March 22, 2013

NEWSMAX
Marine Kills Two at Quantico, Takes Own Life
by Thomson/Reuters
March 22, 2013

A U.S. Marine shot dead two fellow service members at a base at Quantico, Virginia, then barricaded himself in a building and apparently killed himself, prompting a brief lockdown of the base, the Marines said on Friday.
The shootings took place late on Thursday in the vicinity of the Marine Corps Base at Quantico's Officer Candidate School, and all three people who died were identified as Marines, Marines spokesman Sergeant Christopher Zahn said.

"An isolated shooting incident has occurred at Officer Candidate School, Quantico," the base said on its Facebook page. "The suspect has been barricaded by law enforcement personnel."

The Facebook message told base residents to remain in their homes with their doors locked, until the lockdown was lifted before dawn on Friday. No other injuries were reported, and Zahn could give no details as to a motive for the shootings.

"The investigation is in the very early stages," he said.

The shootings came days after seven U.S. Marines were killed in a mortar explosion at an Army munitions depot in Nevada during a live-fire training exercise.

In that incident on Monday, a lightweight mortar exploded prematurely in its firing tube, killing the Marines from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, who had been undergoing mountain warfare training, and wounding eight other service members.

It prompted the Marines to order a blanket suspension of the use of 60mm mortars pending a review.

Read more: http://goo.gl/fIEPR

HUMAN EVENTS
Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?
by James Antle
March 21, 2013

You wouldn’t know it by listening to the political debate in Washington, but the United States government is essentially broke.

The $16 trillion national debt is just the beginning of the problem. The major entitlement programs have unfunded liabilities bigger than the national economy. Social Security is currently promising $8.6 trillion more in benefits than it has revenues to pay for. Extend that time horizon even further into the future and that number eclipses $20 trillion.

Medicare isn’t in much better shape. Last year’s Trustees’ report estimated the net unfunded liability for the program that pays for our seniors’ health care at $42.8 trillion. The trust funds are stuffed with IOUs.

We’ve already seen this happen at the state level, where government workers’ pension benefits are crowding out other budget priorities. Medicaid is also bankrupting states. An aging population plus rising health care costs is causing government to grow on auto pilot.

People’s eyes tend to glaze over looking at such big numbers. It has also been difficult to get the voters’ attention because the dates when Social Security and Medicare were projected to be in trouble were so far into the future.

But now the future is almost here. Within a decade, interest payments on the national debt may exceed the entire military budget. Think about that: money we should be spending protecting the country from future Osama bin Ladens will instead be paid to our creditors.

Medicare is already paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes. Social Security ran a deficit in fiscal 2012.

And that’s assuming interest rates don’t return to where they were before the 2007 financial crisis or spike even higher. Higher interest rates would make it even more expensive to service the debt.

Unless there are structural reforms, it is likely that the quality of these programs will worsen at the same time taxpayers are expected to contribute more to pay for them.

The Senate Democrats took four years to produce a budget and it achieves deficit reduction mostly through nearly $1 trillion in tax increases.

Sounds like a great bargain, right?

The problem is much bigger than money. Our current fiscal path limits our political options. We can’t have the kind of government programs we want, whether it is investing infrastructure, enhancing homeland security, or funding the cure for cancer, because the dollars are already spoken for.

Every dollar of federal spending is sucked out of the private economy, a net drain on the American people’s resources. That limits your freedom, as do the myriad regulations big government imposes.

Obamacare comes not only with new federal subsidies and mandates, but also a clearer government role in your personal lifestyle choices. The government wants to be able to tell you what health insurance you have to buy, how much water your toilet will hold, what light bulbs you can use, and what size soda you can drink.

No wonder they don’t want to answer questions about whether they can launch domestic drone strikes! No limit on federal power, even one extremely unlikely to ever be exercised, can be contemplated in public.

The people who say the present course is sustainable rely on two arguments: Trust us, we’re the experts. And there’s a sucker born every minute.

Think about the contradictions there.

The suckers’ argument is, “Hey, people are buying our bonds now, so they always will.” Uncle Sam can borrow money indefinitely, the liberal’s American exceptionalism.

The experts’ argument assumes technocrats can avert a fiscal crisis with the right policy adjustments at the last minute. The government can bid down health care spending and spend us into lower deficits with fiscal stimulus.

The economist and Paul Krugman gave us a preview of that would look like recently: “death panels” and “sales taxes.”

But the situation is not hopeless. The truth is, from Reagan to Gingrich to even the end of World War II, we have cut government spending before. We can learn from their mistakes. We can also build on their successes.

More often than not, the problem isn’t that big government can’t be curtailed. It’s that politicians seldom have the will to try.

Despite the results of last November, a growing number of voters doubt the experts. They don’t believe a sucker is born every minute. And they want their politicians to protect their pocketbooks—and their freedom.

Read more: http://goo.gl/ymHCT

TOWNHALL
Democrat Controlled Senate Votes to Repeal ObamaCare Medical Device Tax
by Katie Pavlich 
March 22, 2013

Apparently, the Senate thinks the medical device tax in ObamaCare is a pretty bad idea and voted to repeal it last night.

The Senate overwhelmingly passed a largely symbolic resolution calling for repeal of a 2.3 percent tax on medical device companies on Thursday, as more than 30 Democrats joined Republicans in approving it. 

The tax helps to fund President Barack Obama's 2010 healthcare law. It applies to a range of medical products - from bedpans to expensive heart devices - many manufactured in the home states of the senators backing the repeal. 

The Senate voted 79-20 to call for repeal of the tax, but the resolution is non-binding and will not change the levy. The symbolic measure will be attached to a non-binding budget measure drafted by Senate Democrats that is expected to pass on Friday. 

Full repeal of the tax may be difficult to achieve, given its $30 billion price tag and the opposition of key Senate Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid.

As a reminder of just how bad the medical device tax is, it's pretty much a tax within a tax that will not only kill jobs in the medical device industry, but will kill medical device innovation as well.

Not only does this tax increase costs on companies, it also increases costs on hospitals, doctors and people in need of medical treatment that requires medical devices to be used. As a consequence of this, biomedical or medical device engineering firms are already laying off workers who develop crucial medical products due to the "unforeseen" costs, or in other words, the costs of ObamaCare. Not to mention, the more money these companies pay to the government, the less money they have to invest in research and development. 

With this new medical device tax, students who pay large sums of money to get degrees in the field of biomedical engineering, just like doctors, will no longer see the benefits of going into the field and therefore, we will have a shortage of engineers developing new medical device technology. The medical device tax is a death sentence for American medical innovation.

And where exactly does this tax hurt the most? When it comes to research and development of new products.

Medical-device manufacturers contend, however, that the potential problems go much further. While the tax may seem relatively small -- it would amount to $230 on the sale of a $10,000 medical device -- opponents note that it hits sales, not just profits, which increases its impact. Indeed, several medical companies say that the surcharge would eat into their profitability, at the expense of their research and development budgets. Large orthopedic device maker Stryker says that in anticipation of the tax, it plans to cut more than $100 million from its annual pretax operating costs next year. Smaller device maker Zoll Medical says the new surcharge will raise its overall rate above 50 percent and use up its entire R&D budget.

Read more: http://goo.gl/RzfrC

February 6, 2013

NEWSMAX
Kibbe: Rove's Plan to Protect GOP Incumbents is 'Political Suicide'
by Jim Meyers and Kathleen Walter
by February 5, 2013

FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe tells Newsmax that a new Karl Rove-backed group is seeking to protect incumbents who “are afraid of a tea party challenge” — and he calls the effort “political suicide.”

Kibbe also discloses that his group intends to target in GOP primaries incumbents who don’t consistently support conservative principles.

Tea party-affiliated FreedomWorks was founded in 2004 and claims to have millions of members nationwide.

Former George W. Bush adviser Rove’s group, American Crossroads, has formed a new organization called the Conservative Victory Project that will target Republican candidates it deems unelectable. The organization was formed because of concerns that candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock were costing the GOP congressional seats.

Commenting on the group’s efforts, Kibbe says in an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV: “It’s all about stifling competition. It’s all about protecting incumbent senators who are afraid of a tea party challenge, afraid of actually standing on their record.

“If you think about what Karl Rove is trying to do, he’s going to eliminate this whole new breed of Republican that’s repopulated the party, bringing all this energy. There would be no Marco Rubio, no Pat Toomey, no Mike Lee, no Rand Paul if this type of apparatus was successful.

“So it’s a really bad idea and if you look at our record on balance, we have in fact brought new energy to the Republican Party and it’s vital that we continue to do so.”

Read more: http://goo.gl/xqAJR

TOWNHALL
Prophets and Losses: Part II
by Thomas Sowell
February 6, 2013

People on both sides of tax issues often speak of such things as a "$300 billion tax increase" or a "$500 billion tax decrease." That is fine if they are looking back at something that has already happened. But it can be sheer nonsense if they are talking about a proposed increase or decrease in the tax rate.
The government can only raise or lower the tax rate. Whether the actual tax revenues that the government will collect as a result will go up or down is a matter of prophecy. And these prophecies have been far too wrong far too often to base national policies on them.

When Congress was considering raising the capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 28 percent in 1986, the Congressional Budget Office advised Congress that this would increase the revenue received from that tax. But the Congressional Budget Office was wrong, not simply about the amount of the tax revenue increase, but about the fact that the capital gains tax revenue actually fell.

There was nothing unique about this example of tax rates and tax revenues moving in opposite directions from each other -- and also in opposite directions from the predictions of the Congressional Budget Office. Reductions of the capital gains tax rates in 1978, 1997 and 2003 all led to increased revenues from that tax.

The Congressional Budget Office is by no means the only government agency whose prophecies have been grossly unreliable. Anyone who looks at the history of the Federal Reserve System will find many painful examples of wrong prophecies that led to policies with bad consequences for the whole economy.

In a worldwide context, during the 20th century economic central planning by governments -- prophecy at the grandest level -- led to so many bad consequences, in countries around the world, that even most socialist and communist governments abandoned central planning by the end of that century.

The failures of governmental prophecies in so many different contexts cannot be blamed on stupidity. Most of the people who made these prophecies were far more educated than the average person, had far more information at their fingertips and probably had higher IQs as well.

Their intellectual superiority to others may well have given them the confidence to venture into areas where no human being has what it takes to make prophecies that lead to policies overriding the plans and actions of millions of other human beings.


As John Stuart Mill said, back in the 19th century, "even if a government were superior in intelligence and knowledge to any single individual in the nation, it must be inferior to all the individuals of the nation taken together."

People competing with each other, and being forced to make mutual accommodations with each other in the marketplace, are operating in a trial and error process.

Human beings are going to make errors in any kind of economic or political system. The question is: Which kind of system punishes errors more quickly, and more effectively, in terms of forcing errors to be corrected?

A market economy with many competitors has incentives and constraints that are the opposite of those in a government monopoly.

Anyone familiar with the economic history of businesses knows that their mistakes have been common and large. But red ink on the bottom line lets them know that they are going to have to shape up or shut down.

Government agencies face no such constraint. The Federal Reserve can keep making the same mistakes in the next hundred years that it made in its first hundred years. Or it can make new and bigger mistakes.

Nor is the Federal Reserve unique. The same thing applies to the Congressional Budget Office and to government agencies on down to the local DMV.

Elected politicians not only can keep making the same mistakes. They have every incentive to deny that they made a mistake in the first place, since such an admission can end their careers.

That is why these prophets can lead to our losses.


Read more: http://goo.gl/JXIoK

THE DAILY CALLER
Stunning new numbers forecast debt explosion by 2023
by Betsi Fores
February 6, 2013

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an estimate Tuesday saying that by 2023, the federal debt will be $7 trillion larger.

“If current laws remain in place, debt will equal 77 percent of GDP and be on an upward path,” CBO projects.

Based on their modeling, the deficit will total $845 billion in 2013, making it the first year in five years to have a deficit below $1 trillion.

“With such deficits, federal debt would remain above 73 percent of GDP — far higher than the 39 percent average seen over the past four decades,” says the CBO.

Economists commonly recommend that the debt-to-GDP ratio should not exceed 60 percent. It currently exceeds 70 percent.

“The CBO’s report is yet another warning that we need to get spending under control,” House budget committee chair Paul Ryan said last week. “The deficit is still unsustainable. By 2023, our national debt will hit $26 trillion. We can’t let that happen. We need to budget responsibly, so we can keep our commitments and expand opportunity.”

Included in the CBO’s budget outlook is the future of medical insurance programs. The CBO projects that 7 million people will no longer have employer-provided health insurance by 2022, because of changes required by the Affordable Care Act.

The cost of Social Security is expected to nearly double over the next ten years, from $773 billion in 2012 to $1.43 trillion in 2023.

G. William Hoagland, senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, testified before Congress that by 2022, the debt will be $27 trillion. Hoagland agreed that the debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 77 percent.

In all, the CBO expects economic growth to be slow for the remainder of the year as the expected budgetary cuts take place. Following 2013, the CBO estimates economic growth will speed up, “causing the unemployment rate to decline and inflation and interest rates to eventually rise from their current low levels,” the CBO writes.

“Nevertheless, the unemployment rate is expected to remain above 7½ percent through next year,” making 2014 the sixth consecutive year with unemployment exceeding 7.5 percent — the longest period of extended unemployment in the last 70 years.

Read more: http://goo.gl/nKXHx

January 22, 2013

NEWSMAX

Gingrich: Parts of Obama’s Speech ‘Goofy Left-Wingism’

by Todd Beamon

January 21, 2013

Former GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told Newsmax late on Monday that 20 percent of President Barack Obama’s second inauguration speech was “goofy left-wingism.”

“Eighty percent was a very good, American speech that Republicans can use to make their case to the American people: the Declaration of Independence, having a good work ethic,” Gingrich, the former House Speaker, told Newsmax in an exclusive interview. “The other 20 percent was just left-wingism.”

Gingrich, who attended the inauguration, was among many GOP legislators and conservatives who shared their opinions on Obama’s second address. Many attacked the speech for its lack of specificity and bipartisan outreach.

As for Gingrich, the former Georgia representative said President Obama’s lack of clarity gave Republicans much fodder as his new term begins.

“For instance, he talked about how children need to feel safe,” he told Newsmax. “One left-wing reporter asked me if it was a call for gun control. I said that it was a call for armed guards in schools. He wasn’t clear.”

This fuzziness marks the foundation of a new, effective GOP strategy, Gingrich said.

“To conservatives, we have a choice,” he added. “Because he talked about having a good work ethic, I’d say: ‘Let’s reform unemployment compensation, with a requirement that you educate yourself so you can get a new job — because we should not be paying people to do nothing’ — and we can cite it as being a part of Barack Obama’s agenda.”

Gingrich likened the 80 percent of the president’s speech to words that might have been spoken by former GOP President Ronald Reagan.

“I’d say, ‘Let’s look at this speech and underline everything you agree with,’” he said. “If Ronald Reagan had given this speech, and you read it — and, not knowing who gave it — you could see that it was almost identical to something he would have said.

“But 20 percent is goofy left-wingism — and we’d cheerfully fight him on that. The whole section about climate change is nonsense. The great energy revolution we’re living through is called ‘oil and gas.’”

“There are portions of his speech that we can totally support,” Gingrich added — and embracing those sections, in particular, “would totally confuse Obama and the Democrats. That’s not quite what the Left expects.”

Meanwhile, Arizona Sen. John McCain expressed displeasure with Obama’s failure to discuss bipartisanship.

“I would have liked to have seen some outreach,” the 2008 GOP presidential candidate told the Los Angeles Times. “This is the eighth [inauguration] that I’ve been to — and always there’s been a portion of the speech where [the president says] ‘I reach out my hand because we need to work together.’ That wasn’t in this speech.”

Read more: http://goo.gl/FO8ki

TOWNHALL
Once a Critic of Deficits, Obama Now Goes for Broke
by Byron York
January 21, 2013

"You don't have to be a deficit hawk to be disturbed by the growing gap between revenues and expenses," said Sen. Barack Obama during a Nov. 3, 2005, debate on the Senate floor. At the time, Obama had been a senator for less than a year and the federal budget deficit was in fact shrinking, from $248 billion in fiscal 2006 to $160 billion in fiscal 2007. Still, Obama seemed deeply concerned about the deficit, and he appeared to believe it when he said the only way to close the shortfalls was to force Congress to pay for what it spends.

A few months later, on March 16, 2006, Obama returned to the same theme -- "You don't have to be a deficit hawk ..." -- in a sobering floor speech as the Senate considered whether to raise the nation's debt ceiling from $8.184 trillion to $8.965 trillion. "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure," Obama said. "It is a sign that the U.S. government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies."

The deficit, Obama argued, handcuffed government in many ways. The money paid in interest on the debt was money that could not be spent on education, transportation, disaster relief or many other worthy causes. And borrowing so much from foreign countries meant America's economy would be "tied to the whims of foreign leaders" who might not wish the best for the United States.

"Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally," Obama concluded. "I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit."

Obama made good on his promise. Joined by then-Sen. Joe Biden, Senate Democratic leaders Harry Reid, Richard Durbin, Charles Schumer and indeed every other Democrat, Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling. Republicans, who controlled the Senate with a Republican in the White House, voted for the increase, which became law.

Later, as president, Obama admitted his '06 debt ceiling vote was a political maneuver. "That was just an example of a new senator making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country," Obama told ABC in April 2011. "As president, you start realizing, 'You know what? We can't play around with this stuff.'"

Read more: http://goo.gl/9wQZ4

BREITBART

Thrill is Gone for Crowds at Obama Inauguration 

by Matthew Boyle

January 21, 2013

NATIONAL MALL, Washington DC—Crowds shuffled in throughout Monday morning and took their places around the National Mall for Barack Obama’s second inauguration as president of the United States. Color-coded tickets separated those who paid to be here from those who wanted to get in for free.

Lines were short. Getting into the ticketed areas was easy for those with the right stubs. Blue, green, gold, yellow, and orange ticket-holders had no problems slipping right up front for the show. But many of those in attendance trudged over to what event organizers called the “Non-Ticketed Mall” area–signifying they didn’t have to pay to be here.

Police and security units blocked off streets around Capitol Hill, forcing swaths of people wishing to see Obama take the oath of office again to walk or use the Washington, D.C., subway system–known as the “Metro.”

The air was frosty, a freezing cold that Washington, D.C. doesn’t normally endure. A biting wind exacerbated the chill. Cloudy skies prevented sun from shining through. But the weather wasn’t the only gloom in town.

“I could have just stayed home and watched this all on TV,” one woman complained into her cell phone near Breitbart News’ Kerry Picket, amid negative comments about the freezing air and lack of nearby places to eat.

Every so often along the lengthy path around the event area, a hustler peddling “Official Obama 2013 Inauguration programs” would pressure groups of people to purchase their booklets. Not many fell for it.

Obama buttons, tee shirts, and other political paraphernalia were for sale too, as were artistic photos and drawings of the first family. One vendor on C Street Southeast sold candy apples. “Get your Obama caramel apples here!” the man shouted as people walked past him from the Capitol South Metro stop right across the street from the Republican National Committee’s headquarters.

Closer to the mall, savvier peddlers pitched tents and stood up tables to push to their products. Cops told some of the tent-pitchers they needed to remove their setups because they weren’t supposed to be there without a permit. “You’ll be arrested if you don’t move this within half an hour,” a police officer told one merchandise cart owner on Seventh Street Southwest.

On a corner opposite that cart, two men laid out posters of Barack and Michelle Obama. “Can I have this dance?” read one caption on a sheet showing the president and first lady kissing with a heart design around them. Stacks of photos laid on the grass there, unsold. When this reporter moved to snap a photo of their posters on the ground, one of the men turned around and said with a bit of a desperate tone: “Are you interested in any of these? No pictures, you have to buy it.”

Compared to Obama’s 2009 inauguration, something was missing. The crowds carried an air of obligation. Those who made the trek to Washington for the day appeared to have done so because they were supposed to, not because they wanted to.

“It’s the re-inauguration of the first black president,” one man said into his cell phone while trekking around the mall, appearing to defend his decision to show up for whoever was speaking in his ear.

Excitement was lacking. Energy was non-existent. The magic that only Obama could bring to a country, like he did in 2008, was gone. Unemployment remains as high as when Obama first took office, and gas prices are even higher. The president’s approval ratings are still low.

Read more: http://goo.gl/m0Rjs

January 9, 2013

THE DAILY CALLER
New data show 1 in 4 children on food stamps in FY 2011
by Caroline May
January 9, 2013

The USDA’s “Characteristics of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Households: Fiscal Year 2011” shows that in 2011, 19.9 million children, or people under 18, received food stamp benefits.

The Census estimates there were 73.9 million children living in the United States in 2011, meaning that 26.9 percent of children, or approximately one in four, were on food stamps in 2011.

The USDA notes that children constituted 45 percent of SNAP participants in 2011. Some philanthropists and policy experts believe efforts to reform SNAP because of high youth enrollment are misguided, arguing that the program ultimately helps the economy and improve kids’ health.

But Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions — one of the most vocal critics of the recent skyrocketing SNAP enrollment numbers and USDA’s promotion of the benefit — contends that something must be done about government policies and a USDA that he says is more interested in enrolling Americans in the program than finding real solutions.

“It has become sadly clear that Agriculture Secretary Vilsack wishes to make welfare part of the normal American experience, with no regard for social or economic consequences. How else can you explain why he gave an award to a recruitment worker for overcoming the ‘mountain pride’ of rural Americans?” Sessions told The Daily Caller, recalling one of the many outreach efforts the USDA has engaged in over the years to get more people on SNAP. (RELATED: USDA suggests people host food stamp parties to boost SNAP enrollment)

Indeed, the trajectory of the food stamp program has in recent years been up — with spending on the program doubling in the last four years and quadrupling since 2001. Approximately 15.5 million additional recipients have been added to the SNAP rolls since the beginning of 2009.

Read more: http://goo.gl/tF6wi

BREITBART
Obama Voters Furious About Tax Hikes
by William Bigelow
January 8, 2013

Now, now. Calm down. Yes, I know you voted for Obama, but didn’t you ever stop to think that he’d tax you, too? You didn’t?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Disillusioned Obama voters are waking up to face the reality that Obama didn’t exempt them in his quest to steal money from all Americans to pay for his expanding government. It turns out that those making $30,000 a year will pay more taxes than those making $500,000 because of the deal Obama pushed for after the fiscal cliff debacle.

Obama voters, the joke’s on you.

Oh, one other little tidbit. The Democrats want to find $1 trillion more in taxes in 2013.

The message is sinking in. Here are some tweets from Obama voters:

• @CZebari22 Damn the taxes killed me. I should have voted Romney
• @crushonchrissy I'm starting to regret voting for Obama.
• @gekka_88 I have a friend who voted for Obama publicly complaining about the new #SS tax   raise. I would just like to say: You did this to yourself.
•  @VAisforlovas But really how am I ever supposed to pay off my student loans if my already small paycheck keeps getting smaller? Help a sister out, Obama

One comment on the liberal site DemocraticUnderground.com. whined:

What happened that my Social Security withholding’s in my paycheck just went up? My paycheck just went down by an amount that I don’t feel comfortable with. I guarantee this decrease is gonna’ hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over 400 grand. What happened?”

Another comment, by “DemocratToTheEnd” was, “My boyfriend has had a lot of expenses and is feeling squeezed right now, and having his paycheck shrink really didn’t help.”

“Nancy Thongkham” gave a measured response to the new taxes she would have to pay: “F***ing Obama! F*** you! This taking out more taxes s*** better f***ing help me out!! Very upset to see my paycheck less today!”

“_Alex™” was more resigned: “Obama I did not vote for you so you can take away a lot of money from my checks.”

“Dave” had the most honest reaction: “Obama is the biggest f***ing liar in the world. Why the f*** did I vote for him”?

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington estimated 77.1 percent of all taxpayers will see higher taxes.

Obama voters, that means you.

Hahahahahahahaha.

Read more: http://goo.gl/5NOyX

THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR
Muzzling Military Chaplains - Obama forces them to bow to his agenda.
by George Neumayr
January 9, 2013

One of the items on Obama’s second term agenda is to root out traditionally Christian chaplains from the military. He sees them as bigots unworthy of conscience protections. Like Chick-fil-A, they don’t uphold Obama’s “values.”

Obama’s mouthpieces in the military have already blurted this out. In 2010, Admiral Michael Mullen told a Christian chaplain who opposed the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that “If you cannot get in line, resign your commission.” That same year Lieutenant General Thomas P. Bostick, the Army’s deputy chief of staff in charge of personnel, said military members who dissent from Obama’s gay rights agenda should “get out.”

“Unfortunately, we have a minority of service members who are still racists and bigoted and you will never be able to get rid of all of them,” he said, as reported by the Washington Times. “But these people opposing this new policy will need to get with the program, and if they can’t, they need to get out.”

Pentagon officials go through the motions of saying that military chaplains still enjoy religious freedom. But this claim grows ever more lawyerly and narrow. When Defense Department Counsel Jeh C. Johnson testified before Congress about the implications of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy’s collapse for religious freedom, he said that it would not affect what a chaplain said in “the religious context.” In other words, chaplains would be punished for objecting to Obama’s gay rights agenda anywhere outside of a pulpit.

But even that feeble promise isn’t worth taking seriously, since Obama’s military officials have already regulated sermons from the pulpit. Last year they forbade Catholics chaplains from orally criticizing the HHS mandate, permitting only a printed objection to it. How long before the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains requires vetting of all sermons on homosexuality?

At Maoist-style reeducation sessions, soldiers and chaplains have already been told that “You remain obligated to follow orders that involve interaction with others who are homosexual even if an unwillingness to do so is based on strong, sincerely held moral or religious beliefs.”

Also, it is not even clear if military chaplains control who speaks from their pulpits. It is likely that they will have to turn them over to other ministers preaching at gay nuptials whenever the Pentagon so decrees . A September 2011 memo from DOD general counsel Johnson indicates that any chapel space on a military base can be appropriated for gay weddings, which is a blatant violation of the Defense of Marriage Act. “Determinations” of chapel space, he wrote, “should be made on a sexual-orientation neutral basis.” By 2011, in open defiance of DOMA, the military authorized ministerial training for gay marriage ceremonies on military bases.

Considering himself very generous and tolerant, Obama has said that he would never force a priest or minister to preside at a gay wedding. This is an absurdly low guarantee of religious freedom. But there is no reason to suppose that he will even honor that low standard, given that he sees such a stance as discriminatory. In time, pressure, both direct and indirect, will be brought to bear on non-participating ministers. Even their silence will be seen as a hate crime. Careers will rise or fall depending upon the level of one’s participation in the promotion of gay rights.

The “LGBT” community will no doubt frame the issue as one of “access”: How can a gay soldier have a right to marry on a military base if military chaplains are free to refuse to marry them? At last year’s first gay wedding at West Point, the lesbian couple complained to the press that none of the ministers on campus agreed to marry them, so they had to fly a chaplain in from elsewhere.

Using the “access” argument, Obama scotched Bush-era conscience protections for pro-life Christian doctors working at federal hospitals. They are required to distribute abortifacients whether they like it or not. When the time is right, Obama will use the same “access” argument to require ministerial participation in gay weddings.

Keeping this option open, Obama last week announced that he will disobey a provision protecting chaplains which Republicans included in the national defense authorization bill he signed. The provision states that the religious views of a soldier cannot be “the basis of any adverse personnel action, discrimination or denial of promotion, schooling, training or assignment,” and that chaplains cannot be forced “to perform any rite, ritual or ceremony that is contrary to the conscience, moral principles or religious beliefs of the chaplain.”

Just as Obama refuses to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, so he promises to ignore this provision, as he said in his signing statement, calling it “unnecessary and ill-advised.” He added that he will not let it slow down his gay-rights agenda: “My Administration remains fully committed to continuing the successful implementation of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and to protecting the rights of gay and lesbian service members; Section 533 will not alter that.”

Obama won’t promise to protect these military chaplains for the simple reason that he views them as the moral equivalent of segregationists. Chai Feldblum, one of Obama’s commissioners on the EEOC, has written that the state, acting in the name of nondiscrimination, enjoys an absolute right to violate the religious freedom of Christians: “Just as we do not tolerate private racial beliefs that adversely affect African-Americans in the commercial arena, even if such beliefs are based on religious views, we should similarly not tolerate private beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity that adversely affect LGBT people.”

That’s the essential view animating all of Obama’s policies related to Christianity. Under this secularist dogmatism, Christianity has no public rights. Freedom, as Feldblum puts it, is a “zero sum game” in which the religious deserve to lose.

Read more: http://goo.gl/W6gXJ

January 3, 2013

 

NEWSMAX
Bowles, Simpson: 'Washington Missed Magic Moment’ on Budget
by Newsmax Wires
January 2, 2013

Budget-deficit-reduction devotees Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson rue Congress’ inability to come up with a more comprehensive fiscal-cliff solution than the one it just passed.

While the deal represents a “small step forward” for deficit reduction, “it’s truly a missed opportunity to do something big to reduce our long-term fiscal problems,” the duo say in a statement issued by Fix the Debt, a group they founded.

Bowles was chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, and Simpson is a retired Wyoming Republican senator. They headed a panel on deficit reduction appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010. But their recommendations essentially went nowhere.

As for fiscal cliff negotiations, “Washington missed this magic moment to do something big to reduce the deficit, reform our tax code and fix our entitlement programs,” the two say. “Even after taking the country to the brink of economic disaster, Washington still could not forge a common-sense bipartisan consensus on a plan that stabilizes the debt.”

Government leaders now must summon up the courage for real tax and entitlement reform to begin curbing the $16 trillion public debt, Bowles and Simpson say.

They aren’t totally discouraged. “We take some encouragement from the statements by the president and leaders in Congress that they recognize more work needs to be done,” the two say.

But “to reach an agreement, it will be absolutely necessary for both sides to move beyond their comfort zone.”

Read more: http://goo.gl/b6ZOU

WASHINGTON POST
Our decadent democracy
by George Will
January 2, 2012

Connoisseurs of democratic decadence can savor a variety of contemporary dystopias. Because familiarity breeds banality, Greece has become a boring horror. Japan, however, in its second generation of stagnation is fascinating. Once, Japan bestrode the world, jauntily buying Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach. Now Japanese buy more adult diapers than those for infants.

America has its lowest birth rate since at least 1920 — family formation and workforce participation (which hit a 30-year low last year) have declined in tandem. But it has an energy surplus, the government-produced overhang of housing inventory is shrinking and the average age of Americans’ cars is an astonishing 10.8 years. Such promising economic indicators, however, mask the country’s democratic decadence, as explained by the Hudson Institute’s Christopher DeMuth in the Dec. 24 Weekly Standard:

Deficit spending once was largely for investments — building infrastructure, winning wars — which benefited future generations, so government borrowing appropriately shared the burden with those generations. Now, however, continuous borrowing burdens future generations in order to finance current consumption. Today’s policy, says DeMuth, erases “the distinction between investing for the future and borrowing from the future.”

It is now as clear as it is unsurprising that most Americans will be spared the educational experience of “fiscal cliff”-related tax increases and spending cuts, which would have been a small but instructive taste of the real costs of the entitlement state.

Still, December’s maneuverings taught three lessons.

First, there will be no significant spending restraint. Democrats — you know: the people respectful of evidence and science — even rejected a more accurate measurement of the cost of living that would slightly slow increases in myriad government benefits. Accuracy will be sacrificed to liberalism’s agenda of government growth.

Second, Barack Obama has (as Winston Churchill said of an adversary) “the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.” His incessant talking swaddles one wee idea — raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires,” including people earning less than half a million. He has nothing pertinent to say about the steadily worsening fiscal imbalance that will make sluggish growth — less than 3 percent — normal.

Third, one December winner was George W. Bush because a large majority of Democrats favored making permanent a large majority of his tax cuts. December’s rancor disguised bipartisan agreement: Both parties flinch from cliff-related tax increases and spending decreases. But neither the increases nor decreases would have tamed the current $1 trillion-plus budget deficit nor made a discernible dent in the 87-times-larger unfunded liabilities of the entitlement state.

This state cannot be funded by taxing “the rich.” Or even by higher income taxes on the middle class. Income taxes cannot fund the government liberals want, and they dare not seek the consumption and energy taxes their entitlement architecture requires. Hence, although Republicans are complicit, Democrats are ardent in embracing decadent democracy. This consists not just of infantilism — refusing to will the means for the ends one has willed — but also of willing an immoral means: conscripting the wealth of future generations.

As economists Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane explain in National Affairs quarterly, the U.S. political system “cannot govern the entitlement state” that “exists largely to provide material benefits to individuals.” Piling up unsustainable entitlement promises — particularly, enactment of Medicare in 1965 and the enrichment of Social Security benefits in 1972 — has been improvident for the nation but rational for the political class. The promised expenditures, far in excess of revenue, would come due “beyond the horizon of political consequences.”

“Our politicians,” say Hubbard and Kane, “are acting rationally” but “politically rational behavior is now fiscally perverse.” Both parties are responding to powerful electoral incentives to neither raise taxes nor cut spending. Hence, “the clash over raising the debt limit that gripped Washington during the summer of 2011 was just the beginning, not the end, of our fiscal woes.”

But the perils of the entitlement state are no longer (in Hubbard’s and Kane’s words) “safely beyond the politicians’ career horizons.” Furthermore, a critical mass of Republicans reject the careerists’ understanding of “politically rational” behavior. These Republicans have a different rationale for being in politics.

The media, which often are the last to know things because their wishes father their thoughts, say the tea party impulse is exhausted. Scores of House Republicans and seven first-term Republican senators (Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Pat Toomey, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio and Tim Scott) will soon — hello, debt ceiling — prove otherwise.

Read more: http://goo.gl/LsuW5

BREITBART
Can Boehner Hang onto His Job?
by Matthew Boyle
January 3, 2013

The Speaker of the House will be elected today and some conservatives believe they have the votes necessary to oust John Boehner. In an appearance on CNBC, American Majority Action spokesman Ron Meyer said there are more than 20 House Republicans willing to vote for someone other than Boehner on Thursday when the 113th Congress convenes to elect a Speaker. Another source from a different organization has similarly confirmed that more than 20 have planned to oppose Boehner.

Meyer and AMA correctly predicted Republican opposition to Boehner’s fiscal cliff “Plan B" and the overwhelming House Republican opposition to Vice President Joe Biden’s and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s fiscal cliff deal that passed the House on Tuesday evening.

Outgoing Louisiana Republican Rep. Jeff Landry made a similar prediction earlier in the evening, telling Breitbart News that between the required minimum 17 members and 20 were on board at that point.

Despite rumors that he might do so, Boehner did not resign at a Republican conference meeting Wednesday night.

The reason why some, including Landry, thought Boehner would resign Wednesday is because that group of members supposedly approached Boehner and offered him a way to avoid the public fight that will likely take place on Thursday. An emergency Republican conference meeting was called on Wednesday evening and Boehner’s decision not to resign sent a message to those who want to unseat him that he believes he will survive tomorrow's vote.

Freshman Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas is on the record publicly stating he’ll oppose Boehner on Thursday, but the members also need a leader to rally around. Though there has been speculation that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor may emerge, his spokesperson would not respond to Breitbart News’ inquiries about whether he would. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy also would not go on the record as supportive of Boehner.

But, as Breitbart News reported weeks ago, the document containing the conservative plan to unseat Boehner notes that those members involved expect a new leader to emerge if Boehner were to lose a first election for Speaker (there are potentially multiple votes).

Meyer said in a statement Wednesday evening that his sources are "very Conservative members” and that they "remain optimistic that Speaker Boehner will lose his job tomorrow.” He also noted that sources behind the rumor that Boehner would resign Wednesday night were "different sources than the ones that helped AMA correctly predict the exact vote counts for Plan B and the Biden-McConnell bill.”

Boehner has made concessions to the conservatives seeking his ouster – a sign he's worried about his job. He caved on the Hurricane Sandy package after originally killing Cantor’s efforts to bring the bill to a vote after the “fiscal cliff” package Tuesday evening. After outrage from Reps. Peter King and Michael Grimm from New York, Boehner now will allow a vote on a Sandy package on Friday.

Boehner also, through a spokesman, renewed an old promise he made – but broke. Boehner said he won’t negotiate with the president on his own anymore, and will let the House follow the regular order. "He is recommitting himself and the House to what we've done, which is working through regular order and letting the House work its will,” a Boehner aide told The Hill.

Boehner made a similar promise during an interview with National Journal’s Major Garrett in October 2010, before the Tea Party wave swept Republicans into the House majority – and Boehner into the Speaker’s office. Boehner promised to follow the three-day rule – meaning legislation wouldn’t come to the floor until it was available for three days for members and the public to read – a promise he broke yet again with the “fiscal cliff” deal.

The Budget Control Act of 2011 – the legislation that carved the so-called “fiscal cliff” into law – was negotiated behind-closed-doors between the president and the Speaker. Boehner has also conducted negotiations on each Continuing Resolution (CR) – the legislation that funds the government in absence of a budget – directly with the White House.

We were each elected to uphold the Constitution and represent 600,000-odd people in our districts. We need to open this place up, let some air in. We have nothing to fear from letting the House work its will–nothing to fear from the battle of ideas. That starts with the committees. The result will be more scrutiny and better legislation.”

But now that he’s in trouble, he’s making the same promises again.

Stockman, for one, is not opposing Boehner because he doesn't like the Speaker as a person, but because he believe he’s failed the conservative cause. “We cannot tolerate betrayal of conservative principle and economic reality,” the Texas Congressman wrote in blog post according to the Dallas Morning News, adding that Boehner is a “decent man” who didn’t get the job done.

Landry made a similar argument in an op-ed for Breitbart News on Wednesday. “Thanks to the leadership of Speaker John Boehner, the House passed a bill which raises taxes by $620 billion while cutting spending by a mere $15 billion over 10 years,” Landry wrote. “Usually, a compromise is an even trade (one-for-one). In this trade, House and Senate Republicans traded $41 dollars in tax hikes for every $1 dollar in spending cuts—not exactly a balanced approach.”

Read more: http://goo.gl/7zDul

January 2, 2013

NEWSMAX

Cantor, McCarthy Join 151 Republicans Against Bill

by Stephen Feller

January 2, 2013

Majority House Leader Eric Cantor and GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy were among the 151 Republicans who voted against the fiscal cliff bill in the House Tuesday night.

Speaker John Boehner and Republican Conference chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the number four in the party hierarchy in the House, both voted in favor of the bill that was introduced in the House by the GOP's Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp.

The party was split with around two-thirds of House Republicans voting against the bill aimed at keeping a plethora of tax rates from going up this year.

It even divided one married Republican couple. Florida's Connie Mack voted against while his wife Mary Bono Mack of California voted in favor.

The biggest complaint was that the bill — which had earlier passed by an overwhelming 89-8 vote in the Senate — did not include enough spending cuts while increasing taxes on Americans who make more than $450,000 per year.

Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam joined the no votes, along with influential oversight committee chairman Darrell Issa.

Budget committee chairman and former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan voted for while former presidential candidate Ron Paul was among five GOP members who did not cast a vote.

The bill passed the house 257 to 167 as 85 Republicans and 172 Democrats voted to send the bill to the president to be signed, and 151 Republicans and 16 Democrats voted no.

Cantor "was disappointed with the bill that passed the Senate late last night," the Virginia congressman's deputy chief of staff, told Politico. "That's why you saw him working all day to find an alternative with the leadership. That's why you saw two conference meetings to deal with what all alternatives.”

Republicans also discussed the possibility of amending the bill by adding additional spending cuts to it, however the Senate would have been required to vote to approve the new version of the bill. Senate Democratic leaders already had indicated earlier in the day that they would not vote on the bill again.

Had the bill not passed the House, tax rates on all Americans were set to go up — which gave pause to many Republicans who voted against it.

"I'd like to be speaking for this bill, but I can't," said Californian Issa during the debate. "I would like to vote for this because I do vote for lower taxes. But the other day in conference, one of my colleagues pointed out that in fact you're spending the money, you're taxing our future generation."

Read more: http://goo.gl/NNJR0

BREITBART

Sources: Enough Republicans Willing to Unseat Speaker Boehner

by Matthew Boyle

January 1, 2013

American Majority Action spokesman Ron Meyer told Breitbart News late Tuesday that enough House Republicans have banded together in an effort to unseat House Speaker John Boehner from his position--they just need a leader to take up the mantle.

“At least 20 House Republican members have gotten together, discussed this and want to unseat Speaker Boehner--and are willing to do what it takes to do it,” Meyer said. “That’s more than enough to get the job done, but the one problem these guys face is they need a leader to coalesce behind.”

Meyer said the conservatives have considered House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) to take the helm after Boehner is knocked out. His opposition from the right to the Senate fiscal cliff deal that Vice President Joe Biden cut with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is a sign Cantor may try for the job.

AMA is hardly the only conservative entity aware of the rekindled effort afoot to unseat Boehner. Another conservative with inside knowledge of the effort told Breitbart News that the movement has "new focus and juice," and if enough members go to Boehner telling him they won’t support his re-election, that Americans should “watch for him to resign gracefully.”

The vote for Boehner’s re-election as Speaker happens on Thursday, two days after Boehner’s decision to support the Senate "fiscal cliff" deal Vice President Joe Biden cut with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on New Year’s Eve.

Read more: http://goo.gl/Lq3ZD

CVN EDITORIAL

Beware of Rinos Drinking Tea

by Conservative Sue

January 2, 2012

Well, the votes have been counted, and it appears the Democrats and Republicans have now passed a 'fiscal cliff' deal that represents a big tax increase with no significant long term spending cuts.  Outspoken critics of this deal include Senators Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and other Tea Party favorites,

What Speaker John Boehner has managed to accomplish with his adept political deal-making skill is to get the GOP blamed for the biggest tax increase in the last two decades while simultaneously increasing the deficit and kicking the spending cuts down the road for 'another day' that, most agree, will never come.  And, to add insult to injury, the mainstream media is in full propaganda mode blaming the teaparty for obstructionism and a 'bad deal' even though the teaparty has been pretty much united against this proposal from the start.

What does the GOP stand for?  Limited government?  Low taxes? Controlling spending? Balanced budgets? Fiscal responsibility? State sovereignty? Liberty?  From seeing the legislation written and passed by the GOP over the last 20 years, I see very little coming out of the leadership of this Republican Party that bears any resemblance to the current GOP party platform or the Reagan-style conservatism that built conservative majorities in the 80's.

Interestingly, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor voted no on this deal, which initially puzzled me (considering he's been brokering this deal with Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell all along), but I've had an epiphany this morning and believe I may have discovered the motive behind Cantor's vote....

The balance has tipped in the GOP controlled house, and the vote for this particular bill has made that clear. The majority of Republicans in the House voted against this bill, meaning that the establishment-wing of the GOP (led by Boehner and others) is now in the minority. The 'leash' the establishment had placed on the teaparty coalition has been removed, and 'going along' with GOP leadership is no longer a foregone conclusion.  Cantor is very much an establishment Republican .. so why did he join the teaparty coalition in this vote?  

Simple, Boehner is facing a vote on Thursday by GOP House Republicans on whether or not he will remain as Speaker of the House. The establishment needs to have a viable alternative to put forth if it becomes clear they will not have the votes to keep Boehner in the job .. so along comes the mysterious Cantor 'pro-teaparty' vote just in time to give them that establishment alternative to Boehner. Does anyone really believe Cantor is a teaparty Republican?  I certainly don't.

Beware of Rinos drinking tea. These politicians will sell their souls for power. If the House GOP wants to throw out Boehner for being too liberal on taxes and spending, they had better look elsewhere for an alternative. Replacing Boehner with Cantor is like replacing Charlie Sheen with Lindsay Lohan.  Both Boehner and Cantor are bad news for fiscal conservatives, and neither have any desire to get this out-of-control deficit spending under control.

December 30, 2012

BREITBART

Hobby Lobby Defies Obama Administration with Civil Disobedience for Religious Liberty

by Ken Klukowski

December 28, 2012

“We must obey God rather than men!”—Acts 5:29.

Now that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has denied Hobby Lobby’s application for an emergency injunction protecting them from Obamacare’s HHS Mandate on abortion and birth control, Hobby Lobby has decided to defy the federal government to remain true to their religious beliefs, at enormous risk and financial cost.

Hobby Lobby is wholly owned and controlled by the Green family, who are evangelical Christians. The Greens are committed to running their business in accordance with their Christian faith, believing that God wants them to conduct their professional business in accordance with the family’s understanding of the Bible. Hobby Lobby’s mission statement includes, “Honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company … consistent with Biblical principles.”

The HHS Mandate goes into effect for Hobby Lobby on Jan. 1, 2013. The Greens correctly understand that some of the drugs the HHS Mandate requires them to cover at no cost in their healthcare plans cause abortions.

Today Hobby Lobby announced that they will not comply with this mandate to become complicit in abortion, which the Greens believe ends an innocent human life. Given Hobby Lobby’s size (it has 572 stores employing more than 13,000 people), by violating the HHS Mandate, it will be subject to over $1.3 million in fines per day. That means over $40 million in fines in January alone. If their case takes another ten months to get before the Supreme Court—which would be the earliest it could get there under the normal order of business—the company would incur almost a half-billion dollars in fines. And then of course the Supreme Court would have to write an opinion in what would likely be a split decision with dissenters, which could easily take four or six months and include hundreds of millions of dollars in additional penalties.

This is civil disobedience, consistent with America’s highest traditions when moral issues are at stake. The Greens are a law-abiding family. They have no desire to defy their own government. But as the Founders launched the American Revolution because they believed the British government was violating their rights, the Greens believe that President Barack Obama and Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are commanding the Greens to sin against God, and that no government has the lawful authority to do so.

The Christian tradition of defying government commands to do something wrong goes back to the very birth of Christianity. When the apostles were ordered not to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with anyone, the Book of Acts records: “Peter and the other apostles replied: ‘We must obey God rather than men! The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead—whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree.’”

Eleven of the twelve apostles—including Peter—would lose their lives for the sake of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ; only the apostle John died of old age. They were determined to obey God’s will at all costs.

This issue of civil disobedience is never to be undertaken lightly. The Bible teaches Christians to submit to all legitimate governmental authority (e.g., Romans 13:1), and so a person can only disobey the government when there is no other way to obey God.

But here in America, the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land, and in its First Amendment it protects against a government establishment of an official religion and separately protects the free exercise of religion. On top of that, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) to specifically add an additional layer of protection against government actions that violate a person’s religious beliefs.

The HHS Mandate is a gross violation of the religious beliefs of the Green family. The issue before the courts here is whether the Greens religious-liberty rights include running their secular, for-profit business consistent with their religious beliefs. In other words, is religious liberty just what you do in church on a Sunday morning, or does it include what you do during the week at your job?

The Greens are now putting their fortunes on the line to do what they believe is right. The courts should side with them, affirming a broad scope of religious liberty under the Constitution and RFRA. And the Supreme Court should resolve this matter with dispatch in their favor.

Millions of Christians across the country feel exactly the same way as the Greens. The Obama administration has issued a statist command that is a declaration of war on people of faith who object to abortion, and civil disobedience could break out all over the country unless the courts set this matter right—and quickly.

Read more: http://goo.gl/d86N3

THE BLAZE

‘We Have Passed That Point of No Return’: Ron Paul Explains What’s Missing in The ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Talks

by Becket Adams

December 29, 2012

Even if Congress manages to come up with a solution to avert the “fiscal cliff,” a combination of year-end tax increases and spending cuts, it won’t be worth anything because it’ll probably only deal with tax rates and ignore the problem of runaway government spending, or so say Texas Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul.

“I think we have passed that point of no return where we can actually get our house in order,” Rep. Paul said Friday on CNBC. “I believe there is too much bipartisanship on the spending. Nobody is talking about cutting any spending.”

“Republicans and Democrats,” he continued, “they pretend they’re fighting up there, but they really aren’t. They’re arguing over power, spin, and who looks good, and who looks bad, but they’re all trying to preserve this system where they can spend what they want, take care of their friends, and let the Fed print money when they need it.”

However, that’s not to say Rep. Paul doesn’t believe U.S. lawmakers will come up with temporary solutions to things like the “cliff.”

“[It’ll be] sort of like — how many times have they had a ‘solution’ for the Greece crisis? About ten or 15 times?” the congressman asked, referring to the eurozone’s most unstable and financially broken member.

“There’s no admission that they [U.S. lawmakers] have a crisis. They have no admission that the country is bankrupt. There’s no admission that our government is spending way too much and it’s way beyond our means and there’s not a single bit of effort to cut anything,” the congressman continued.

“They are so they so far removed from admitting the seriousness of this crisis and if they don’t admit it, they can’t solve the problem. They’re like a bunch of drug addicts that just want another fix. That’s what they are looking for,” he concluded:

Read more: http://goo.gl/SNSSP

TOWNHALL
Putting the Spending Genie Back in the Bottle
Bob Beauprez 
December 30, 2012

As the following chart from Investor's Business Daily demonstrates, The Bush Tax Cuts didn't starve the federal treasury – revenue flooded in as the economy expanded from the pro-growth policies implemented in 2003 and continued until the sub-prime mortgage market collapse.

Even with the anemic Obama economic recovery, revenues are again nearly equal to the level required to fund the government had spending over the last fifteen years increased at the rate of population plus inflation growth.  But, that has not been the case.

The pox on Bush and the Republican majorities is that while revenues soared following implementation of the 2003 tax cuts, spending did as well.  To be fair, much of that increased spending was related to the war on terror following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Also, the rate of GOP spending increases pale in comparison to what happened when Democrats took control of Congress beginning in 2007 and further accelerated when Obama moved into the White House in 2009.

  

Federal revenue rose from $1.7 trillion to $2.4 trillion from FY 1998 to 2012 as indicated.  "Revenue growth averaged 2.9% annually, despite two recessions, bear markets, - and tax cuts," as David Hogberg explained in the feature article accompanying the IBD graphic.

However, federal spending rose nearly twice as fast – 5.7% per year – surging from $1.6 trillion to $3.5 trillion over the same period, notes Hogberg.

Further, the chart shows that if spending had increased over the period at the same rate as population and inflation, revenue would have trended upward about the same even allowing for the effects of the recessions.  But, current spending levels are nearly $1 trillion beyond what population-plus-inflation growth increases would have dictated.

Hogberg calculates that had spending from FY1998-2012 increased consistent with population-plus-inflation growth, revenues would have exceeded spending by $177 billion – a net budget surplus!  Instead, because of the dramatic increase in spending, the federal government racked up an additional $6.7 trillion of new debt.

Every objective observer knows that the elephant in the room is the out of control rate of spending increases over the last many years.  True to form, however, Washington – and particularly Barack Obama - is laser focused on who they can raise tax rates on and by how much.  Their efforts would be better directed at putting the Spending Genie back in the bottle.

Read more: http://goo.gl/ALHXq

December 29, 2012

NEWSMAX
McConnell and Reid Called in to Come up With Fiscal Cliff Deal
by Thomson/Reuters
December 28, 2012

Senate leaders are working to craft legislation by Sunday that averts the year-end "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts, but many details needed to be worked out after a crucial meeting with President Barack Obama on Friday.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell, termed the meeting "constructive" and "positive" and said they would keep working on trying to find a solution over the weekend.

However shortly afterwards Reid said he would be sending a bill to the Senate calling for an end to the Bush-era tax cuts for households earning more than $250,000, a figure that Republicans have repeatedly said they will not accept.

"At President Obama's request, I am readying a bill for a vote by Monday that will prevent a tax hike on middle-class families making up to $250,000, and that will include the additional, critical provisions outlined by President Obama," Reid said in a statement.

"In the next 24 hours, I look forward to hearing any good-faith proposals Senator McConnell has for altering this bill."

After adjourning on Friday, Reid he would probably not call the Senate back into session until about 1 p.m. on Sunday to give leaders time to hash out a deal.

On the Senate floor, McConnell said, "We are engaged in discussions, the majority leader and myself and the White House, in the hopes that we can come forward as early as Sunday and have a recommendation that I can make to my conference and the majority leader can make to his conference."

"So we'll be working hard to try to see if we can get there in the next 24 hours. So I'm hopeful and optimistic," he added.

An aide to House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said it was agreed at the White House meeting that the Senate should act first.

"The speaker told the president that if the Senate amends the House-passed legislation and sends back a plan, the House will consider it — either by accepting or amending," the aide said.

However, Reid said it would be difficult to craft a solution that can win passage in both the House and Senate, adding that it involves "big numbers."

"Whatever we come up with is going to be imperfect," Reid said. "Some people aren't going to like it. Some people will like it less. But that's where we are and I feel confident that we have an obligation to do the best we can."

Read more: http://goo.gl/lKKlm

TOWNHALL
Senate Approves $60.4 Billion Sandy Aid Bill
by AP News
December 29, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Friday approved a $60.4 billion emergency spending aid package for victims of Hurricane Sandy that had been backed by Senate Democrats.

Democrats had to turn back Republican efforts to cut programs such as $150 million in fisheries aid that Republican lawmakers said was unrelated to the storm that hammered the East Coast late in October. The measure cleared the Senate on a 62-32 vote, with 12 Republicans supporting the bill. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., was the only Democrat to vote against the bill, but he later switched his vote to support the measure.

The bill faces uncertain prospects in the House, where GOP leaders appear reluctant to move quickly on a big spending bill in the final days of a lame duck session. Congress' attention is focused on talks over the so-called fiscal cliff of tax hikes and automatic spending cuts.

Sandy was blamed for at least 120 deaths and battered coastline areas from North Carolina to Maine. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut were the hardest hit states and suffered high winds, flooding and storm surges. Sandy damaged or destroyed more than 72,000 homes and businesses in New Jersey. In New York, 305,000 housing units were damaged or destroyed and more than 265,000 businesses were affected.

Senate Republicans failed on an amendment for a smaller package of about $24 billion in aid for Sandy, which was the most costly natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and one of the worst storms ever in the Northeast.

House GOP leaders have not said how they plan to proceed. But House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky has said Congress should probably begin with a smaller aid package for immediate recovery needs and wait until more data can be collected about storm damage before approving additional money next year.

Rep. Paul Ryan, the 2012 GOP vice presidential nominee and a leading House fiscal conservative, has criticized the Democratic bill as "packed with funding for unrelated items, such as commercial fisheries in American Samoa and roof repair of museums in Washington, D.C."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., urged House leaders to "put this bill on the floor quickly and allow a vote." If the House balks, Schumer said, the Senate bill provides "very good groundwork" for seeking Sandy aid next year.

The measure includes $11.5 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's chief disaster relief fund and $17 billion for community development block grants, much of which would help homeowners repair or replace their homes. Another $11.7 billion would help repair New York City's subways and other mass transit damage and protect them from future storms. Some $9.7 billion would go toward the government's flood insurance program. The Army Corps of Engineers would receive $5.3 billion to mitigate flood future risks and rebuild damaged projects.

Senate Republicans said much of the spending in the Democratic bill was for projects unrelated to Sandy, such as $150 million for fisheries disasters that could go to Alaska as well as Gulf Coast and New England states. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., sought to strip the fisheries funding, but his amendment failed.

To court votes, Democrats last week broadened some of their bill's provisions to cover damage from Hurricane Isaac, which struck the Gulf Coast earlier this year. A provision was added to the $2.9 billion allotted to Army Corps of Engineers projects to reduce future flooding risks; the coverage area for that program will now include areas hit by Isaac in addition to Sandy. Democrats also shifted $400 million into a community development program for regions suffering disasters, beyond areas struck by Sandy.

A Coburn amendment to reduce the federal share of costs for the Army Corps of Engineer projects to reduce future flooding risks also failed.

Read more: http://goo.gl/dQevo

WASHINGTON TIMES
Washington spenders flunk basic math - Raising taxes won’t avoid ‘fiscal cliff’
by Rep. Darrell E. Issa
December 28, 2012

Politicians in Washington have spent the better part of the past two months advancing a myth that is undermining one of the most important public policy debates in recent memory. It’s a myth that is coming at the expense of solutions based on common sense that could return us to balance and fiscal stability.

Twenty-six years ago, President Reagan implemented significant tax reforms that lowered the individual income tax rate, limited deductions and brought equality to tax rates across all levels. Before that reform, there had been 15 different marginal tax rates reaching levels as high as 50 percent for top brackets. By the time Reagan left office, the number of brackets had been reduced to two: 15 percent and 28 percent.

In 1993, President Clinton raised the top two income rates to 36 percent and 39.6 percent while also raising the corporate tax rate, increasing the taxable portion of Social Security benefits and increasing income taxable for Medicare. This is what has become known as the “Clinton tax rates.”

In 2001, President George W. Bush changed the rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, lowered the capital gains and dividend income rates, and expanded credits and deductions such as the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

So much time and energy is being spent advancing the myth that raising taxes is the best way to avoid falling off the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

If you raised taxes on the top income bracket, you would generate around $1 trillion over 10 years. The past four years under President Obama have resulted in trillion-dollar deficits each year. At this rate, in 10 years we’re looking at $10 trillion in new debt. At best, the “tax-the-rich” proposal is just a 10 percent solution.

Let’s take this tax-more, spend-more approach to the extreme. If you return everyone to the Clinton-era tax rates, you’re still left with a 10-year, $2.3 trillion deficit, and that’s assuming everything stays as it is right now, and Washington breaks its trend of spending more every year. (Even if we go over the fiscal cliff and return to Clinton-era tax rates, we’re still left with at least a $2.3 trillion deficit over the next 10 years.) The bottom line is this: Under no proposed scenario does raising taxes eliminate the deficit and return us to a balanced budget. The problem is government spending.

This fixation with tax increases is doing a huge disservice to the American people because it ignores the real crisis: government spending. By now, you know all too well that government spends more than it takes in. The federal government is spending more per household than ever before. Since 1965, spending per household has grown by 152 percent.

Conveniently omitted from the current fiscal-cliff discussions is the reality that for individuals earning more than $200,000 a year, their taxes already are going up in 2013, courtesy of Obamacare, which includes a new 1 percent tax on persons making more than $200,000 a year as well as an additional 3.8 percent tax on capital gains, investment income and certain home sales. These two new taxes will generate $317.7 billion over a 10-year period, or $31 billion a year — covering just a fraction of the current $1.1 trillion deficit for fiscal 2012 alone.

Do you know what some in Washington will say 10 years from now, when the problem hasn’t gone away? They’ll say, “We need to tax more.” Why isn’t the solution ever about spending less?

Some in Washington aren’t interested in the truth. They aren’t interested in facts. They aren’t interested in solving the problem. For them, that’s bad for business. It’s much easier for them to keep kicking the can down the road and using our fiscal decline to essentially “cry wolf” and raise your taxes. When will it ever stop?

I can guarantee you this: It won’t stop here, it won’t stop with just the “1 percent” or the “2 percent.” There will never be enough to satisfy this insatiable appetite to spend more.

That’s what’s really at stake right now.

The other side tries to boil this down into a seven-second sound bite about taxing the rich and people paying their fair share. In 2009, the top 10 percent of earners in the United States already paid more than 70 percent of federal income taxes.

This isn’t about fairness and unfairness. It’s about taxing and spending, and the federal government has spent enough.

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