You know who’s a millionaire? Obama. Also Nancy Pelosi. And also, I think, Harry Reid. Thanks to DrewM. Stupid Is Contagious: Harry Reid is probably riffing off this insipid column, making the same claim. I’m a very rich person. As… See original here:
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Harry Reid: Millionaires Who Create Jobs Are "Actually Like Unicorns, Impossible to Find. They Don’t Exist."
With just a month left before the one-year payroll tax break expires, Senate Democrats are trying to get Republicans to agree to extending it, to be paid for with a 3.5 percentage point surtax on income above $1 million. The catch is that the surtax would be permanent.
By now, we are all intimately acquainted with the bromide that “Republican’s only control one-half of one-third of government.” Nonetheless, we must remember that, in the realm of appropriations, they control the most consequential body of government; the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, almost a year into their stewardship of that body, they have shown only a tepid inclination to defund Obamacare. Despite months of diligent work on appropriations bills, House (and Senate) Republicans are abdicating their budget powers to Harry Reid’s “minibus” scheme – a scheme in which the House is jettisoned from two-thirds of the process, while conference committees adopt the spending bills favored by Senate Democrats [more here and here ]. Next week, the Senate will vote on the second minibus bill. Reid is using the House-passed Energy-Water bill ( HR 2354 ) as a vehicle to carry the Financial Services ( S.1573 ) and State-Foreign Operations ( S.1601 ) bills (even though they were never voted on by the full House). So we will have one appropriations bill that covers such disparate expenditures as the IRS and the State Department. But don’t worry, it’s a minibus bill; not an Omnibus bill. Hence, Republicans will get the green light to vote for it. All but 14 of them already voted for cloture to proceed with the ‘don’t call it an omnibus bill.’ Here are the issues with Reid minibus number two: 1) The entire package will appropriate $129.5 billion, roughly $8 billion more than the House version. Most of the excess appropriations are for the State Department. 2) The House version of the State-Ops bill (passed out of Subcommittee), HR 1905 , contains many cuts in foreign aid to unsavory entities, such as the Palestinians and the UN. There are also provisions that force the administration to crack down on those who do business with Iran. The final Senate version, the one that will prevail in committee without a chance to amend in the House, will not contain those cuts. 3) The House version of the Financial Services bill (reported out of committee), HR 2434 , which funds the Treasury Department, the federal judiciary, the District of Columbia, the Executive Office of the President and a number of other agencies, has a provision to limit funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The Senate version will contain no limits on that entity or any other Dodd-Frank related expenditures. 4) Most importantly, the House version of the Financial Services bill contains two provisions barring the IRS from implementing Obamacare. The first would block certain transfers of money from HHS to the IRS related to implementation of Obamacare. The second provision would prohibit the IRS from using funds provided through the bill to verify that individuals have health care coverage and impose penalties on those who do not. The Senate stripped out these provisions. 5) All of the additional Senate funding for odious big-government programs will have to come at the expense of defense spending. The overall discretionary spending cap was already set at $1.043 trillion. As such, if Republicans continue to allow more funding for these bills, there will be an inevitable hit to the Defense appropriations bill. Despite the jarring vices of the Senate minibus bills – both in terms of policy content and process – Republicans are credulously voting for cloture on these bills. They are doing so because Harry Reid promised them votes on their amendments to reinstate some of the House provisions. So Republicans are granted opportunities to offer amendments that are summarily defeated, in return for final passage of the bill…without the amendments! It doesn’t get more pathetic than that. Republicans still have several opportunities to defeat these minibus bills and reassert House control over the process. First, Senate Republicans must oppose Harry Reid’s amendment to turn the Energy-Water bill into a three-legged minibus bill. Next, they should vote against cloture to shut off debate (they already agreed to commence debate on the bill). Finally, if the bill passes the Senate, House Republicans must object to unanimous consent (requested by the appropriators) on the motion to instruct conferees to conference committee. They must demand an opportunity to offer amendments, which will strip out funding for Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and aid to evil foreign entities. Now is not the time to go wobbly on spending, especially as it relates to Obamacare. Even as other conservative measures went down to defeat this week, the Obamacare individual mandate was voted down in Ohio with overwhelming support. Earlier this month, Congressman Steve King bemoaned the waning alacrity of Republicans to defund Obamacare. “I have seen the fervor to repeal and defund Obamacare diminish significantly to kind of a flat line,” he told CQ . Unfortunately, this might be another consummate example of the American people being ahead of their elected leadership; even ahead of those who were elected to defund Obamacare. Follow @RMConservative
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Now is Not the Time to Shirk From Obamacare Fight
Update: 16 Republican Senators voted to empower Harry Reid and expand Food Stamps. It is now up to House members to demand a full floor vote with amendments to this bill. Last week, we noted that Harry Reid, with the help of Republican leadership, is attempting to come late to the 2012 budget game and commandeer the entire process through a series of ‘minibus’ bills. They are using House-passed appropriations bills as vehicles to tack on at least two additional disparate spending bills. Such a maneuver will allow the Senate to force a conference committee vote on spending measures and policies that the House never amended. Although the topline discretionary spending figure is already set, Reid is wagering that his fast track minibus strategy will allow him to override House-passed policies, while inserting his own policies into the bills. Thus far, he has been successful. The first minibus is comprised of the House-passed Agriculture appropriations bill (HR 2112), along with the Senate’s version of the Commerce-Justice-Science (S 1572) and Transportation-HUD (S 1596) measures. Democrats assert that this package, which authorizes $128 billion in discretionary spending, is actually $1 billion below last year’s levels. To that end, it is slated to pass today with overwhelming bipartisan support. The problem is that this bill will actually increase spending. As Senator Sessions observed , this bill increases spending by $2.2 billion because it contains extra emergency spending – without any offsets. Moreover, this bill increases mandatory spending by $8 billion on Food Stamps. The Food Stamp program (SNAP) is, by far, the fastest growing government program, as it is emblematic of Obama’s socialist transformation of our country. In just three years, SNAP enrollment has jumped from 27 million to 45 million, while its budget has doubled to over $77.6 billion for FY 2011. Yet, many Republicans are ready to sign their life away to Harry Reid, and help grow this program by 10%. Two weeks ago, Senator Sessions attempted to cut spending on Food Stamps by eliminating “categorical eligibility.” This is a practice in which states automatically grant Food Stamps to people who had received a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families brochure or contacted a pregnancy hotline funded by that program. Categorical eligibility allows many people to enroll in SNAP who would otherwise be disqualified because of their income level. Last year, members of the Government Accountability Office flagged this wasteful practice , and called for congressional action. Unfortunately, Sessions’s amendment to the minibus bill was defeated with the help of six Republicans. Today, the Senate will be voting on final passage of the minibus bill, following votes on six Republican amendments . While these are very constructive amendments, Democrats (and many Republicans) will invariably vote them down. As such, Republicans must vote against final passage of this bill. If the bill passes the Senate, House conservatives must oppose efforts of their leadership to steer the minibus away from the House floor directly into the hands of the appropriators in conference committee. Conservatives must get a chance to vote down pernicious policies and extraneous spending in bills that never saw daylight in the House. Follow @RMConservative
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Republicans Must Oppose Reid’s Minibus Bill
RedState Morning Briefing For October 27, 2011 Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge. 1. Student debt is a symptom of our lack of economic literacy 2. Stop Harry Reid’s Egregious Budget Power Grab 3. Public-Sector Unions To Ohio Taxpayers: We Will Bury You 4. Al-Jazeera and Green Peace Unite Against Keystone Pipeline 5. You Can’t Rely On American Cars Because American Car Makers Rely On Bailouts 6. In Which John Tillman Plays With Fire 7. An Anti-Semite? ———————————————————————- 1. Student debt is a symptom of our lack of economic literacy One of the failings of our public school systems is the lack of basic economic literacy of so many of our students. I am afraid this has infected our political discourse and policy making to a degree that is frightening and deeply disheartening. One prime example of this, are attempts to ignore basic things like supply and demand when making public policy. In my humble opinion, Democrats are guilty of this more than Republicans but a depressing amount of Republicans follow this path as well. A good example is a hot topic these days: student debt. This is a subject I have some inside knowledge about having acquired far too much student debt in order to achieve an advanced degree from a fancy Ivy League school (fine, a MA from a MAC school, but that is beside the point). This is also a classic example of politicians blindly declaring something a universal good and then making policy that not only ignores economic reality but undermines the economy and harms people (see, housing policy). We blithely declare that everyone should go to college and set up a system that allows anyone breathing to borrow large sums of money with no consequences or connection to reality and wonder why the system doesn’t function. Soon we have millions of people with massive debt and very little to show for it. The sad thing is that these people are now protesting in the streets and asking for what? More hair of the dog that bit them – more government intrusion and less economic reality. And it appears President Obama is happy to oblige them. Please click here for the rest of the post. 2. Stop Harry Reid’s Egregious Budget Power Grab Senate Democrats (and all other Democrats, for that matter) have not passed a budget for over 900 days, yet they are planning to come late to the game and commandeer the appropriations process. After delaying the process for over two years, Harry Reid, with the help of some Senate Republicans, is planning to expedite appropriations bills in a way that disavows standard procedures of transparency. House Republicans must rebuff this insidious plan. When Republicans assumed control of the House earlier this year, they completed the job that Democrats refused to do regarding the FY 2011 budget. Additionally, they passed a concurrent budget resolution for FY 2012, and proceeded to complete half of the 12 annual appropriations bills. When it became clear that Senate Democrats were dithering with roll call votes and speeches, and had no intention of even passing a budget resolution, Republicans held back the remaining approps bills, in an effort to wait for the Senate to get its act together. Now, instead of coming to the table and passing the 12 individual appropriations bills along with a budget resolution, Harry Reid is seeking to circumvent the process by using “Minibus” bills. He rightfully perceives that a 12-bill omnibus package would be politically unpopular, so he is planning to bundle the 12 appropriations bill into four minibus bills, containing three spending bills apiece. Why does Reid want to use this awkward and obscure process for appropriations bills? Please click here for the rest of the post. 3. Public-Sector Unions To Ohio Taxpayers: We Will Bury You With less than two weeks before the November 8th elections and with the polls leaning toward repealing SB5, it appears that Ohioans are ready to vote to increase their taxes and unemployment. Ultimately, that is a choice Ohio taxpayers will be making and fiscal self-immolation is certainly within their rights and, frankly, there are states who would be all-too happy to see Ohio’s unions put the nail in the coffin there. Curiously, though, after months of being pounded by a multi-million dollar union campaign of fear-mongering and deceptive propaganda, there seems to be very few Ohioans who know the true economic consequences of what happens when they repeal SB 5—and the unions, in their attack ads, certainly aren’t telling them either. Please click here for the rest of the post. 4. Al-Jazeera and Green Peace Unite Against Keystone Pipeline Al Jazeera, arguably the most terrorist-friendly news station after MSNBC, has offered some thoughts on the proposed Keystone Pipeline which will bring billions of dollars and thousands of jobs to the United States. Calling it a “pipeline of poison,” writer Dahr Jamail makes the case that the project will be an environmental catastrophe. Quite a shocker that the media outlet of choice in the middle east would be against something that might make us more energy independent. Please click here for the rest of the post. 5. You Can’t Rely On American Cars Because American Car Makers Rely On Bailouts The Consumer Reports Company just rated the reliability of 28 makes of automobile from around the world. No American car manufacturer scored better than 13th in ordinal ranking. Ranked on a Lickert Scale from 1 to 5, Jeep, the best American competitor, scores approximately 3.0. No American car does better than average at staying in one piece. This raises a fair question: did we really save GM and Chrysler or did we just screw the bondholders to put off the inevitable? Much-hyped and manfully-bailed General Motors finished 22nd out of 28 world manufacturers. Their subjects over at Chevrolet performed modestly better (17th out of 28) and are currently the standard-bearers and great hope for bailout motors. Their marquis offering, The Chevrolet Cruze, has received positive reviews and is temporarily well-positioned to sell well against other small cars. Please click here for the rest of the post. 6. In Which John Tillman Plays With Fire I understand where John Tillman is coming from. The CEO of the illinois Policy Institute has encountered a few of the occupiers and shares some concerns with them. I’ve written about the common ground conservatives might find with some of the folk who’ve joined in the occupation cause. The Sam Adams Alliance and other groups have found that there are some in the crowd who really are just angry about feeling like the deck is stacked against them. They aren’t there for punishment. They are there because they want to be able to compete. But as I noted at the time, “Most of the common ground with most of these damn dirty communists is superficial.” The more we learn about the crowds, the more I am set in that opinion. Playing with fire is going to get Tillman and likeminded souls burned. The better approach would be to push forward the legislative proposal Tillman thinks we find common ground on. Make sure the Occupy crowd knows about and let those who share our values come out of the crowd. If we push sound policy, they’ll come if they really are there. Please click here for the rest of the post. 7. An Anti-Semite? I’m so used to being called a Zionist, among other things, I am actually shocked tonight to learn Jenn Rubin thinks this statement makes me anti-Semitic: “A conservative friend says she’s best understood as ‘Likud’ rather than Republican or conservative. There’s nothing wrong with being Likud, but one ought to be honest about it.” I nor the friend of mine who offered that up are anti-Semitic, but it has apparently hit a nerve that I did not intend to hit and I feel I do need to apologize for that. A friend of mine explains to me that a Jewish-American might find it insulting because it suggests they put Israel ahead of the United States. I had not thought of that when writing it and was not my intention. Where I finally had enough of Jenn Rubin was her position on Jonathan Pollard that I cannot in any way, shape, or form comprehend as being the right position. It was that position of hers and her positions on national security, terrorism, and Israel (all three of which she and I see eye to eye on) that didn’t make me think twice about using the Likud comparison. Apparently I should have. Likud as a party is tough as nails on terrorism and security issues, but is liberal to left (by American standards) on fiscal and social policy, and that’s what I intended by the comparison, not a suggestion of misplaced loyalty. And certainly not anti-semitism. Please click here for the rest of the post.
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Morning Briefing for October 27, 2011
