How did Pelosi et al Do It?

[Article 15]

Well thank you for that. I hope almost all of us feel that way.

I hope after the GOP got their butts kicked out of power in 2004 that they learned their lesson about putting politics ahead of the people. Right now they are mostly talking the talk, but it's too early to know whether they'll walk the walk. We won't know until they regain power and have a chance to redeem themselves.

But it's for damn sure most of the Democrats in Congress put politics ahead of the people and need their butts kicked out of power.

I am simply not willing to resign myself to the fact that it is impossible to elect patriots and honest men and women to high office any more. I may die trying, but I haven't given up yet.

I admire your resolve.

Personally, I doubt the GOP walks the walk if they take part of Congress. Our current two party system has transformed into the Bloods versus the Crips.

However, nothing would make me happier than the GOP taking the House, setting a mutual goal with the White House to balance the budget and meeting it.

Ah, a Tea Partier in spirit if not in name.

You know, I don't give a rat's ass WHO does it or WHO gets the credit or what they call themselves. I just want people elected to high office who will be above board, realistically honest, and show some integrity in their dealings in legislative projects.

If we had a law in place, for instance, making it illegal for Congress to give ANY favors of ANY kind to ANYBODY that isn't made available to all without prejudice, we wouldn't be facing trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and we might have a healthcare bill that actually improves access to healthcare in the USA instead of the monstrosity that just passed.

And a balanced budget amendment is looking better to me all the time IF it can be accomplished without giving Congress a blank check to just keep ratcheting up the taxes and fees to balance it.

Unfortunately, we NEED to raise taxes AND cut spending to balance the budget and dig ourselves out of debt. Doing just one and not the other isn't good enough.

 

[Modbert]

Unfortunately, we NEED to raise taxes AND cut spending to balance the budget and dig ourselves out of debt. Doing just one and not the other isn't good enough.

Yup.

Cutting taxes but rising spending is what got us where we are today.

 

[SFC Ollie]

And raising taxes and spending like this Administration is just spinning our wheels. Except they are spending even faster than raising taxes. Record spending.

 

[CMike]

LOL. I thought about commenting on the size of her gavel, but then decided to focus on the corruption that passes for government these days. But that gavel is one powerful symbol for that don't you think?

Actually I was thinking where she can stick her gavel.

You must spread some reputation around before giving it to Cmike again.

Dammit

Thanks for the thought.

 

[txlonghorn]

 

[Care4all]

And raising taxes and spending like this Administration is just spinning our wheels. Except they are spending even faster than raising taxes. Record spending.

we HAD record spending the last administration ollie, now this is just record spending on the last record spending....

non discretionary spending has been cut in the obama budget....

the bailouts and stimulus pkgs are out of the ordinary spending....and i am NOT saying that i agree with it all....just that these things are not what is normally faced in a budget.

the deficit is so high, because we are not pulling in the taxes we once did when we were not in an economic slump....less people working, less taxes they collect to pay the bills.

we need people to have jobs, to get us out of this deficit mess, and a curb on spending.

 

[PatekPhilippe]

Okay, we've discussed the Louisiana Purchase, the Cornhusker kickback, and all sorts of other shenanigans that went on to get the previous healthcare bills passed in the House and Senate, but those bills were too far apart for reconiciliation.

The healthcare reform was proclaimed dead by none other than Pelosi herself. She did not have the votes to go with the Senate version and the Senate wasn't inclined to budge.

So how did Obama and Pelosi raise the legislation from the dead in these last few days and get it passed? What created the triumphal march to the microphones to declare a landmark victory?

So how did they do it? By demonstrating that the sins of the fathers shall be visted upon the children, even to the fourth and fifth generations:

Excerpt

President Obama flew to Pennsylvania (home to five wavering House Democrats), Missouri (three wavering), Ohio (eight), and Virginia (four) to hold rallies with small, supportive crowds. In four days, Mr. Obama held 64 meetings or calls with congressmen. The goal was to let undecideds know that the president had them in his crosshairs, that he still had pull with the base, and he'd use it against them. By Saturday the tactic had yielded yes votes from at least half the previously undecided members of those states.

As for those who needed more persuasion: California Rep. Jim Costa bragged publicly that during his meeting in the Oval Office, he'd demanded the administration increase water to his Central Valley district. On Tuesday, Interior pushed up its announcement, giving the Central Valley farmers 25% of water supplies, rather than the expected 5% allocation. Mr. Costa, who denies there was a quid pro quo, on Saturday said he'd flip to a yes.

Florida Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (whose district is home to the Kennedy Space Center) admitted that in her own Thursday meeting with the president, she'd brought up the need for more NASA funding. On Friday she flipped to a yes. So watch the NASA budget.

Democrats inserted a new provision providing $100 million in extra Medicaid money for Tennessee. Retiring Tennessee Rep. Bart Gordon flipped to a yes vote on Thursday.

Outside heavies were enlisted to warn potential no votes that unions and other Democrats would run them out of Congress. Al Lawson, a Tallahassee liberal challenging Blue Dog Florida Rep. Allen Boyd in a primary, made Mr. Boyd's previous no vote the centerpiece of his criticism. The SEIU threatened to yank financial support for New York's Michael McMahon. The liberal Working Families Party said it would deny him a ballot line. Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand vowed to challenge South Dakota Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin if she voted no. New York's Scott Murphy was targeted as a part of a $1.3 million union-financed ad campaign to pressure him to flip. Moveon.Org spent another $36,000 on ads in his district and promised a primary. Messrs. Boyd and Murphy caved on Friday.

All the while Mrs. Pelosi was desperately working to provide cover with a Congressional Budget Office score that would claim the bill "saved" money. To do it, Democrats threw in a further $66 billion in Medicare cuts and another $50 billion in taxes. Huzzah! In the day following the CBO score, about a half-dozen Democrats who had spent the past months complaining the bill already had too many taxes and Medicare cuts now said they were voting to reduce the deficit.

Even with all this, by Friday Mrs. Pelosi was dealing with a new problem: The rule changes and deals winning her votes were losing her votes, too. The public backlash against "deem and pass" gave several wary Democrats—such as Massachusetts's Stephen Lynch and California's Dennis Cardoza—a new excuse to vote no.

Mrs. Pelosi jettisoned deem and pass. Once-solid Democrat yes votes wanted their own concessions. Oregon's Pete DeFazio threatened to lead a revolt unless changes were made to Medicare payments to benefit his state. On Saturday Mrs. Pelosi cut a deal to give 17 states additional Medicare money.

By the weekend, all the pressure and threats and bribes had left the speaker three to five votes short. Her remaining roadblock was those pro-life members who'd boxed themselves in on abortion, saying they would vote against the Senate bill unless it barred public funding of abortion. Mrs. Pelosi's first instinct was to go around this bloc, getting the votes elsewhere. She couldn't.

Into Saturday night, Michigan's Bart Stupak and Mrs. Pelosi wrangled over options. The stalemate? Any change that gave Mr. Stupak what he wanted in law would lose votes from pro-choice members. The solution? Remove it from Congress altogether, having the president instead sign a meaningless executive order affirming that no public money should go to pay for abortions.

The order won't change the Senate legal language—as pro-choice Democrats publicly crowed within minutes of the Stupak deal. Executive orders can be changed or eliminated on a whim. Pro-life groups condemned the order as the vote-getting ruse it was. Nevertheless, Mr. Stupak and several of his colleagues voted yes, paving the way to Mrs. Pelosi's final vote tally of 219.

Even in these waning minutes, Senate Democrats were playing their own games. Republicans announced they had found language in the House reconciliation bill that could doom this entire "fix" in the Senate. Since many House Democrats only agreed to vote for the Senate bill on promises that the sidecar reconciliation would pass, this was potentially a last-minute killer.

Senate Democrats handled it by deliberately refusing to meet with Republicans and the Senate parliamentarian to get a ruling, lest it be unfavorable and lose House votes. The dodge was a clear dereliction of duty, but Democrats figure the Senate parliamentarian won't dare derail this process after ObamaCare passes. They are probably right.

So there you have it, folks: "How a Bill Becomes a Law," at least in Obama-Pelosi land.

Full story here in the WSJ:
Kimberley A. Strassel: Inside the Pelosi Sausage Factory - WSJ.com

Makes you proud to be an American doesn't it.

Welcome to hardball politics...what comes around goes around.

 

[Vel]

bartering within congress is legal, and has been repeatedly done in the previous and all other administrations.Poison pill: how Abramoff's cronies sold the Medicare drug bill. - Free Online Library

Without seeing a previous outcry AGAINST such negotiations, and only seeing them NOW, serves nothing but a partisan purpose.

though I can understand the concern of the back room deals, I am baffled by the sudden and singular outrage of those on the "right" regarding such?

And so when IS a good time for the public to say enough of this crap is enough? Should we continue to allow it because someone else got away with it in the past or do we ever reach a line where we can say no more?

 

[BolshevikHunter]

I admire your resolve.

Personally, I doubt the GOP walks the walk if they take part of Congress. Our current two party system has transformed into the Bloods versus the Crips.

However, nothing would make me happier than the GOP taking the House, setting a mutual goal with the White House to balance the budget and meeting it.

Ah, a Tea Partier in spirit if not in name.

You know, I don't give a rat's ass WHO does it or WHO gets the credit or what they call themselves. I just want people elected to high office who will be above board, realistically honest, and show some integrity in their dealings in legislative projects.

If we had a law in place, for instance, making it illegal for Congress to give ANY favors of ANY kind to ANYBODY that isn't made available to all without prejudice, we wouldn't be facing trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and we might have a healthcare bill that actually improves access to healthcare in the USA instead of the monstrosity that just passed.

And a balanced budget amendment is looking better to me all the time IF it can be accomplished without giving Congress a blank check to just keep ratcheting up the taxes and fees to balance it.

Unfortunately, we NEED to raise taxes AND cut spending to balance the budget and dig ourselves out of debt. Doing just one and not the other isn't good enough.

AR-15, El WrongO. You're smarter than that brother. Cutting spending would do it all alone, and before long even more Tax breaks could be given. The Funds that citizens would flow into the Economy from Tax cuts would take care of the other end. The amount of waste that was going on yesterday, and even more today, could solve this problem within years or atleast get control of it prior to killing and doing away with for good this mentally deranged idea of any form of Nanny statism. ~BH

 

[Care4all]

bartering within congress is legal, and has been repeatedly done in the previous and all other administrations.Poison pill: how Abramoff's cronies sold the Medicare drug bill. - Free Online Library

Without seeing a previous outcry AGAINST such negotiations, and only seeing them NOW, serves nothing but a partisan purpose.

though I can understand the concern of the back room deals, I am baffled by the sudden and singular outrage of those on the "right" regarding such?

And so when IS a good time for the public to say enough of this crap is enough? Should we continue to allow it because someone else got away with it in the past or do we ever reach a line where we can say no more?

say it when it happens is the right thing to do, but be consistent and not selective or only on party lines with the complaints.... i realize that is hard to do, with the ''my party'' blinders we all seem to wear whether intentional or not.

 

[Care4all]

no, cutting their spending WILL NOT take care of the deficit....we could eliminate every single dime of what we spend on our national defense-military/pentegon, homeland security, veterans and welfare and it will not eliminate the deficit and certainly not address the huge debt we hold either.

we need spending cuts, some higher taxes, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY a good, strong, growing economy, to bring us out of this mess....all three, imho!!!!! ( if the economy is very strong, then higher taxes on some, may not need to happen)

 

[Foxfyre]

no, cutting their spending WILL NOT take care of the deficit....we could eliminate every single dime of what we spend on our national defense-military/pentegon, homeland security, veterans and welfare and it will not eliminate the deficit and certainly not address the huge debt we hold either.

we need spending cuts, some higher taxes, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY a good, strong, growing economy, to bring us out of this mess....all three, imho!!!!! ( if the economy is very strong, then higher taxes on some, may not need to happen)

Spending cuts PLUS a robust economy will do it, and you don't get a robust economy by raising taxes in a recession. The Obama administration is spending as if we were in the most amazing economy that the nation has ever known and that was before this latest trillion dollar bill passed.

Obama's 09 deficit exceeds all eight years of Bush red ink

How much is President Obama boosting federal spending? The Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl puts a little perspective on the numbers made public today:

· This year, Washington will spend $30,958 per household, tax $17,576 per household, and borrow $13,392 per household. This spending is not just temporary: President Obama would permanently keep annual spending between $5,000 and $8,000 per household higher than it had been under President Bush.

· The 22 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). Federal spending is up 57 percent since 2001.

· The 2009 budget deficit will be larger than all budget deficits from 2002 through 2007 combined. More than 43 cents of every dollar Washington spends in 2009 will have been borrowed.

· One would expect the post-recession deficit to revert back to the $150 billion to $350 billion budget deficits that were typical before the recession. Instead, by 2019, the President forecasts a $917 billion budget deficit, a public debt of 77 percent of GDP, and annual net interest spending of $774 billion.


Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...-all-eight-years-of-Bush-red-ink-54801777.htm

Last year in March, the Heritage Foundation used the actual Bush numbers against the CBO's estimates of Obama defciits. When they do that again this year, the numbers for Obama will look much much worse.

Notice that had the housing bubble not burst in 2008, there is every reason to believe that the budget, in a strong economy, would have come into balance. There appears to be no hope for that now, but they don't seem to care. They just keep on spending money by billions and billions, even hundreds of billions, and trillions. Look again in the OP at the monetary layouts promised to buy votes for the healthcare bill. And that is a tiny tip of the iceberg.

It's frightening.

And there is no light at the end of this tunnel.

 

[Care4all]

no, cutting their spending WILL NOT take care of the deficit....we could eliminate every single dime of what we spend on our national defense-military/pentegon, homeland security, veterans and welfare and it will not eliminate the deficit and certainly not address the huge debt we hold either.

we need spending cuts, some higher taxes, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY a good, strong, growing economy, to bring us out of this mess....all three, imho!!!!! ( if the economy is very strong, then higher taxes on some, may not need to happen)

Spending cuts PLUS a robust economy will do it, and you don't get a robust economy by raising taxes in a recession. The Obama administration is spending as if we were in the most amazing economy that the nation has ever known and that was before this latest trillion dollar bill passed.

Obama's 09 deficit exceeds all eight years of Bush red ink

How much is President Obama boosting federal spending? The Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl puts a little perspective on the numbers made public today:

· This year, Washington will spend $30,958 per household, tax $17,576 per household, and borrow $13,392 per household. This spending is not just temporary: President Obama would permanently keep annual spending between $5,000 and $8,000 per household higher than it had been under President Bush.

· The 22 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). Federal spending is up 57 percent since 2001.

· The 2009 budget deficit will be larger than all budget deficits from 2002 through 2007 combined. More than 43 cents of every dollar Washington spends in 2009 will have been borrowed.

· One would expect the post-recession deficit to revert back to the $150 billion to $350 billion budget deficits that were typical before the recession. Instead, by 2019, the President forecasts a $917 billion budget deficit, a public debt of 77 percent of GDP, and annual net interest spending of $774 billion.


Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...-all-eight-years-of-Bush-red-ink-54801777.htm

Last year in March, the Heritage Foundation used the actual Bush numbers against the CBO's estimates of Obama defciits. When they do that again this year, the numbers for Obama will look much much worse.

Notice that had the housing bubble not burst in 2008, there is every reason to believe that the budget, in a strong economy, would have come into balance. There appears to be no hope for that now, but they don't seem to care. They just keep on spending money by billions and billions, even hundreds of billions, and trillions. Look again in the OP at the monetary layouts promised to buy votes for the healthcare bill. And that is a tiny tip of the iceberg.

It's frightening.

And there is no light at the end of this tunnel.

There is more to that graph that meets the eye...

one, obama is reducing deficits from when he took over to when his term is done in 2012....you made no comment of such.

two, there are no more SS surplus monies to use in the budget as both president bush and Clinton had to use, so this alone will show the deficits larger, and larger per person.

If not a dime more was spent, we would still have the larger deficits no matter WHO is in office, due to not having the SS surplus monies anymore.

So we are NOT in the same circumstance as we were in 2008 with the budget imo.... it will not be as easy to do by just cutting....unless of course the economy was busting at the seams good.

I agree that during an economic down fall is not a good time to raise any taxes....they did it already on cigarette smokers....why not fight against them doing such to them in a recession is what i was asking at the time....?

 

[Lumpy 1]

Seems like many years ago the Republican got kicked out of power for spending like drunken sailors, the war in Iraq, invasion of privacy.. funny.. when Democrats took over Congress all Hell broke lose....

Interesting though .. when Democrats screw up it's suddenly a bi-partisan problem and the blame should be shared..

 

[Foxfyre]

Seems like many years ago the Republican got kicked out of power for spending like drunken sailors, the war in Iraq, invasion of privacy.. funny.. when Democrats took over Congress all Hell broke lose....

Interesting though .. when Democrats screw up it's suddenly a bi-partisan problem and the blame should be shared..

Yup. Even more than a year into the administration.

 

[Montrovant]

I'm continually baffled by the shock people evince when they see corruption in government (most often by the 'other' party). Of course it's nothing good, and if you have ways to curtail it, that's great, but what usually seems to be the solution is to vote the other party into office asap, as though that party doesn't work the same way.

I don't like the health care bill, I don't like the deals made to get it done, but I also don't think voting out Dems and voting in Repubs will do a thing to solve the problems of that corruption. It might get the bill revoked, but then the Repubs would likely get their own legislation passed through bribes and deals, etc.

As Immie mentioned earlier, the people you would want in power are almost never the ones who reach for it. I don't think this is a recent development, nor one limited in scope to US politics; I imagine that any government you might find throughout human history had it's fair share of greed and corruption. I don't say we shouldn't strive for an honest, ethical government, only that it's best to realize that will be extremely difficult, at best, to achieve and maintain, and that partisan politics is not the way to get it. I really think most people understand the truth in that, that it's just hard to keep in mind when frustrated by the antics of whatever party is currently in power.

 

[Foxfyre]

no, cutting their spending WILL NOT take care of the deficit....we could eliminate every single dime of what we spend on our national defense-military/pentegon, homeland security, veterans and welfare and it will not eliminate the deficit and certainly not address the huge debt we hold either.

we need spending cuts, some higher taxes, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY a good, strong, growing economy, to bring us out of this mess....all three, imho!!!!! ( if the economy is very strong, then higher taxes on some, may not need to happen)

Spending cuts PLUS a robust economy will do it, and you don't get a robust economy by raising taxes in a recession. The Obama administration is spending as if we were in the most amazing economy that the nation has ever known and that was before this latest trillion dollar bill passed.

Obama's 09 deficit exceeds all eight years of Bush red ink

How much is President Obama boosting federal spending? The Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl puts a little perspective on the numbers made public today:

· This year, Washington will spend $30,958 per household, tax $17,576 per household, and borrow $13,392 per household. This spending is not just temporary: President Obama would permanently keep annual spending between $5,000 and $8,000 per household higher than it had been under President Bush.

· The 22 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). Federal spending is up 57 percent since 2001.

· The 2009 budget deficit will be larger than all budget deficits from 2002 through 2007 combined. More than 43 cents of every dollar Washington spends in 2009 will have been borrowed.

· One would expect the post-recession deficit to revert back to the $150 billion to $350 billion budget deficits that were typical before the recession. Instead, by 2019, the President forecasts a $917 billion budget deficit, a public debt of 77 percent of GDP, and annual net interest spending of $774 billion.


Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...-all-eight-years-of-Bush-red-ink-54801777.htm

Last year in March, the Heritage Foundation used the actual Bush numbers against the CBO's estimates of Obama defciits. When they do that again this year, the numbers for Obama will look much much worse.

Notice that had the housing bubble not burst in 2008, there is every reason to believe that the budget, in a strong economy, would have come into balance. There appears to be no hope for that now, but they don't seem to care. They just keep on spending money by billions and billions, even hundreds of billions, and trillions. Look again in the OP at the monetary layouts promised to buy votes for the healthcare bill. And that is a tiny tip of the iceberg.

It's frightening.

And there is no light at the end of this tunnel.

There is more to that graph that meets the eye...

one, obama is reducing deficits from when he took over to when his term is done in 2012....you made no comment of such.

two, there are no more SS surplus monies to use in the budget as both president bush and Clinton had to use, so this alone will show the deficits larger, and larger per person.

If not a dime more was spent, we would still have the larger deficits no matter WHO is in office, due to not having the SS surplus monies anymore.

So we are NOT in the same circumstance as we were in 2008 with the budget imo.... it will not be as easy to do by just cutting....unless of course the economy was busting at the seams good.

I agree that during an economic down fall is not a good time to raise any taxes....they did it already on cigarette smokers....why not fight against them doing such to them in a recession is what i was asking at the time....?

Sorry Care, that just won't fly. The deficits have already exceeded the projections shown in that graph which was developed in March 2009. Obama isn't reducing anything but every year of his administration, the deficits are projected to be more than all eight years of the Bush administration. When the graph is revised, it will look far worse than the 2009 graph which was developed before the first Obama budget was released and before the healthcare overhaul.

That is not meant to excuse the Bush administration. They were not fiscally responsible either. But at least the Bush tax policy was generating sufficient economic growth to reduce the deficiit and would have balanced the budget if there had been no housing bubble crash. And that was in spite of the war expense.

Obama is allowing most of the Bush tax cuts to expire this year and is imposing new taxes on top of that massive tax increase.

Obama was not to blame for the economy he inherited, but he is 100% to blame for endorsing, promoting, and engineering any policies that have exacerbated an already bad situation. All expenditures he has asked for and signed into law--expenditures that did not HAVE to be made and which have greatly increased the deficit--those are on his watch and Bush had nothing to do with them.

The healthcare bill which will add billions more to the deficit with the taxes beginning right away but most of the purported benefits to begin years from now. Bitter experience tells us that raising taxes in the midst of a deep recession is NOT a good economic move, but it appears that is exactly what they will be doing.

There has been essentially nothing done to stop the bleeding and they keep piling on debt on top of debt.

You can put as much lipstick on this pig as you can find in all of Wal-Mart, and fiscal conservatives will still know that it is irresponsible and dangerous to the overall solvency of the country.

 

[Si modo]

Full story here in the WSJ:
Kimberley A. Strassel: Inside the Pelosi Sausage Factory - WSJ.com

Makes you proud to be an American doesn't it.

And where were you during the Bush Administration?

Perhaps you could expound on what my location during the Bush administration has to do with the OP?

Doggiestyle and logic don't mix.

 

[California Girl]

You see the size of that hammer,and we all know that the Dems had no balls through this.They needed to be given deals,threatened to have their balls broken literally by Nancy's big ball bustin hammer.

LOL. I thought about commenting on the size of her gavel, but then decided to focus on the corruption that passes for government these days. But that gavel is one powerful symbol for that don't you think?

see, you say it is ''the corruption that passes for gvt. these days'', implying this is something NEW with this congress, and this is where we differ.....it is not something new, it is not worse than ever, and it certainly is NOT WORSE than the republicans when they held the gavel....

But..... what about those of us who say 'just because it's always been done this way does not make it right, nor acceptable', what about those (like me!) who say that we've had decade after decade of dishonesty and corruption and we would like to stop that. I think the few intelligent lefties and the few intelligent righties might actually agree on one thing.... That we actually want 'Government of the People, by the People, for the People'. Just because we've had decades of lies doesn't make lies ok, it makes us suckers for tolerating it.

What say you, Care? Art15?

 

[Article 15]

LOL. I thought about commenting on the size of her gavel, but then decided to focus on the corruption that passes for government these days. But that gavel is one powerful symbol for that don't you think?

see, you say it is ''the corruption that passes for gvt. these days'', implying this is something NEW with this congress, and this is where we differ.....it is not something new, it is not worse than ever, and it certainly is NOT WORSE than the republicans when they held the gavel....

But..... what about those of us who say 'just because it's always been done this way does not make it right, nor acceptable', what about those (like me!) who say that we've had decade after decade of dishonesty and corruption and we would like to stop that. I think the few intelligent lefties and the few intelligent righties might actually agree on one thing.... That we actually want 'Government of the People, by the People, for the People'. Just because we've had decades of lies doesn't make lies ok, it makes us suckers for tolerating it.

What say you, Care? Art15?

I say until both sides come together and put a stop to it then unfortunately this is what it has comes to and the harsh reality is this is how you have to run things if you want to get something done in DC.

The problem is that the the political climate is so bad that neither side can lay down their arms because the other will take it as a sign of weakness and steamroll over them.

Voting out incumbents and putting "the other" party isn't working.

We need a new party.

Form a party that runs on a fiscally conservative/socially liberal platform, and run candidates that adhere to that platform, and I'm on board.