October 6, 2013 by David K. Sutton
Government Shutdown: Republicans Make For A Disingenuous Negotiating ‘Partner’
The Senate passed a comprehensive budget plan back in the spring that would have ended the sequester cuts. It’s no surprise the Senate budget was dead on arrival in the House. Republicans refused to negotiate until a last minute offer by Speaker John Boehner to appoint a conference committee the night before the government would shut down. It was literally minutes before midnight. This was something they could have done for the past six months, but instead Republicans now blame Democrats and President Obama for failing to negotiate over the budget.
What is clear to me is that once Republicans lost big time in the 2012 election, they decided it was time to shut down the government. Ever since Republicans took control of the House in the 2010 election they have threatened shutdown, and each time President Obama has offered huge concessions to avoid closing the doors. This is why we have the sequester in the first place. So after Republicans were handed their asses last November, they hatched a plan to threaten a government shutdown. What they couldn’t achieve through the election process they would instead get through extortion. And this time they were indeed serious, it was going to be full repeal of the Affordable Care Act or bust.
And I don’t think Republicans are stupid, so they knew this tactic would lead to a government shutdown because this was one area where President Obama and Democrats were not going to offer concessions. Oh sure, I bet there are a few deluded Republicans who thought that they could break the president yet again, and well, there’s still time for that to happen I guess, but most Republicans knew this is precisely how it would play out.
So regardless of your opinion of the Affordable Care Act, let’s be honest about who is responsible for the shutdown. You are free to despise Obamacare. You are free to support your Republican representative in yet another vote to defund Obamacare. But you are being disingenuous when you blame President Obama for the shutdown you brought on yourself.
Obamacare has been law for 42 months. It finally went into full effect on October 1st. Regardless of your opinion of the Affordable Care Act, do you honestly believe the Democrats who voted for it, and the president who signed it into law, were going to dismantle it before it had a chance to work? I understand you think it won’t work, but you have to recognize that Democrats and the president believe it will work. So what could possible make you believe they had any incentive to “negotiate” the terms of it’s dismantling? As Police Sergeant Al Powell once said, “Why don’t you wake up and smell what you’re shoveling.”
