Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
So let me get this right. The Tea-Publican anti-government insurgency that wants to destroy the federal government is suddenly concerned about federal government employees? The very same federal employees they despise and villify as blood-sucking parasites every chance they get? One has to have been living in a cave for the past 30 years to fall for this bullshit.
The Tea-Publican economic terrorists may have just thrown President Obama the card he needs to play to end this government shutdown. On Saturday, in a unanimous vote, the House
passes bill to give federal workers back pay:
[M]embers of the House came together in a moment of rare bipartisanship
to pass a bill, by a vote of 407 to 0, approving back pay for furloughed
government workers.
One has to assume that the Tea-Publican anti-government insurgents clearly did not intend to give blood-sucking parasite federal employees a vacation for not working, right?
If we are going to pay federal employees, then they should at least return to work and earn their pay:
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid supports the measure, but said
Saturday that if furloughed workers are guaranteed back pay, there’s no
reason to keep them out of work.“It’s really cruel to tell
workers they’ll receive back pay once the government opens and then
refuse to open the government,” Reid said on the Senate floor,
suggesting that House Republicans have authorized a “paid vacation” for
furloughed workers.
President Obama should use an emergency executive order to reclassify so-called "non-essential" federal employees and to order them back to work on Monday. What are Tea-Publicans going to do? Argue that the federal employees they so despise are to be given a paid vacation for not working? Try selling that on FAUX News.
This move has already been done at the Pentagon. Last week, President Obama signed a bill to protect pay and allowances for members of the Armed Forces during the government shutdown. And on Saturday, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel reinstated almost all of the 400,000 civilian employees who had been sent home. In Surprise Announcement, Hagel Recalls Most Defense Department Workers.
Mr. President, use an emergency executive order to reclassify "non-essential" federal employees and order them back to work on Monday. Take advantage of the card that Tea-Publicans have tossed you to end their ridiculous government shutdown.
No. I’m sorry, but this would be a major mistake. First, it would immediately create such a raft of lawsuits that the whole point would be dissolved in the legal language. It might, in fact, keep the government shut down until they were settled, in a worst case scenario.
More importantly, we HAVE to win this fight, we have to win it in the eyes of voters, and we have to win it decisively before the Debt Ceiling Crisis comes along. And we are winning it on both fronts. People are realizing the pain the shutdown is causing, and they are signing up for Obamacare in higher numbers than were even expected. (And, in those states where exchanges don’t exist, a lot of people are talking to Cousin Bob or Aunt Shirley — who live in covered states — and hearing how glad they are to have it and the benefits they are receiving.)
But we win it by remaining ‘the only adult in the room’ and simply staying with our position — not by trying to ‘out-stunt’ the Republicans and turning people off entirely. (And we PARTICULARLY don’t win it by making an unnecessary last-minute concession, as we did with ‘end of life counseling.’ I am firmly convinced that it was the appearance that that action created — at a time when the media as a whole had just about come around to calling ‘death panels’ the lie they were — that created the Tea Party and gave the republicans the ‘cover’ they needed to create the Disaster of 2010. Some of you may remember my fulminations about how we were sleeping through that, and how dangerous it was. We saved the Senate — but only because the republicans gave us Crazy Chrissie, the Obtuse Angle and Lady Linda the wrestling promoter. But while we were still running around in the afterglow of January 2009, we ignored the state legislatures entirely, the House mostly, and — well, anyone heard the word ‘gerrymandering’ recently.)
Sorry, hobby-horse riding. But we ARE winning the fight. Cruz is not making friends, Boehner is saving his job and losing everything else, including what little respect hios title had given him, and the various wings of the Republican Party, even the very Conservative ones, and going to begin being at each other’s throats.
The Republican Party has never been as unified as we have thought — and, btw, we’ve never been as unified as republicans have thought, that’s the way group dynamics always is. (Non-Protestants see “Christians” as united, Christians don’t think the divisions in Judaism are important, we don’t realize the hatred of sunni and Shia, etc. Even Diamondback fans don’t all have the same reason for rooting for them and aren’t as unified as outsiders think.)
[Whoa, Dobbin! Sorry, I haven’t been doing much writing over the last year and things are pouring out.] Anyway, the business groups — particularly the small and medium sized local businesses, not the Koch Brothers-types — have never been that comfortable with the social and religious conservatives, and are scared as hell of the ‘We’re mad, we’re M*A*D — and we’ll tell you what about when we figure it out ourselves’ group. And then there are the real dangerous ones, the total anti-government extremists, and the fat Pied pipers who can lead the children anywhere, knowing they will be safe in their chairs in front of the mike — cashing BIGBIG checks — whatever happens to their victims.
If we play this smart, if we stay steady and adult and strong, we won’t just win this battle. Those tensions are going to rip the Republicans apart next year. They have thrown away their sources of growing support, ethnics, women, youth, the aged, now dissatisfied government workers — not many of those groups will be left wearing (R)’s. And the business groups are going to be trying to get rid of the dangerous — to them as well as to the country — TPers, the TPers will be fighting any Republican who even blinked during the crisis — and if we remember the lessons Howard Dean taught us and don’t write any district off we can probably win 20-40 ‘solid red’ districts that are tearing themselves apart — and we can even run progressive candidates and win them.
But not with stunts, shysterisms, or this sort of ‘technicality’ which will only confuse already confused voters.