GOP Wants Reconciliation Renounced

In his opening statement for the Republican members of the bipartisan health care summit, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) called on Democrats and President Obama to renounce the use of reconciliation to pass health care.

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[RavenMichaels]

The Democrats should only stop using Reconciliation when the Republicans stop threatening to filibuster nearly every bill that comes through there...

[PVBOG]

Last democratic president to balance the budget was President Bill Clinton . Last republican president to do it was Richard Nixon . Think about that for a minute .

[bigrebnc1861]

Sen. Lamar Alexander is full of shit if obama secedes then America will fail it will change to something we will not recognize as home of the free.

[eyesphere]

Go look up how many times Republicans have used Reconciliation to get things passed... Here's a hint: It's a big number...

They oppose it only when it passes things that the people that pay them don't like (and I don't mean taxpayers)...

[galaxyyellow]

Poor comment!

[phillip84109]

@TheAerialbomb I'm glad we're having a civil discourse about things. I'm glad you didn't move either.

You're still wrong about the bill, though. Obama did vote to block it. But the Republicans still should have pressed the issue and tried to push it though.

Like I said, the banks also have much responsibility for the financial collapse; but so do the Democrats and Republicans who supported the policy of putting people into houses they couldn't afford.

[TheAerialbomb]

@phillip84109

As I remember the Republicans had enough votes to call it up but it hardly matters. I think selling off the loans made it easy for lenders to give credit and I think a lot of people thought they could make a fast killing on real estate prices going up. We looked at a house in Vegas in 1999 that was 224K, same house in 2005 was 750K. I believe I read that 80% of the homes there are underwater now on their mortgages. Glad we didn't move, LOL.

[phillip84109]

@TheAerialbomb The reason why it was never called up for a vote is because it was blocked by the Democrats. Obama was one of the Democrats voting to block it.

By the way, I do agree with you that the lenders were also partly to blame for the housing crisis because they did knowingly make bad loans.

What you fail to realize is that the reason banks loaned to people with bad credit is the Democrats pressured them to do it because they felt that "poor people deserve houses too."

[TheAerialbomb]

@phillip84109

Not exactly true, Dems were against it. GOP had enough votes to pass it if they had wanted to. It was never even called up for a vote.

Later Barney Frank wanted loan writers to retain at least 10% of the loan so the "writers" would have some interest in them. The original lenders cared little about the credit worthiness of people because they sold off the loans. Lenders cried INTERFERENCE...... never passed.

[phillip84109]

@TheAerialbomb Also, people using their houses as "piggy banks" was a bad thing because they were spending money they didn't have because the equity was never really there.

We had an artificial housing bubble caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (over 1/2 of our mortgages were with them).

Why? Because people like Obama supported putting people into houses they couldn't afford. Then, when the Republicans tried to reform the system in 2005, Obama and the Democrats blocked it.