27 posts tagged “congress”

I guess we are really screwed for funds if the Dems are considering a national sales tax now!

John Taylor writing for the Financial Times had this to say about our government spending practices. 

Best line? 

Ask and your shall receive:

The debt was 41 per cent of GDP at the end of 1988, President Ronald Reagan’s last year in office, the same as at the end of 2008, President George W. Bush’s last year in office. If one thinks policies from Reagan to Bush were mistakes does it make any sense to double down on those mistakes, as with the 80 per cent debt-to-GDP level projected when Mr Obama leaves office?

With all due respect, they do care.  And that is why those inside the beltway don't get it.

Thank you for reinforcing why I voted for McCain.

You see... saving the economy and creating bailout bills is hard work.

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

They were just too busy to prevent the automatic pay increase.  But don't worry, I am sure this raise will only serve to boost approval numbers for Congress.

Maybe instead of demanding plans from American automakers that would show how they think they will return to profitability, Congress should figure out their own plan to reduce our nation's debt.

Then we can talk about raises.

Maria Bartiromo:  Do you want to encourage him (Obama) to pull his spending plans?

Barney Frank:  Well, I think at this point, there needs to be a focus on an immediate increase in spending and I think this is a time when deficit fear has to take a second seat.

So is he talking about another potential stimulus package for the economy or spending on Democratic minded programs?  I wonder if he is telegraphing the latter...  Because he sure didn't sound like he answered the question about pulling back on spending plans...

The Wall Street Journal had this opinion piece today:

If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.

Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.

It is worry some that in the haste to get to the state of "change" we might be rushing into another era of government that previous generations of Americans eventually rejected.

Wow.  This is big.

Now that the symbolic leadership of the party is shifting away from Bush and toward the suddenly popular Republican presidential ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin, things may be changing. This shrinks Bush's shadow over the Republicans, revealing more of the Democrats' own shadow stemming from high disapproval of Congress. The key question is how much of this is temporary because of the tremendous bounce in support for the Republicans on many dimensions coming right off of their convention. The degree to which the Republican bounce is sustained, rather than dissipates, in the weeks ahead will determine whether the 2008 race for Congress could in fact be highly competitive, rather than a Democratic sweep.

Only time will tell I guess...

We all know from a military perspective the surge is working.  But the intention behind the surge is designed to give the Iraqis time to sort out their political differences.  Well, Ed Morrissey talks about the Iraqi government's latest move, de-Baathification, that addresses another one of benchmarks set by the U.S. Congress.

This allows Sunnis to retake their jobs and join the Shi'ites and Kurds in administering government functions, especially in Sunni areas. It gives them a stake in the new, representative government instead of being shut out of it. Sunnis will now have every reason to support the central government in Baghdad rather than attempting to undermine it to get back what they lost in the fall of Saddam, and they won't need to again adopt the fascist Ba'ath principles to do so.

This looks like progress to me. It's progress that wouldn't have come without lowering the violence and removing the provocations and depredations of al-Qaeda in Iraq. That wouldn't have happened at all had we not ramped up our efforts and taken a much more aggressive posture against the terrorists -- and the Sunnis would not have cooperated if we hadn't signaled so strongly that we intended to beat AQI and stick it out.

The Iraqis are stepping up to the plate, albeit slowly.

As Urban Lenny puts it:

Let us remember that a reduction in violence in Iraq was not the goal of the "surge"; rather it was a means to the real goal of the troop escalation: political reconciliation between Iraq's religious and political factions that results in lasting peace and stability for the Iraqi people.

Well, I agree.  And I think you have to say this a continued move in the right direction.  Let us check off another one.

(ii) Enacting and implementing legislation on de-Baathification.

Not according to Michael O'Hanlon:

...Petraeus will argue that the overall situation has improved substantially this year. He will be right to do so, based on virtually any primary-source data I have seen (in my capacity as co-author of Brookings’s “Iraq Index”). Depending on which category of violence one emphasizes, and which starting and end points one uses for the comparison, most categories of killings are down 20 to 50-percent since the surge began. This is true for overall civilian fatalities from all causes, including victims of extrajudicial killings (basically reprisal assassinations), murders, and for the most part, car- and truck-bombing victims.

Captain Ed speaks about our current Congress:

While the Democrats hailed the SCHIP legislation as protecting America's children, its real intent appears to be protecting Democratic backsides. It rewards hospitals in suburban Democratic districts such as Maurice Hinchey's in New York and Bart Stupak's in Michigan by forcing Medicare to pay above-market rates to hospitals in those areas. The Democrats hid these earmarks by casting them in gobbledygook geographical descriptions that sound broad but actually describe specific hospitals.

Democrats want to exploit Medicare to pay above-market rates in these hospitals to curry favor with unions and with local voters. For instance, a rural Alabama hospital that has not even yet been built will get higher payments from Medicare because it will be listed as a "critical access" facility. It normally wouldn't qualify for that status because of the proximity of another hospital, but Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) got language waiving the standard for any hospital built in Butler. Coincidentally, that's just where Rush Health Systems had planned to build the new hospital.

Medicare is a financial disaster just waiting to crash. Congresses controlled by both parties have failed to address its Ponzi-scheme financials, but this Congress appears determined to loot it for all it's worth before the crash. The 110th's Democratic leadership also seems determined to keep its machinations as secret as possible from the American public, despite their clean-government fervor in 2006.

Just great.  Thanks Democrats.  As you denigrate Bush and the Republicans for no bid contracts given to such firms as Halliburton, you get to do things like this.  As you criticize the Bush administration for keeping secrets (of national security no less) from the American people, you neatly wrap this up with a little bow.

Both parties seem to act like little children where say, "Well, they're doing it too!"  But it is evident that the current Democratic controlled Congress is just more of the same, even though they try to sit on mightier than thou rhetoric and while they hold the brooms that are supposedly gonna clean up Congress.  So much for keeping government open to the people...

The American people like to see action, not rhetoric.  Can anybody step up to the plate?

Just as Congress likes to tout the oversight card over the Bush administration when it comes to the war on terrorism, Bush needs to tout his oversight card on excessive and earmark spending -- the veto!