Wednesday, September 18, 2013

If the GOP Shuts Down the Government to "Defund" Obamacare I'm Done

I think the GOP has just lost their mind and it might actually affect my portfolio.

In a bow to conservatives, House Republican leaders facing a Sept. 30 deadline to avoid a government shutdown will hold a vote Friday on a three-month funding bill that would permanently drain funds from the Affordable Care Act. The move -- a gamble that the establishment wing of the GOP decried not so long ago -- nonetheless has unified the conference, according to Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy.

Of course this legislation has no way of passing the Senate and Obama would veto it even if it gets to his desk. It is just such a stupid gamble I don't know what to say. It will roil markets that can only go up because the FED isn't going to taper. (I just *hate* the word taper now) If GOP stupidity makes my stocks go down I will never forgive them.
 
I don't understand why they are going to play chicken with the markets over something that seems so purely symbolic. The US cannot afford to have its debt rating dinged again for pretty much no reason. If the GOP presented something that "fixed" Obamacare then I would be all for it. Maybe something with tort reform attached, a ban on penalties for not buying insurance imposed by the scandal-plagued IRS, or something similar should be what they gamble on.

If this gamble were tied to tax reform that slashed all capital gains and dividend taxes on people making less than $150K I would support it as well. The take away is they need to gamble on something that will actually help the middle class instead of taking what seems like the 100t toothless vote on Obamacare for a purely symbolic meaning.

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