{"id":3540,"date":"2013-09-19T13:30:53","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T13:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=3540"},"modified":"2013-09-19T13:30:53","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T13:30:53","slug":"help-me-understand-this-budget-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3540","title":{"rendered":"Help me understand this budget fight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>A lot of things go over my head. I&#8217;ll admit to being a bit slow on the uptake at times.<\/p>\n<p>Take the budget battle that&#8217;s building into a donnybrook &#8212; yet again &#8212; on Capitol Hill. I&#8217;m puzzled over why the Republican congressional leadership has allowed the tea party wing take it over and threaten to hijack the government because it dislikes a duly enacted law that&#8217;s been upheld by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>The Affordable Care Act has become a bargaining chip in the budget battle. The right-wing crazies in Congress say they&#8217;ll approve a continuing resolution on the budget only if it defunds the ACA, President Obama&#8217;s signature legislative achievement. If they don&#8217;t get the resolution approved in about 10 days, the government shuts down.<\/p>\n<p>Think about this for a moment. We&#8217;re still at war in Afghanistan; Social Security checks will need to go out to those who need them; so will veterans disability payments; roads are crumbling; Colorado residents are digging out from horrific weather events in their state &#8230; and there might be more weather-related misery occurring in Texas as storm clouds migrate north from Mexico.<\/p>\n<p>You get the picture, yes?<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner, a so-called &#8220;establishment Republican&#8221; who&#8217;s been whipsawed by the tea party cabal within his caucus, says the GOP-led House has &#8220;no interest&#8221; in shutting down the government. Who&#8217;s he kidding?<\/p>\n<p>Everyone who hates &#8220;Obamacare&#8221; has forgotten that Congress passed the law, the president signed it, it survived a Supreme Court challenge when the high court ruled that the law indeed is constitutional. It has been settled.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, the Affordable Care Act hasn&#8217;t even been implemented fully &#8212; and still congressional Republicans have declared it a &#8220;failed policy.&#8221; Aren&#8217;t there independent studies out there showing that premiums have increased at a slower rate than predicted and aren&#8217;t there 30 million or so Americans who are about to have health insurance?<\/p>\n<p>The moronic push to defund the health care law would deny those folks insurance. That&#8217;s a good thing for the country? <\/p>\n<p>While our so-called &#8220;leaders&#8221; wage budget war, a lot of other pressing needs are being ignored. Does anyone remember immigration reform?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t understand a lot of things. This battle is really pushing me to the limit.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of things go over my head. I&#8217;ll admit to being a bit slow on the uptake at times. Take the budget battle that&#8217;s building into a donnybrook &#8212; yet again &#8212; on Capitol Hill. I&#8217;m puzzled over why the Republican congressional leadership has allowed the tea party wing take it over and threaten &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=3540\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Help me understand this budget fight<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[164,540,1698,1978,2250,2523,3376],"class_list":["post-3540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-affordable-care-act","tag-barack-obama","tag-federal-budget-battle","tag-government-shutdown","tag-immigration-reform","tag-john-boehner","tag-obamacare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}