GOP Shutdown KO

So the Shutdown appears to be over (or close to it) as pretty much everyone agrees the new senate deal will pass the Senate and that the House will vote on it.

So what did the House Republicans and Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul get for their shutdown?

Well the first offer they made was repeal Obamacare, then the second was delay Obamacare until after the next election.

Both offers were met with the same response by President Obama

And actually to be fair, the Senate backed up the President and passed the clean funding bill, after Senators Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz refused to actually filibuster the bill. (Instead they preferred to fake filibuster the bill by giving a long speech that had a set time limit but calling it a filibuster)

Of course the bill died in the House and the House tried to come up with a new plan to actually get some concessions out of the Democrats. The problem became that the House couldnt actually pass their own plan, in fact they spend most of the last 3 days killing off suggestions for their plan.

So finally Speaker Boehner had enough, and said that basically that the house will pass ANYTHING the senate agrees to....other than the clean bill.

At which point President Obama/Democrats stopped being Willy Wonka, and became Don Corleone:

And the Republicans became the Senator Don Corleone is talking to.

Basically they got the same offer.....BUT now they have to give something akin to the price of a gaming license to Don Corleone/Obama as well.

See heres the agreement as I understand it:

1) Debt limit extended until February 7, subject to vote of Congressional disapproval, which the President can veto.

In English what this means is next time around, unless congress says no, the debt ceiling automatically goes up. But even if congress says no, the President can veto their no. Unless they can override it with 2/3rd of each chamber voting "no", the debt ceiling automatically goes up.

So yea, Republicans just lost their leverage the next time around and ceded power to the President.

2)  A budget conference established to come up with long-term spending plans by December 13

So the reason we keep having these budget fights is because we dont have a budget, and therefore only pass short term continuing resolutions. This would require both chambers to appoint people to a committee to actually work out a budget based on the budgets that actually [separately] passed both chambers months ago.

In short, if a Budget passes it guarantees we wont have another budget fight till the end of the next fiscal year (October 2014, and that being weeks before an election no one is going to want to do anything remotely controversial on the budget).

Now it should be pointed out House and Senate Democrats and House Republicans (to be fair) have actually been asking for that conference committee for months. Senate Republicans have been filibustering the motion to go to committee.

So again this results in a removal of the republican ability to "take a hostage" and stopping republican obstructionism in the Senate.

3) Income verification for recipients of subsidies under Obamacare’s newly-established exchanges.

Now this is the one that republicans are going to claim is their big victory. This is what they fought to do. They actually successfully changed Obamacare.

Now what does this DO exactly? basically if you sign up for Obamacare you have to give your income and prove its low enough to qualify for the subsidy.

Now as its currently set, you get the subsidy right away. At the end of the year (2014 in this case) a "Statistically significant"  portion of people will be tested to make sure they qualify for the subsidies they are receiving. HOWEVER starting 2015, everyone would have to be checked prior to receiving the subsidy, basically the same process that will now go into affect immediately.  

Now I guess you can argue over if it was a good idea to use a different process for the first year or not (and Ive seen arguments both ways that sound good and I dont know enough to know which is right) but it doesnt change one simple immutable fact here.

The Republican party shut down the government to repeal or delay the implementation of Obamacare. They are now claiming a win for basically accelerating the implementation of Obamacare.

Yea thats how badly they got beat up, they are now claiming they won by doing the exact opposite of what their stated goals were.

Now to be fair its not ALL bad news for republicans, they did get one major win. The continuing resolution IS still set at sequester levels, which republicans wanted.

However that was also true of the original clean CR they refused to pass. They could have just taken that and called it a win. Instead they decided to take away a lot of their own power and speed up Obamacare....and call that a win instead.

Man talk about snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.....

Actually look to be fair, there are 2 republicans who actually DID win in this deal, and another who claims he did.

The two actual winners? Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell. See their is one last piece to this deal, and piece that increases the funding to the Olmsted Locks and Dam in Kentucky. Basically it gives 1.2 BILLION to the state of Kentucky for this project.

According to reports thats actually THE thing Mitch McConnell specifically asked for in order to allow his caucus to vote on the bill, and to get him in as a yes.

Now to be fair to Senator Paul, their is yet to be anyone who has suggested he had anything to do with this provision, but it might explain why he said yesterday that he "never really planned on trying to obstruct any of the process." You know this DESPITE helping Senator Cruz lead the fake filibuster and previously saying not raising the debt ceiling would give us the balanced budget (which is wrong but still) that he favors....or favored maybe.

Speaking of Ted Cruz he is our fake winner tonight. See earlier today Senator Cruz actually claimed he won, saying:

"We have seen a remarkable thing happen. Months ago when the effort to defund Obamacare began, official Washington scoffed. They scoffed that the American people would rise up. They scoffed that the House of Representatives would do anything and they scoffed that the Senate would do anything.We saw first of all, millions of millions of American people rising up across this country, over two million people signing a national petition to defund Obamacare. We saw the House of Representatives take a courageous stand listening to the American people that everyone in official Washington said wouldn’t happen."

Yep, thats how Ted Cruz defines a win....two million people signing a list to defund Obamacare (which you know they just failed to do....). Of course the list Cruz was talking about is on the website of "The Senate Conservative Fund" a political PAC that backs Ted Cruz.

So he did just get two million more people on his donor list, I guess thats a big win for him. In fact thats ALMOST as many people who live in his hometown of Houston, Texas.

In fact given the 16 days the government was shut down he got  125000 people per day! Thats basically the number of people who visit Disney land in a single day. Thats almost 1/3rd as many people per day as changed the television channel at the SECOND this sentence wrapped up:

Yea thats right a wrestling commentator trying to convince people NOT to change the channel accidentally convinced more people to do what he didnt want them to do in a single second, than Ted Cruz was able to convince people to do what he wanted them to do every 3 days

Thats a great win there for ya Ted...two and a half week shut down and only two thousand people to show for it.......

So yea, there it is the losers of the Shutdown, how they are going to sell it as a win, and why they are still losers......