Sunday, September 15, 2013

Dingell Compares GOP Bill to Lunch Meat




 This week in the midst of the Syrian Crisis that has been taking center stage on the media, the House Republicans attempted another vote to shot down Obamacare. The only thing is, it’s the 41st time the House has voted on this. The bill to knock down Obamacare passed the House 235-91, but as speculated it will never be passed in the Senate and the President will veto it before it reaches his desk. What is the reason for the vote this time? A July regulation issued by the Department of Health and Human Services.  The regulation would “give state-run health insurance exchanges some flexibility when examining whether people are qualified for insurance subsidies, which are tax credits that can be used right away to buy insurance.”[1] The Republicans obviously were not pleased about this new regulation and decided that another attempt at banning Obamacare was worth a shot.
Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) made a speech in response to this impending vote and subtle is not a word that comes to mind when describing his speech. “Here we go again, time in the House is being wasted…and the Republicans have more nonsense to put on the floor.”[2] That is how Dingell starts his two-minute speech; he goes on to says that this bill is “baloney.” Dingell goes so far as to scold the Republican Party for not respecting the will of the people, “what a shame that we have such kind of behavior on that side of the aisle.”[3]. As he says in his speech, this is the 41st time the GOP has tried to vote against Obamacare. Dingell is the longest-serving Congressman in the House and with that comes a lot of seniority. Seniority is an important factor in the workings of the House and a speech like this could have been Dingell’s way of using his authority. He is also a member of the House subcommittee on Health so this could have also been personal; healthcare is an area of legislation that the Congressman focuses on. What ever the reason for the speech Dingell was forceful and blunt making his frustration clear.


[1]Alan Colmes, "Rep. John Dingell Balls Out Republicans For Trying To Overturn Obamacare For 41st Time," FOX News Radio, September 12, 2013, http://radio.foxnews.com/2013/09/12/rep-john-dingell-balls-out-republicans-for-trying-to-overturn-obamacare-for-41st-time/.
[2] Rep. John Dingell on House Republicans' 41st Vote to Undermine the Affordable Care Act, Youtube.com, 2013.
[3] Rep. John Dingell on House Republicans' 41st Vote to Undermine the Affordable Care Act, Youtube.com, 2013.
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7 comments:

Unknown said...

My representative was also frustrated with the lack of action by some republicans. I feel like there is no more cooperation in congress anymore between the parties. Everything is a zero sum gain in todays politics it seems.

September 17, 2013 at 7:01 PM
Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
September 17, 2013 at 8:35 PM
Unknown said...

It is interesting that people ignore most of the so called "smaller" issues when hot button issues take over Congress. At the moment, the issue that Congress is widespread throughout the media is on Syria. But you don't hear about other issues of Congress, such as this important vote on Obama Care and the huge division that still exists between the House and the Senate on this national issue. It would be nice for the media to take a break on Syria at times and mention issues that are still of major importance in our nation.

September 17, 2013 at 11:34 PM
Unknown said...

In a time when so many public figures go out of their way to ensure the political correctness of everything they say, I found Dingell's speech to be very refreshing. Regardless of personal party affiliation, it is hard to disagree with his point. Republicans have already challenged Obamacare forty times, and yet they are still stubborn and bold enough to continue doing it. Practices such as these, as Dingell so elegantly puts it, are baloney, and an irresponsible waste of time and money ($1.5 million per hour spent debating and voting on the bill). This is exactly the type of Congressional nonsense that has turned so many Americans off to politics, and it is refreshing to see someone challenge these practices.

September 17, 2013 at 11:59 PM
Unknown said...

Leah, the problem is you see this all the time. The media takes a story and beats the heck out of it, and then beats it some more. It does this with issues that don't even mean anything of importance to our country. Before President Obama announced he would seek Congressional support, the 2-day major issue being talked about instead in the media was "What happened to Miley Cyrus? How could she twerk on stage?" It is almost laughable at this point. In the case of Dingell, he is right. The Republicans continue to say how much this bill cost, yet they continue to protest, thus making it cost more and then blaming it on the Democrats.

September 18, 2013 at 9:11 AM
Lanethea Mathews said...

There are lots of interesting assumptions getting thrown around here, folks. For example, Christian, do you know for a fact what the media has covered and what it has ignored (is this your general perception, or do you have some hard facts to back it up?)? And, do we have a sense of what the proponents of the "baloney" bill are arguing here? It seems to be safe to say that this smacks of obstructionism, as many have suggested. Is there any value in this obstructionism?

September 18, 2013 at 12:36 PM
Lanethea Mathews said...

There are lots of interesting assumptions getting thrown around here, folks. For example, Christian, do you know for a fact what the media has covered and what it has ignored (is this your general perception, or do you have some hard facts to back it up?)? And, do we have a sense of what the proponents of the "baloney" bill are arguing here? It seems to be safe to say that this smacks of obstructionism, as many have suggested. Is there any value in this obstructionism?

September 18, 2013 at 12:36 PM

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