Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Attempt to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics - FAIL.

House Republicans, Under Fire, Back Down on Gutting Ethics Office
By ERIC LIPTON and MATT FLEGENHEIMER JAN. 3, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/us/politics/trump-house-ethics-office.html

Attempt to repeal (uh, no, that was Trump's promise which will never be fulfilled, it's adjust now) Obamacare - FAIL.

In Major Defeat for Trump, Push to Repeal Health Law Fails
By ROBERT PEAR, GLENN THRUSH and THOMAS KAPLAN MARCH 24, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/us/politics/health-care-affordable-care-act.html

Trump said, "We all learned a lot." and that "we nearly had it" .. the reality is that he learned something
about not being able to close the deal .. and that they never ever nearly had it .. apparently Trump wanted
a vote so that he would 'know who his enemies were' and Ryan talked him out of his favored scorched earth path.

Then there is the debt ceiling over which the GOP shut down much of the government in 2013.

What are conservatives doing voting to increase debt by $9 trillion?
By David Lightman [e-mail] January 6, 2017 1:58 PM

[...]

So why did they and 49 other Senate Republicans vote this week to consider a measure that says the “appropriate levels of the public debt” would rise from the current $20 trillion to $29.1 trillion in 10 years? And predict deficits of $1 trillion by the end of that period?

Because, they said, it’s the first procedural step in repealing Obamacare. And they insisted the number is meaningless.

[...]

“Nobody’s going to understand any of this,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington watchdog group, of the conservatives’ reasoning.

What the public understands, she said, is that in their daily lives, they look at their budget first and then decide what to buy.

“No company, no consumer should make large decisions without putting a budget in place first,” she said.

What the public understands is that “$20 trillion is not an appropriate level of debt,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington budget research group.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the lone Republican to oppose considering the repeal bill when the Senate voted 51-48 to proceed Wednesday. “Because we’re in a hurry, we can’t be bothered,” he said sarcastically. “It’s just numbers, I was told again and again ... and yet the legislation says it is a budget.”
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/article125030534.html

We've all heard of the '7 year itch' .. the GOP have been scratching to kill Obamacare for 7 years and could only come up with an effort which would make the rich richer and which would hit the most vulnerable hard .. they couldn't take time to consult experts even now .. they HAD to rush the effort through to make it a momentous happening on Obamacare's 7th anniversary .. but no .. the best deal maker in the world, in his own mind, had an epic - FAIL.