Louise Slaughter Quotes

On that day, the Republican Majority in the House adopted a strategy to attach conditions to the normal budget process that they knew was unacceptable to the Senate and the President. The United States Government, the greatest nation on Earth, literally shut down all but the most essential services. What was worse is that the majority of the House of Representatives would pass a clean budget if they could vote on it. But the Tea Party Republicans blackmailed the Republican speaker that he would lose his speakership if he did not follow their strategy which was ironically controlled by a Republican Senator who had already lost on the issues they wanted in the Senate and in a Presidential election.

Coolidge had no involvement in politics after his Presidency. He was never consulted by his successor and never resented that fact.

Under his leadership the conservative Republicans had attempted and failed dozens of times to repeal Obamacare which many Republicans campaigned against in the 2012 Presidential election which they also lost. The irony was that even if a repeal were to possibly pass both housed of Congress, President Obama announced that he would veto the repeal. This futile and repetitive wast of time took place where the House was so extreme that it originated almost no legislation that every became law. The conservative Republicans had opposed every attempt to provide a national health system since they blocked President Truman from it. Yet Medicare was passed and became one of America’s most popular programs. Conservatives blocked all efforts to expand Medicare to cover all Americans until President Obama in his first term passed Obamacare. Since then they made all these attempts to repeal it.

The Republicans who had control of the House of Representatives were reaching the end of the fiscal year and had not yet passed a budget nor expanded the debt ceiling so the government would have to shut down in a few days and a little later America could not pay any of its bills. They had a very strong position if they willing to blackmail the Democratically controlled Senate and the Democratic President. But the last time the Republicans had ever tried this before was the Republican House when Gingrich was speaker and they shut down the government for almost 3 weeks. It cost the Republicans the next election’s majority in the House. President Obama decided that he would not set a precedent of negotiating with a house of Congress that was threatening to shut down the government or threatening not to pay the nation’s bills which Congress had already authorized the purchase of.

When Roosevelt was elected Governor of NY State, the State Party Boss Platt saw patronage and contracts was the most important services the Governor should render to the Party. TR had a different view as expressed here.

A minority of newly elected ultra conservative Tea Party Republicans intimidated most of the main line Republicans by threatening to run against them in their primary elections. The result was that almost no legislation was passed and there was a constant drumbeat of attacks against anything the government was doing or might do in the future. Public confidence in government was driven very low, with only the public confidence in Congress lower. The Democrats who could accomplish very little in that circumstance became very unpopular while the Republicans were even more so. However, many Tea Party Republicans viewed that as a victory as their major objective is to enfeeble government—especially the Federal government.