“After years of tickling the dragon’s tail, flirting with the demagoguery of America’s right wing and egging on a growing rage within a core constituency of disaffected, working class white Americans, the dragon has started to breathe fire, and the flames have spread in all directions. The result is the maddening success of raving nativist Donald Trump and to a lesser extent, Senator Ted Cruz.”
Filed under The Public Square, Uncategorized
Here’s the most interesting (and ironic) thing about the #DefundObamacare effort: Even if they convince congressional Republicans to hold hostage America’s budget, it won’t defund Obamacare – but by stopping funding to critical programs, it would defund America.
That’s right. A government shutdown would not shut down Obamacare. That’s what the Congressional Research Service reported when asked by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. How is that possible, you ask? Because much of Obamacare is funded by multiyear and mandatory funding. Such funding is unaffected by the annual appropriations that the tea party wants House Speaker John Boehner to shut down. The state marketplaces (known more commonly as “exchanges”), the subsidies for low-income people to buy insurance, the individual mandate and all the new rules prohibiting insurance company discriminations and abuses (remember the days of pre-existing conditions)? They’ll all go forward even if the tea party succeeds in disrupting this year’s federal budget. Continue reading here.
Filed under The Public Square
PrairiePopulistsAndProgressives.net 