A brief update from the United States of Lunatics

The Tea Party House is like a spoiled brat who puts his hand over your mouth and pinches your nose until you pass out in order to get his way.  

Yes, it was just last summer that the GOP knocked the stock market down just with the threat of a shutdown, now their apparently intent on going through with it.  Too bad we all have to pay the price for their childish behaviour again.

Just so you know:

(T)he health care act at the center of this storm (will) continue its implementation process during a shutdown. That's because its funds aren't dependent on the congressional budget process.

The ACA is the law, the Supreme Court called it constitutional, and its happening anyway, even if the government defaults on paying its other bills.

Further, it would require a Democrat Senate to approve and a Obama to not veto getting rid of the ACA.  As he believes it a signature piece of his Presidency and he believes it important to try to cover the 10s of millions of people without insurance, it is completely irrational to believe that he will do away with it OR really even that he should. 

For comparison, do you think Bush would vetoed a law that would have erased the Bush tax cuts?  Of course he would, even though the tax cuts blew massive holes in our budget with little economic benefit (aside from leaving further in troubh when a real crisis occurred).

So please, if you haven't, write your Representative and Senator, and tell them to do they sane thing:  pass a no condition change in the debt limit.  

We simply don't have the time for this fantasy play.

Super G

PS   I recently sold my business of more than 15 years.  During that time I paid about $9 million in salaries, paid a ton of taxes, and still provided my employees with insurance, even in the one year that I didn't make a dime.  I think the medical device tax in the ACA is poorly implemented and a bad thing.   However, there are good things and concepts in the ACA and it is the only serious attempt to a real issue that 10s of millions of people don't have insurance.  In short, I know what providing health care is like for a small business because I did it.  Being an employer is hard work, but I never accepted and I never will accept that we so economically inept that we cannot take on healthcare, by some approximation, for all.   Fee for service medicine, the insurance industry, and the medical malpractice business have all badly warped medicine in the US, so that cannot remain the status quo.  Perhaps after the tantrums are over and the damage is done, it will shake a little sense and we'll see people actually start trying to govern.