Is there a way out of this government shutdown stalemate? Steven Pearlstein, a professor of public and international affairs at George Mason University, thinks so -- and he has thought outside the box. If you have been butting heads with friends over this issue, Share this idea with them. It might just work. A face-saving plan to end the Obamacare shutdown stalemate Enough already! It’s obvious that both sides in the Great Standoff have played out their political chess moves to a stubborn and unsatisfactory stalemate. Republicans have convinced themselves that if Obamacare is allowed to take root, either it would be the first step on the slippery slope to socialism and health-care chaos, or it would become another runaway entitlement program that would bankrupt the country. Democrats see the confrontation in the context of a larger governance issue: If they allow a minority to hold the government hostage until it gets its way on every issue, then the system of majority rule and republican governance collapses. These positions cannot be reconciled. Both sides believe they have no choice but to hang tough and hope that the unfolding disaster forces the other side to capitulate. It’s not clear who will be the “winner” in this showdown, but we can be pretty sure that the rest of us are the losers. So the challenge is to find a way for each side to declare credibly some measure of success. To that end, a modest proposal: Even the president has acknowledged that there are bound to be glitches in implementing an initiative as large and complicated as Obamacare. So why not agree now to a thorough review of the program once we have some experience with it? Read the rest at: washingtonpost/opinions/a-face-saving-plan-to-end-the-obamacare-shutdown-stalement/2013/10/07/fc5eef72-2f65-11e3-bbed-a8a60c601153_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions
Posted on: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 13:08:46 +0000