VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH CONGRESSMAN ELECT ALLEN WEST
Sunday, December 5th, 2010
Archive for the ‘Bush Tax Cuts’ Category
HARRY REID, THE LAMEST DUCK, EVER
Friday, November 26th, 2010WALL STREET JOURNAL
NOVEMBER 25, 2010
The Lamest Duck, Ever
Harry Reid’s midterm strategy was a bust, and Democrats are now dealing with the consequences.
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Not so long ago, the great fear was that the Democratic Party would return from its midterm drubbing to jam all manner of odious legislation through a lame duck session of Congress. We may need to put that in the “wasted worry” category.
This year’s post-election congressional session is shaping up as one of the lamest turkeys ever. If Democrats leave town with few or no final victories to tout—if they fail even to protect Americans from tax hikes—they can thank their Senate majority leader, Harry Reid. It was Mr. Reid’s flawed pre-election strategy that landed his party with this undercooked fowl, and his post-election floundering has even his own members worried.
You wouldn’t know this from listening to Mr. Reid, who has laid out a lame-duck agenda that bears no connection to time, reality or election results. According to the Nevadan, Senate Democrats are going to confirm judges, rewrite immigration law, extend unemployment insurance, fix the issue of gays in the military, reorganize the FDA, forestall tax hikes, re-fund the government, and ratify a nuclear arms treaty—all in two, maybe three, weeks. This is the same institution that needs a month to rename a post office.
KNOW THY ENEMY – MOVEON.ORG EMAIL
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010
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Share your videoDear MoveOn member,Remember Barack Obama in 2008? The guy who refused to go along with a “dumb war” and said, “In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”
I miss that guy. Imagine if someone told you in 2008 that Barack Obama was actually thinking about signing legislation to extend the Bush tax giveaways for the rich.1 I wouldn’t have believed it.
Now more than ever, we need the Barack Obama we elected in 2008—the smart, tough, hopeful progressive champion who inspired millions of us—to stand up and say “no” to a millionaire bailout.
Right now, with the change we all fought for hanging in the balance, President Obama needs to hear from those of us who supported him the most.
So we’re asking MoveOn members nationwide to record a video message from the heart to tell President Obama to go to the mat to stop any extension of the millionaire tax giveaways—and to bring back the progressive fighter we all knew and supported in 2008. (more…)
THIS LAME DUCK SESSION OF CONGRESS SHOULD BE THE LAST
Friday, November 19th, 2010By BETSY MCCAUGHEY
Americans ought to make this lame duck session of Congress the last in history. Members who lose re-election have no moral authority to continue governing: They were fired by the voters, who should demand that they clean out their desks and go home.
On Nov. 2, the voters replaced the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives with at least 61 new Republican members who campaigned on lower spending and less government power. Allowing members who were not re-elected to legislate national policy or set the 2011 federal budget is like allowing a fired employee to run the office another two months, or letting your ex-spouse continue managing your checkbook.
Lame duck sessions were unavoidable before jet planes. The framers of the U.S. Constitution provided 17 weeks for newly elected members to travel to the capital and take their seats on March 3. That was the 18th century.
In 1933, Americans ratified the 20th Amendment to eliminate lame duck sessions. It set Jan. 3 as the day newly elected members would take their seats. That still left seven weeks after the election, but no one imagined that the old Congress would return to the capital during that time.
For a half-century, the 20th amendment worked. Except during World War II and the Korean War, Congress did not reconvene after November elections. But for the last two decades, lawmakers have hurried back to the capital after Election Day to deal with spending bills and controversial legislation they deliberately had avoided before the election.
For the last two decades, lawmakers have hurried back to the capitol after Election Day to deal with controversial legislation they deliberately avoided before the election.
EMBARRASSMENT IN SEOUL
Sunday, November 14th, 2010
- NOVEMBER 13, 2010
The world won’t follow slow-growth, weak-dollar America.
- Has there ever been a major economic summit where a U.S. President and his Treasury Secretary were as thoroughly rebuffed as they were at this week’s G-20 meeting in Seoul? We can’t think of one. President Obama failed to achieve any of his main goals while getting pounded by other world leaders for failing U.S. policies and lagging growth.
The root of this embarrassment is political and intellectual: Rather than leading the world from a position of strength, Mr. Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner came to Seoul blaming the rest of the world for U.S. economic weakness. America’s problem, in their view, is the export and exchange rate policies of the Germans, Chinese or Brazilians. And the U.S. solution is to have the Fed print enough money to devalue the dollar so America can grow by stealing demand from the rest of the world.
President Barack Obama walks off the stage with Secretary of Treasury Timonthy Geithner
A GROWTH AGENDA FOR THE NEW CONGRESS – ART LAFFER
Saturday, November 13th, 2010
- NOVEMBER 12, 2010, 4:09 P.M. ET
For now: Extend the Bush tax cuts, repeal ObamaCare, support free trade. After 2012: Enact a flat tax, stabilize prices, balance the budget, give politicians incentive pay.
Since its cyclical zenith in December 2007, U.S. economic production has been on its worst trajectory since the Great Depression. Massive stimulus spending and unprecedented monetary easing haven’t helped, and yet the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve still cling to the book of Keynes. It’s an approach ill-suited to solving the growth problem that the United States has today.
Columnist Daniel Henninger sees a trap in Beltway negotiations to avoid year-end tax increases. But Senior Economics Writer Steve Moore says taxpayers don’t have to worry about a January 1 increase.
The solution can be found in the price theory section of any economics textbook. It’s basic supply and demand. Employment is low because the incentives for workers to work are too small, and the incentives not to work too high. Workers’ net wages are down, so the supply of labor is limited. Meanwhile, demand for labor is also down since employers consider the costs of employing new workers—wages, health care and more—to be greater today than the benefits. (more…)
KNOW THY ENEMY – MOVEON.ORG EMAIL
Thursday, November 11th, 2010
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Dear MoveOn member,
The economy is in shambles. People everywhere are struggling to make ends meet. So naturally, Republicans are worried about the richest Americans.
They’re looking to make Bush’s tax cuts for the rich—which expire at the end of the year—permanent. The worst part is that some right-wing Democrats have already come out and agreed with the Republicans’ reckless approach, and the White House has signaled that they’re open to compromising on this issue.1
This has to be the worst idea since—well, ever. And to show just how bad an idea it is, we’ve decided to gather 1 million reasons why the millionaire tax bailout is a bad idea. (more…)
WHAT THE REPUBLICANS NEED TO DO TO WIN IN 2012
Friday, November 5th, 2010- NOVEMBER 5, 2010
The Boehner Evolution
House Republicans and the challenge of divided government.
In his press conference yesterday, Mr. Obama did not sound like someone ideologically chastened by the rout of his fellow Democrats. He said he felt “bad” for so many careers cut short, and that he was thinking about his own role in the defeat. But he rejected the thought that his own policies were to blame, save for the fact that they haven’t—yet—produced an economic recovery robust enough to make everything else he did popular. His concessions to defeat, in short, were limited to a reflective personal tone, not substance.
The message we take away is that Mr. Obama will continue to press his “transformative” agenda in any way possible. Even on cap and trade—an issue that West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin literally shot in a TV ad to save his campaign—Mr. Obama said yesterday he would seek other means to accomplish the same goal of taxing carbon. We can only imagine what soon-to-be-jobless Democrats in the Coal Belt and Midwest thought of that one.
Which brings us to Mr. Boehner, who saw the Gingrich train wreck of 1995 up close as part of the leadership. He knows Republicans can’t govern from the House, so his challenge will be picking the issues on which he might be able to succeed, or at least frame the agenda for the election of 2012.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, center, with Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, left, and House Republican leader John Boehner after the Republican sweep in the midterm elections.
MITT ROMNEY – OBAMA’S FIRST PRIORITY MUST BE TO MAKE CONDITIONS FAVORABLE FOR JOB CREATION
Thursday, November 4th, 2010WASHINGTON POST
Obama must slay the job-killing beast
By Mitt Romney
Wednesday, November 3, 2010;
President Obama could have focused on solving the financial crisis. He did not. He could have endeavored to conquer the looming threats to our future. Instead, he added to them. Now that voters have rejected his first two years in office, the president should not waste this political crisis: He should seize his “Nixon to China” opportunity.
Government is a greater threat to America in 2010 than China was in 1972. Government is smothering the pioneering, entrepreneurial spirit that propelled our economy past those of older, larger nations. Ever higher taxes on small and big business, layers of red tape, onerous labor regulations, and punitive bureaucrats and lawsuits are suffocating U.S. economic vitality. So far, the president and his fellow travelers in Congress have made things worse: If Obama is serious about changing the way things are done in Washington, he must slay the job-killing beast Washington has become.
He must also choke off government’s voracious appetite. Under current law, the federal government’s share of the economy will grow from its 50-year average of 20.3 percent to 26.5 percent by the end of this decade; federal, state and local governments will then constitute more than 40 percent of the economy. At what point do we effectively become a socialist economy, with its associated low growth, low incomes and permanently high unemployment? (more…)
KRAUTHAMMER – BRING IN STEWART AND COBERT, “THE COURT JESTERS”
Saturday, October 9th, 2010
2010-10-07 15:00:25
WASHINGTON – A president’s first midterm election is inevitably a referendum on his two years in office. The bad news for Democrats is that President Obama’s “re-elect” number is 38 percent – precisely Bill Clinton’s in October 1994, the eve of the wave election that gave Republicans control of the House for the first time in 40 years.
Yet this same poll found that 65 percent view Obama favorably “as a person.” The current Democratic crisis is not about the man – his alleged lack of empathy, ability to emote, etc., requiring remediation with backyard, shirt-sleeved shoulder rubbing with the folks – but about the policies.
And the problem with the policies is twofold: ideology and effectiveness. First, Obama, abetted by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, tried to take a center-right country to the left. They grossly misread the 2008 election. It was a mandate to fix the economy and restore American confidence. Obama read it as a mandate to change the American social contract, giving it a more European social-democratic stamp, by fundamentally extending the reach and power of government in health care, energy, education, finance and industrial policy. (more…)