Obama Challenges Boehner on Budget Vote

This article, here, in "The New York Times" focuses on President Obama's recent visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In his address given while there, he challenges Speaker of the House John Boehner to call on the House to vote. He accuses Boehner of having alternate interests in not calling the vote, which is an allusion to Boehner's firm stance regarding ACA concessions. The President states that he believes there are enough bipartisan Republicans and Democrats to pass a budget bill and that Boehner is prolonging the government shutdown unnecessarily. President Obama reiterates his willingness to discuss the ACA as well as other policies, economic and otherwise, but says it is inappropriate to harm Americans in order to gain leverage in the ACA debate.

This is not President Obama's first call for a vote. I don't have a link to the video, but President Obama appeared the day prior to the actual day of the shutdown and called for congress to pass a budget bill. He said that holding the nation hostage to prevent the ACA is irresponsible.

Party affiliation is irrelevant when I say that Boehner and the Tea-Party minorities in the House are handling the budget bill and ACA concessions extremely ineffectively.

Let's muse for a minute. Suppose I was adamantly opposed to Obamacare; defunding it is an excellent way to undermine it. However, it is not the only way. If the ACA is just as detrimental to our economy and society as its opponents make it out to be, even in its worst form it is a slow killing policy, much more slowly than the damage a shutdown government is doing right now. Remember in class when we talked about the projected 1 to 1.5 percent decrease? That's in the space of just two weeks. That's not in anyway comparable to the damage that the ACA would do, and that's assuming it would have any damage at all.

On a side note, I tried to find sources that explicitly defined the ACA's methodology and implications, but was relatively unsuccessful in finding one that was objective. I found the .gov sites about it, here, here, and here, and "Forbes" did an article on the implications here, but those were the best I could find. If someone could comment below and give me some good ones, I would be appreciative. I would really like some quantitative work that show things like, the intended effect, the theoretical effect, the effect on different demographics, the business implications, and other things like that.

Now, back to strategy. If I were trying to repeal a bill and do so with national consent, I wouldn't hold the economic growth of my voters contingent on that repeal. To the voters, that shows that agenda comes before them. I would pass a budget bill and include funding for that bill, and then engage in post-bill negotiations. Then the economy can breathe while the debate over repeal is hashed out, and even in the bill's worst form, I still have more time to prevent an economic breakdown than I would have otherwise. The irony is that in trying to prevent economic breakdown and the devolution of medicine and insurances, the GOP is accelerating that process by threatening economic breakdown.

It seems to me that there are more than just the ideals of the GOP and the economy of the U.S. at stake for the Republican Party right now. I just can't quite put my finger on it. One idea that has been thrown around by Obama and the media is that Boehner is more afraid of the Tea-Party element of his party than he is of the damage a shutdown government would do. I think this has some merit. In this article, Paul Krugman theorizes that the Republican Party is devolving due to extremism (Note: This is an opinion piece and I myself am not sure what I think of it. It has a real lack of objectivity, but opinion pages by definition aren't objective. I think he makes some interesting points, but I don't think the Republican Party is quite as blind as he makes them out to be). I think that the uncompromising nature of the Tea-Party minority is causing Boehner to make some decisions that he himself doubts, but to maintain the full support of the Republicans, he is being forced to make a stand on the ACA.

In this poll done by "The Washington Post," we see that with regards to handling negotiations over the budget bill, The President's approval rate has risen, while the approval for both Democrats and Republicans have fallen, with the Republican rating the lowest (70 percent disapproval). This is probably due to the fact that Obama has been very vocal about an end to the shutdown, while Republicans have also been vocal about an end, but they include their conditional concessions about ACA in their vocalizations. To the public, not even necessarily an educated one, this sounds less compromising than Obama has or even the House Democrats. I think if the budget bill isn't passed soon, that the GOP will suffer a lot more than if they relinquished their demands for concessions.

As far as the ACA goes, I am ignorant. Like I said earlier, I would love some sources that could further develop and form my stance. If you wish to comment on what you think is the prudent decision with the standoff right now, I appreciate any comments. Thanks.