamacare will continue. America’s going to have to judge whether it’s a good thing or bad thing. I still think Obamacare is going to be bad for part-time workers, for workers who may lose their insurance. I think it’s bad for the country,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a leading contender for his party’s 2016 presidential
nomination.
He suggested that the fight against Obamacare had been lost for now and that the GOP should move on to other issues.
One veteran of the mid-1990s shutdowns, which also pitted a Democratic president against a Republican speaker, warned a temporary shutdown was increasingly likely.
“It depends if wisdom trumps energy. It hasn’t thus far, has it?” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said, a dig at those who want to continue the campaign against Obamacare.
Coburn, a freshman House member in the 1990s shutdowns, said it wouldn’t matter much until Oct. 15. That’s when the first pay checks for service members — including those on the front lines of Afghanistan — would not go out.
“When you start getting into military pay, that’s serious. When the people defending this country can’t pay their house payments, things they need to do. . . . We’ll fold like hot cakes if they shut down. Republicans will,” Coburn predicted.
3 Ring Circus
WASHINGTON — The federal government on Saturday barreled toward its first shutdown in 17 years after House Republicans, choosing a hard line, demanded a one-year delay of President Obama’s health care law and the repeal of a tax to pay for the law before approving any funds to keep the government running.
Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting Saturday unified and confident that they had the votes to delay the health care law and eliminate a tax on medical devices that partly pays for it. But before the House had even voted, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, declared the House bill dead. Senate Democrats are planning to table the Republican measures when they convene on Monday, leaving it up to the House to pass
a stand-alone spending bill free of any measures that undermine the health care law.
The House’s action all but assured that large parts of the government would be shuttered as of 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. More than 800,000 federal workers deemed nonessential faced furloughs; millions more could be working without paychecks.
A separate House Republican bill would also ensure that military personnel continued to be paid in the event of a government shutdown, an acknowledgment that a shutdown was likely. The health law delay and the troop funding bill were set for House passage Saturday.
“The American people don’t want a government shutdown, and they don’t want Obamacare,” House Republican leaders said in a statement. “We will do our job and send this bill over, and then it’s up to the Senate to pass it and stop a government shutdown.”
Representative Darrell Issa, a powerful Republican committee chairman who is close to the leadership but has sided with those who want to gut the health care law, flashed anger when asked what would happen when the Senate rejected the House’s offer.
“How dare you presume a failure?” he snapped. “We continue to believe there’s an opportunity for sensible compromise and I will not accept from anybody the assumption of failure.”
But Mr. Reid made it clear that failure was inevitable. “After weeks of futile political games from Republicans, we are still at Square 1,” he said. “We continue to be willing to debate these issues in a calm and rational atmosphere. But the American people will not be extorted by Tea Party anarchists.”
The White House was just as blunt. “Any member of the Republican Party who votes for this bill is voting for a shutdown,” the press secretary, Jay Carney, said in a written statement. The White House also said that the president would veto the House bill if approved by the Senate.
In fact, many House Republicans acknowledged that they expected the Senate to reject the House’s provisions, making a shutdown all but assured. House Republicans were warned repeatedly that Senate Democrats would not accept any changes to the health care law.
Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio faced a critical decision this weekend: Accept a bill passed by the Senate on Friday to keep the government funded and the health care law intact and risk a conservative revolt that could threaten his speakership, or make one more effort to undermine the president’s signature domestic initiative and hope that a shutdown would not do serious political harm to his party.
With no guarantee that Democrats would help him, he chose the shutdown option. The House’s unruly conservatives had more than enough votes to defeat a spending bill that would not do significant damage to the health care law, unless Democrats were willing to bail out the speaker. And Democrats showed little
inclination to alleviate the Republicans’ intraparty warfare.
“The federal government has shut down 17 times before, sometimes when the Republicans were in control, sometimes with divided government,” said Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina. ( Anythng Virginia Foxx says should be researched, she will tell you a big Michelle Bachmann type lie with blinking an eye.) “What are we doing on our side of the aisle? We’re fighting for the American people.”
Veteran House Republicans say there is still one plausible way to avoid a shutdown. The Senate could take up the House spending bill, strip out the one-year health care delay and accept the medical device tax repeal as a face-saving victory for Republicans. The tax, worth $30 billion over 10 years, has ardent opponents among
Democrats as well. Its repeal would not prevent the law from going into effect. Consumers can begin signing up for insurance plans under the law beginning on Tuesday.
Mr. Reid has already said he would not accept even that measure as a condition to keep the government operating. Even if he did, a single senator could slow action well past the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline, and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, has said he would accept nothing short of a one-year delay.
“By pandering to the Tea Party minority and trying to delay the benefits of health care reform for millions of seniors and families, House Republicans are now actively pushing for a completely unnecessary government shutdown,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the Democrat who leads the Senate Budget Committee.
As provocative as it was, the move by House Republicans was an expression of their most basic political goal since they took control in 2010: doing what they can to derail the biggest legislative achievement of Mr. Obama’s presidency. Conservative anger over the law’s passage in 2010 helped propel them to power.
As a debate inside the party raged over whether it was politically wise to demand delay or defunding of the act, many Republicans argued that they should fight as hard as they could because that is what their constituents were expecting.
“This is exactly what the public wants,” Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said. She described the House proposal as “fabulous” and said all House Republicans were in support. In most states a person with the mental problems of Michelle Bachmann would be under some form of confinement or restraint but the folks in her district elected her to Congress and shipped her off to Washington. What a novel way to solve a problem in the district.
The mood in the Capitol on Saturday, at least among Republicans, was downright giddy. When Republican leaders presented their plan in a closed-door meeting on Saturday, cheers and chants of “Vote, vote, vote!” went up. Republicans are sure all of America will love them when they close down the government and that this is their ticket back to the White House.
As members left the meeting, many wore beaming grins.
Representative John Culberson of Texas said that as he and his colleagues were clamoring for a vote, he shouted out with his own words of encouragement. “I said, like 9/11, ‘Let’s roll!’ ” That the Senate would almost certainly reject the health care delay, he added, was not a concern. “I can’t control what the Senate
does. Ulysses S. Grant used to say, ‘Boys, quit worrying about what Bobby Lee is doing. I want to know what we are doing.’ And that’s what the House is doing today, thank God.” Has this guy got a few loose screws or what? Even for a Texan he's comes off stranger than normal.
After the shutdowns of 1995 and 1996, Republicans were roundly blamed. Their approval ratings plunged, and President Bill Clinton sailed to re-election. This time they say they have a strategy that will shield them from political fallout, especially with the bill to keep money flowing to members of the military.
“If Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats would stop being so stubborn then no, of course the government won’t get shut down,” said Representative Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas.
But some Republicans acknowledged that Senate colleagues like Mr. Cruz hurt their message by turning policy dispute into a personal crusade.
“I think that the rhetoric coming out of the Senate was a bit of sideshow and a circus and distracted people from what the real goal here was,” said Representative Michael Grimm of New York. “The goal was to stop a really onerous law from hurting a lot more families.”
Republicans acknowledged that the difficulty is what is next. If the Senate sends back a bill, it will most likely not have a year long delay. Then Mr. Boehner ( Jim DeMint) must decide whether to put that measure on the floor, which would anger his conservative members. If you should ever read the words John Boehner and Speaker of the House in the same sentence be advised that the two terms do not go together. John Boehner speaks for the tea party and does not own his words. There is no one for Democrats to negotiate with.
These piss ant republican and tea party congressmen are crazier than loons.
ACV DEMOCRATIC NEWS
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