The 20% can be misleading. Only 1/3rd of the total cost was stuff to be spent. Another 1/3rd was to support states and another 1/3rd was tax cuts. A good chunk of that part is already flowing through the system. How much has been spent vs. budgeted is also important here. Some of the money has been budgeted but not necessarily spent. For a gov't example, something like 60,000 teachers would have been cut if not for those funds from just a handful of states. Now, they haven't all been paid using that money yet because the school year is just beginning, but they would have been laid off otherwise, adding to unemployment and welfare expenses.
Thumbs, I really think you should consider joining the Dems. I can understand how your frustration with the Repubs.
Glynch, I work with -- and campaign with -- local Democrats as well as with Republicans. I am a moderate conservative, which by needs you are forced to paint as a hardcore Republican. However, I dance in the middle of the floor and not in the corners.
What would Hillary have done differently? Why should anyone even bother trying to have a rational discussion with you if you're going to take this approach? You make unsupported claims, then when pressed for specifics, you admit that you had no idea what you were talking about.
How can you claim that we are seeing a "more spiteful" administration that operates "in an even darker cloak of secrecy" than the Bush administration? If you actually believe this, I think you are truly delusional.
We all believe what we want to believe. Thank goodness, for the moment at least, it is still a free country.
Single payer is at least the naked truth -- one single government-run system. Public option is a more convoluted version of the same thing. If two vendors show you identical hamburgers but one is $1 and the other is $2 because it has a tax on it, you will choose the $1 hamburger even though you know that tomorrow the $1 hamburger vendor will be selling it for $3. The $2 vendor goes out of business because he can't sell his $2 hamburger in the face of a tax-free $1 hamburger. Now that the hamburger is a nice tax-free $3, you run back to the $2 vendor. Unfortunately, that vendor is no longer in business. Public option works the same way. There is choice at first but soon there is no choice and single payer becomes the de facto winner.
... putting people on ignore, putting on the headphones, and listening to Mr. Roboto for the rest of the afternoon.
Your question is moot. No one can say what McCain or Hillary would have done. Heck, Obama campaigned that he would do or not do many things and has done just the opposite. All politicians say one thing and do another because, conveniently, conditions change once they achieve office. (And let me warn you in advance I do not have time to do your research in comparing and contrasting).
Sorry -- just not true. Evidence and logic speak more loudly to some. The "gut" and the "heart" speak more loudly to others. That does not necessarily split on party lines. I'm just talking about individuals. The evidence against Cheney's "cloak of secrecy" is unprecedented. You are free to ignore it and then say you "just know" that Obama is worse, but like so many Iraqi WMD, you have left the world of hard evidence behind.
what is the tax you are referring to that's on private insurers? The idea that private insurers can't compete with a big inefficient gov't bureaucracy is so counter to everything the tea-baggers are saying. They claim big gov't is inefficient - than how the heck is it going to make efficient insurers go out of business? With a tax? What tax? Out of business? You think Hospitals are going to want to see private insurers replaced by the gov't? Think about it. You know what's killing private insurers? It's rising health costs until their margins are squeezed to a few percentage points. If you want to save the insurance industry, you have to go after the source of rising health costs. The insurers are just complicit because they are making money essentially off arbitrage. it's the hospitals and medical supply companies, the pharma industry...these are the folks running away with the loot. You have to put the price pressure on them.
Except they aren't. And the administration has never supported implementing a single payer system. So you're suggesting that the government is more efficient than the private sector? After all, with the way the legislation is written, they will be playing on a level playing field.
Thumbs, now that we know that the public option and the health care reform bills currently in front of congress will actually reduce the deficit, are you now in favor of the health care reform legislation?
What tax are you referring to here? There is no tax. The real situation is this: vendor number one offers a hamburger that costs $6 because he's the only game in town. Then vendor number two steps in and offers a hamburger that only costs $3 because not everyone can afford a $6 hamburger. This $3 burger is not being subsidized by taxes, it is being covered by the $3 that people are paying. However, if vendor #1 is really more efficient than vendor #2, he will either lower his prices in the face of competition, or people will continue to buy the burger at $6 because it is far superior to what is being offered at $3.
Are you really this stupid or are you just pretending? The question is most certainly NOT moot. How can you say that no one can tell what McCain or Hillary Clinton would have done just a couple of pages after you guaranteed us that neither McCain nor Hillary would have "taken the country so far afield from its basic principles"?
