Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Thanks for nothing Paul Ryan

 



In negotiations there is a saying "shoot for the stars and you might get the moon." Basically ask for everything you could dream about and you might be able to end up with close to what you really wanted. Republicans in Congress have never learned this lesson. They shoot for their nuts and typically end up shooting their own feet. Meaning they start out asking for less than they should dream about and end up with only looking spineless with a bloody foot.
Enter Paul Ryan. I honestly thought last year when Romney picked him as VP that it would help the ticket to have two people who could really understand business and economics in that election. Well that was wrong.

Now he goes to the WSJ and writes an op-ed and completely forgets the main reason Ted Cruz and Mike Lee forced this shut down. Obamacare.

Look I understand that in negotiations you have to make sacrifices. Everyone needs to walk away feeling like they "won" something. That leads to the ability to have further negotiations that work. The "leadership" in the GOP has been so horrible at this that the base always feels as though we got rolled. Well now is the time to stop that.

See when this first started we had a great plan, defund Obamacare, that was a decent starting spot. It would allow for gives in negotiations, we could have gone down to delaying for a year, but we offered that before we ever got anyone to the table.

I will admit that I do like the idea of sending over the small individual appropriations bills and make the Senate pass or reject each one. But at least each program gets vetted individually. Granted nothing of substance has been removed from any of them to lower the costs but we can get to that later.

However this plan of Ryan's is nothing but surrender. If he was so interested in this then it should have been added to the original proposal. That is how this works. This proposal of his is no more than face saving surrender to make it look like we got something.

DO NOT fall for it. Make sure Congress knows the only way we reopen the government is when Obamacare is defunded.

Add to that the ability to add the pressure of a debt ceiling fight and we might be able to get somewhere. Unlike others I believe that nothing should be done on the debt ceiling until at such time the government shut down has been completed. Do not merge them. The House should pass the Faith and Credit Act and force Treasury to pay the debt first. Then hey lookie there no default. Now we have all the pressure we need.

However like I have said before this current level of spending should be the starting point for all future budgets. Obviously we don't need 17% of our government if it is non-essential. Therefore we should not be paying for it.

No comments:

Post a Comment