US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9396

On December 02 2017 23:30 Introvert wrote:
Seeing this level of panic reminds me of a few things. First of all, it has been years since people have seen the GOP get to make and pass their own even somewhat important legislation. That must be an odd feeling contributing to the doom and gloom.

Second, supposedly Collins (I think it was her) got a concession on doing Alexander-Murray before the year is done. This bill is meant to stabilize the exchanges (remember when it was being floated). Now on this topic I'd prefer the Ted Cruz idea that if gov is going to be taxing citizens to subsidize healthcare they be more honest about it and just use tax money directly. But there you have it.

Given the level of wailing you'd think they had just foisted a large, expensive, fundamentally new law on us like Obamacare. Indeed, I wish what they did was at least as important.

Third, I enjoy seeing Democrats now concerned about debt. The we-are-out-of-power-now-we-care never fails. And in case it isn't clear, I've said they should be cutting spending for a while. It's just an amusing phenomenon that always occus.

edit:also the grad school change and the endowment amendment (not just taken by Hillsdale) didn't make it into this version, so far as I know.

On December 02 2017 23:44 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

I'll take this as a re: towards me. I'm not panicking. I'm giving an option as to what he asked. The only thing that can be done now is hope there is someone in Congress who has a better plan and has a means to introduce it. Either give it away completely to a republican or get as many people to look at it and adopt portions of it I don't know the specifics of the new tax bill and even if I did, I don't have a degree in understanding most of that. I rely on people like KwarK to help fill in the blanks.

As for the GOP passing anything that resembles good policy, that's laughable. For you to sit behind your screen and laud this as anything but a clusterfuck of epic proportions, shows you don't either care about those less fortunate, want to see the country go down in smoke (sure won't be any civil war), or you're just apathetic and cynical about everything in life. Which I don't have kind words for. If you want the GOP to pass meaningful legislation, they first have to understand what those two words mean together. Looking at their healthcare debacle and this bill, they still have no clue what they are doing except what the rich tell them. So feel good.

Democrats are always concerned about debt, as far as I can tell. They just have never had an idea about how to introduce good legislation that isn't going to cripple and eradicate the middle class and empower the wealthy more than it already does. They care more about the everyday person than the GOP, but not enough to figure out the more important aspects of governing. Most of these people are unqualified to be in the position of power they are in.

On December 02 2017 23:48 Gorsameth wrote:

I'll explain it to you again.

This bill scraps the individual mandate, the bit of law that says you must buy insurance.
It does not scrap the pre-existing condition clause, the bit of law that says insurers cannot decline you for an illness you already have.

This means I can cancel my health insurance, if I get seriously ill I will apply for an insurance, I cannot be denied.
Now the insurer has to pay for my illness.
I get better, I cancel my health insurance again.

The only way the insurer can make money is if my monthly premium is higher then my monthly cost, Which is always high because I only have insurance when I'm ill.

This is utterly unsustainable.
The system cannot work with the pre-existing condition clause but without the mandate. No country in the world has this.

The Alexander-Murray bill doesn't stabilize the system because the patient just put a bullet through his brain.

The only option is to remove the pre-existing condition clause, at which point we are back to pre ACA levels where anyone with a long term illness is utterly FUCKED the moment they lose their current health plan (which they can't afford in the first place because their premiums are astronomical because no one healthy is paying in for the sick).

The far-reaching implications of the Republican tax plan may include a sneaky attempt to use the sweeping piece of legislation to attack abortion rights.

Nearly 100 pages into the House version of the bill — and likely in the Senate bill as well, though Republicans have not yet released the text of the bill to the public, despite their intent to vote on it Friday afternoon — Republicans attempt to codify an anti-choice priority known as fetal personhood. The provision is, on its face, a move to allow fetuses to be named as beneficiaries of popular college savings plans known as 529 accounts.

“Nothing shall present an unborn child from being treated as a designated beneficiary or an individual under this section,” the bill reads.

It goes on to define the term “unborn child” as a “child in utero,” and then, even more explicitly, “The term ‘child in utero’ means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”

President Donald Trump has called the Republican tax plan a “big beautiful, Christmas present” for the country, and, at least where anti-choice activists are concerned, he’s right.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Backers of a U.S.-Russian plan to build nuclear reactors across the Middle East bragged after the U.S. election they had backing from Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Flynn for a project that required lifting sanctions on Russia, documents reviewed by Reuters show.

The documents, which have not previously been made public, reveal new aspects of the plan, including the proposed involvement of a Russian company currently under U.S. sanctions to manufacture nuclear equipment. That company, major engineering and construction firm OMZ OAO, declined to comment.

The documents do not show whether Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, took concrete steps to push the proposal with Trump and his aides. But they do show that Washington-based nuclear power consultancy ACU Strategic Partners believed that both Flynn, who had worked as an adviser to the firm as late as mid-2016, and Trump were firmly in its corner.

“Donald Trump’s election as president is a game changer because Trump’s highest foreign policy priority is to stabilize U.S. relations with Russia which are now at a historical low-point,” ACU’s managing director, Alex Copson, wrote in a Nov. 16, 2016 email to potential business partners, eight days after the election.

On December 03 2017 01:35 xDaunt wrote:
The most important and impactful feature of the tax bill is the slashing of corporate tax rates, which needs to happen. Most everything else is a comparative rounding error. All of the hysteria surrounding this bill is grossly unwarranted.

On December 03 2017 01:46 Sermokala wrote:

But xdaunt if they don't pass a budget at all for the ten years the worst thing that will happen is that the debt will go up by a whole trillion dollars. That means america will be a third world nation and civil war will happen. Don't forget great depression guaranteed if they don't pass a new budget for the next few years for some reason.

On December 03 2017 01:35 xDaunt wrote:
The most important and impactful feature of the tax bill is the slashing of corporate tax rates, which needs to happen. Most everything else is a comparative rounding error. All of the hysteria surrounding this bill is grossly unwarranted.

On December 03 2017 01:51 kollin wrote:

Is it not 1.5 trillion to the budget deficit, which is effectively tripling it?