We are doomed!
Posted by Storo 7 years, 9 months ago to Government
WE ARE DOOMED!
So a Republican controlled House, Senate and White House cannot find enough votes to repeal Obamacare. Even to pass Obamacare-lite, which I suppose repeals something, but leaves the mandates, taxes, and other aspects in place.
This shows that the many "repeal" votes taken during the Obama Administration were, as we all suspected, show votes by the GOP with no substance.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she would not vote for the latest repeal bill because of cuts included in the bill to Medicaid. Therein lies our doom.
If there is ever going to be any fiscal sanity brought to bear in Washington, and if the spending deficits and the National Debt is to ever be tackled, it MUST be by way of reforming entitlements. This would require changing of eligibility requirements, and an overall reduction in the size, scope and cost of these programs. But there is clearly no stomach for this among the Ruling Class in Washington because it would endanger the re-election hopes of anyone who votes to make these cuts. Why? Because 40% of the American people rely on government handouts to make ends meet. 45% are on food stamps. Illegal aliens - 20 Million of them - are allowed access to government benefits, making a bad situation even worse.
Given the lack of any appetite for cutting government spending on social programs, the only alternative path, short of armed revolution, is continuing down the road we are on, with increasing deficits, added trillions to the national debt, and eventual financial collapse. I.E. Doom.
http://mrkt.news/2-charts-show-next-recession-will-blow-us-budget/
So a Republican controlled House, Senate and White House cannot find enough votes to repeal Obamacare. Even to pass Obamacare-lite, which I suppose repeals something, but leaves the mandates, taxes, and other aspects in place.
This shows that the many "repeal" votes taken during the Obama Administration were, as we all suspected, show votes by the GOP with no substance.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she would not vote for the latest repeal bill because of cuts included in the bill to Medicaid. Therein lies our doom.
If there is ever going to be any fiscal sanity brought to bear in Washington, and if the spending deficits and the National Debt is to ever be tackled, it MUST be by way of reforming entitlements. This would require changing of eligibility requirements, and an overall reduction in the size, scope and cost of these programs. But there is clearly no stomach for this among the Ruling Class in Washington because it would endanger the re-election hopes of anyone who votes to make these cuts. Why? Because 40% of the American people rely on government handouts to make ends meet. 45% are on food stamps. Illegal aliens - 20 Million of them - are allowed access to government benefits, making a bad situation even worse.
Given the lack of any appetite for cutting government spending on social programs, the only alternative path, short of armed revolution, is continuing down the road we are on, with increasing deficits, added trillions to the national debt, and eventual financial collapse. I.E. Doom.
http://mrkt.news/2-charts-show-next-recession-will-blow-us-budget/
Previous comments... You are currently on page 4.
I usually think the problem is without Constitutional limits, people naturally vote themselves taxpayer money. Many people consume more calories than they should (I do) or spend more money than they have. Maybe representatives really do reflect us.
I also think politicians exploit "wedge" issues to give people a chance to be nasty in a sanctimonious way at the expense of accepting the business-as-usual bipartisan consensus. For some reason if it were Gary Johnson going up against Bernie Sanders and people were all fired up, I could accept it because they have radically different views. It's discouraging when people are fired up about almost nothing, as if they're pathetically looking for only the thinnest of pretenses to be a jerk, and for some reason they've chosen this. It makes the problem of getting the gov't to respect Constitutional limits seem intractable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdqyG...
It's over. As a buddy of mine used to say - "O-f'ing-ver!"
I do not think we've had a bad run of luck on the type of people elected to office. I think we have a system that rewards politicians who DO things and makes it difficult for anyone wanting to UNDO things to get elected.
I see the Constitution as attempting to prevent this state of affairs, but it's not working. The gov't HAS power over a large segment of the economy and people's lives, and to get elected politicians must promise to use it to DO things for people.
I do not have a solution; I think we'll decay in a slow undramatic fashion, which is a sad thought. It's tempting to think "If we do not start electing people who can contain gov't, the country will collapse in an apocalyptic fashion, leaving behind Utnapishtim, Noah, and other righteous people to build a better world." I think think this is a very simplistic flood-myth fantasy.
I like the idea of a Convention of States. Right now the Constitution's not working because there's no authority making it work. There must be a way to fix it.
John Galt would kick your statist ass out of the Gulch.
(sarcasm)
I spoke to our first selectman about taking our town back from the state. He said it would be a great idea, if it is possible, because if they didn't take our tax money generated locally we would never need a loan or grant ever again and therefore never accountable to our progressive state government either.
We will be speaking again on possibly getting our local healthcare clinic to begin a program of taking care of our "individual" health emergencies for a set monthly fee, (like a local co-op)...thereby avoiding the health insurance trap and to hell with the congress and federal health care lawlessness.
He is willing to listen to other ideas I have to better prepare our town for the dim future we face. ie, local currency, food etc.
There are probably a handful who actually want to scale back the government but it is far short of a majority.
A full repeal without replacement is the only outcome I wish to see.
This situation is no surprise to me. I always expect Republicans spend equally to Democrats, borrow money even faster, and allow gov't to become even more intrusive, and they're doing just that. So I tend to vote Democrat, but the Democrats do not want to reduce gov't and debt, they just want to increase them a little slower-- an unimportant distinction. This is why I hold my Democratic and Republican senators (Baldwin and Johnson) both in equal regard. I actually think they're great people. I know Baldwin. She grew up down the road from me. But they're in a system that accepts a starting point that gov't will be expensive, intrusive, and funded by debt.
The compromises that come out of this system are everyone gets a little spending for themselves. It's ever everyone agreeing to cut spending. Many of the people who are indignant that we cannot stop spending on medicine for the poor would not be willing to dismantle our enormous military or not have a huge chunk of our population incarcerated or under supervision of the criminal justice system for non-violent drug offenses. Just as people who want to go back to the federal social safety net the Founders wanted, supporters of the military industrial complex will say "but people will die!" if you suggest returning to a well-regulated militia with a limited standing army for defense and if we returned to pre-20th century drug laws.
I do not know the solution or how it will play out. My sense is we can keep kicking the can for a long time, more than a century. The empire will decay like Rome, and in the future the US will be a decent place to live just as Rome is today.