Bigotry In Motion

Man! Dude! Session #326

(D)ude: Man! Speaker of the House and Representative from Ohio’s Eighth Congressional District John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader and Senator from Kentucky Mitch McConnell are continuing and will be reinstating their austerity measures and approach towards President Obama’s Administration by retreating to their individual states instead of convening the United State Congress on Capitol Hill or  preferring to attend Republican Billionaires’ retreats for compliant congressional concierges like themselves.

(M)an: Dude! Speaker John Boehner insists on the United States Congress stalling outside Capitol Hill and not reconvening until January 15, 2014 when the Congressional Republicans hope to convene with Republican majorities in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. But when it comes to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families or TANF, John Boehner and the Congressional Republicans falsely insist that their passing H.R. 890 or “Preserving Work Requirements for Welfare Programs Act of 2013” was unfairly blocked by the Democrats in the United States Senate under the leadership of Senate Majority Leader and Senator from Nevada Harry Reid and that there are over 46 such jobs bills just as worthy of passage as H.R. 890.       

D: Man! How are the Congressional Republicans falsely insisting theirs was a productive four years for which they should now be reelected back into office so that they can pass legislation that’s been historically hurtful to women and minorities much the same way that the Republican Party is toxic to American Democracy and Diplomacy presently?    

M: Dude! The “Preserving Work Requirements for Welfare Programs Act of 2013” or H.R. 890 from the 113^th Congress’s first session states that it is,

AN ACT to prohibit waivers relating to compliance with the work requirements for the program of block grants to States for temporary assistance for needy families, and for other purposes.

D: Man! What’s a waiver?

M: Dude! The American Heritage Dictionary’s Third Edition states a waiver as being such,

1. An intentional relinquishment of a right, claim, or privilege. 2. The document that waives a right or claim.

D: Man! The Congressional Republicans of the 113^th Congress only passed H.R. 890 to limit what the Secretary of Health and Human Services at the time, Kathleen Sebelius, could do in terms of the requests coming in to the Department of Health and Human Services from both Democratic and Republican Governors across the United States of America pleading for what Liz Schott and LaDonna Pavetti described in their February 26, 2013 article entitled Changes in TANF Work Requirements Could Make Them More Effective in Promoting Employment as much needed

…greater flexibility than the work participation rate (WPR) afforded them [the states] in designing work programs. 

M: Dude! The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published that article a month before the Congressional Republicans passed H.R. 890 in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, Schott and Pavetti did not follow up on the implications of H.R. 890 once it passed the House and landed in the United States Senate only to be deferred due to the severity with which it restricted the operations of the Department of Health and Human Services and Kathleen Sebelius who was facing another turmoil concocted by the neoconservative counter government’s pledge to impair if not repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.     

D: Man! You really think the neoconservative counter government was responsible for the technical glitches and the two failed launches of the ObamaCare website portal?

M: Dude! The Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act’s web portal was hacked with the same rightwing intolerance towards President Obama as displayed by Jon Stewart on Monday night’s episode of The Daily Show on Comedy Central [October 13, 2014]. Jon Stewart is the drudge that swore to ingest 100 onions in order to avoid 100 lashings as punishment at the hands of a bloodcurdling bloodthirsty enslaver who agreed to the enslaved workhorse’s challenge knowing that by the end of such stunt the enslaved would only have achieved ingesting at most 99 onions and, therefore, still be subjected to the awaiting 100 lashings.         

D: Man! That’s cruel! Bigotry is cruel! Jon Stewart’s a bigoted captive of the neoconservative rightwing television executives! Wait! Jon Stewart is a neoconservative rightwing television executive!

M: Dude! What’s really cruel is that there are no alternatives afforded to any of the fifty states by the Congressional Republicans’ H.R. 890 so that every state may implement individualized improvements in the  outcomes for needy families on TANF state-by-state.    

D: Man! According to Schott and Pavetti,

The 1996 welfare law established the TANF block grant and requirements that states must meet, including rules related to work requirements, time limits, child support, and immigrants’ eligibility. Under the work provisions of the law, states must require recipients to engage in work, impose sanctions (by reducing or terminating benefits) if an individual refuses to participate in required work activities, and achieve a work participation rate measured in accordance with detailed provisions of the law.

M: Dude! How about work requirements for the lax Congressional Republicans?

D: Man! Vote for the Democratic Ticket on or before November 4, 2014 or suffer the government shutdown planned by the GOP fifty-nine days from tonight.