October 3, 2012
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Questions Every Voter Should Ask
In case it hasn’t been obvious that the Republican party is more interested in their party’s well-being than the country’s, here’s some more information for you. The Republican party has filibustered more than at any time in history. This means that our Senate doesn’t even get a chance to VOTE on important issues.
In case you’re not good at reading charts, simply look at the trends for filibustering. Look at the last three lines, where the Republicans were the minority, and thus the ones calling for a filibuster. You’ll notice that the term the graph uses is “cloture”, not filibuster. That’s because the old days of Strom Thurmond reading the Bible for 24 hours, thereby stalling until after the vote was to be called. Now the minority party simply threatens to filibuster, and thereby ending the whole process without the actual stalling. The reason the Democrats cave in to the cloture instead of forcing the actual filibuster is that, were the Republican party to actually filibuster every measure they oppose, we’d never get a single vote settled. Even though this Congress has gotten very little done, were they having to deal with 15-hour filibusters on every vote, it would have gotten even less done.
And let’s not forget the Standard’s & Poor reducing our credit rating down from AAA for the first time in history. They even warned us that unless we raised the debt ceiling they would be forced to do this. So what did the Republicans do? They held American hostage. And don’t think I’m being hyperbolic in saying this was a “hostage situation.” Just ask Mitch McConnell:
“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,” he said. “Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.”
So here’s the main question you need to ask yourself when you go out to vote: do you really want to vote for a party that believes that holding the country hostage to advance their party’s policies rather than doing what’s right and doing what’s best for the country as a whole?
Comments (14)
I wish I was from a state where my vote mattered! OH WELL
Of course, let’s just forget facts and go with probables. Or even better yet, ignore the fact that the democrats, when in power, didn’t pass budgets and could have raised the debt ceiling back then.
But that’s right. It’s so much easier to play partisan politics and ignore the wrong that one party did just to make the other look bad.
^ There’s no shortage of brain dead bobbleheads that will defend the indefensible no matter what.
No body wants checks and balances until the shoe is on the other foot.
Canada’s credit rating is STILL a comfortable AAA.
@grim_truth - Sorry… what facts were I ignoring?
You forgot “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”
these are facts and let’s not the republican campaign to suppress votes of minorities, students and the elderly, all likely democrat voters. filibustering legislation for political reasonsthat would help the U.S. financial recovery and trying to keep voters from being able to vote? how anti-American is that? if someone told me terrorists are sitting at home watching their TVs and cheering the republican party on I wouldn’t be surprised. fortunately the Pennsylvania voter suppression law has been shot down in the court too. looks like Pennsylvania republican Senate leader who said “Voter ID law that will assure Romney wins the State…Done!” is now eating crow.
@TheTheologiansCafe - people are better off than they were 4 years ago. 30 or 31 straight months of job growth. the stock market went from 6,000 to over 13,000 which means 401ks are back. the housing market is again on sturdy ground and strengthening. consumer confidence is up and according to an analysis published two weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal unemployment would be at or lower than 7.1% if not for Congressional republicans filibustering the President’s jobs bill.
a few months before Obama took office the nation was in total panic mode. Romney is promising 12 million jobs over the next 4 years but guess what? that is already the minimal number of jobs projected at the present rate of economic growth. in other words Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels of “Dumb and Dumber” could sit in the White House until 2016 and there will be still be 12 million new jobs created.
and let’s not forget…Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. if Romney had been President those two stories would be reversed.
@TheTheologiansCafe - Four years ago was immediately after the stock market crashed and was during the Bush administration. Bad example.
@TheTheologiansCafe - 2008 I started with the company I am with now. In Oct, Nov of 2008 it honestly looked like the world was about to end. Scary fucking shit. Our sales went to nothing, We took salary cuts company wide (A majority of our employees are in Asia). Honestly…didn’t know if we would make it.
Been a good 4 years since…steadily growing. Personally I have seen my pay rise 37% over that time.
Yea…I know 8% unemployment your tried and true…..Which beggs the question…Since when do you give two shits about the unemployed? You would eliminate unemployment insurance if it were up to you.
Did it ever occur to you maybe they are filibustering more because the dems are trying harder at passing insane laws that will HURT the economy even more?
As for me,I would ask the question “Why pass more laws when you don’t even enforce laws you DO pass”?Reps and dems both are full of politics and politics never got nothin DONE! If the Gov would get out of the way,the economy would fix itself.Capitalism is no where near as greedy as Gov,thats a fact!Don’t believe me?Look how big Gov has grown the last 4 years against how the private sector has shrank.It speaks for itself sir!
All parties everywhere put their party policies first for one of two reason and usually a dash of both: they believe their policies are the salvation of the country concerned; and to enhance their personal ambitions.
@GodlessLiberal - I was actually referring to how you make assumptions instead of purely sticking to facts. By using the same method, @Somefishytales argument holds plenty of water, in his assumption that the bills would have hurt the economy more. You made the assumption that the fiibusters that didn’t happen would have held things up even more.
You also didn’t list the bills that were held up. You also ignored the fact that cloture is NOT the same as filibuster as cloture MUST be enacted by the senate majority party, and is NOT necessarily done to stop a filibuster. The chart is incorrect in saying the republicans hold a majority, the dems do in the senate. Many of the clotures filed were in regards to bills that had nothing to do with the economy, and the republicans said they would filibuster continuing resolutions, in an attempt to actually get an actual budget passed. Many of the bills that were threatened with veto that drew the cloture were also bills that would have extended the hand of the gov’t. The republicans elected campaigned for smaller gov’t. Are you condemning them for following through on what they campaigned on?
So, for anyone claiming that the nation is better off than it was 4 years ago, wouldn’t it then be prudent to attribute some of that success to the attempted filibusters?