Blog 2.6

1. What are the reasons given that suggest that Trump will likely follow Ryan's legislative agenda instead of Ryan following Trump's?

2. What is the Center On Budget and Policy Priorities [(CBPP)]?

3. What Lyndon Johnson programs are likely to be cut significantly?

4. What happened to welfare in the 1990's that will likely happen to these programs?

5. If states have freedom to make decisions in spending for these programs, what are they most likely to do?

6. Why does Paul Ryan's plan advocate for allowing insurance companies to sell across state lines?

7. What would be the effect of funding Medicaid through block grants?

8. What are the two areas the article claims are the things Paul Ryan does not want  to cut?

9. Ryan wants to cut spending for all sorts of programs, but where does he want to increase federal spending?

10. According to the article, what was the impact of poverty fighting programs implemented in the 1960's?

11. Who would benefit most from Paul Ryan's tax plan?

12. What does he want to do to Social Security & Medicare (programs in which ALL people use)?

Answers:

1a. "Republicans... have won Congress, and it’s House Speaker Paul Ryan who... leads those Republicans." Therefore, if legislation is passed, it will likely be under Ryan's guidance.

1b. "Ryan has spent the better part of a decade crafting a coherent, sweeping agenda to reform and slash the American safety net." Because Ryan has been forming a coherent plan for quite sometime, coming up with a new plan would be a waste of time for Trump.

1c. "Trump enters office as a historically unpopular president distrusted by his own party in Congress. He’s not in a position to dictate to them what he wants. To keep [Congress] on his side, he’s going to have to do what they [want, and] what they want — and have repeatedly voted to pass in recent Congresses — is Ryan’s budget."

2. "The Center On Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) is an American think tank that analyzes the impact of federal and state government budget policies from a progressive perspective. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the Center's stated mission is to 'conduct research and analysis to help shape public debates over proposed budget and tax policies and to help ensure that policymakers consider the needs of low-income families and individuals in these debates.'" It is led by Robert Greenstein.

3. "Ryan’s proposals would repudiate the federal government’s 50-year guarantee of medical care and food to America’s poorest residents, a promise generated by Lyndon B. Johnson when he made food stamps permanent in 1964 and created Medicaid in 1965."

4. Medicaid and food stamps will move to the state level, but "no state will have a program anywhere near as generous or comprehensive as the ones they did have. The 1996 welfare reform law effectively rendered welfare dead, according to sociologists of poverty, particularly in the eyes of the extreme poor, who ceased to see it as a program that can help them at all."

5. "The Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, or “food stamps”) will be slashed and turned over to states, which will likely use the money as a slush fund for other endeavors."

6. "By enabling the selling of insurance across state lines, [it] would effectively ban states from enacting stricter regulations."

7. "If Medicaid is block granted and cut, and the [Affordable Care Act] repealed and replaced according to Trump’s plan, the total increase in the uninsured could very well reach 30 million to 40 million."

8. "He wants to drastically cut basically everything the government does outside of defense and retirement spending."

9. "Ryan, like most Republicans, wants to increase defense spending."

10. Paul Ryan claimed that, "'After a 50-year war on poverty and trillions of dollars spent, we still have the same poverty rates,' [but...] if you measure poverty properly, taking safety net programs into account, poverty fell by 40 percent from 1967 to 2012."

11. "His tax plan, which would cost at least $3 trillion over the first decade,... would give 99.6 percent of its cuts to the top 1 percent."

12. "He intends to cut it, drastically, to return it to the states, and give the states unprecedented flexibility in how to spend that money. That would mean the end of the guarantee of health care and food to America’s poorest residents."

Blog 2.5

1. What was the makeup of the Congress that began in 2009 with Obama's first term?

2. What is the current makeup of the Congress (Before the new one takes office in January)?

3. Why is a 60 vote majority so critical in the Senate?

4. When did the Republicans take control of each house of Congress?

5. Why was Republican John Boehner forced out of his role as Speaker of the House?

6. What has been the main issue that Obama [and] Congress have been fighting over?

7. How are the Tea Party Caucus and the Freedom Caucus different from other Republicans?

8. What is happening to moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans? Which types of elections are they losing to lose their seats?

9. Why does the article predict that there will be little conflict between the president and Congress over his last year in office?

Answers:

1. "Democrats held a 16-seat Senate majority and 79-seat House edge."

2. "[Paul] Ryan leads 246 House Republicans, [and] Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell... has a comfortable majority of 54 Republicans."

3. 

4. "A GOP takeover of the House [occurred] in 2010. The Senate fell into Republican hands in 2014."

5. "The Ohio Republican [John Boehner] was ousted... by conservatives dissatisfied with his leadership."

6. The arguments were largely related to the economy of the United States.

7a. The Tea Party Caucus believes they are more conservative than the leaders of the Republican party. The group has previously pushed for reduced spending and the elimination of taxes, for they believe doing such would reduce our debt and deficit.

7b. The Freedom Caucus formed out of dissatisfaction in the GOP agenda. They desire the "[empowerment of] rank-and-file members, [the rewriting of] the tax code, [an overhaul of] Social Security and Medicare, and [the offering of] a Republican alternative to Obamacare."

7c. Both caucuses have a problem with core elements of the Republican party, unlike one's everyday Republican representative.

8a. Both parties are seeing their number of moderate party members decrease in Congress.

8b. Midterm elections (I think) are taking the greatest toll on the moderates.

9. There is virtually nothing left to argue over in the Obama Administration, for Congress does not want to work with the White House in Obama's last year.

Blog 2.4

1. How does a candidate win in the Electoral College system?

2. When people cast their vote for president, what are they actually voting for?

3. When will the actual Electoral College vote count take place?

4. What 3 problems with the Electoral College does the article identify?

5. What are the penalties for an elector that does not vote as their state voted?

6. Why haven't there been many faithless electors before?

7. Why did the Framers choose to use the Electoral College?

8. How did political parties change this process?

9. What does the article say are the 3 reasons the Electoral College is a good system?

10. How do the American people feel about the Electoral College?

11. Explain how the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would work

12. Which states would be opposed to this plan?

Answers:

1. A candidate wins when 270 or more electors (that are picked by the popular vote) vote for a single candidate.

2. When citizens vote, they are actually voting for which party should send electors to vote for a presidential candidate.

3. On December 19th, the vote by the electors will take place.

4a. Candidates ignore non-swing states, for it is almost certain that there is a large number of states that will vote in their favor or their opponent's favor; this number is so large that it is not strategic to go attempt to win them.

4b. Electors don't even have to vote the way that the popular vote wants them to vote; there is such thing as faithless electors, who can vote rogue.

4c. This system was developed back when our country was created and hasn't really been altered to accommodate how times have changed.

5. Most states merely fine faithless electors, and in the cases where the state's penalty is not just a fine, no one has ever really upheld the stiffer penalties that states have.

6. Faithless electors are never really a problem because the parties almost always make sure during their vetting processes that the electors they send will not vote rogue.

7. "The founding fathers specifically did not want a nationwide vote of the American people to choose their next president. Instead, the framers gave a small, lucky group of people called the “electors” the power to make that choice. These would be some upstanding citizens chosen by the various states, who would make up their own minds on who should be the president."

8. "Political parties began to nominate slates of electors in each state [they won] — electors they believed could be counted on to vote for the presidential nominee [they wanted]."

9a. "Swing states tend to swing along with the nation rather than overriding its will, [and] the popular vote winner almost always wins."

9b. "The Electoral College ensures regional balance, since it’s mathematically impossible for a candidate with overwhelming support from just one region to be elected. "

9c. "The most serious objections to reforming the Electoral College come from rural and small-state elites who fear that under a national popular vote system, they’d be ignored and elections would be decided by people who live in cities."

10. "Large majorities of Americans would prefer a popular vote system instead of the Electoral College."

11. It sounds like it's saying that all of the votes in states where the NPVIC has been signed into law will be pledged to whoever wins the popular vote, if and only if the other states signed on to the NPVIC number 270 electoral votes total.

12. Republican and swing states would not sign this into law, though, for the states that have signed the NPVIC now are all Democratic, it would be a sign of big government (which Republicans don't like), and swing states like being able to flip flop when they want.

Blog 2.3

1. Which health based interest groups are identified as receiving funding from Coke?

2. What did these health based groups do in return for Coca Cola?

3. What does the article claim the sugar industry did 50 years ago to the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine study?

4. What kinds of policies is Coca Cola trying to lobby against now?

5. What legislation was being considered in California that would have impacted ride sharing companies like Uber and Lyft?

6. How much money did those companies spend lobbying California lawmakers?

7. Which political parties are giving support to Uber and Lyft?

8. Who seems to be the loser when policies regulating Uber and Lyft are not adopted?

9. How many lobbyists does AT&T keep on staff?

10. Where does AT&T rank among telecommunications companies in terms of amounts donated?

11. What % of the House and what % of the Senate does AT&T currently donate to?

12. How do you expect this to benefit AT&T as they try to acquire Time Warner, a deal which will need government approval?

Answers:

1. The American Heart Association (AHA), the American Diabetes Association (ADA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) all receive funding from Coke.

2. They all seemed to skew findings and information in a way that would not be detrimental toward sugar producers and soda producers, specifically Coke.

3. "The sugar industry... exerted strong influence on early research about heart disease. That study, in JAMA Internal Medicine, showed how the sugar industry funded research by Harvard scientists that claimed cholesterol and saturated fat were the primary culprits of heart disease, and played down studies that suggested that sugar played a critical role."

4. "The New York Times reported in August 2015 that Coca-Cola was funding and providing logistical support to a nonprofit called the Global Energy Balance Network, which played down the role that diet and sugary drinks have  in the obesity epidemic, and stressed the importance of exercise."

5. "The companies are also resolving high-profile court cases that challenged how they hire drivers — without hurting their shared core position that drivers aren't their employees."

6. "In the current legislative session, Uber and Lyft have spent nearly $900,000 combined on lobbying."

7. Democrats support Uber and Lyft because the supporters, who are young politicians that believe in new technologies (such as Uber and Lyft), see this to be of as great importance to our quality of life as light bulbs and whatnot.

8. The state of California loses in this battle of regulations as policies keep getting delayed; the longer Uber and Lyft are not regulated, the longer they are given to grab a hold of society.

9. AT&T has one hundred registered lobbyists on staff.

10. "AT&T is the biggest donor to federal lawmakers and their causes among cable and cellular telecommunications companies..."

11a. 85.98% of the House of Representatives receives funding from AT&T.

11b. 85% of the Senate receives funding from AT&T.

12. Because 85% of Congress is receiving funding from AT&T, it is likely that Congress will likely allow for Time Warner to be acquired by AT&T, seeing as how the answer of, "No," would possibly lead to funding cuts.