Posted on 01/13/2016 2:38:30 PM PST by Kaslin
WASHINGTON - Republicans kept their 2014 promise to the voters who put them in control of Congress, passing legislation to repeal Obamacare.
The bill, which also blocked federal funding of Planned Parenthood, easily passed the House last week by a vote of 240 to 181, after having passed the Senate last month, 52 to 47 along party lines.
When the bill reached President Obama's desk, he promptly vetoed it. But that isn't the end of the GOP's long battle to replace Obamacare with a healthcare reform bill that won't drive up insurance premiums and bankrupt our country.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan promised to take the fight to the next step. While neither chamber had the votes to override Obama's veto, he said the House would hold a vote to override anyway, "taking this process all the way to the end under the Constitution."
"If there is one story that is being told here today," he said following the House passage of the repeal bill, "it is this:
"The idea that Obamacare is the law of the land for a long time is a myth. We will see this law either collapse under its own weight, or we will see this law, in the next session of Congress be repealed and signed and replaced, by a Republican president."
For Ryan and his new team of Republican leaders, this is the beginning of an election year process to show that the GOP has put their divisions behind them and is making the legislative process work.
And that the only impediment to good government is a Democratic president who has vetoed the bill to complete construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and blocked pro- job tax cuts.
Among the GOP bills waiting in the wings is a sweeping overhaul of the tax code to cleanse it of costly loopholes and corporate welfare, plowing the savings into cutting the tax rates for businesses and individuals to boost economic growth, job creation and business investment.
Other areas awaiting legislative action include welfare and entitlement reforms, and an alternative to Obamacare.
What Ryan wants to do this year is return to "regular order," passing all 12 appropriations bill one by one that allow floor votes on amendments sought by members of the House GOP conference.
"That's the whole purpose of having a bottom-up organic process in Congress, not a top-down leadership," Ryan said at a news conference last week.
"I'm decentralizing power of this place. And when you decentralize power, you have a group decide these things," he said.
Ryan and the rest of the GOP leadership do not expect Obama and the Democrats to embrace their proposals to cut taxes to spur economic growth. They rarely focus on the economy or jobs -- except in an occasional speech where Obama cherry picks good data, but ignores other gloomy statistics such as declining economic growth.
By and large the White House and the Democrats are ignoring the economy, and with good reason. Much of it is bleak.
Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that payroll employment rose by 292,000 in December.
But dig down into the fine print of its report, and the employment figures aren't so good.
"The number of unemployed persons, at 7.9 million, was essentially uncharged in December," the BLS said.
Black unemployment stood at 8.3 percent. For working age teenagers, it was over 16 percent. For Hispanics it was unchanged at 6.3 percent.
"The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 2.1 million," BLS said.
"And the number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed at 6.0 million."
These long-time victims of the Obama economy want full-time employment, but were working part-time "because their hours had been cut back or they were unable to find a full-time job." the government said.
Then there were another 2 million unfortunate people who were "marginally attached to the labor force" but were not counted as unemployed, even though they had looked for a job in recent months. The reason: they hadn't searched for a job in the last several weeks.
Among them, there were 663,000 discouraged workers who have stopped looking for a job because they believed there were none available for them.
The real shocker in the Obama economy lately has been the decline in manufacturing activity and inventories as businesses push to reduce their stockpile of unsold goods.
Economists said that this, among other weaknesses in the economy, signaled much weaker fourth quarter growth.
The economy's gross domestic product, the broadest measurement of the nation's economy, grew at an anemic 2 percent in the third quarter. And its getting weaker.
The Commerce Department said Friday that wholesale inventories, in both durable and nondurable goods, fell to 0.3 percent.
Its report "added to weak data on construction spending, export growth and manufacturing that have suggested GDP growth braked sharply in the final three months of 2015," Reuters reported.
Estimates of fourth quarter GDP growth have ranged from 1.1 percent to as low as 0.4 percent.
The Atlanta Fed's GDP Now model is projecting GDP grew by an anemic 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter. In other words, the economy is barely breathing.
Economists at Barclays last week were also projecting GDP will come in at 0.7 percent, dealing a devastating blow to the administration's rosier outlook.
Other forecasters are saying the economy isn't going to improve anytime soon, facing an even rockier year ahead, and giving the GOP another opportunity to strengthen their control of Congress and win back the White House.
Stay tuned.
Obama did a great job trashing our economy with his friends,Boner, McConnell & now Ryan.
One year to go in his pResidency and everything is going as planned. By this time next year we’ll be dodging bullets as we scavenge for food.
Obama, the democrats, and all of the GOP are all for selling out America to China.
Every single one of them.
Only Donald Trump is for American production.
Obama said the economy is great during the State of the Onion.
We’ll wait him out. One liberal homo commie muslim assh0le cannot destroy this country.
Finally the last Obama “Hate of the Union” speech. Unfortunately the damage will linger for years to come.
Read
Yup, if you negate everything from his first SOTU and his final SOTU you will expose the communist agenda.
WHAT!!!!!!!!
There is the “football” option. I think he hates America enough to at least ponder playing with it sometimes.
The correct tactic is to not fund that or ANYTHING until either Hussein folds or his term is over.
Obama’s government is just as fake as the Chinese government
Just in time for Trump to get the blame.
More Kabuki theater.
I agree SAM but when you have most of the house and senate and supreme court its a little easier.
"The Obama Economy Is Collapsing And It's Going to Get Worse"
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponents Argument
Patriots, quit picking on Obama !
Regardless what FDRs anti-state sovereignty activist justices wanted everybody to think about the scope of Congresss Commerce Clause powers (1.8.3), a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified that the individual states, not the corrupt feds, own their respective economies.
State inspection laws, laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. [emphases added] - Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
So whatever conservative patriots elect as president, they will also need to elect a new, state sovereignty-respecting Congress that will work within its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to support the president instead of letting both the legislative and executive branches interfere with 10th Amendment-protected INTRAstate economies.
In fact, note that such a Congress will also probably be willing to fire state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices who likewise help to empower lawless presidents like Obama to interfere with intrastate commerce.
And one republican administration can not undo the damage that he has done.
Yeah, no question that is true.
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