The (un)Affordable Health Care Act & Debt Ceiling Controversies

[k-troop]

A majority of Americans and politicians have no idea what the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare is.  Their opinion of it is based on whatever the media they subscribe to told them it was.

That's the point. Saying that "a majority of Americans want..." anything is pretty much a useless comment.

[newtogolf]

That's the point. Saying that "a majority of Americans want..." anything is pretty much a useless comment.

Agreed, if you want really measure public opinion compare the ratings of CNN and Fox and you can pretty much get the same results.

[jamo]

Actually the gallop polls show that a good majority of Americans think the government is to intrusive, and has to much power.

If they worded the poll question that way, then I'm not surprised. Few people, no matter their party affiliations, are going to say, "sure, I'd like the government to intrude more in my life." "Intrude" and "power" both have negative connotations. Most reporting on polls sucks. A lot of polls themselves suck.

[dfreuter415]

Getting back to my original points, does anyone feel that we need:

1) Term limits - 12 years max for Senators (2 terms) or members of the House (6 terms)

2) Balanced budget amendment

If these two items were in place, I personally feel that many of our problems would go away. First, as seen in the days of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, a balanced budget leads to a robust economy. Secondly, term limits in Congress might, just might, reduce a lot of the Washington gridlock.

[saevel25]

1) No i don't believe in term limits. I think that until a person gets voted out, then the people speak on this point. If you correct redistricting, then things will settle back to most seats being a challenge. I know some seats will always been one side or the other. Like Pelosi in San Francisco. No way your going to get a republican in there. But you can make 80% of the seats competitive, that will go a long way.

2) Depends on how it is done. Like you have to balance the budget every 10 years. I don't believe in yearly balance budgets. I think its stupid for the federal government. It would cause to much chaos if they had to keep shuffling things around every year. I think some years we can run deficits, then as long as it balances out over a certain time frame.

[teamroper60]

Getting back to my original points, does anyone feel that we need:

1) Term limits - 12 years max for Senators (2 terms) or members of the House (6 terms)

2) Balanced budget amendment

If these two items were in place, I personally feel that many of our problems would go away. First, as seen in the days of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, a balanced budget leads to a robust economy. Secondly, term limits in Congress might, just might, reduce a lot of the Washington gridlock.

On face value I like term limits because it would force the mopes in congress to live with the laws they are writing.   But term limits come with their own set of problems, not the least of which is in an election year where a large majority of seats are up for re-election, we could end up with a derth of people who have any clue how the legislative process really works as opposed to how it works philosophically and gridlock like we have now could become the norm.  We can see how that is working out.   Do we really want that forever?   I think not.

I like the balanced budget amendment idea.    We have that at the state level here in Missouri.    It works pretty well here, so I would like to see it tried at the federal level.  Of course, it does require that an actual budget gets made and passed, which has not happened at the federal level in quite  a few years....

[mmoan2]

Getting back to my original points, does anyone feel that we need:

1) Term limits - 12 years max for Senators (2 terms) or members of the House (6 terms)

2) Balanced budget amendment

If these two items were in place, I personally feel that many of our problems would go away. First, as seen in the days of Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, a balanced budget leads to a robust economy. Secondly, term limits in Congress might, just might, reduce a lot of the Washington gridlock.

Don't have much of an opinion on term limits. I don;t think it would make much of a difference. Some of the best lawmakers in Congress - Patrick Moynihan who was in new York for like 30 years comes to mind - were in office for quite a while and always did a good job. I think Peter King of New York now, who has been a member of the House for 20 years, is good there too. I agree with the above point that massive turnover is a problem. Incoming Congresspeople take a long time to figure things out.

Balanced budget amendment is a bad idea at the federal level. It's unnecessary. The robust economy during the Clinton years was not the result of a balanced budget. If anything, the budget was balanced because of the robust economy.

[boogielicious]

Yep, but as Margaret Thatcher famously said, "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."

We're there......

And yet she did her best to increase the size of the British government as did her pal Ronald Reagan.  They both did the opposite of their clever quotes.

[madolive3]

I hate getting sucked into these types of discussions. can't we talk about golf? I can go elsewhere and find plenty of political arguments.

[jamo]

I hate getting sucked into these types of discussions. can't we talk about golf? I can go elsewhere and find plenty of political arguments.

Ummmm ... this thread has been dead for four months. You would have had to search pretty deep to come across it. Who's sucking you in?