US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7124

On March 16 2017 02:39 Sermokala wrote:
I think it looks like that beacuse there are just two parties and the vitriol just goes two ways and thus gets concentrated.

Reagen has had a lot of influence on politics in america and I think it's just now ending. Sanders should have become president but I can understand dems wanting what they think was a sure win.

On March 16 2017 02:50 LightSpectra wrote:


You think the Reaganist influence is now ending? I don't know about that. Just about every Republican in Congress right now is a hardcore Reaganist.

On March 16 2017 02:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
The White House is asking for "Obamacare disaster" stories. As a result, people are flooding this page sharing their stories about how Obamacare has helped them, and how the new proposed Trumpcare bill will adversely affect them.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/obamacare-share-your-story

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/14/14923592/white-house-survey-obamacare

On March 16 2017 02:50 LightSpectra wrote:


You think the Reaganist influence is now ending? I don't know about that. Just about every Republican in Congress right now is a hardcore Reaganist.

On March 16 2017 02:53 zlefin wrote:

mostly iirc dems went for hillary because she's closer politically to the center of the dem party; and the people who hate hillary aren't in the dem party by and large.

On March 16 2017 02:53 Plansix wrote:

Except they don’t do anything Reagan did, like work with democrats. Or not treat minorities with aggressive indifference. Its like people who like tough talking Teddy Roosevelt, but leave out that part where he used that tough talk fight against the Captains of Industry(AKA, the job creators/innovators/visionaries of that era).

On March 16 2017 02:57 Sermokala wrote:

Sure the Republicans are but they're always going to want to repeat sucsessful stuff. I'm talking about dems finding a way forward that isn't afraid of tacking to the left on non social issues. Sanders showed that the base isn't happy anymore and is impatient enough to get behind a really old white dude from the northwest.

The US Federal Reserve has sought to head off rising inflation with a third interest rate rise since the 2008 financial crash and the second in three months to a base range of 0.75 to 1%.

The central bank set aside concerns about the impact of higher interest rates on consumer spending to confirm analyst projections that the Fed is prepared to increase rates several times this year to keep a lid on inflation as it rises above the Fed’s 2% target level.

Fed boss Janet Yellen said a wide range of indicators showed the US economy was in rude health, allowing the federal markets to push rates back towards historically normal levels. Policymakers voted nine to one to raise rates.

Earlier in the day the Commerce Department said retail sales inched up by 0.1% in February, while sales in January were better than it previously estimated.

The Labor Department said consumer prices were 2.7% higher in February than a year earlier. After excluding the costs of food and energy, inflation was 2.2%.

A housing market index by the National Association of Home Builders also surged to its highest level since 2005.

US stock markets moved up on the news, rising 90 points in the minutes after the decision, and US crude rose 2%. But the increases were modest following signals in December from Yellen that interest rates were on an upward path. Investors were caught out by Yellen’s bullish comments in the wake of the announcement and by projections showing that 11 of her 17 policy-making colleagues saw borrowing costs rising another three times in 2017.

Dennis de Jong, managing director at currency trader UFX.com said: “Given the bloating effect Donald Trump’s presidency has had on US inflation, it would have been more of a surprise had Fed Chair Janet Yellen not announced a rate hike at today’s Federal Reserve meeting.

“Trump’s grand plans for American infrastructure spending have signalled an about-turn for US economic policy – after just one rate increase in ten years, we’ve now seen two in the space of three months, and plenty more are expected for 2017.

“This all spells bad news for US borrowers, who will likely have to foot a larger bill over the coming months. With at least three more hikes on the cards by the end of the year, today’s news could hit many where it hurts the most – the pocket.”

But some economists argue that weak wages and productivity growth in the US will limit Fed’s rate increases to a handful before reaching a peak at around 2%.

Gus Faucher, deputy chief economist at stockbroker PNC, said: “I think the concern, in terms of why the Fed is raising rates now, is that inflation is picking up. The unemployment rate is 4.7% and that’s putting upward pressure on prices.”

But he told the Guardian economic forces were acting against a return to interest rate levels of 4-5% seen before the 2008 crash.

WASHINGTON ― With the GOP bill facing opposition from House conservatives, and a dismal Congressional Budget Office score stirring opposition from moderates and the Senate, Republicans seem to be scaling back the goals for their Obamacare repeal-and-replace.

Instead of actually overhauling the Affordable Care Act, Republicans may now just be trying to pass a bill in the House ― with the recognition that the Senate will never agree to a House-passed plan and that rowdy House conservatives may never accept a Senate bill.

“The focus of House leadership has been more about getting a bill out of the House that is unchanged and in keeping with the Better Way plan, instead of truly seeing to potential roadblocks that exist in the House and Senate,” one GOP House member told The Huffington Post on Tuesday.

The lawmaker predicted that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the White House would move the bill further to the right in an effort to get reluctant conservatives onboard. Such a move would open up the measure to more moderate objections, with centrist Republicans already expressing discomfort over projections that 24 million people would lose health insurance and provisions that phase out the Medicaid expansion. Still, conservatives have made it clear they won’t support the bill as is, so giving in to demands from the House Freedom Caucus may be the only way forward.

Or there may be no way forward.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that it’s in the political interest of Republicans to just let the Obamacare exchanges collapse. “Let it be a disaster, because we can blame that on the Dems,” Trump told governors two weeks ago, summing up a thought he’s expressed repeatedly.

If Trump and some Republicans now think their best course of action is to do nothing and continue blaming problems with the health care system on Democrats, then perhaps the best cover they can offer their members is to move a GOP bill out of the House, watch it die in the Senate, and then spend the next two years blaming Senate Democrats in states that Trump won.

In that scenario, voters fail to recognize that Republicans have the power to pass this bill without a single Democratic vote, and the ire over Obamacare doesn’t dissipate even though voters have seen the GOP alternative.

If moderates knew that the House legislation would never go into effect, it might allow them to support the bill. It would become just another messaging vote.

House Republican aides are already starting to blame the Senate for intransigence.

“The question people should be looking at is whether Republican senators like Tom Cotton and Rand Paul are actually interested in repealing Obamacare, or whether they’re sabotaging this to preserve the Medicaid expansion in their states,” one senior House GOP aide told HuffPost on Tuesday. “These senators masquerading with conservative objections are too afraid to admit they want to keep Obamacare.”

Arkansas (Cotton’s state) and Kentucky (Paul’s state) have been two of the biggest winners from the Medicaid expansion, so passing a bill that is projected to make $880 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade may not be in the interests of their constituents. But standing up for Obamacare, after Republicans have railed against the 2010 health care law for years, is basically political suicide. If the repeal-and-replace legislation simply went away, however, with senators opposing the plan because it’s insufficiently conservative, then expansion states like Arkansas and Kentucky would never feel the effects of the Republican plan.

Again, House aides were happy to level the charge.

One GOP leadership aide noted that Trump had backed the House legislation. “So,” the aide said, “senators who have spent the last couple of weeks grandstanding against this reality are going to need to decide whether they want to get serious and get this done, or be the ones responsible for keeping Obamacare in place. That’s the choice.”

But that assumes the House can get this legislation out of their chamber. Even with conservative concessions, there will likely be a number of hardline Republicans who won’t support the basic structure of the bill. And with the CBO’s cheerless score ― and perhaps some more conservative changes ― moderates will have little incentive to vote for the House bill.

On March 16 2017 05:16 a_flayer wrote:
Neutrality is so annoying when you are heavily partisan, isn't it?

On March 16 2017 05:22 Plansix wrote:

Neutrality for the purpose of being detached and superior to both sides of the discussion is super annoying. I have my disagreements with GH, but he wears his political views on his sleeve and pretend otherwise. I respect people who believe in things, rather than those who are to cynical to do so.