If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed. -- Benjamin Franklin
Shutdown Means No NFL Games for Deployed Troops
The government shutdown means deployed troops and sailors cannot get their sports fix, as the Pentagon reduced the civilian staff of its Armed Forces Network Broadcast Center in Riverside, Calif., which normally transmits nine television channels and seven radio channels via satellite worldwide.
In a notice on its website, the center said most of its channels are off the air, except for news channels. AFN Europe said mandatory staff reductions at the broadcast center will reduce television to one service: AFN News.
The AFN sports channel, which broadcasts professional sports live, went dark yesterday along with the network’s movie, family and children’s channels.
Ted Cruz admitted to Sean Hannity back in July that "If we don't [defund Obamacare] now, in all likelihood, Obamacare will never, ever be repealed. Why is that? Because on January 1, the exchanges kick in, the subsidies kick in," and they'll be unable to take away something people are benefiting from. And he's surely not the only Republican who gets this, which is part of the explanation for the ferocity with which they're fighting now. But in our future scenario, the fight over the law will be basically over. There might be some debates about adjusting parts of the law, as Democrats will want to do, but that won't concern Republicans too much. Once there's no possibility left that it can be killed, they'll likely lose interest.
I think that's the most plausible picture of what things will be like in, say, 2015. The question is, if eventually they have no choice but to accept that the argument over the ACA is settled, what on earth will Republicans do with themselves? Because over the last four years, opposition to Obamacare has taken on such an extraordinary power within the movement that all other issues have paled before it.
Sure, they could revert to the old standbys—Cut taxes! Cut regulations! Strong defense! But those are just positions you can take. Obamacare was a war to be fought. And nothing galvanizes, energizes, and defines us like our wars. That's particularly true of the zealots who are driving the Republican party and form such a key part of its base. And if they aren't fighting Obamacare, who will they be?
Seventeen of his novels were No. 1 New York Times best sellers, including his most recent, “Threat Vector,” which was released in December 2012. More than 100 million copies of his books are in print.
Sales of his books made him a millionaire. His family moved into a five-bedroom house in Calvert County, Md., and acquired an 80-acre farm on the Chesapeake Bay. He became a part owner of the Baltimore Orioles. He even bought a tank.
Mr. Clancy was an insurance salesman when he sold his first novel, “The Hunt for Red October,” to the Naval Institute Press for only $5,000.
That publisher had never released a novel before, but the editors were taken with Mr. Clancy’s manuscript. They were concerned, however, that there were too many technical descriptions, so they asked him to make cuts. Mr. Clancy made revisions and cut at least 100 pages.
The book took off when President Ronald Reagan, who had received a copy, called it “my kind of yarn” and said that he couldn’t put it down.
After the book’s publication in 1985, Mr. Clancy was praised for his mastery of technical details about Soviet submarines and weaponry. Even high-ranking members of the military took notice of the book’s apparent inside knowledge.
In an interview in 1986, Mr. Clancy said, “When I met Navy Secretary John Lehman last year, the first thing he asked me about the book was, ‘Who the hell cleared it?’ “
Some House Republicans facing perilous paths to reelection in 2014 are beginning to budge on the government shutdown, calling for the party to compromise and move on from its fight over defunding Obamacare.
“Republicans fought the good fight. The fight continues but is not advanced by a government shutdown that damages our economy and harms our military,” Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell said in a statement. “The time has come to pass a clean CR to reopen the government.”
And Pennsylvania Rep. Pat Meehan said: “I came to Washington to fix government, not shut it down. At this point, I believe it’s time for the House to vote for a clean, short-term funding bill to bring the Senate to the table and negotiate a responsible compromise.”
New Jersey Rep. Jon Runyan said: “Enough is enough. Put a clean (continuing resolution) on the floor and let’s gets on with the business we were sent to do.”
Republicans in Washington insist they have simply been upholding the wishes of the American people throughout their efforts to block the Affordable Care Act, but a poll released Tuesday tells a very different story.
In fact, the latest survey from Quinnipiac University contains a ton of bad news for the GOP. For starters, 72 percent of Americans said they are opposed to shutting down the government in an effort to block implemntation of the health care law. A poll last week also showed a wide majority opposed to shutting down the government over Obamacare.
The federal government shut down for the first time since 1996 on Tuesday morning amid Republican-led efforts to include policy concessions on the health care law in must-pass bills to fund the government.
While Quinnipiac's poll showed that the Affordable Care Act remains polarizing — 45 percent support it while 47 percent are opposed — 58 percent said they are opposed to Congress cutting off funding for the law. Seventy-four percent said they disapprove of congressional Republicans while only 17 percent said they approve — their lowest score ever in Quinnipiac's polling.
Democrats in Congress came out marginally better in the poll — 32 percent approve while 60 percent disapprove — but the party may enter next year's midterm elections with an upper-hand over the GOP.
The poll showed that voters gave the nod to a generic Democrat over a generic Republican ahead of the 2014 congressional races, 43 percent to 34 percent. According to Quinnipiac, that's the widest advantage enjoyed by Democrats on that particular question.
“We’re very excited,” said Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). “It’s exactly what we wanted, and we got it.”
“It’s wonderful,” said Rep. John Abney Culberson (R-Tex.), clapping his hands to emphasize the point. “We’re 100 percent united!”
At the National Institutes of Health, nearly three-quarters of the staff was furloughed. One result: director Francis Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center into clinical trials each week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said.
A new CNN/ORC poll shows that Americans are not happy about the prospect of a shutdown, which is happening because Congress has been unable to pass a budget for the new fiscal year that begins Tuesday.
According to the poll, 68% of Americans think shutting down the government for even a few days is a bad idea, while 27% think it's a good idea.
And it appears most Americans would blame congressional Republicans for a shutdown: Sixty-nine percent said they agreed with the statement that the party's elected officials were acting like "spoiled children."
Democrats, however, weren't far behind: Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they too were acting like spoiled kids.
A poll later showed public support for Congress at record low levels.
If the federal government shuts down starting Tuesday because of a bitter partisan battle over the new health care law, more people say congressional Republicans rather than President Barack Obama would be responsible, according to a new national survey.
A CNN/ORC International poll released Monday morning, hours before funding for the government is scheduled to run out, also indicates that most Americans think Republicans in Congress are acting like spoiled children in this fiscal fight, with the public divided on whether the president is acting like a spoiled child or a responsible adult.
And six in 10 questioned in the survey say they want Congress to approve a budget agreement to avoid a government shutdown, and if it happens, most people say a shutdown would be a bad thing for the country.
New York representative Peter King is leading the charge, and his fellow New Yorker Michael Grimm is close behind him. The group told leadership on Saturday they have 25 members who are willing to bring down the rule.
That number of defections would defeat the rule, which, like all such votes, is a party-line affair. “How many of them are going to follow up today with the pressure and everything else, I don’t know,” King told me in a phone interview.
King wants to pass a clean continuing-resolution bill. “This is going nowhere,” he says about the standoff with Senate Democrats. “If Obamacare is as bad as we say it’s going to be, then we should pick up a lot of seats in the next election and we should win the presidency in 2016,” he says. “This idea of going through the side door to take something you lost through the front door — to me, it’s wrong.”
Despite his backroom pleas and carefully crafted strategies, Boehner — a veteran of the shutdown battles of the mid-1990s — was unable to convince a hard-line faction of House GOP lawmakers that they should save their legislative brawls for the debt ceiling fight, where Boehner thought he could drag President Barack Obama to the negotiating table.
Unless there is a last-minute deal, the U.S. government will shut down Monday at midnight, immediately furloughing hundreds of thousands of federal workers. The vast majority of public and private polling shows that Boehner’s House Republicans will get blamed for the stalemate. Boehner and his top aides know it — after all, it was the speaker who privately warned his leadership team that this shutdown could cost him his majority.
It’s a pivotal moment for Boehner, perhaps the biggest crisis of his speakership, and he’s heading into it with a weak hand. The best Boehner can hope for is a draw. At worst, he could be endangering his troubled 17-seat majority as well as his own hold on the speaker’s gavel.
Boehner’s options, however, are dictated — and significantly limited — by his conservative flank. Hard-line Republicans, like Reps. Tom Graves of Georgia and Jim Jordan of Ohio, are keeping their powder dry, saying they will decide how to proceed when the Senate reacts to the latest House funding measure.
In public and private, many of these conservatives are spoiling for a fight. On conference calls and in conversations on the House floor, many conservatives say they need a shock to the political system to have a chance of extracting something from Obama. This isn’t a government shutdown, they say, but rather a slowdown. They are betting the American public won’t turn on House Republicans like they did in 1996, when the GOP lost nine seats, and President Bill Clinton won a second term in the White House.
The administration plans to unveil the program on Monday, the official said, even as Congress fights over the future of President Obama’s health care law, intended to provide coverage to more than 25 million people within three years.
Federal officials said they had signed a contract with the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association to offer health insurance next year in the marketplaces, or exchanges, of 30 states and the District of Columbia. In later years, the officials said, they hoped to see at least two multistate plans in every state, as Congress envisioned.
Under its federal contract, Blue Cross and Blue Shield will offer different products in different states — a total of more than 150 products, including health maintenance organizations and preferred provider organizations, which give discounts for using selected health care providers. In many of the products, consumers will have access to a nationwide network of doctors and hospitals.
The federal government negotiated the benefits and premiums for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield products, so this plan carries a federal seal of approval.
In negotiating with insurers, the Office of Personnel Management leveraged more than 50 years of experience in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the nation’s largest employer-sponsored health insurance program, covering more than eight million federal employees, retirees and dependents. Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans are, by far, the most popular among federal employees, with more than 60 percent of the enrollment.
Under the 2010 health care law, the federal government was supposed to sign contracts with at least two multistate plans. But the application from Blue Cross and Blue Shield was the only one approved. Five other companies expressed interest and may file applications in the future, federal officials said. By 2017, at least two multistate plans are supposed to be available in each state.
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