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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The Gang of Six Becomes Five. Coburn Bolts. Chambliss Stays.

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  May 18th, 2011 at 05:00 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The “Gang of Six”, which is the group in the Senate trying to come up with bipartisan tax increases and tax restructuring to implement the Deficit Commission’s plans, is collapsing. Late yesterday, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn bolted from the group because the Democrats are unwilling to deal with restructuring entitlements in their quest to raise taxes.

Two Republicans remain, Mike Crapo of Idaho and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. The Washington Post reports Chambliss is now leading the GOP down a path toward supporting tax increases without serious entitlement reform.

Chambliss, his friends say, doesn’t care about the political cost. He’s decided the voters are too stupid to know what to do, but he does know what to do. And doggoneit, Saxby is going to do what Saxby wants to do with his good friend and drinking buddy, Democrat Mark Warner.

Together, their bipartisan plan will raise Americans taxes massively over the next few years and do nothing to solve the very real crisis of social security and medicare. At best, they’ll put a bandaid on the entitlement crisis.

Every once in a while the stupid party and evil party get together and do something both stupid and evil. They call it bipartisanship. It looks pretty much like what Saxby Chambliss is orchestrating. And it just became too stupid and evil for Senator Tom Coburn.

That should tell you just how bad it is. But Saxby will keep plugging away while hiding behind his American Conservative Union rating.

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  • sccrenny

    the next-to-last paragraph to my “Quotes from Redstate” file. One of the best explanations I have ever heard as to how we got to where we are today.

    Unfortunately, it also points out the miles we have to go before we sleep. In fact it points out that we must never sleep.

  • jiminga

    and needs to be primaried next time. He is also supporting “Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011″ which abrogates the Senate’s constitutional responsibility for advise and consent on many presidential appointees.

    Erick, I am also a GA resident and I hope you will gin up support for dumping Saxby when next he runs. We deserve better in a real Red State.

  • wesok101

    Saxby is toast when he comes up for reelection. He says the people in GA are too stupid to understand, WELL he is too stupid to respect the people he was elected to represent.

  • southernpatriots

    Saxby already faced the largest effort to be re-elected last time due to his vote to start the bailout craze. He voted for the bailout Bush wanted and this angered Georgians. He had to have all the big guns of the Rs come down and prop up his campaign. Saxby can be reached. Email or telephone him…everyone! He will get the point, at least we are hoping that he will.

  • gpclaw

    2014 is a long ways off. I would be thrilled if we could get Herman Cain to run (assuming he’s not otherwise occupied).

  • ihateliberals

    but I call them infiltrators. They have no business to call themselves Republicans. they remind me of our dear departed Senator Arlen Spector. he would sit on whichever side of the Isle would elect him. Thank God it finally caught up with him this past election. There should be away to strip Chambliss and Crapo ( should be pronounced Crap – O) of their Republican credentials. The gang of six should be reduced to the gang of zero.

  • renny

    There is never bipartisanship. There is only giving in to what Dems./libs. want and the press approves.

  • old1

    Chambliss, like most current politicians today, probably has a closet full of rotting skeletons. Discovered them.

  • cam1

    is a very arrogant republican elitist who did the same thing with the “Amnesty Bill” that awakened the sleeping giant known as the Tea Party.

    Saxby is our problem here in Georgia, and we will make sure that he finds another job after the next election.

  • gpclaw

    But I stumbled across an odd article in the Washington Post. It’s about Southern states who receive more funds from the feds, than they pay in. The lefties are complaining up a storm, and are advocating cutting off funding to such states.

    I happen to think this is a great idea, and have been trying to encourage them that eliminating federal programs, and returning power to the states would solve their problems. If your a little fun.

  • http://www.patriotactionnetwork.com/profile/semperfi sirjason

    A “Conservative In Name Only” who thinks his constituents are too dumb to know what he is up to! What a hoot!

    “We the People” are deadly serious about federal government spending, borrowing, taxing, indebtedness, printing Fiat money and raising the debt ceiling over and over!

    The “DEBT CEILING” is precisely that, NO MORE DEBT! CINO Chambliss is in for a rude awakening in 2012 as well as ALL the rest of these RINOS and CINOS in the GOP!

  • rightwingmom52

    Even more interesting that the author focuses solely on the south when 4 of 10 of those states aren’t southern, not to mention that one is Reid’s state. Hardly an overwhelming majority. However, I agree with you and the author. Cut the funds.

    BYW, I heard a blurb on a local radio show in Birmingham about the number of people who have been added to the food stamp rolls after the tornadoes, how that will skew the numbers and the left will use it to support their argument that more funds are needed. Only story I could find with any numbers is linked below. There are some interesting comments, especially about the folks who just lost power for the day and applied for assistance. I had just stocked up as well, and we lost power for 12 hours. Threw a lot out, but I didn’t show up for assistance. I’m sure it would be a difficult task to figure out who was gaming the system.

    http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/05/d-snap_food_help_sought_by_63000_in_jefferson_county.html

  • gpclaw

    The authors data includes money spent on federal agencies, as a transfer of revenue to a state. For example, Ft Gordon’s budget counted as federal tax dollars transferred to Georgia. That’s the left for ya!

    Thank you for taking a pass on the free (ahem) money from the government. From the tone of the article, the planners appear to be patting them selves on the back. To bad more people don’t appreciate the value of other peoples money.

    I love this line from the article:

    Rice said she didn’t know how much money has been given out through D-SNAP. But she said it was significant.
    “It’s going to be a considerable amount of money into the local economies,” Rice said..

    It’s STIMULUS! Miss Rice may need to study up on her Bastiat

  • edintexas

    In ’55 there were lots of thing that every family in the country could afford, and we weren’t making spit for wages. But the dollar was solid. The states could afford to pave roads – in part because the oil which went into the asphalt was in large part produced domestically. In fact we exported oil (I said in large part because the heavy crude which IIRC goes into asphalt was certainly not an equivalent to West Texas Light Sweet Crude).

    And we didn’t have people getting income tax “refunds” when they paid no tax. And we didn’t have “The Great Society” programs, particularly Medicare and Medicaid. A few years later I had to have a couple of stitches in a finger. 2 visits to the doctor’s house (the first at supper time and 2 sutures) and the bill came to $2.00. We didn’t need anything other than “major medical” when you could pay for minor expenses out of pocket.

  • gpclaw

    But ed’s comment reminiscence of the 50′s reminded me of this. This is an excerpt from a speech given by economist Gary Becker, when he received his Nobel Prize. He studied the effects that Social Security have had on the family. If you put up with the econo-speak, it’s worth a read. (BTW, bequest means inheritance. I only offer this up because I had to look it up)

    Parents who leave sizable bequests do not need old-age support because instead they help out their children. I mentioned earlier one well-known implication of this: under certain conditions, budget deficits and social security payments to the elderly have no real effects because parents simply offset the bigger taxes in the future on their children through larger bequests.

    It is much less appreciated that altruistic parents who leave bequests also tend to invest more in their children’s skills, habits, and values. For they gain from financing all investments in the education and skills of children that yield a higher rate of return than the return on savings. They can indirectly save for old age by investing in children, and then reducing bequests when elderly. Both parents and children are better off when parents make all investments in children, which yield a higher return than that on savings, and then adjust bequests to the efficient level of investment

    Gary Stanley Becker. The Economic Way of Looking at Behavior: The Nobel Lecture (Kindle Locations 213-215). Kindle Edition.

  • williamjameson

    Chambliss must be challenged. I think he doesn’t really care if he wins again. Even wonder if he’ll run considering his illness last year.

    Thus far Herman Cain has the best qualities as a candidate. I think dems forget his role at the Kansas Fed was political in nature even though the Fed is not considered a gov entity by some.

  • jaykali

    Everything will be ab positioning for the next election. Even though its over a year out it’s too late. The gang of 5 will come up with ‘something’ and it will be mostly Democratic ideas and that’s what the Democrats will run with. It’s too bad that the President ignored his own deficit commission. Entitlements still appear to be the 3rd rail so I really don’t know how we get out of this mess. The political landscape is such that it doesn’t appear any significant changes will be made to entitlements until we are literally a year or 2 out from insolvency. When you tell a politician there’s only 10-20 years before something goes broke they are thinking, ‘great I’ll be retired by then.’ Republicans have taken the risky position in all of this but to their credit they appear to be on the right side of this issue. It’s only going to be worse for everybody when Medicare goes broke. It will mean draconian cuts, taxes, everything and it wont be for 55 yr olds. It will be for current retirees.