So, We Were Pissed When BO Didn't Offer His Own Plan on HCR, Leaving It To Congress

[stopbush]

and NOW we're pissed because he's offered a plan on the bush tax cuts after two years when the Congress couldn't be bothered to do so.

Just sayin...

[dennis4868]

1. DU = BLAME OBAMA FOR THE REPUBLICAN NON STOP FILLUBUSTER

[dionysus]

4. yay! i swear, some people are only happy when they're miserable.

they probably miss the old bush days so they can REALLY be angry all the time.

[Bluerthanblue]

2. that about sums it up-

:shrug:

[Scurrilous]

3. Blame Obama. Now and forever.

:thumbsup:

[NorthCarolina]

5. I guess the truth can be seen in what he chooses to offer, and to publicly fight for. nt

[stopbush]

9. What he offered at first was an extension on the middle-class cuts

and an end to cuts for the super rich.

THAT PLAN WAS DEFEATED IN THE SENATE!

Those who say the Ds should stand tough on no tax cuts for the rich ignore the fact that WE ALREADY TRIED THAT AND IT WAS SHOT DOWN BY THE Rs.

What are Ds supposed to do? Just keep bringing the same already defeated bill up for vote after vote? Senate rules don't allow that.

[Jamastiene]

6. If he hadn't managed to get it so wrong in both instances,

the criticisms would not be there.

Just sayin...

[donheld]

8. You're sayin... and I'm agreein.

When the plan he offers is the plan he campaigned AGAINST he should only expect us to complain.

[jaxx]

7. Kinda weird isn't it?

You'd think people just flat out don't like the President.

[jpgray]

17. See my post in this thread. How can you be so disingenuous?

How can you consistently dole out petty one-liners, smugly condemning or approving of thread after thread, without any regard for the actual content? Obama in no way, shape or form simply left HCR to Congress. In fact, he just claimed in his press conference that -he- got health care for all Americans. What "he" got was health -insurance- for all Americans, but how do you square his own statements and actions with your attitude in the post you just made, that he was a passive player in HCR who just sat out and signed? It's absolutely ridiculous.

[jaxx]

22. The congress wrote the bill.

The President came in at the last, when it was declared dead, and refined some of it, and it passed. People on here said he was passive, I suppose you don't like those smug answers either.

Many threads have no content, simply redundant opinions. Mine are my own, as are yours. Far be it from me to tell you how to post.

[gateley]

10. As always, there are differing opinions on this as there were on HCR - but "we"

keep lumping everyone into the same category.

Haven't you seen the heated disagreements and discussions?

You insult your fellow DUers.

IMO, anyway.

[stopbush]

12. Give me a break. I use "we" in the editorial sense,

for no other reason that there's a limited character count in the subject line for OPs.

If you're insulted it's only because being insulted is part of your raison d'etre.

[gateley]

23. Non, ma raison d'être, c'est que je suis fatigué de DUers critiquer DUers autres.

But thanks for deciding what is and isn't my motive. I guess I need others to tell me why I respond in any way.

[stopbush]

25. So, you're tired of DUers criticizing other DUers

after you've criticized me one post earlier.

Whatever.

[gateley]

26. Yeah, you're right. I've been on a tear this morning for some reason. I'm going to

log off. I apologize.

[Tatiana]

11. This is actually a very salient point. Obama acted because Congress had not in the past.

So hopefully now Congress has learned that if they want decent and fair legislation passed, they need to do the jobs the people elected them to and get the damn bills to the President's desk. Pelosi has pretty much done her job, but Reid has not been the leader the Senate needs and I think it's a shame that he was reelected as majority leader. He is highly ineffective.

I think Obama doing what he did and negotiating with the hostage takers was bad politics but ironically, may turn out to have been a good decision after all. Not because the deal negotiated was a good one, but because it fired up the lackluster Dems and may have motivated them to actually get something productive and beneficial (for the American working class) done.

[Pirate Smile]

13. This explains a lot about why President Obama did what he did re HCR:

A tweet from Bill Scher:

People ask why Obama let Congress lead on stim & healthcare. Now you see why. Reps who don't shape the compromises, attack the compromises.

http://twitter.com/billscher/status/12702360405016576

[jpgray]

18. Who made the deal with Billy Tauzin?

Who said "I passed health care for all Americans" in a press conference just days ago? Was it Congress or the White House who was forced to admit publicly that it had bargained away re-importation and negotiation for Medicare after the House began considering those provisions? Your disingenuous attitude is absolutely unbelievable.

[lame54]

14. so we were right twice

[jpgray]

15. Short memory? Selective memory?

Here you go:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/health/policy/06insure.html

Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.

In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement.

Don't remember his secret deal with Tauzin? How much attention were you paying during HCR? This administration has a bad habit of negotiating away things without consulting with or even alerting Congress.

[stopbush]

21. Are you really saying that BO making a deal with drug companies

encompasses the whole of the HCR debate and represents the be all and end all of that massive bill?

Really?

As far as paying attention, anyone who was paying attention to the MSM and/or DU knows that it is simply a fact that Obama was being pounded during the HCR debate for not putting forward his own comprehensive plan and telling Congress "this is what I want passed." He was hauled over the coals for his lack of leadership by allowing Max Bachus et al to control what went into the legislation.

The fact is that even if Obama did negotiate side deals with big pharma et al the Congress didn't need to include any of that in their versions of the bill. Sure, they risked Obama's veto, but that's the way it goes. They could have done whatever they wanted.

[jpgray]

27. This, to you, is leaving it to Congress?

What do people in Congress say?

In an interview on Wednesday, Representative Raul M. Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who is co-chairman of the House progressive caucus, called Mr. Tauzin’s comments “disturbing.”

“We have all been focused on the debate in Congress, but perhaps the deal has already been cut,” Mr. Grijalva said. “That would put us in the untenable position of trying to scuttle it.”

He added: “It is a pivotal issue not just about health care. Are industry groups going to be the ones at the table who get the first big piece of the pie and we just fight over the crust?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/health/policy/06insure.html

[enlightenment]

16. A bit disingenuous to suggest that the President did not make

his beliefs known about health care - when he most certainly did - but this sort of comment is pretty typical around DU.

If a good thing happens, the President is completely responsible for it happening and we should all acknowledge his superior power to lead.
If a bad thing happens, the President mustn't shoulder an iota of blame, because Congress makes all the laws and there's just nothing the President can do about it.

A nice job, if you can get it.

[Bandit]

19. Congress brought a bill forward and voted on it .

Republicans filibustered it in the Senate. Obama decided he would go with the Republicans and throw away the Core Democratic Priniciple of Progressive Taxation and you wonder why any would be upset with him? :crazy:

[dgibby]

20. So, let me see if I have this right.

Obama circumvents both Houses of a duly elected Congress, makes a backdoor deal with republicans that he KNOWS will enrage Dems, announces the deal on national tv, gets upset when they don't support his actions. Then he goes on to announce that it's a "done deal" that can't be changed and that if they don't pass it, they're putting the country in danger of falling back into a recession.

Doesn't that make him just another "Decider-in-Chief" or a Dictator that has adopted the Unitary Executive Theory of the Neocons?

What was that old "joke" of Dubya's? Oh, yeah, "It would be easier if this were a dictatorship, as long as I was the dictator".

What's wrong with this picture?

[myrna minx]

29. +1

[Life Long Dem]

24. And now

Md.'s Chris Van Hollen - says "We were told take it or leave it, and we're going to leave it."

Looks like the Democrats in Congress will cause the tax cuts to expire.

[mrdmk]

28. When you look at who was invited to the meeting, the time-lines, the ratios of who pays what

then announce the outcome on the evening news to your party, of course people are going to be pissed-off.

The folks who defend this action are in total denial of the facts.

To further add insult to injury, the Democrats are in-control of the House, Senate, and the Presidency; there was and still is time to do something different!

The bottom-line is this:

President Obama wanted tax cuts for the Rich
President Obama wanted cuts in Social Security
President Obama wanted to cut-off long-term unemployment at 99 weeks
President Obama wanted single people who make less-than $20,000 and married couple who make less-than $40,000 to pay more taxes

That is the bottom line!!!

[DirkGently]

30. "Made a deal giving the Republicans everything they want" is not "offered a plan."

[readmoreoften]

31. Is this today's new talking point?

I've heard it 3 times already.

[stopbush]

32. If so, it's a talking point that I started.