I recommend we correspond with our local state representatives to encourage them to formulate legislation to allow each state to create its own single-payer insurance program. Every working citizen in the state pays taxes. Healthcare should be considered a right for everyone in the population. The federal congress has been bought out by the people who are not subject to the constraints of health insurance policies and who use their clout to maintain the working classes in a form of slavery to their economic policies.
Let’s get our state governments to initiate single payer insurance which covers every one who resides in the state and pays taxes (either employment or sales taxes).
I understand what you’re trying to say, but… the Republicans have control of all three branches of government at the moment: the White House; Congress; and the Supreme Court and Federal Bench. The fact that they can’t manage to pass a bill (for better or worse) isn’t a reflection on the Democrats. They don’t need 60 votes in the Senate to pass a bill: they need a simple majority, and they have 52+1 votes at their disposal (including Pence).
Power is not “near the balance point.” Power is firmly in the hands of the GOP, and a minority of voters (seriously, check out the numbers: minority win for POTUS; minority wins in the Senate; minority wins in the House) in the US decided that. The only thing keeping them from passing some kind of comprehensive healthcare reform is their incompetence or their reluctance. Everyone is free to have an opinion as to why they can’t function as a government, and I certainly have one. Pretty hard to blame it on Democrats at this point…the Senate even did away with the filibuster to make sure that the minority party doesn’t have even a procedural leg to stand on to obstruct the Republican agenda. It’s not the fault of the minority party that the majority party doesn’t seem to have an agenda (on healthcare and any number of other things) that they can come together to pass.
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That isn’t true, at all! If the House passes a bill to the Senate, with a GOP president, the Senate only needs a simple majority (for which they only need 49 votes at the moment) to send it to the White House. I’m not talking about rules for the Election. Just pointing out that the majority government represents a minority of the citizens, and they have no constitutional or procedural hurdles in the way of passing an agenda.
Is it partisan to point out that the GOP can’t seem to agree about healthcare? It’s not the Democrats standing in the way of action: in this country, minority opinions are allowed to be expressed. But minority opinion can’t keep the majority from passing it’s agenda. It’s not partisan to say that what we’ve seen so far from this current administration and Congress is absolute, complete inability to pass a bill.
Tim, check your constitutional law. The 60 vote “requirement” is a procedural issue that the GOP-led Senate can bypass, if they actually have the will and the votes to. That’s not partisan, that’s just law. You can read more about it in any number of places, but a quite simple place to start is with news articles about the AHCA bogging down in the Senate itself:
One of the biggest challenges the House bill faces is that in order for it to be eligible for simple majority vote – instead of a 60-vote threshold usually required for major bills – it must meet special requirements under budget reconciliation rules.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/04/politics/senate-health-care-bill/index.html
The “requirements” of 60 votes are not requirements under the law. They are procedural hurdles that the GOP leadership can suspend, if they want to. The fact they aren’t willing to incur the political cost of suspending the rules (as they did for approving bench and SCOTUS appointments earlier this year) isn’t germane to the conversation. If they can get agreement within the GOP, they can pass AHCA with a simple majority in the Senate. They just don’t want to because they know it’s political suicide.
And that ain’t partisanship, that’s just fact. Regardless, I’m not a Democrat, so I don’t see the point of blowing off disagreement as “partisanship.” It’s OK to disagree. We disagree on this, which is fine. But don’t imply that the Democrats are standing in the way of a comprehensive health care bill. The GOP is able to do that, without having to compromise with the Democrats. The issue is that they can’t achieve compromises within their own party.
I’m not taking anything you say personally. I just want to be very clear. If the Republicans are able and willing to put aside their own internal differences, there is nothing preventing them from passing a comprehensive healthcare bill. That’s it. Nothing else.
It is not useful, at this point, to suggest that the party in power across all branches of government somehow needs the cooperation of the minority party in order to rule. That is just not the case.
Cheers
Fella’s remember that POTUS will just tell the majority party (his) to simply disregard the 60 vote requirement, and invoke NUCLEAR, as what happened with the President’s Supreme Court Nominee - Neil Gorsuch. Politics is a joke in this country anymore because they do not know how to work together? That’s because it’s all about themselves, hence nothing gets done!
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