Politics, Woo
Oct. 1st, 2013 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skysailorSo this is my take on the Republican side of the shutdown shit. Disclaimer here that I don't actually agree with these views, but I felt it a good idea to try to articulate/get a good understanding of how the thinking goes.
Okay, so the Affordable Care Act exists, but the Republicans have opposed it from the beginning because it
1) forces healthy people to buy health insurance they may not need,
2) disallows insurance that doesn't cover a laundry list of things many people may not want from posting on the marketplace,
3) increases taxes and has, anecdotally, caused businesses to start firing/part-timing workers (all the more exemplified by the administration's own decision to delay the employer mandate - and look, the administration did that, but says it can't delay anything applying to individuals) and
4) looks like a first step to a single-payer system that could become very expensive while we're already having long-term debt issues and already have a huge portion of our budget allocated to entitlements (in fact, we already spend more per capita on healthcare than any other developed nation, I think?)
They think it's gonna fuck over jobs and make more people poor when we're already in crisis, which itself will increase the amount of money that has to go into our entitlement spending.
Because of this and other reasons, they oppose the ACA in any and all legal ways they can - and note, they're only using paths legally available to them. They're just using every available legal path they can find.
So here it comes, yet another legal opportunity to do /something/ to chip away at this massive piece of legislation. They start with a high opening bid that's still less than what they really want so they can get something, anything, to make things better. But the Democrats not only won't negotiate, but accuse them of hostage-taking and terrorism, which is /holy fuck/, right? So they lower their offer, same thing. Lower their offer, same thing. They don't really see themselves as the sole cause of the crisis because there wouldn't be a crisis if the Democrats had compromised, which they've previously been willing to do but suddenly won't do. Worse, the Demos are claiming Republicans are the only obstinate ones. And they won't even compromise on aspects politically unpopular in the Democratic party, like the medical devices tax, and won't even delay the health insurance purchasing requirement like they've done for Big Business.
...of course, not everyone's going along this line of reasonable reason and some people are just extremists and some other people are just trying to manage the extremists without losing all power they have, etc., but you know that already.
Okay, so the Affordable Care Act exists, but the Republicans have opposed it from the beginning because it
1) forces healthy people to buy health insurance they may not need,
2) disallows insurance that doesn't cover a laundry list of things many people may not want from posting on the marketplace,
3) increases taxes and has, anecdotally, caused businesses to start firing/part-timing workers (all the more exemplified by the administration's own decision to delay the employer mandate - and look, the administration did that, but says it can't delay anything applying to individuals) and
4) looks like a first step to a single-payer system that could become very expensive while we're already having long-term debt issues and already have a huge portion of our budget allocated to entitlements (in fact, we already spend more per capita on healthcare than any other developed nation, I think?)
They think it's gonna fuck over jobs and make more people poor when we're already in crisis, which itself will increase the amount of money that has to go into our entitlement spending.
Because of this and other reasons, they oppose the ACA in any and all legal ways they can - and note, they're only using paths legally available to them. They're just using every available legal path they can find.
So here it comes, yet another legal opportunity to do /something/ to chip away at this massive piece of legislation. They start with a high opening bid that's still less than what they really want so they can get something, anything, to make things better. But the Democrats not only won't negotiate, but accuse them of hostage-taking and terrorism, which is /holy fuck/, right? So they lower their offer, same thing. Lower their offer, same thing. They don't really see themselves as the sole cause of the crisis because there wouldn't be a crisis if the Democrats had compromised, which they've previously been willing to do but suddenly won't do. Worse, the Demos are claiming Republicans are the only obstinate ones. And they won't even compromise on aspects politically unpopular in the Democratic party, like the medical devices tax, and won't even delay the health insurance purchasing requirement like they've done for Big Business.
...of course, not everyone's going along this line of reasonable reason and some people are just extremists and some other people are just trying to manage the extremists without losing all power they have, etc., but you know that already.
