Wow, the Wall Street banksters strike back

[wgrr]

Originally Posted by Krazygrrl

How can you have super majorities as a president, and still have your hands tied? That is an excuse inability, nothing more. Not even a budget was able to be passed under Obama. Yet, a wildly unpopular budget busting health care bill was passed. Passed in a way that made the US Congress look very much like the Russian Duma under Stalin - like a "rubber stamp" legislature. That, my friend, is very disturbing. Yes, quite right, Obama isn't a Dictator. Neither was George W. Bush or Bill Clinton, and both have proven themselves considerable more able than the Hawaiian.

KG you are wrong on several counts.

Due to a Senate rule it takes a 60% super majority in the Senate to bring cloture to a bill so it can be voted on. Obama never had what you think of as a super majority in the Senate. At best, with, Bernie Sanders, they could only scare up about 52 to 54 votes trying to end the record number of Republican filibusters. If the filibuster is broken the vote would have only required 51 votes to pass. In the case of a 50/50 tie the Vice President breaks the tie. The truth is most of the legislation made it out of the House and most of it died in the Senate.

The health care bill in no way was "rubber stamped" after fierce debate in the Senate it passed. After fierce debate in the House it passed in a very close vote. That is about as democratic as it gets. Republicans could have easily blocked it in the Senate, but Republicans did not. Why?; because they wanted to use it to run against Obama in 2012. Yes, it was wildly unpopular because it did not provide any real competition to the for profit health insurance companies. A majority of Americans wanted a public option, if not a single payer system. I was against the bill because all it was was a mash up of Republican proposed ideas from paste debates. "Budget busting" yes in the Republican talking points world. In fact The CBO scored it as deficit reducer.

"In March 20, 2010, CBO released its final cost estimate for the reconciliation act, which encompassed the effects of both pieces of legislation. Table 1 (on page 5) provides a broad summary and Table 2 offers a detailed breakdown of the budgetary effects of the two pieces of legislation. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting both pieces of legislation will produce a net REDUCTION in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010-2019 period." (emphasis is mine)

Bill Clinton is a friend. My wifes law partner for many years worked at the Arkansas AG's office when Bill was the AG of Arkansas. My father in law was the dean of the UofA law school and was responsible for hiring Bill and Hillary to teach there. Need I go on. That "Hawaiian" (Kenyan, black man, communist, Hitler, Fascist, etc....) in the White House now makes Clinton look like a light weight in the brains department. He makes Bush II look like an idiot. Well, I admit, that is not hard to do.

Here is the link to the CBO numbers on the health care bill should you care to read the crunched numbers

http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/health.cfm