As the original 2% payroll tax cut for employees is set to expire next month, Democrats are proposing an even bigger cut. Earlier this week, they introduced legislation (S.1917) to cut the payroll tax to 3.1 percent for employees, and for employers on the first $5 million of their payroll. The bill would also eliminate the payroll tax paid by employers for the last quarter | Read More »
I was the sole general chairman of the New Hampshire campaign of Pat Buchanan in the winter of 1995-6. I was alone because my co-chairman, faced with unmoving single-digit poll numbers, had fled for the Dole campaign. I remember Pat’s consternation about our seemingly stagnant poll numbers. And yet, when New Hampshire voters began focusing on the election, those polls became meaningless. Just a few | Read More »
Senate Democrats (and all other Democrats, for that matter) have not passed a budget for over 900 days, yet they are planning to come late to the game and commandeer the appropriations process. After delaying the process for over two years, Harry Reid, with the help of some Senate Republicans, is planning to expedite appropriations bills in a way that disavows standard procedures of transparency. | Read More »
1) Obama gets his full lifeline, long-term debt limit increase that will take him beyond the election ($2.1-2.4 trillion), without making any transformational concession. There is no realistic roadmap to entitlement reform; not a single agency or program, domestic or mandatory, will be eliminated; Obamacare is off limits; there will be no balanced budgets, ever. We will still add trillions more to the debt over | Read More »
Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the McConnell – Obama debt deal, how we got screwed, and the weak GDP report. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope | Read More »
Over the past week, the Tea Party has been impugned and maligned with more ferocity than ever before. Amidst our push to balance the budget, downsize job-killing government agencies and programs, and preserve our AAA credit rating, we have been condemned as extremists, suicidal, and traitors. Sadly, most of these acrimonious ad hominem attacks were propagated by those who purport to share the aforementioned goals, | Read More »
Guess who wrote it? The late-night jousting in the Senate followed a vote on House Speaker John A. Boehner’s debt-limit measure, which would extend the Treasury’s borrowing power until early next year and force another economy-rattling fistfight within a few months. Drafted largely by aides to Reid and McConnell last weekend, the measure was originally designed to appeal to the more centrist Senate. Everything we’ve | Read More »
Having watched this debt ceiling fight play out over the past couple of months, I keep coming back to one inescapable conclusion: we need better generals. The Washington GOP wants to force another vote on the debt ceiling right before the election. That’s one of the ideas being kicked around in part of this grand deal. Let’s play this out: We get to the last | Read More »
Here is the way things work in Washington. One group in Congress comes up with a bold plan to save the country. Let’s call it Cut, Cap, and Balance. Everyone else sets out to undermine their plan. Heck, most of the rest of Congress doesn’t have a plan at all — they just want to dump on the group that comes up with the plan. | Read More »
Tuesday night felt pretty good, didn’t it? The House GOP, joined by five Democrats, voted for Cut, Cap, and Balance. Finally, the House led on solid reform to turn the tide. Senators got active quickly to undermine the effort and still the House held the line. Great, wasn’t it? The Gang of 234 stood for freedom and, as an added bonus, gave a wonderful middle | Read More »
I have joined FreedomWorks, American Majority Action, Let Freedom Ring, and the Club For Growth in drafting a letter to Republicans in Congress opposing the McConnell Plan. Of particular note, considering who all is on board this letter, is this paragraph: We will refrain from backing any Member of Congress or candidate for federal office, or a leadership position in a Republican Caucus, who supports the McConnell—Reid—Pelosi “Cut, Run, and Hide” plan, to the extent that our various legal structures and rules allow. I | Read More »
I am instituting a new policy here at RedState. In the future, as we support candidates for the U.S. Senate in Republican Primaries, we will not support any candidate who goes on the record supporting Mitch McConnell as Senate Republican Leader. That does not preclude them from voting for McConnell once they get there if there are no better options. But when looking to endorse | Read More »
Republicans backing Mitch McConnell‘s Pontius Pilate Act should be deeply, deeply worried by a new CBS News Poll. The poll shows the public is very unhappy with the way things are going in Washington. In fact, 51% of Republicans and 73% of Independents disapprove of the way the GOP is handling the debt ceiling. “But wait,” you say. “That must mean they want to go | Read More »
Well, well, well. As Monday’s news cycle gets into full gear, we’re starting to see exactly what Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are cooking up for the American public — pretend spending cuts and very real tax increases. It is like the GOP learned nothing from No Child Left Behind. In NCLB, the GOP let liberals like Teddy Kennedy write the legislation and | Read More »
I have long criticized the calls of many disaffected conservatives for a third party and I maintain that position. The closest I have come to calling for a third party is to encourage tea party activists to take over the GOP from within. External third parties are not, in my mind, a solution to anything, but a great enabler of Democrats. Notwithstanding my opinion, I | Read More »
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