I’m trying not to let this go to my head, but I’m starting to believe that if I told Ed Royce not to lick a metal pole during a freezing blizzard, he’d need the Fire Department to remove his tongue from it, a la A Christmas Story. WHAT a moron!
Modestly sized Orange County provided 2-1/2 of the 144 votes in the House of Representatives this evening against re-opening the government and avoiding default — that’s default on our bonds and Social Security checks! — in the process. If I said to you on October first that that would happen, you’d probably guess that those full votes would be (1) Dana Rohrabacher and (2) that guy in the foothills that no one notices, with the half vote coming from Darrell Issa, whom we share with San Diego County.
You’d be wrong. Issa — crazy, irresponsible, flame-throwing Darrell Issa — voted with most of the House leadership to avoid unprecendented and self-inflicted. fiscal catastrophe. Speaker John Boehner voted yes. Majority Leader Eric Cantor voted yes. Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield voted yes.
Of the 15 remaining Republican members of California’s House delegation, 8 Republicans, to their credit, voted “yes.” In addition to Issa and McCarthy, that would be Ken Calvert, Paul Cook, Buck McKeon, Gary “Dead Man Walking” Miller, Devin Nunes, and David Valadao. That’s exactly the least radical group of Republicans you could assemble!
Voting “no” from California were John Campbell — oh yeah, that’s the name I couldn’t remember! — Jeff Denham, Duncan Hunter, Doug LaMalfa, Tom McClintock, Dana Rohrabacher … and Royce.
Yes, Ed Royce, who represents a district that is largely in the not-so-conservative district eastern San Gabriel Valley. (You can tell that’s true because even I beat Bob Huff there in last year’s State Senate race.) Royce, who is Chair of the bleedin’ HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE and might be thought of as someone who should understand the international repercussions of this sort of extreme nincompoopery. That Ed Royce.
Royce’s vote was more extreme that Darrell Issa, more extreme (by my official count) than all four Republican House members from the state of Washington, all four in Arkansas, all three from Nebraska, both from West Virginia, the two from Montana and South Dakota, nine of thirteen from Pennsylvania, five of six from Illinois and the same from New Jersey, four of six from New York, four of eight from Michigan, three of four from Colorado, and three of five from Kentucky. I repeat: Royce’s vote was more extreme and reckless than that of the majority of the Republican representatives in Kentucky.
Royce put the sophisticated Republican Party of the eastern San Gabriel Valley and northern Orange County on a par with Republicans in South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Maybe rural northeastern California belongs in that company, but we here do not.
Royce presumably thinks that this vote — from a major figure in the House Republican hierarchy — will easily be forgotten. It won’t. This was a career-defining vote. Royce put himself on the side of the nihilists.
For those Democrats eyeing running in CA-39 as a possibly better alternative to a likely losing primary campaign, Royce is practically begging for them to come after him. He only beat Jay Chen — almost unknown in the district outside of Hacienda Heights this time four years ago — by spending $5 million to beat him, a spending total that does not evince confidence. But now he’s given them an issue to run on — when the nation was staring into the abyss to which it had been led by clowns and reprobates, Royce stood with them and said: “let’s jump!”
Democrats statewide should be looking at CA-39 right now. Don’t worry about carpet-bagging; since Royce pushed Young Kim into carpetbagging in AD-65, he can’t make that argument against a heavy-hitting Democrat moving into the district without hurting Kim’s campaign. Of course, when push comes to shove, I guess he’ll throw anybody overboard — including the nation itself.
So let me never hear the fact that Rohrabacher, Campbell etc. are moderates.
Note that I am not denouncing their vote, just that they are NO different than any of the other tea partiers.
I suppose that makes Issa an incompetent wingnut. OMGHAZI, IRSGHAZI, and soon to be SHUTDOWNGHAZI is all he can do
Budget/Debt Ceiling “Deal”
• The budget crisis was kicked down the road until Jan. 15, 2014; the debt ceiling until Feb. 7, 2014.
• Now that ObamaCare is law, Congress requires the Dept. of Health & Human Services to certify that it can verify income eligibility for applicant’s ObamaCare subsidies. (B. S.) Federal agencies are not allowed to share information; so what happens if the HHS can’t verify income eligibility? Does ObamaCare get repealed, or delayed?
• Yet another committee is set up to come up with a long-term budget plan.
(The previous: Bowles-Simpson Commission)
http://www.ocregister.com Oct. 17, 2013 Front Page
Please re-register “No Party Preference” NPP
Oh shit, the LaRouchies are leaving the Democratic Party? Now who will Al Franken have to punch out?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/27/elec04.prez.democrats.larouche/
http://screen.yahoo.com/popular/weekend-al-franken-lyndon-la-000000135
Robert,
FYI from the LATimes;
“The glittering new deal to end the government shutdown/debt ceiling crisis has one tiny sop to the Republicans. Let’s hope they don’t break their arms patting themselves on the back about it.
The sop is a provision to tighten “income verification” for people applying for federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. We reported on this provision earlier this week.
Here’s a little more background. Bottom line: The problem that the new “tightening” is supposed to resolve doesn’t even exist.
“Income verification” became an issue in July, when the Department of Health and Human Services issued its final rules for the process. The Washington Post said the rules would “significantly scale back” the act’s requirement for verification of applicants’ eligibility for cut-rate insurance, at least for a year. A full-scale right-wing freak-out ensued, based on the conviction that hordes of people would cheat the insurance exchanges for undeserved subsidies, presumably bankrupting the government.
The truth is that the rules have not been significantly scaled back. They’re quite rigorous. Pretty much every applicant has to prove that his or her income meets the subsidy standards. …
…[Updated, 3:12 p.m. PDT Oct. 16: It’s even less of a sop than that. On “income verification,” the Senate deal requires only that the secretary of Health and Human Services report to Congress by Jan. 1 on the “procedures” in place to verify eligibility for the subsidies, and by next July 1 report on their effectiveness. That’s what’s the right wing got for its attack on Obamacare.”
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-myth-shutdown-20131016,0,5503988.story
Anonster
My original question remains unanswered:
‘How can the Dept. of Health & Human Services verify a person’s income? The HHS is not the IRS. I understand that government agencies can’t share information.
###
The intent of ObamaCare is to increase costs and decrease care.
Conn. HealthCare Dumps Medics To Line Up Profit From Obamacare
October 10, 2013 • 5:17PM
http://larouchepac.com/node/28496
Robert,
Obviously you are NOT interested enough in the answer to do any reading or research.
From the LA Times article I referenced above;
“…The rule requires that applicants’ income — as submitted with their applications — be checked against their IRS and Social Security records. If that can’t be done, the income will be checked against employer records submitted to the credit agency Equifax. If there’s still a discrepancy between those records and the income claimed, the applicant will have to furnish more documentation and an explanation.
The final rule allows state exchanges to check a statistically valid sample of applicants, rather than every applicant, in a small subset — cases in which an applicant claims income more than 10% below what IRS and Social Security records show, and where there’s no Equifax data. “…
Darling, if you hadn’t caught on, Robert belongs to a cult.
I know the douchie LaRouchies don’t care about reality, but I hope other folks do.
I would of still voted NO if I was congressman. I think I would of held for a 1 year delay on the individual mandate, if the ACA servers are not working effectively then how can we expect people to partake in it. Special rights for big business, but not for the average guy?
The ACA servers are not working in states that are opposed to Obamacare and have no state created exchanges. So what you are saying is that if they are not working (for now, and likely for a few weeks), Californians who can access their websites should not be able to get affordable health-care either. Never mind that the program’s enrollment period is till next March, and it is not as if anyone is being denied.
Special rights for big businesses? Less than 6% of the businesses are affected by the delay. Why not demand that the delay not be implemented rather than a delay be implemented for everyone?
And how would you fund the deficit caused by the one year delay on the mandate?
Never mind that should a default occur, and it would, even if it did not occur right away, interest rates will rise, credit market will freeze up, and the interest on the debt alone will cause it to rise faster.
So what exactly would you be holding on to for a year? A battering of the economy that was struggling to begin with, freezing of the credit markets so that small businesses cannot even get lines of credit, higher interest rates, and an automatic increase in debt, not to mention the countless legal messes when the President is forced not to pay on some obligations?
From Obama’s speech:
Hey there’s something that THE FREAKING CHAIR OF THE HOUSE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEEshould have understood would happen, don’tcha think?
Well, If the President said it MUST be true!
More rocks from the Glass (White) House.