Remember when Rs were screaming about the IRS being "in charge" of the ACA? That it's an unacceptable intrusion, and we just need to get rid of the IRS along with the ACA? (And evolution.) Well, after all the sturm und drang, the posturing, the finger pointing, the manipulative use of gullible old vets at memorials, it's come to this: ending the threat of default turns on agreeing to give the IRS more power, more of a role in the ACA. Per demand of Congressional Rs. Rather than random checking of financial status the way the IRS does for tax returns, Rs have mandated that the dreaded IRS step up its intrusions and check every single applicant for subsidized health insurance.
Fact is, I can't object to the idea. But it's funny, isn't it? It'll make the IRS larger and cost taxpayers more money. It'll, of necessity one assumes, give the IRS more wherewithal to intrude in the very ways that teabaggRs equate with Nazi Kenyans. (Of course, it'll only be on poor people, so who cares, right?)
And, oh yeah: they've also demanded that, unlike the private corporations they so love, who pay for part of their employees' health insurance because free market, the US no longer contributes to the health insurance costs of their own Congressional staff people.
The deal, of course, at best just pushes the next crisis to January. So the idiots will have yet another chance to ruin us all. And, no doubt, another, and another...
Hypocrisy? Stupidity? Selfish and short sighted destruction of everything that's made America great -- exceptional, you might say? Yep. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you today's Congressional Republicans, beholden to the most radical and terminally dumb members of their party, with no enlightenment in sight.
I'd laugh, but I know it'd devolve into sobs so great I might never be able to stop. Plus I'm writing this @ 9:30 am. Who knows what'll happen next?
[Image source]
