Call Obama’s bluff…

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: July 14 – The Washington Post

President Obama is demanding a big long-term budget deal. He won’t sign anything less, he warns, asking, “If not now, when?”

How about last December, when he ignored his own debt commission’s recommendations? How about February, when he presented a budget that increases debt by $10 trillion over the next decade? How about April, when he sought a debt-ceiling increase with zero debt reduction attached?

All of a sudden he’s a born-again budget balancer prepared to bravely take on his own party by making deep cuts in entitlements. Really? Name one. He’s been saying forever that he’s prepared to discuss, engage, converse about entitlement cuts. But never once has he publicly proposed a single structural change to any entitlement.

Hasn’t the White House leaked that he’s prepared to raise the Medicare age or change the cost-of-living calculation?

Anonymous talk is cheap. Leaks are designed to manipulate. Offers are floated and disappear.

Say it, Mr. President. Give us one single structural change in entitlements. In public.

As part of the pose as the forward-
looking grown-up rising above all the others who play politics, Obama insists upon a long-term deal. And what is Obama’s definition of long-term? Surprise: An agreement that gets him past Nov. 6, 2012.

Nothing could be more political. It’s like his Afghan surge wind-down date. September 2012 has no relation to any military reality on the ground. It is designed solely to position Obama favorably going into the last weeks of his reelection campaign.

Yet the Olympian above-the-fray no-politics-here pose is succeeding. A pliant press swallows the White House story line: the great compromiser (“clearly exasperated,” sympathized a Post news story) being stymied by Republican “intransigence” (the noun actually used in another front-page Post news story to describe the Republican position on taxes).

The meme having been established, Republicans have been neatly set up to take the fall if a deal is not reached by Aug. 2. Obama is already waving the red flag,warning ominously that Social Security, disabled veterans’ benefits, “critical” medical research, food inspection — without which agriculture shuts down — are in jeopardy.

The Republicans are being totally outmaneuvered. The House speaker appears disoriented. It’s time to act. Time to call Obama’s bluff.

A long-term deal or nothing? The Republican House should immediately pass a short-term debt-ceiling hike of $500 billion containing $500 billion in budget cuts. That would give us about five months to work on something larger.

The fat-cat tax breaks (those corporate jets) that Obama’s talking points endlessly recycle? Republicans should call for urgent negotiations on tax reform along the lines of the Simpson-Bowles commission that, in one option, strips out annually $1.1 trillion of deductions, credits and loopholes while lowering tax rates across the board to a top rate of 23 percent. The president says he wants tax reform, doesn’t he? Well, Mr. President, here are five months to do so.

Will the Democratic Senate or the Democratic president refuse this offer and allow the country to default — with all the cataclysmic consequences that the Democrats have been warning about for months — because Obama insists on a deal that is 10 months and seven days longer?

That’s indefensible and transparently self-serving. Dare the president to make that case. Dare him to veto — or the Democratic Senate to block — a short-term debt-limit increase.

This is certainly better than the McConnell plan, which would simply throw debt reduction back to the president. But if the House cannot do Plan A, McConnell is the fallback Plan B.

After all, by what crazy calculation should Republicans allow themselves to be blamed for a debt crisis that could destabilize the economy and even precipitate a double-dip recession? Right now, Obama owns the economy and its 9.2 percent unemployment, 1.9 percent GDP growth and exploding debt about which he’s done nothing. Why bail him out by sharing ownership?

You cannot govern this country from one house. Republicans should have learned that from the 1995-96 Gingrich-Clinton fight when the GOP controlled both houses and still lost.

If conservatives really want to get the nation’s spending under control, the only way is to win the presidency. Put the question to the country and let the people decide. To seriously jeopardize the election now in pursuit of a long-term, small-government, Ryan-like reform that is inherently unreachable without control of the White House may be good for the soul. But it could very well wreck the cause.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Krauthammer:  Clinton’s endorsement of the iron-fisted dictator is incomprehensible. http://wapo.st/f3E57b  &   http://fb.me/XWu6ht9u

UN Reveals Its Master Plan for Destruction of Global Economy

Debt Crisis, Ron Paul, the Fed and the IMF

What Happened to the $2.6 Trillion Social Security Trust Fund? (Madoff would be proud)

Republicans to Vote on $2.4 Trillion in Cut With Debt Ceiling Increase  -  Obama and Dems… Still No Plan Offered~

New spending bill totals $575.13 million per page

Reid threatens to keep Congress into next year

 

Forget about going quietly into the night.

Senate Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a broad agenda for an end-of-session sprint that, in other years, could be a whole year's worth of activity — ranging from an arms-reduction treaty with Russia to a major immigration bill to overturning the ban on gay troops.

And that's not to mention the nearly 2,000-page, $1.1 trillion massive spending bill Senate Democrats said they'll try to push through. The bill contains hundreds of pork-barrel spending projects and new rules governing everything from airport baggage to detainees at the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"We're not through. Congress ends on Jan. 4," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat.

The omnibus spending bill is likely to get the most attention, spanning 1,924 pages and spending an average of $575.13 million per page.

It stands in contrast to the House, which last week passed a streamlined bill freezing fiscal 2011 government spending at 2010's level. The Senate bill, though, boosts spending by $16 billion — a tough sell at a time when deficits and debt already are dominating the policy debate in Washington.

In some cases the spending bill not only rejects President Obama's proposed cuts, it actually boosts spending. For example, Mr. Obama earlier this year told Congress to cut funding for the health and welfare package targeting Mississippi's Delta region, which in 2010 received about $26 million. But the Senate bill includes funding and actually increases it to nearly $35 million in 2011.

Senators also picked up the slack for their House colleagues, whose bill was devoid of pork-barrel earmarks, by including House lawmakers' requests in the Senate's own bill. Still, earmarks total less than 1 percent of the bill's spending.

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii Democrat, who is Appropriations Committee chairman, said that doing a full omnibus bill will help make sure spending is targeted and appropriate.

"While I appreciate the work that the House has done in producing a full-year Continuing Resolution, I do not believe that putting the government on autopilot for a full year is in the best interest of the American people," Mr. Inouye said.

In a memo, the Appropriations Committee said the House approach fails to make $10.2 billion in cuts to wasteful military programs and also fails to increase spending for new needs that have popped up in the past year, such as more oversight of offshore oil-drilling rigs.

But the measure also takes care of smaller needs, such as specifically authorizing the secretary of health and human services to purchase six new government sedans.

The push comes as many lawmakers already are eyeing the door.

Mr. Reid, though, said Congress will stay until he tries to tackle issues he says have been unfairly stalled by the GOP.

"I hate to report all this to you — but you know, there's still Congress after Christmas," he told reporters. "So if the Republicans think that because they can stall and stall and stall that we take a break, we're through, we're not through."

Washington Times

I think this is a good time to say thank you to all those who voted for, supported or donated to the Campaigns of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

Senators from your State.  *   U.S. Government on Twitter *  United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121

 

It’s Official:  Our Leaders Have Lost Their Freaking Minds… or only care about their own agenda!!  A lame-duck session gone wild!

Happy Anniversary Stimulus… or Perhaps Not So Happy

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the failed stimulus. Only 6% of all Americans believe that the Stimulus Bill did anything to create or save jobs, while 7% believe that Elvis is still alive. Think about it~

OBAMA GOES TOO FAR AND FALLS TOO SHORT

Obama's 'plan' appears to be working. Of course, it's not the plan of which he speaks - healthcare for everyone, clean energy, jobs-jobs-jobs (that 3 letter word) and, let's not forget, world peace. No, it's his plan to destroy the America we all know and love, while in the process blaming George W. Bush. The problem is, or not, it appears to be blowing up in his face. This on the one year anniversary of his failed stimulus, for which he is doubling down.
Obama's popularity has gone through the floorboards, and his congress is jumping ship, seeing the writing on the wall. Bi-partisan conflict has nothing to do with his problems, when he has a majority in both Houses. Big corporations such as ConocoPhillips, BP, and Caterpillar have also jumped ship by quiting the Climate Group because the big lie is now public knowledge. Obama loves to bash, and is probably the most negative person ever to hold the powerful office of United States President. Polls apart from a loving and gracious President Ronald Reagan.

Dick Morris write a great piece on this from TheHill.com:
Obama Goes Too Far and Falls Too Short
by Dick Morris, February 16, 2010

One of my favorite quotes about politics comes from Henry Kissinger in his book Years of Upheaval, his memoir of the Ford Presidency:

"A statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his vision and his nation's experience. If his vision gets too far out ahead of his nation's experience, he will lose his mandate. But if he hues too close to the conventional, he will lose control over events."
Now, at once, we see both happening to President Obama.

His health care proposals obviously ran afoul of the first of Kissinger's warnings. By pushing for changes that conflicted with America's values, common sense, and experience, he lost his mandate. In that disastrous push for an elusive goal, he ruined his own presidency and his party. It may take decades for the Democratic Party to recover from his folly. Indeed, his push for health legislation, in the face of rapidly eroding public support, ranks with the War in Vietnam, Watergate, and, of course, Clinton's health care initiatives as the most costly to their respective political parties.

But now, as he faces threats from Iran, domestic terrorism, continually high unemployment, and the swollen deficit, he is also violating the second half of the Kissinger warning - his politics are too passive and too conventional and, as a result, losing control over events.

In the phase of presidential dithering in the aftermath of the Brown victory in Massachusetts, there is no clear presidential message, no coherent strategy and, even, no identifiable program. His budget cuts are far too tepid. His tax program nothing new. Obama's stimulus 2 package seems like the same old, same old.

His short lived bounce from the State of the Union speech is indicative of how limited a vision he has these days. It lasted a week and was never more than three points at its apogee.

And, as Kissinger would have predicted, he is losing control over events. Senator Evan Bayh's retirement, with its implied blast at Obama's policies, the increasing recklessness of Iran, and the seemingly intractable unemployment all provide evidence that President Obama is no longer dictating the national agenda.

As a result, the negatives he incurred by moving too far out ahead of the nation's experience are combining with those he is getting for being too conventional. He is experiencing both ends of the Kissinger prediction. Republicans and Independents are still in shock from his headlong rush into socialism while Democrats are increasingly restive and disillusioned by his failure to lead.
And...the entire country is worried at his passivity in the face of domestic terror threats and the rapidly growing Iranian momentum toward the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

While his job rating has remained relatively stead in recent months, hovering just below 50% of likely voters, his ratings in specific areas - like holding down spending, cutting the deficit, creating jobs, and managing the economy -- are all eroding, presaging further drops in his overall ratings.

Seemingly paralyzed by adversity, President Obama and his advisors are showing a lack of resilience in the face of reversals that is perhaps the inevitable outcome of his smooth rise to the top in 2008. Never tried by bad outcomes (as Hillary has doubtless been), he and they seem unable to regain momentum and appear to be just flailing without strategic or even tactical direction.

All this might be what happens when you elect a State Senator whose US Senate career was consumed with his presidential campaign as president.

Go to DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!

America… the financial fall is coming. That seems to be the consensus from all the experts! Use this time to prepare:

God, Gold, Guns and Granny’s Fruit Cellar Supplies are a good guide to follow to be ready for any emergency or for the Perfect Storm, that many have predicted.

Make yourself as self reliant as possible and if you haven’t already, start today!!

Expect the worst and prepare for it while praying and hoping for the best.

If you are ready for any emergency and it doesn’t happen, you just end up ahead of the game for a natural emergency or with some extra. If you are not ready and there is an emergency, it could be devastating for you and your family.

GB: Happy Anniversary Stimulus!

It's been a great year, hasn't it? Filled with jobs and a booming economy, and it's all thanks to the stimulus. Well, no, but that sure is the way the administration made it sound today. Biden, with a straight face, touted the 2 million created or saved jobs in the midst of 9.7% unemployment. Glenn talks about the wonders of the stimulus on radio this morning. ( Transcript, Insider Audio)

There are solutions

Video 1

Video 2

“POTUS FLIP FLOP ON WHO REALLY CREATES JOBS… Spoken like the true idiot he is.......he has now flip flopped from one year ago when he said only government can create jobs. I guess it depends whether he reads the right or left teleprompter... hmmmmmm~” …Michelle Malkin

"Unimaginable" Tax Increases Coming

Pensions Aren't Sustainable