House Republicans Credit Ted Cruz As Government Shutdown Looms

Source: Huffington Post

During the meeting, GOP leaders announced plans to advance a bill that would keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30 in exchange for a one-year delay of Obamacare and repeal of its medical device tax. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) declared the proposal dead on arrival a couple hours later.

But conservatives were jubilant as they left the meeting, and they identified Cruz as the force that pushed a reluctant GOP leadership to the brink.

"I think Ted Cruz did a huge service to the nation and to the cause of Republicanism," Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) told The Huffington Post.

"He played an excellent role," said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). "I think what he's done is strengthened our hand. He's made the case that we need to act and act decisively, and so I think we have a lot to credit him for."

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/29/ted-cruz-house-republicans_n_4014071.html

The Alantic - "Why This Is Not Just 'Washington Breakdown."

Here is a nice story that pushes against the typical main stream media meme of blaming both parties for failing to compromise and placing the blame squarely on crazies in the Republican party.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/why-this-is-not-just-washington-breakdown-in-3-graphs-and-1-story/280099/

In essence, the hard-line faction of the House GOP is demanding the following, as recent NYT, WSJ, and WaPo articles, apart from today's, have made clear:

EITHER the Administration must undo the main legislative accomplishment of the president's time in office, which he passed despite filibuster resistance four years ago and which the Supreme Court has since held constitutional;
OR ELSE all other business of the government will be halted, and the full faith and credit of the United States will be called into question, with unknown but likely bad world-financial consequences.

This is not what either John Boehner or Mitch McConnell says he stands for. I have no doubt that Obama could ultimately strike some compromise with even McConnell's filibuster-happy Senate Republicans and any kind of normal Republican majority in the House. In the end Democrats would complain that Obama had caved, Republicans would complain about Beltway insiderism, but some deal would result.

Yet enough of today's absolutist House members think in exactly these Either/Or terms that normal compromise is simply impossible. Compromise itself is as much their stated enemy as is Obamacare. If you're urging a search for "common ground," please tell me where you see any in this case. I argued recently that the closest parallels in our history were to the John C. Calhoun era before the Civil War. If you think that's unfair, please tell me another case in which a dissatisfied minority threatened to shut down the entire government, and if necessary renege on the national debt, unless a sitting President agrees to reverse his hardest-won policy accomplishment.

Clinton says Obama needs to call the GOP's 'bluff'

Source: CNN

Washington (CNN) - Former President Bill Clinton, who sat in the Oval Office during the last government shutdown, supports President Barack Obama's refusal to negotiate with congressional Republicans and argues he should call their "bluff" as the government nears a possible shutdown and default.

"He could stop it, but the price of - the current price of stopping it is higher than the price of letting the Republicans do it and taking their medicine," he said in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

Clinton went on to say that House Republicans, having realized they have little chance of pushing through legislative items their party wants, have dug in and scrapped any plans of negotiating. "Give us what we want or we're going to shut the government down," Clinton said, describing how he sees the GOP strategy.

"I think under those circumstances, the president has to take the position he's taken," he continued. "Which is 'You - not me - you voted to spend this money.' … You can't negotiate over that. And I think he's right not to."


Read more: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/29/clinton-says-obama-needs-to-call-the-gops-bluff/?hpt=hp_t1

"A Government Shutdown And Debt Ceiling Guide For Journalists Who Don't Want To Be Complete Idiot"

The Sunday news shows are replete with examples of journalists trying to push a false equivalence narrative suggesting that Democrats are equally at fault for a shut down and that Republicans are doing Democrats a favor by considering an increase in the debt ceiling or funding the federal government. This is not gridlock. This is GOP nihilism at its worse.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/27/government-shutdown-debt-ceiling_n_4004408.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

The only thing I'd add to this is that anyone who suggests in the future that raising the debt ceiling constitutes a "concession" to Democrats is also committing malpractice.

Among the many examples Fallows cites of journalists employing these best practices is the Sept. 27 edition of the Diane Rehm show, in which "panelists Ruth Marcus, Janet Hook, and Todd Purdum all said with a bluntness unusual for a D.C.-based talk show that we are witnessing the effects not of gridlock but of one party's internal crisis." Check it out here.

Naturally, this is a 100 percent accurate take on the matter. This is the GOP's intra-party crisis, not a congressional one. Democrats don't receive any benefit from avoiding a shutdown or a default. Nor do they impose anything on the GOP by calling for a government that continues to run, or a global economy that continues to exist. Republicans are free to stage debates, make arguments, attempt to pass laws, try to strike bargains, and seek redress in the normal cycle of campaigns and elections. At the moment, their party is having a difficult time deciding if it wants to stick with traditional American governance, or swap it out for a series of violent threats on the nation's economic security.

This should be a really easy story to get right.

NY Times - "House Leaves U.S. on Brink of Shutdown"

WASHINGTON — The federal government on Saturday barreled toward its first shutdown in 17 years after House Republicans, choosing a hard line, demanded a one-year delay of President Obama’s health care law and the repeal of a tax to pay for the law before approving any funds to keep the government running.

Republicans emerged from a closed-door meeting Saturday unified and confident that they had the votes to delay the health care law and eliminate a tax on medical devices that partly pays for it. But before the House had even voted, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said that when the Senate reconvened on Monday it would strip out both provisions.

The House’s action all but assured that large parts of the government would be shuttered as of 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday. More than 800,000 federal workers deemed nonessential faced furloughs; millions more could be working without paychecks.

A separate House Republican bill would also ensure that military personnel continued to be paid in the event of a government shutdown, an acknowledgment that a shutdown was likely. The health law delay and the troop funding bill were set for House passage Saturday.

The Atlantic - "Your False-Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead"

Nice discussion of how the mainstream corporate media is enabling Republicans by once again portraying Democrats and Republicans as being equally inflexible and resistant to compromise.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/your-false-equivalence-guide-to-the-days-ahead/280062/

As a matter of journalism, any story that presents the disagreements as a "standoff," a "showdown," a "failure of leadership," a sign of "partisan gridlock," or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement, represents a failure of journalism*** and an inability to see or describe what is going on. For instance: the "dig in their heels" headline you see below, which is from a proprietary newsletter I read this morning, and about which I am leaving off the identifying details.

This isn't "gridlock." It is a ferocious struggle within one party, between its traditionalists and its radical factions, with results that unfortunately can harm all the rest of us -- and, should there be a debt default, could harm the rest of the world too.

* * *
** The debt-ceiling vote, of course, is not about future spending decisions. It is about whether to cover expenditures the Congress has already authorized. There is no sane reason for subjecting this to a repeated vote. And there is no precedent for serious threats not to honor federal debt -- as opposed to symbolic anti-Administration protest votes, which both parties have cast over the years. Nor for demanding the reversal of major legislation as a condition for routine government operations.

*** For examples of coverage that plainly states what is going on, here is a small sampling: Greg Sargent, Derek Thompson, John Gilmour (on why Ronald Reagan believed in compromise), Jonathan Rauch, Brian Beutler, Jonathan Chait, Andrew Sullivan (also here), Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas, Dan Froomkin. On today's Diane Rehm show News Roundup, panelists Ruth Marcus, Janet Hook, and Todd Purdum all said with a bluntness unusual for a D.C.-based talk show that we are witnessing the effects not of gridlock but of one party's internal crisis.

Republican hard-liners block strategy to avoid federal government shutdown

Source: Washington Post

Washington stumbled toward a shutdown as the Republican Party’s rebellious right wing on Thursday blocked a strategy by House Speaker John A. Boehner for navigating a series of deadlines to keep the government funded and avoid a first-ever default.

Boehner (R-Ohio) and his leadership team revealed the first step of that plan to rank-and-file lawmakers early Thursday, urging conservatives to shift their ­assault on President Obama’s health-care law to the coming fight over the federal debt limit.

That would allow lawmakers in the meantime to try to reach an agreement on a plan to fund federal agencies into the new fiscal year, which begins Tuesday, and avoid a shutdown.

But about two dozen hard-liners rejected that approach, saying they will not talk about the debt limit until the battle over government funding is resolved.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/republican-hard-liners-block-strategy-to-avoid-federal-government-shutdown/2013/09/26/ae905f9e-26e4-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html

Officials Detail Premium Costs of Health Plan

Source: NY Times

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday provided the first detailed look at premiums to be charged to consumers for health insurance in 36 states where the federal government will run new insurance markets starting next week, highlighting costs it said were generally lower than previous estimates.

Administration officials released the information, central to their campaign to persuade millions of uninsured Americans to sign up for coverage, even as Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, waged a fierce fight on the Senate floor, risking a government shutdown if necessary to eliminate financing for the expansion of coverage under President Obama’s health care law.

The White House sought to focus attention on what it portrayed as the financial advantages of the health insurance program, which is set to start accepting customers on Oct. 1.

“I can tell you right now that in many states across the country, if you’re, say, a 27-year-old young woman, don’t have health insurance, you get on that exchange, you’re going to be able to purchase high-quality health insurance for less than the cost of your cellphone bill,” Mr. Obama said Tuesday, speaking at a health care forum in New York City with former President Bill Clinton.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/25/us/politics/officials-detail-premium-costs-of-health-plan.html?_r=0

Conspiracy theorist targets Sandy Hook family

Source: Tampa Bay Times

Jillian Soto remembers the day she stumbled across a website that showed photos of her at her sister's funeral — and was horrified to read accusations that she had faked grief as part of an elaborate government hoax.

Only a month earlier, Victoria Soto, 27, had been shot down while sheltering her first-grade students at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The Dec. 14 massacre in Newtown, Conn., left 20 children and seven adults dead.

* * *
Conspiracy theorists have thrived on the Internet, producing hundreds of such websites that challenge official reports and claim nefarious plots behind emotionally charged events — despite evidence to the contrary. Some are wildly speculative, casting doubt on whether man really took steps on the moon.

Others, like the website Soto discovered, which espouses antigovernment and anti-Semitic opinions, are viewed by some watchdog groups as malicious hate speech.


Read more: http://www.tampabay.com/news/nation/conspiracy-theorist-targets-sandy-hook-family/2123880

New Yorker - "The I.R.S. and the Tea Party: Where Is the Scandal?"

Here is a nice piece from the New Yorker that does some actual reporting, rather than breathlessly reporting Darrell Issa's breathless rants of the day or repeating the latest Fox News narrative.