A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

"You are here because now is the single best time we have to defund Obamacare. This is a fight we can win." SENATOR TED CRUZ, speaking in August to a Heritage Action gathering in Dallas

WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.

It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.

“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”

Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.

To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. But interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.

With polls showing Americans deeply divided over the law, conservatives believe that the public is behind them. Although the law’s opponents say that shutting down the government was not their objective, the activists anticipated that a shutdown could occur — and worked with members of the Tea Party caucus in Congress who were excited about drawing a red line against a law they despise.

A defunding “tool kit” created in early September included talking points for the question, “What happens when you shut down the government and you are blamed for it?” The suggested answer was the one House Republicans give today: “We are simply calling to fund the entire government except for the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.”

The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new, too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.

__________

House Republican Efforts to Repeal or Weaken the Health Care Law

As part of a multipronged conservative effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, House Republicans have voted dozens of times to kill all or part of the law. The chart shows House votes that Republican leaders identified as containing at least some provision weakening the health care law. Related Article »

The New York Times

Source: Clerk of the House; House Republican leadership

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/us/a-federal-budget-crisis-months-in-the-planning.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[Jacque67 7,328]

Goddam lobbyists.

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

There is a bigger plan going on behind the scenes. I'm just grateful the commissary is back open and folks are coming back to work.

[RGinWA 816]

Nobody will work with them, yet they spent years planning shutting it all down?

Yeah, makes sense.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

Nobody will work with them, yet they spent years planning shutting it all down?

Yeah, makes sense.

Hmm?

[RGinWA 816]

I don't understand why there isn't more outrage about the Republican's manufacturing a crisis and then claiming its all so unavoidable.

It's no secret. They've been behaving like this since the Tea Party was invented.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

I don't understand why there isn't more outrage about the Republican's manufacturing a crisis and then claiming its all so unavoidable.

It's no secret. They've been behaving like this since the Tea Party was invented.

Don't forget that when they started they called themselves the "tea baggers."

[RGinWA 816]

Don't forget that when they started they called themselves the "tea baggers."

I received a warning from the establishment last week for using that term...so be careful.

Apparently ** is ok, but tea b@gg#r is totally banned.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

I received a warning from the establishment last week for using that term...so be careful.

Apparently ** is ok, but tea b@gg#r is totally banned.

Um, but that is what they called themselves. It's just the truth.

[Ban Hammer 13,332]

3 posts removed, 2 for attacks upon moderation and one quoting.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

So anyway... what do you all think about PACs and lobbies pulling strings and carrying out their long-term agenda? How do you think Ted Cruz liked the extra money he found stuffed in his shirt pocket?

[mota bhai 2,675]

Saying most moderators are sympathetic to one political faction is now an "attack" on moderation? Wow.

[RGinWA 816]

Saying most moderators are sympathetic to one political faction is now an "attack" on moderation? Wow.

Think Stalin.

[mota bhai 2,675]

Way before my time, old man.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Saying most moderators are sympathetic to one political faction is now an "attack" on moderation? Wow.

Though shalt not speak the truth.