Obama and the House Republicans

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In summary: The other story is that the term was first used to describe someone who was trying to get access to the president to influence or lobby him. In either case, the term has come to describe someone who is trying to get access to someone for some sort of purpose.
  • #1
Ivan Seeking
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How many here watched this? As did many Republicans, I found the exchange to be useful and refreshing.

Here is my favorite line from Obama

But if you were to listen to the [Health Care] debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot. No, I mean, that’s how you guys -- (applause) -- that’s how you guys presented it.

Bravo! Note that even some Republicans applauded!

Also a salient point
I mean, we’ve got to be careful about what we say about each other sometimes, because it boxes us in in ways that makes it difficult for us to work together, because our constituents start believing us. They don’t know sometimes this is just politics what you guys -- or folks on my side do sometimes.
Full text
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/292b631e-0d1e-11df-a2dc-00144feabdc0.html
 
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  • #2
Video's of the meeting can be found on Youtube

Question and answer period.



Responce from Republican congressional leaders.

 
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  • #3
I'm only a 20-something, and have been following politics for half that time, but it feels like you American (and our Canadian) politicians are always campaigning, mugging for the press / looking for a good sound bite, and that everything is hyper-partisan, and interpreted through those glasses / spun through that machine.

Has it always been that way? Is it just the 24-hour news cycle, the ADD culture we have now (internet, Twitter, gold-fish attention spans, etc.), or that politics is treated like some sort of spectator sport? Or maybe, as Baz Luhrmann says, it's just some sort of idealization of the past on my part with some white-washed notion that politicians were reasonable, rational--noble--people who were primarily concerned with the well-being of their country.

I think I saw it when John McCain stood up and questioned the wisdom of war time tax cuts and torture (for which he got lambasted), and when Obama delivered his keynote at the DNC in 2004 (the core of which--working together, finding common ground, and overcoming dichotomous divides--probably caused the evisceration of the recent health care bill and got HIM lambasted).

EDIT: Either way, I thought you Yanks were in good hands (except where the VPs were concerned--that seemed to be a no-brainer, pun may or may not be intended depending upon your political inclination). Too bad they supposedly detest one-another (according to Game Change, at any rate)
 
  • #4
A good read. Thanks.
 
  • #5
MATLABdude said:
Has it always been that way? Is it just the 24-hour news cycle, the ADD culture we have now (internet, Twitter, gold-fish attention spans, etc.), or that politics is treated like some sort of spectator sport? Or maybe, as Baz Luhrmann says, it's just some sort of idealization of the past on my part with some white-washed notion that politicians were reasonable, rational--noble--people who were primarily concerned with the well-being of their country.

Politics has always been dirty, but there is a difference between what we see now and what we saw in the past. Part of this has been attributed to people like Tom DeLay, former House Majority Leader, who, rather than seeing consensus as as the path to election, as Reagan did, sought to divide and conquer. In fact there were some Republicans, including DeLay, whose stated goal was to effectively eliminate the Democratic party.

Today, a good number of Americans still believe that Obama is a Muslim who harbors a secret, dark agenda; that he's really not an American; that he's a socialist; that he was brainwashed in a Madrasah.

Consider this: Reagan, former Republican President, and Tip O'Neill, former Democratic Speaker of the House, were political adversaries but also the best of friends. Can anyone imagine Bush and Pelosi going for a horseback ride together?
 
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  • #6
MATLABdude said:
I'm only a 20-something, and have been following politics for half that time, but it feels like you American (and our Canadian) politicians are always campaigning, mugging for the press / looking for a good sound bite, and that everything is hyper-partisan, and interpreted through those glasses / spun through that machine.

When Eisenhower left office (president) he had to walk to the train station because he did not have the money for a taxi. Have things changed? Yes. Extremely.
 
  • #7
edpell said:
When Eisenhower left office (president) he had to walk to the train station because he did not have the money for a taxi. Have things changed? Yes. Extremely.

A bit of a diversion, but an interesting point of history, I thought:

After a hard day in the oval office, Grant used to walk down the street to the Williams Hotel for a cigar and brandy. Soon, people began to realize that they had access to Grant who could be found sitting in the lobby. As the story goes, this is where we get the word "lobbyist".

One story states that the term originated at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, where it was used by Ulysses S. Grant to describe the political wheelers and dealers frequenting the hotel's lobby in order to access Grant, who was often found there, enjoying a cigar and brandy.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying

Apparently the BBC claims there was an early usage of the term, in the UK.
 
  • #8
Ivan Seeking said:
Bravo! Note that even some Republicans applauded!

A celebration of the truth perhaps?
 
  • #9
WhoWee said:
A celebration of the truth perhaps?

The truth that Republicans have made these crackpot claims? No doubt about it.

Or was it your goal to twist this into another misrepresentation of the facts? Do you really believe this was a Bolshevik plot, or are you willing to admit that the inference that this is some kind of Bolshevik plot, is absurd and crackpot?
 
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  • #10
Thanks for posting the youtube link. I like how Obama presents himself at meetings like this, no matter how important they are.

Like at the beginning when the leader who was saying who had questions was first asking the questions himself and Obama at the end was kind of laughing at him and he says '...this guy' hahaha that nearly killed me.
 
  • #11
Ivan Seeking said:
The truth that Republicans have made these crackpot claims? No doubt about it.

Or was it your goal to twist this into another misrepresentation of the facts? Do you really believe this was a Bolshevik plot, or are you willing to admit that the inference that this is some kind of Bolshevik plot, is absurd and crackpot?
Yes, I agree that Obama is twisting and misrepresenting the Republican opposition. Certainly no one in Congress ever claimed that Obamacare was a "Bolshevik plot".

No doubt we are in agreement that Obama shouldn't be making such crackpot claims...?
 
  • #12
From the transcript:
There was an interesting headline in CNN today: ”Americans disapprove of stimulus, but like every policy in it.” And there was a poll that showed that if you broke it down into its component parts, 80 percent approved of the tax cuts, 80 percent approved of the infrastructure, 80 percent approved of the assistance to the unemployed.
I didn't see the article and I bet CNN was scratching their heads over these poll results (as, apparently, was Obama), but people need to be able to grasp such simple realities: people like candy, and will eat a piece at a time, but not a fistfull at a time. When you package a few dozen different policy initiatives together and get to see the big picture of what it all costs, people start realizing that its a bad idea.
So you’ve seen a 12 percent reversal during the course of this year. This turnaround is the biggest in nearly three decades -- and it didn’t happen by accident. It happened -- as economists, conservative and liberal, will attest -- because of some of the steps that we took.
Pat yourself on the back much? No, Barry, economists will attest that deep recessions come with (initially anyway) fast recoveries. We've run the number in this forum on the fraction of the economic growth that was related to the stimulus and it's pretty small. Only somewhere on the order of two percentage points of that 12 point turnaround could possibly have been from the stimulus.
And that’s why, from the start, I sought out and supported ideas from Republicans. I even talked about an issue that has been a holy grail for a lot of you, which was tort reform, and said that I’d be willing to work together as part of a comprehensive package to deal with it. I just didn’t get a lot of nibbles.
Wait - you know that tort reform is important to Republicans and despite the fact that you [are implying] favor it, you didn't put it in the bill, so now you're blaming Republican for not supporting it loudly enough? Sorry, you can't have that cake and eat it to. You can't bash the republicans for not supporting something you didn't do. Knowing that it was a "holy grail" issue for Republicans, there is no excuse for you not to include it if you really did favor it.
You’re absolutely right that when I was sworn in the hope was that unemployment would remain around 8 [percent], or in the 8 percent range...

So I mean, I think we can score political points on the basis of the fact that we underestimated how severe the job losses were going to be.
He's naive if he thinks that's going to have any traction.

I also like his deflection of the issue of his increasing spending before freezing spending - basically, he says 'we'll talk about it later'.
 
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  • #13
russ_watters said:
And there was a poll that showed that if you broke it down into its component parts, 80 percent approved of the tax cuts, 80 percent approved of the infrastructure, 80 percent approved of the assistance to the unemployed.

Well, 80% x 80% = 64%, and another 80% makes it 51.2%, and pretty soon everyone hates it.:smile:
 
  • #14
It is the basic problem with democracy everyone loves candy and no one wants to pay for it. Leading to spiraling debt that eventually destroys the country.
 
  • #15
edpell said:
It is the basic problem with democracy everyone loves candy and no one wants to pay for it. Leading to spiraling debt that eventually destroys the country.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
 
  • #16
russ_watters said:
Yes, I agree that Obama is twisting and misrepresenting the Republican opposition. Certainly no one in Congress ever claimed that Obamacare was a "Bolshevik plot".

No doubt we are in agreement that Obama shouldn't be making such crackpot claims...?

Obama never said they did. What he said was:

President Obama; said:
But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot. No, I mean, that’s how you guys -- (applause) -- that’s how you guys presented it.

I listened closely to the debate this summer and between the death panels and the government takeover arguments, I came away with that perception of some Republican arguments. And judging from the applause... so did a number of Republicans.
 
  • #17
CRGreathouse said:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

After 234 years, are you saying we are overdue?
 
  • #18
CRGreathouse said:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

Who is this quote from? Thanks.
 
  • #19
edpell said:
Who is this quote from? Thanks.

Alexander Fraser Tytler
 
  • #20
russ_watters said:
Yes, I agree that Obama is twisting and misrepresenting the Republican opposition. Certainly no one in Congress ever claimed that Obamacare was a "Bolshevik plot".

No doubt we are in agreement that Obama shouldn't be making such crackpot claims...?

Then why did even Republicans applaud, Hmmmmm? Were they applauding because it really is a secret plot, or did the Republicans agree that other Republicans have acted like a bunch of crackpots in trying to terrorize people?
 
  • #21
russ_watters said:
I also like his deflection of the issue of his increasing spending before freezing spending - basically, he says 'we'll talk about it later'.

Is it really so hard to understand that there are times when spending is necessary? Ironic considering that under Clinton, it was the Republicans who were defending deficit spending when we didn't even need it! Yes, we barely avoided a depression. We barely avoided a collapse of the financial systems. We need to avoid the Japanese model of sustained stagnation. What was the latest report on growth, 6%, I believe. One year ago, the number was more like an average 6% loss in GDP.

Republicans [one year ago] - 6% negative growth
Democrats [today] - 6% positive growth

Job losses when Obama took over ~ 700,000 per month
Job losses today ~ 70,000 per month - one-tenth as much - with one short-term gain in the last quarter.

Hmmmmm... And if the GDP grows, as can be seen by the stable level of debt after WWII, the fraction of debt decreases.

Here is another Republican misrepresentation for you. Every Republican pundit and talk radio nut will point to the debt without ever referencing the debt as a fraction of the GDP. The fact is that we are barely any worse off than when Clinton first took office...from the Republicans [actually we are better off in terms of public debt only] From there, our debt ratio decreased under Clinton.

Oh my, the sky is falling... or maybe not.
350px-USDebt.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

All of this fuss about Obama and his spending is over nothing more than a slight uptick on the graph. 2001-2009 was brought to you by the Republicans. Much of the previous debt [as a fraction of GDP] was brought to you by the Republicans. In fact, some of the debt Obama has to include was money not included in the budget by Republicans. For example, much of the cost of the war was deferred to the next Admin. Also, the prescription drug plan was unfunded. Yet the Republicans never mention this. Instead, they constantly try to deceive the public by tagging Obama with this debt responsibility.

Here is an interesting fact about Dems vs Reps: The only President since WWII who significantly decreased the debt directly, was Clinton - a Democrat.

It seems to me that the report card on the Republicans and their economic philosophies is in. They get a big fat F. I once bought into their failed models and theories, but no more. Enough is enough! Quit terrorizing the public with wild claims in order to further a failed philosophical agenda.

There are times when we need conservative solutions, and others when we need liberal solutions. Ideologues need not apply. Long live the pragmatists! :biggrin:
 
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  • #22
Vanadium 50 said:
Alexander Fraser Tytler
http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html" [Broken].
 
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  • #23
Ivan Seeking said:
We need to avoid the Japanese model of sustained stagnation.
How? By making vast increases in spending and running up the debt like they did?
japan-debt.png


http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2009/01/FriedmanChart.jpg [Broken]
 
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  • #24
mheslep said:
How? By making vast increases in spending and running up the debt like they did?

http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2009/01/FriedmanChart.jpg [Broken]
A[/URL] 10% increase over 10 years doesn't sound particularly "vast" - it's slower than the rate at which Bush increased federal spending over his first 6 years (when he had a Republican Congress). Yet, when the Japanese cut spending during the 1995-1997 period, that didn't help the deficits any. Moreover, GDP and employment rates appear to fall fast around 1996-1997. But there are large fluctuations in the numbers and it's hard to eyeball correlations in such short, noisy data.

http://perotcharts.com/images/challenges/challenges09.png [Broken]
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/japan-unemployment.jpg
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds...im=country:JPN&dl=en&hl=en&q=japan+gdp+growth
 
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  • #25
Ivan Seeking said:
Oh my, the sky is falling... or maybe not.
Or maybe so. The problem is not so much in what he's done in the first year, it's what a continuation of that trend and own budget forecasts out to 2019 portend: a near tripling of the debt from 2008.
tripple-debt.jpg
 
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  • #26
Gokul43201 said:
A 10% increase over 10 years doesn't sound particularly "vast" - it's slower than the rate at which Bush increased federal spending over his first 6 years (when he had a Republican Congress).
Eh? Not relative to GDP as in the Japanese spending above.
r=0&stack=1&size=m&col=c&spending0=33.24_33.38_34.75_36.11_35.56_35.68_35.11_35.90_37.09&legend=.png
 
  • #27
mheslep said:
Eh? Not relative to GDP as in the Japanese spending above.
r=0&stack=1&size=m&col=c&spending0=33.24_33.38_34.75_36.11_35.56_35.68_35.11_35.90_37.09&legend=.png
That looks like all Government spending - I was looking at only Federal spending under Bush. And I did make a mistake with the numbers, but the rates are still comparable to the increases (relative to GDP) of the Japanese. Japanese spending went from about 31% in 1988 to about 37% in 1998. Under Bush with a Republican Congress, Federal spending increased from 18% of GDP to 20.3% of GDP in 6 years.

http://usgovernmentspending.com/dow...tack=1&size=m&title=&state=US&color=c&local=s

mheslep said:
Or maybe so. The problem is not so much in what he's done in the first year, it's what a continuation of that trend and own budget forecasts out to 2019 portend: a near tripling of the debt.
tripple-debt.jpg
Here's the latest CBO projection relative to GDP (which I consider a more meaningful number than the raw size of the debt):

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/110xx/doc11014/MainText_HseVersion.28.1.2.png

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/110xx/doc11014/Testimony_Frontmatter_Senate.shtml
 
  • #29
Gokul43201 said:
Here's the latest CBO projection relative to GDP (which I consider a more meaningful number than the raw size of the debt):

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/110xx/doc11014/MainText_HseVersion.28.1.2.png
Yes that pretty much tracks the absolute debt plot I referenced:
CBO said:
At the end of 2009, debt held by the public was $7.5 trillion, or 53 percent of GDP; by the end of 2020, debt is projected to climb to $15 trillion, or 67 percent of GDP
The risk, however, is that the spending is very likely to occur but the GDP numbers come from an iffy macroeconomic forecast.
 
  • #31
mheslep said:
The risk, however, is that the spending is very likely to occur but the GDP numbers come from an iffy macroeconomic forecast.
Well, the debt numbers are based not only on spending, but also on revenues, which are a strong function of GDP. So the GDP forecast is already built into the plot with the absolute numbers. The error bars (not shown, of course) will naturally increase in the fractional debt plot, and I see that risk. But in any case, the whole thing carries a somewhat restricted, but not unuseful message to me, since it relies on predicting spending, revenues and economic growth assuming that there are no changes (beyond those promised today) in fiscal policy over the next ten years. When was the last time that happened?
 
  • #32
Gokul43201 said:
Odd! Your numbers look a little different from mine, even though we're using the same source. In any case, it's a minor point, not worth any prolonged argument.
I ran only 00-08, you've got 99-09 in your link, plus in bar vs line they change the scaling. Change those and they match.
 
  • #33
Ivan Seeking said:
Is it really so hard to understand that there are times when spending is necessary? Ironic considering that under Clinton, it was the Republicans who were defending deficit spending when we didn't even need it! Yes, we barely avoided a depression. We barely avoided a collapse of the financial systems. We need to avoid the Japanese model of sustained stagnation. What was the latest report on growth, 6%, I believe. One year ago, the number was more like an average 6% loss in GDP.

Republicans [one year ago] - 6% negative growth
Democrats [today] - 6% positive growth

Job losses when Obama took over ~ 700,000 per month
Job losses today ~ 70,000 per month - one-tenth as much - with one short-term gain in the last quarter.

Hmmmmm... And if the GDP grows, as can be seen by the stable level of debt after WWII, the fraction of debt decreases.

Here is another Republican misrepresentation for you. Every Republican pundit and talk radio nut will point to the debt without ever referencing the debt as a fraction of the GDP. The fact is that we are barely any worse off than when Clinton first took office...from the Republicans [actually we are better off in terms of public debt only] From there, our debt ratio decreased under Clinton.

Oh my, the sky is falling... or maybe not.
350px-USDebt.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

All of this fuss about Obama and his spending is over nothing more than a slight uptick on the graph. 2001-2009 was brought to you by the Republicans. Much of the previous debt [as a fraction of GDP] was brought to you by the Republicans. In fact, some of the debt Obama has to include was money not included in the budget by Republicans. For example, much of the cost of the war was deferred to the next Admin. Also, the prescription drug plan was unfunded. Yet the Republicans never mention this. Instead, they constantly try to deceive the public by tagging Obama with this debt responsibility.

Here is an interesting fact about Dems vs Reps: The only President since WWII who significantly decreased the debt directly, was Clinton - a Democrat.

It seems to me that the report card on the Republicans and their economic philosophies is in. They get a big fat F. I once bought into their failed models and theories, but no more. Enough is enough! Quit terrorizing the public with wild claims in order to further a failed philosophical agenda.

There are times when we need conservative solutions, and others when we need liberal solutions. Ideologues need not apply. Long live the pragmatists! :biggrin:

Ivan, you need to extend your charts out about 10 years to appreciate Obama's massive spending. Then just for fun, look at the projections for social security, medicare, and medicaid over the next 10 decades. Spin it any way you like, but long term we are in BIG trouble.
 

1. What were the main issues of contention between Obama and the House Republicans?

The main issues of contention between Obama and the House Republicans included healthcare reform, immigration policies, and government spending. The Republicans also opposed many of Obama's environmental regulations and tax policies.

2. How did Obama and the House Republicans attempt to address these issues?

Obama and the House Republicans attempted to address these issues through negotiations and compromises. However, there were also instances of executive actions and government shutdowns due to disagreements.

3. Did Obama and the House Republicans ever reach any agreements?

Yes, there were some instances where Obama and the House Republicans were able to reach agreements and pass legislation. For example, the 2015 budget deal and the 2016 opioid addiction bill were passed with bipartisan support.

4. How did the relationship between Obama and the House Republicans affect the political landscape?

The relationship between Obama and the House Republicans was often characterized by polarization and gridlock, which affected the political landscape. It led to a lack of progress on important issues and contributed to the rise of partisan politics.

5. How did Obama's relationship with the House Republicans compare to his relationship with the Senate?

Obama's relationship with the House Republicans was often more contentious and confrontational compared to his relationship with the Senate. This is because the House of Representatives is typically more ideologically divided and has a larger Republican majority than the Senate.

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