“Cut, Cap, and Balance failed in the United States Senate with four votes shy of 50. The vote was 51-46 to table.”

What this news means: Majority of the members of both Houses of Congress supports Cut, Cap and Balance. It got 46 of 100 Senators and 234 of 435 House members to support it – 52% of the members of Congress.

It’s the only viable, solid and real plan out there.  Even if the cut, cap and balance plan is not fully approved in the Senate, its strong level of support indicates that it can be and it should be the basis and framework for any final agreement to go forward. There are other vague, fuzzy, promises-now-disappointment-later plans, but they cannot be the basis of agreement in the way this can.

It’s been noticed that Senator Harry Reid, the do-nothing control freak of the Senate, failed to allow this plan to be modified in a way to make it viable for passage. Here is a comment at the LA Times:

So, rather than ammend the bill to make it into something that they could agree with, they just killed it.  How does that make any sense?  The only actual bill that has been introduced during this entire debate is now completely off the table.  Hopefully the pubilic is paying attention to this.  And where is Reid’s plan?

Yet in fact, this vote, far from actually killing it, tells us that its only 4 Senators short of being supported by both Houses.

“There’s no question that the fiscal challenges in front of us demand a bipartisan solution, but the clock’s running,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a floor speech Thursday night. see:  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/59661.html#ixzz1Sqt4G4Xr

You know you are close to the target when the FUD and the flak starts flying thick and fast. Democrats are wheeling out their old sturdy workhorse campaign gambit – “They are killing Medicare”.  See Senator Conrad in action. Well.  It’s time for us to respond to this political gamesmanship with a few key points:

The Senate has not produced a budget in 2 years.  The Senate knew about the debt ceiling 6 months ago, but Harry Reid has yet to put a debt ceiling increase bill on the Senate floor. Their inaction and incompetence, including Sen Conrad’s failure to even make public his ‘secret budget’, puts our nation at risk.

The House passed a budget, and now has passed a solution to the debt ceiling limit: Cut, Cap and Balance. 234 Members signed on to this plan: The Cut – $100 billion next year, a gentle and moderate 3% reduction in FY 2012; the Cap, which offers a glide-path to reducing the burden of
Government back to the level it was in the latter Clinton years (Govt/GDP ratio of 19%); and the Balance, a balanced budget amendment to keep Congress in check from spending money we don’t have and keep the burden of Government in bounds.

Democrat control of Congress has led to a budget increase of 40% in only 4 years, and under Obama the public debt skyrocketed from $6.2 trillion to $9.7 trillion. So the Democrats have dug a hole, have NO PLAN to get us out, and are shrieking, moaning and wailing against this and any plan that does solve the problem.  Their opposition to this moderate and sensible plan is proof enough that they do not believe in any real limits on Government spending, taxing and power. Medicare spending does NOT even go down, so why the hyperbole? It’s over-heated rhetoric design to deflect from the complete LACK of any real solution on the part of the Democrats.

We are witnessing the disintegration of liberal welfare statism, and the acolytes of Big Government are lashing out violently while staying in denial over the basic unaffordability and economic contradictions of their progressive dreams. They are in denial, and are lashing out at those who point out the true – we much lower our spending.

Here’s what the Republicans must do – defend Cut, Cap and Balance, get as many votes for it as possible in the upcoming Senate vote, stand firm that this is the framework for a solution, and say:

“Cut, Cap and Balance is the only realistic framework for compromise, and the sooner the liberal Democrats admit this, the sooner we can get to a reasonable agreement.”

In the weekend talking head shows, Charles Krauthammer and Senator Marco Rubio point out a curious missing feature in Obama’s ‘proposals’: Real numbers. Details. Specifics. Substance.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: [The President] talks a good game. “Oh, I’m prepared to do entitlements, I’m ready to do entitlements.” Not once has he ever enunciated in public – other than all these leaks which I don’t trust for half a second – one structural change in entitlements, and without that, everybody over the age of nine knows we are not going to get a handle on the debt. So let’s hear him say it in public once.

Marco Rubio, parrying Bob Scheiffer’s ‘why don’t you play nice with the President?’ questions:

MARCO RUBIO: “OK, so where’s the plan? Where’s the president’s plan? I’ve never seen a piece of paper with the president’s name on it that’s his plan to solve this crisis. I’ve seen press conferences. I’ve seen lectures that he’s given to the Congress. I’ve seen these press avails where the camera comes in and takes a bunch of pictures. I haven’t seen a plan. Where is the president’s plan?“

In fact, the President, as is his style, waited until late in the process, inserted himself in it by criticizing other proposals and making demands and deadline for others to meet, yet does not have a specific plan of his own. His positions are, as Speaker Boehner put it, like jello.

The lack of any substance is curious enough, and the corresponding lack of actual legislative language or record is even more disturbing. Yet even more bizarre is the media radio silence over this salient fact, and their pretense at treating media leaks as authoritative, and treating declarations as a substitute for substance.

So when in Inside Washington, Nina Totenberg toted the state press party line and declared that Obama had offered a $4 trillion ‘grand bargain’, Krauthammer hammered back:

NINA TOTENBERG, NPR: So why is it when he offered the big deal, the $4 trillion deal…

GORDON PETERSON, HOST: The grand bargain.

TOTENBERG: …the grand bargain, Republicans backed away from it?

KRAUTHAMMER: When did he offer that?

TOTENBERG: He offered that last week.

KRAUTHAMMER: Where?

TOTENBERG: In, he did it, publicly and in negotiations.

KRAUTHAMMER: In your leaks? What’s in the $4 trillion?

TOTENBERG: But Charles.

KRAUTHAMMER: Give me a number. Explain to me what’s in it.

TOTENBERG: Why is it, in two, in matter of two days, Republicans backed away from that and said we don’t want it?

KRAUTHAMMER: You accept everything he says, a $4 trillion deal, if you don’t have a single item in it that you can enunciate.

TOTENBERG: Well, I’m not at the table. Perhaps you are, but I’m not.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well then how does he expect America to accept something in which he explains nothing?

….  you have a completely compliant, pliant, supine press accepting every leak out of the White House. Tell me, we have been told, I’ve heard it again and again that the President’s prepared to do, to make cuts in entitlements. Name me one.

Why is the media not noticing the stunning lack of specifics in the Obama proposals? Why is the media not noticing the fact that the Senate has not acted on a budget in two years, and, unlike the Republicans, has no legislative language to actually pass the debt ceiling increase?  If the answer is simply – well, it helps the President’s position – that explains much about media bias. They are pushing a meme that the Republicans turned down some ‘great deal’ to shift blame on Republicans for not compromising, when, in fact, Obama has failed to come half-way. The Republicans have NOT turned down a ‘grand bargain’.  They turned down a parlor trick served as jello.

Yet it begs further the question, why aren’t the Republicans not making a bigger deal over the lack of substance, lack of legislative action, and lack of specifics in Obama’s proposals or in the Senate? They need to. The Emperor has no Clothes. The President has no plans for dealing with our debt and deficit in a genuine and serious way.  Bravo to Senator Rubio for making this point, and note for other Republicans: Follow Rubio’s lead.

Krauthammer quotes via Newsbusters.

It’s the Arrogance, Stupid!

It is sad and unfortunate that the Liberal Establishment is so disdainful of the “Tea Party” Republicans, that they don’t bother listening to what they are saying. And what are they saying? The #1 threat to America is not the current (perhaps phony) debt ceiling increase, but the fundamental threat to America’s financial future due to a Government that is spending far, far above its means.

This is not about political gamesmanship, but about ‘turning the country around’. If you think America is heading over a waterfall due to a government that taxes, borrows and spends too much, you will wanting no part in ANY action that takes us closer to the edge. Passing a debt ceiling without starting to fix the fiscal issues of overspending is such an action.

Had the President and his acolytes stopped lecturing and started listening for a change, they would detect that, no, there is no interest at all by conservatives and Republicans in harming the economy, either short-term or long-term. The conservative/Republican real interest is in helping the economy long-term by reducing the size, scope, cost, influence and burden of government, so it returns to a sustainable and rational level relative to our economy.

Given this, the question is ill-posed. The RIGHT question is: Will a debt ceiling ‘deal’ get us further along that path towards a sustainable and less burdensome government than a ‘no deal’ scenario or not?

If it DOES, then the “Tea Party” will bite. What deal would that be? The Tea party agenda would be – Obama-care repeal, the BBA, large spending cuts, and spending caps; these are what would elicit a ‘yes’. ANY tax hikes would be a “NO”. Since Obamacare repeal would be off-the-table from the Democrat side, and ‘entitlement reform’ the conservative way and liberal way are so far apart the twain cannot meet, and since BBA is likely a bridge too far for Democrats … we are left with Spending Cuts.

So we know EXACTLY what will elicit a deal that can stick: A bill with sufficient spending cuts that tells the Tea Party that they will be further along the long-term path to sustainably smaller government than a ‘shutdown crisis’. Is it enough? If its just a few trillion off of $45 trillion in 10 year spending plans, that 5% cut from Obama’s plans will not be enough for many. Ryan budget for FY 2012 however would be.

Either the Obama administration and DC Democrats know this fully and are engaged in partisan gamesmanship by trying to bait the Republicans into a no-deal crisis, or they are clueless and have not listened. It’s very dangerous to get drunk on your own rhetoric, and most of the anti-Tea Party rhetoric from the liberal side is bilgewater unfit for intelligent consumption. the bottom-line:

A REAL and SERIOUS effort towards lowering spending and toward fiscal responsibility would get conservatives in the House to a deal. Smoke and mirrors and gimmicks and brow-beating and ‘my tax hikes or the highway’ will … not.

“But it seems to me that if I’m right and at a macro-level it is politically in the interest of the Republican party to let the government default on its debts” This is dubious on many levels. An axiom – the Republicans ALWAYS get the blame. There is genuine desire by politicians on both sides NOT to muck things up, and McConnell plan can be viewed in that light. However, that desire is curiously lacking in Obama’s behavior. The ‘crisis’ is something Obama seems to be wanting, as his behavior has been to make a deal harder to reach, and he is trying to score far too many partisan points against the very people he is supposed to be talking to. The ‘default’ option is an option of the President, he could sign an order to make sure the interest on debt is paid first, taking that whole concern off the table. Yet, he doesnt do that; rather, he raises the stakes with the fearmongering-type statements of calamity. These are pressure-tactics, not consensus-building tactics.

By Aug 2nd, there will be either a spending-cut-only ‘deal’ bill, e.g compromise between Biden $2T cuts and cut, cap and balance, or there will be no deal at all. (McConnell’s plan B is an abortion, a bill that cuts the legs from under the House wont get through the House, and it adbidcates too much to the President.) The ‘no deal’ will be a political failure for both sides and for which both sides will deserve and get blame. It will not be a boon for Republicans, nor for Obama, nor for the country. Call it a ‘lose/lose/lose’ option.

The media may try, and even succeed, in blaming Republicans for the breakdown. In reality, the breakdown will have been caused by the liberals mis-reading and failing to listen to what the Tea Party Republicans were saying.

Originally posted as a comment  at http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2011/07/14/ok-john-so-should-the-republican-party-tank-the-economy-if-so-i-have-an-idea-how-they-can-do-it/#comments.

Why are things so off the rails, with this awful no-good, bad-deal-worse-than-no-deal McConnell punt-and-pass-the-buck ‘offer’ apparently the best idea our leaders can come up with, haplessly up against a lying bad-faith negotiator in President Obama?

The problems:
1. Fearing a shutdown. The biggest mistake made from the get-go is Speaker Boehner’s incorrect interpretation of how the 1995 government shutdown went down, and his fear of another shutdown. According to the press and Clinton, it was a win for President Clinton. He won the PR warand got re-elected. Never mind that Clinton was benefitting from a better economy, a rather poor campaigner in bob Dole, and had plenty to traingulate with even without a government shutdown. The critical missing element to the analysis is this: Did the end game of legislation reflect the President or the Congress’ priorities?

Answer: CONGRESS. Congress has the power. The only way the President can win is if the Congress willingly gives away that power. In 1995, the government was shutdown for 3 weeks.

2. Not passing bills, AGAIN and AGAIN, to reinforce and make clear the Republican position. WHY HAS THE HOUSE NOT PASSED A DEBT CEILING HIKE ALREADY? one that does exactly what Speaker Boehner wants it to do? Why not get cut, cap and balance done NOW? In 1995, the govt shutdown was ordered not by failure of congress, but by bill clinton vetoing the continuing resolutions. We need to make sure that the only reason for default is because OBAMA VETOED THE DEBT CEILING HIKE. We cannot let him point fingers on this.

3. Negotiating behind closed doors instead of through regular legislative process. Congression porcess gives the House majority MORE POWER. Back room negotiations gives the PRESIDENT  more power. Which does Obama want? Why does the leadership give in to Obama?

4. Fearing political fallout rather than focus on the goal – the goal is to get the spending cuts and burden of govt down. That is the promise to the voter. Keep it. Will the squabble between Congress and President unelect Republicans? NO! In 2012, we will likely nominate a governor or outsider, not part of that squabbling. They will not be ‘tainted’ as Dole was in 1996. 23 Democrat Senators will be up for re-election, dont fear hard votes – EMBRACE THEM because the Democrats will face as many and more. It is the democrats after all that pretend we can spend with abandon in irresponsible ways.

These 4 failures of thinking about the debt standoff has led to the mcConnell error: He fails in #4, thinking he is ‘smart’ to put Obama on the hook – instead of thinking how foolish it is to give our spendthrift president the power to decide on what spending cuts to make (hint: Trillions of spending cut opportunities will be thrown away; Ryan plan, thrown away; RSC plan, thrown away; lots of great ideas, flushed … all to satisfy the desire to see what obama would do?!? Folly!) He and Boehner failed in #3, getting trapped in a process where Democrat spin and media enablement of it puts Republicans at a disadvantage, to the point where an uncompromising President is berating them for stubbornness. Only when Cantor up and left the talks, did we peek into the process; it was a bad-faith effort onthe Democrats’ part. but all of this is related to the failure in #1 and #2, playing by Obama’s rules instead of making your own rules.

The solution is simple – Rep Carter spoke of the need to go in regular order, and that is what is needed indeed. That is the process that keeps the House GOP together, instead of split off from a Speaker who is apparently negotiating on a basis and assumption that 60 GOP votes are not even with him (so where is he getting the rest? the good graces of Nancy Pelosi?) If there really are 60 votes to NOT support a COMMON effort to get the GOP position advanced, we need to have a serious amount of cat herding, and blunt talk with folks like Rep Bachmann to, ahem, lead; we need unity on a strong position. There is a better way:
1. Pass spending cut only debt ceiling increase bill in House. Cut, cap and balance.
2. Demand the US Senate act.
3. If they are different, fix it in conference. NO MORE NEGOTIATIONS PRIOR AND ONLY NEGOTIATE ON THE BASIS OF THE HOUSE – SENATE DIFFERENCES.
4. Put on president’s desk.

REGULAR ORDER, REAL LEGISLATING.
the Kabuki theatre talks with president Obama is SOLELY FOR HIS REELECTION. End them. Now. McConnell needed to STFU after his fine speech and let our actions do the talking.

Pass a spending-cut -only debt ceiling increase. NOW. Do cut, cap and balance in the House. NOW. Then – every day – make it crystal clear that the President and Senate stand in the way of operating the government, not the House. And if long-term bill doesnt work, or we cant get a deal with Reid etal,  go with gingrich plan of 1 month at a time. $100 billion increase with $100 billion in cuts. AGAIN AND AGAIN PASS THE BILLS IN THE HOUSE TO SHOW THAT THE HOUSE IS NOT THE IMPEDIMENT TO THE OPERATION OF THE GOVERNMENT.

A very bogus argument has been used in favor of Mcconnell’s complicate plan, that it puts the ‘onus’ on the President. Of course that is not what is happening! Real bills passed in the House presented and demanding Senate action on them do exactly that, putting onus on the Democrats in the Senate and on Obama to take action and not just talk.

OPINION:  A Return to Regular Order to Handle the Debt

By Congressman John Carter

The hopes of the country were high – unjustifiably high – following November’s landslide election of a new House of Representatives committed to balancing the federal budget and avoiding a Greek-style calamity.

We can say “unjustifiably” from the reality that Republicans won only one of the two houses of Congress and the White House remains in the hands of President Obama. That leaves two of the three bodies required to pass a law still in the hands of those who created the current crisis and remain committed to staying their disastrous course.

The House has the power of the purse. With a judicious use of this power, we can force positive change. We have not done so thus far because we have not effectively used the legislative tools given us by the Founders. Those tools are the regular order of the legislative process. Here’s how they work.

The House passes a bill, which is then sent to the Senate. The Senate can pass the bill or an alternate more to its liking.

The House and Senate then appoint a conference committee to sit down and work out the differences between the two versions. If the conference committee makes no progress in producing a compromise, the speaker and the Senate majority leader can meet to negotiate a way around the impasse.

This compromise bill is then sent back to both houses for final approval. If it passes both the House and Senate, it is sent to the president to be signed into law or vetoed. If it is vetoed, the speaker and Senate majority leader can pressure the president for a compromise or work together to overturn the veto by a supermajority vote.

This is regular order. It is how the House, Senate and White House work together to produce an acceptable result and maintain a guard against any one legislative house or the president gaining unbridled power.

Instead, we have allowed Mr. Obama to skillfully circumvent the democratic process to his political advantage.

The Republican House has done its job in passing tough budgetary measures to control deficit spending. Then the Democratic Senate has refused to take any action, while Mr. Obama begins direct negotiations with the House, effectively eliminating Senate action, House and Senate compromise, final House and Senate approval and joint House-Senate political pressure on the White House.

If the negotiations fail, which the president can guarantee unless the House acquiesces to his demands, the White House is set to use its bully-pulpit advantage with the national media to blame the Republican House for global economic calamity.

The Democratic Senate is allowed to sit on the sidelines, doing nothing, taking no tough votes to have to defend in the next election, and watch the House squirm as Mr. Obama blocks the regular order of the constitutional legislative process.

This is not the working of government designed by our Founders. These are the political hallmarks of a monarch or dictator dealing with an inferior legislature. If you recall, we rejected this form of government with the U.S. and Texas Declarations of Independence in 1776 and 1836, respectively.

This must end if we are to salvage our economy and our future. Now is the time to cease out-of-order negotiations with the president and get down to legislative work through regular order.

We know what must be done to restore fiscal health to our government. We must significantly cut current and future federal spending, put the nation on a course toward a balanced budget in time certain without accounting gimmicks, and begin the process of legislative and constitutional reforms to prevent a repeat of this disaster in the future. With all three of these goals accomplished, we can afford to pass a reasonable temporary increase in the debt ceiling to prevent a downgrading of the U.S. dollar as part of the package of getting our national finances under control.

We have more than enough votes to pass such a measure in the House with flying colors next week. We should do so immediately and then move on to other business until the Senate takes action through approval or the drafting of an alternate version. If the Senate refuses to pass either the House measure or an alternate, the debt ceiling will be reached and no further borrowing will be able to occur because of the Senate’s failure to act. The economic results will be bad, but ultimately no worse than continuing down this road of suffocating national debt. We can lessen the negative impact by passing the Full Faith and Credit Act to guarantee that our bonds cannot be forced into default for political purposes by the Obama administration.

The president should not be allowed to derail the regular order of the democratic process again. House Republicans should stand solidly behind the speaker and refuse to negotiate with anyone other than the Senate until its version of a bill has passed and a conference agreement has been reached.

Our nation is blessed with the inheritance of a system of checks, balances and legislative processes that at times seem unwieldy but together provide us with the tools we need to preserve the ordered liberties that make the United States the greatest nation on earth.

But tools are only useful if someone picks them up and gets to work. It is past time for somebody other than House Republicans to grab a hammer.

Failures in politics often have to do with lack of imagination. On the debt crisis front we have two apparently irreconcilalble positions:
1. We must raise the debt ceiling or the U.S. will suffer grave consequences (default).
2. We cannot afford to continue to borrow and spend, or the U.S. will face bankruptcy eventually.

The obvious solution to this dilemma has been put forward by the Republicans – raise the debt ceiling, but do so in a way that stops the flow of red ink. Any large debt ceiling increase should require a commensurately large change in spending direction. We should say NO to any large debt ceiling increase without:
1. Getting to a path to a balanced budget. WE do have a plan to get to a balanced budget. No, not the Ryan plan, which doesnt balance for decades, but a better one, the Republican Study Group plan. That should be laid on the table as the baseline budget. What makes it better than Ryan is it make more immediate spending reductions, one sure way to get to fiscal balance.
2. Immediate, real, significant spending cuts, requiring spending in FY2012 and beyond to be below 20% of GDP.
3. Defunding and repealing Obamacare and its mandates, taxes, bureacratic regulations, and spending.
4. New Congressional rules a la “Spend-go” that both forces Congress to cut 1-for-1 whenever they vote to spend more, and also protect taxpayers in the bargain, so that we do not force higher taxes as the ‘solution’ to the deficit. It is not.

The 4 points above – A real plan to get to balance; immediate spending cuts; defunding and repealing Obamacare; real rules for fiscal restraint – that is a bold and real approach towards real fiscal conservatism and cutting spending and deficits.

The failure of the Republicans in Congress to drive a better bargain on cutting spending has been due to their failure to push aggressively and BE BOLD in what they demand. The Republican leaders in Congress started too low, at $61 billion in cuts, and too willingly went below that to get the ‘bargain’ that was mostly hollow and double-counted cuts. As it stands today, FY2011 spends $200 billion more than FY2010 did. This is not turning the ship around, this is barely leaning on the wheel. So we need to ask for more and get more doen to cut the spending.

Yet we know the outcome of the above proposals. Obama’s highly partisan budget speech made clear that he will reject this Grand Bargain or even a much weaker set of requirements out of hand. This and any fiscally conservative approach will be rejected by the least fiscally responsible President in American history. Obama wants a blank check – a blank check written against an account that’s below empty. As such, he has built up the debate, with the help of his media minions, as one where, if the debt ceiling is NOT raised, then a calamity will hit the U.S. He wants to blame the Republicans for his own failure to come to terms with them.

As in the government shutdown ‘scare’, the Democrats are engaged more in a PR battle than a serious policy debate. For them, it is all about talking points for the 2012 election. For Republicans, falling into the trap of either letting the shutdown or crisis happen and getting the blame OR falling prey to enough worry that you cut a lousy deal – either error hurts Republicans politically. So how does the GOP stand its ground and at the same time NOT enable the President to create a ‘crisis’? How do we get out of the trap of this false choice?

The answer is simple: Pass small, incremental debt ceiling increases, and include in them a portion of the above 4 points. If we cannot drive a GRAND bargain with the Obama administration, drive small bargains:
- Raise the debt ceiling by $200 billion, combined with agreement on FY2012 budget and inclusion of at least $200 billion in spending cuts over the next 3 years. (Get near term cuts, not the bogus promise of future changes – that’s ‘my diet starts tomorrow’ wishful budget thinking)
- next $200 billion – Repeal a PART of Obamacare, perhaps allowing ANY state to opt out and delaying implementation one year to save hundreds of billions
- next $200 billion – Settle on the long-term path to balanced budget, with ‘spend-go’ rules and spending caps for FY2012 budget and beyond to lock it in as a reality.

Wait, but $200 billion will only last another few months, right? Right. Just like the CRs used to kick the can down the road a ways, and just as we were able to get CRs to include some spending cuts, this method allows us to make SOME budget gains and spending cuts as we hash out the matter. Pass this out of the House, challenge the Senate to do that same, and challenge the President – “We are raising the debt ceiling and doing it in a way that moves us towards fiscal responsibility.” It puts the onus back on the President. If he wants to reject fiscal prudence, let him be against the debt ceiling increase, any default is on his head. He passes the bill and we are back in 2 more months, asking the same question: How much spending cuts and fiscal responsibility can we put in to a short-term debt ceiling increase.

3 further negotiating points: Republicans failed to make sure the Senate was ‘on the hook’ in the prior budget negotiations; we should have required the Senate to pass their own version, then hash it out in conference; that would make the discussion much more 1on1 vs the 2 on 1 when the White House is in the room. People oppose a debt ceiling increase; the democrat demand it be done; fine, let THEM pass a bill out of the Senate FIRST. Beohner can simply point to the Senate and say “If this is a crisis, then Sen Reid should act like it’s one and do something.” Be tardy on it, and every time it comes up, point out that the Senate should act if its important.

Second, the House needs to pass a $1 trillion debt ceiling increase that includes a very STRONG amount of the above. Yes, pass a debt ceiling increase that repeals Obamacare and lay that on the table. Just because the President will push back does not mean it shouldn’t be offered. It will be a popular proposal. Passing much MORE of the spending reductions and budgetary restraints in the large bill will make it much easier to negotiate on a smaller bill.

Third, even if it was brave and solid policy, it was not politically savvy to lead with the Ryan plan and open a long-term discussion about entitlements, when (a) it takes a President to lead on this and (b) it takes the focus off Obamacare. We have a president who has a fundamental disagreement with us on how much we should spend, that disagreement adds up to trillions; so making any long-term ‘deal’ with him is futile. Leave Ryan and fixing entitlements aside, it won’t happen before 2013. Furthermore, it is a political opening for the Democrats to run their ‘Mediscare’ campaign. Instead, the GOP should have 2 goals – think about what smaller short-term gains can be made NOW in cutting spending, and think about 2012.

The worst thing that could be done would be to cave and allow the reckless spend-it-all policy to continue. At some point, the “setup” is such that pressure to do ‘something’ will build. Let the GOP lay the groundwork for a strong principled stand that we must end the fiscal recklessness, by passing a debt ceiling increase out of the House that is chock-full of the Republican spending cuts and fiscal responsibility; and when that ‘do something’ moment comes, let the GOP pass a small and incremental debt ceiling increase that includes more spending cuts.

The President will be forced to do something. If he wants to oppose even incremental steps of fiscal responsibility, let the default be on him.

The liberals have played ‘boil the frog’ on us for years. It’s time for us to start doing it back.

From the diaries by Erick

Texas Redistricting is underway, and a shocking blunder is about to happen in Texas. The Republican majority is about to pass, at the behest of the supposedly Republican Speaker, a redistricting plan that punishes conservative Republicans so badly, it might as well have been a Democratic gerrymander. Coming off the heels of an amazing Republican victory last November, the plan forces Republican incumbents in 8 districts to be paired off, and curiously, many of them are conservatives and freshmen Reps who opposed Speaker Straus.

Last November, State Rep Bryan Hughes accused Speaker Straus’ team of threatening redistricting actions to get support. Well, that exact operation appears to be going down – and in his zeal for punishing conservative, Straus is making it  harder to keep some Republican seats.  Despite 101 Republicans, the ‘committee’ plan draws only 93 Republican seats. In other words, a map is drawn to deliberately give 8 Republicans the short end of the stick. And worse, many of this is not necessary at all. A glaring example is the pairing of Rep Jim Landroop with Rep Charles Perry, while a nearby district is drawn with no incumbent.

Read More →

The thread about Speaker Boehner led me to put in a comment that agreed with the main point about Speaker Boehner, he’s done a good job so far , but there is legitimate concern and unease. A simple way to express how Speaker Boehner needs to recalibrate:  MORE BOLDNESS NEEDED.

We see this clearly in this FY2011 deal. We went from $100 billion in promised cuts, in a budget that is bloated by hundreds of billions, then we compromised down to only $61 billion, then it was turned into a ‘deal’ where supposedly Boehner got most of what he wanted at $38 billion, and now we find $22 billion of that was smoke-and-mirrors and the real Obama spending items are still there.  So we got a mere $16 billion in cuts.

All you need do is compare the FY 2006 with FY2010 budgets to see this. Bush the ‘big spender” proposed a $2.57 trillion budget:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/budget06/budget06Agencies.html

Total spending for FY 2006 ended up around $2.6 trillion. So why is there ANY excuse to have, in an era of supposed austerity, a budget any larger than 20% above that level, which would be around $3 trillion? that extra $800 billioin above that is stimulus (wasnt that temporary?), CHIP, domestic discretionary, new Obama programs (more govt programs). etc. etc. Big Government to the max. This has led to Government spending at the Federal leve that eats up 25% of GDP and more, higher than at any time in US history except during WWII.

We are way up in the stratosphere at $3.8 trillion, and the FY 2011 ‘deal’ shaved only $16 billion for real, in a budget bloated by the above reckoning by about $600 BILLION.  When viewed in the context of the real spending cut opportunity space, this was a pathetic deal. $16 billion versus $600 billion, we got about 3% of what we need to do.

We need to be much more bold and talk about the need to CUT HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS IN SPENDING IN THE UPCOMING BUDGET.

1. I find it very interesting that you are naming names when it comes to the staffers who are helping / not helping here. (Like Conryn’s NRSC missteps, lots of errors are driven by having the wrong staff – Morton Blackwell had a rule on that.) This puts them on notice as to how closely they are being watched. Keep it up! Tell us the wimps and the stars, and send a message: BOLDNESS IS NEEDED.

2. We are doing SO MUCH to get the Democrats off the hook politically, its laughable. Why? We NEED this to be a fight. The instinct to avoid conflict with the Democrats is the RINO way, a failed and flawed way that destroys our ability to show the stark differences between the parties on the ONE MAIN ISSUE WHERE THE GOP HAS A CLEAR ADVANTAGE. We should NEVER be cutting back-room deals or cutting them slack. We should never relent on reminding that the last 3 years were an egregious deviation and we must fix it NOW, and not let stimulus over-spending become the ‘baseline’ for bloated Government. Be bold and attack!

3. The approach on the ‘negotiations’ going 3-way was wrong. Boehner should have insisted on the Senate coming up with and passing real legislation. THAT would have put the Democrats on record with their plan, which then could be picked apart (notice how the Democrats are in total attack mode over the Ryan plan, but where is there plan – they did not have a budget at all for purely political reasons, they knew their plans were politically indefensible). the second thing it would do is get the Senate GOP in the loop and make the Senate more the ‘compromise’ AND it would even the odds. Boehner in a 3-way with Reid and obama is a prescription for GOP giveaways, but a House-Senate one-on-one, when you have 47 GOP senators and 23 Dems up for re-election? Much better odds. Be BOLD enough to keep it out in the open.

4. We know now that most of the $38 billion was smoke and mirrors. It was a bad deal, and it would have certainly been made better had it been in the open, see #3. DONT FALL FOR IT AGAIN. That is inside-the-beltway same-old same-old. Boehner needs to stand up and tell Obama and Reid their midnight sessions are not right – BOLDNESS NEEDED.

5. The Ryan plan is bold? Really? It locks in the extravagent 25% of GDP budget as a baseline and gradually winnows it down over 10 years. Here’s the numbers – sticking spending way up at the $3.6 trillion level, instead of knocking off the spending now:

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ryan_budget_plan

Ryan spending plan is $3.529 trillion in FY2012, $3.559 in FY 2013.

No good enough – the GOP FY2012 budget plan should be cutting about $400 billion in one year from the Obama budget, which is bloated by $400billionrelative to where we would be based on a trajectory from the 2006 budget. So, use the 2006 budget as baseline and spend a population and inflation adder for 2012 and you would get $400 BILLION OFF, or around $3.1 trillion instead of $3.5-3.6 trillion – not off some extravagant Obama plan – $400 billion off The RYAN PLAN.

To put it another way. Obama overspends by at least $10 trillion in his $40+ trillion 10-year budget, with a proposed $4.4 trillion in spending by FY 2016. Ryan plan cuts about $6 trillion of that off, but is off the mark by about $4 trillion from whee we need to be. RYAN PLAN STILL SPENDS TOO MUCH. The RSC and Rand Paul plans get closer, and one benefit of getting closer is that they actually get to balance in 8 years. the RSC plan is the plan we really should be selling, if not one that CUTS MORE and CUTS SOONER.  A $3.1 trillion FY 2012 BUDGET … now THAT would be bold, and NECESSARY, to get the deficit down from the stratosphere NOW. MORE BOLDNESS REQUIRED.

And let us not think such a thing, cutting the budget a mere 10% in a single year, is impossible or even hard. After WWII, the US cut the Federal budget over 3 years by 2/3rds. Nor should we think $3.2 trillion in FY 2012 is austere, it is about 20% of GDP, above the post-war average spending. What makes FY2012 BOLD is that it would FORCE the elimination of all of the added spending programs enacted in the past 5 years. Including repealing Obamacare and much more.

6. MAKE A BIG DEAL OVER THE DEBT CEILING. Failure to utilize every tool available to move the center of gravity on tax and spend is a failurer of leadership. Here is what Boehner needs to extract from the Debt Ceiling vote:
Defund Obamacare. Do ifs, no ands, no buts, no excuses. NOTHING HAPPENS WITHOUT THE HOUSE AGREEING. This is a bill that the majority in the House and the majority in the Senate will want to greatly amend. And the majority of the people agree. GO TO THE MAT – NOW – ON DEFUNDING OBAMACARE AND KILLING THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE.

It can be done. Will Obama veto it? Ahem, what exactly will cause Obama to get defeated if have a happy-smiley bipartisan ‘deal’ of mush that does nothing and sends the signal that the GOP wont change a thing? Do we not remember that the 1994 GOP Congress had to send the welfare bill to Clinton 3 TIMES to get him to sign? And that in the end Clinton DID sign to get re-elected? You think ignoring the #1 cause of bloated Government spending is OPTIONAL?!? No Mr Speaker, BOLDNESS is required to get any progress. YOU MUST CONTINUE TO PUT OBAMACARE DEFUNDING AND REPEAL IN EVERY BILL AND EVERY BUDGET. IT MUST BE A LINE IN THE SAND.

7. Ignore the media. Know that by your actions, you will be setting the agenda and can make your points clearly on that basis.

So here is the path to boldness:

• Keep negotiations out in the open through the legislative process, forcing Democrats on the record
• Defund and repeal Obamacare – again and again and again
• Pass a $3.2 trillion FY 2012 budget, $350 billion below the Ryan plan – make the cuts NOW
• Put obamacare repeal and spending caps into the debt ceiling vote – give NO free passes to the Democrats or Obama

If Boehner and the GOP fails, the autopsy of their failure will read: “MORE BOLDNESS NEEDED”

Politifact has labelled “Government-run health care” as their ‘lie of the year.’

The Lie of the Year is that Politifact is unbiased and in a position to judge others’ words. We have noticed errors, omissions, biases and a keen desire to push a liberal POV on the various “politifact” websites. This is not surprising as it is written by the same journalists who write who purvey liberal bias in their articles and op-eds. It’s a bias exposed this year by the uncovering of the “Jorno-List” a list of left-liberal journalists who cooperated on getting the politically correct ‘narrative’ out there to advance liberal agenda in the media.

This detailed take-down of Polifact’s egregious claim identifies multiple problems with Politifact’s baised story.

Bias in sources is one – using a Professor who opined in favor of the health-care bill as an ‘objective quote’ on why ‘government-run’ is not accurate. That source said: “The label ‘government takeover” has no basis in reality, but instead reflects a political dynamic where conservatives label any increase in government authority in health care as a ‘takeover.’ ”

The claim that using the term ‘government takeover’ is a lie is based on an absolutist assumption that anything less than 100% govt ownership is not ‘control’ or ‘takeover’. This is based on a failure to acknowledge that government regulation of private action takes control out of private sector hands. The Sublime Bloviations blog goes point-by-point as to how that is not a valid way (or at minimum the only way) to look at ‘Government takeover’. Regulation is control, and control is a ‘takeover’; Obamacare is a massive increase in Government regulation and control on healthcare, ergo a ‘takeover’.

Many lies have been told about ObamaCare, but most have been told by Obama and the sponsors and supporters. They lied about getting to keep your care (nope, regulations have forced millions to lose coverage they had, from children-only to medicare advantage), lied about the deficit impact (it is going to cost trillions when fully implemented), lied about ‘death panels’ (denied they existed then tweaked the policy on QALY that was in question), lied about alternatives (claimed there was none), lied about constitutionality (denied the fact that Obamacare mandate really is NOT in the Constitution at all and an honest Judge – like happened this week – would rule it unconstitutional).

But those are minor fibs. The ‘big fib’ to them is the ‘takeover’ meme. So according to these liberals, Government can mandate you buy health insurance, mandate what that insurance must or must not contain in exchanges, subsidize millions with govt funding, have govt panels determining the standards of care, have govt subsidies and taxes to enforce compliance, and smother all 50 states with forced massive expansions of govt-run medicaid and chip, tax medical devices and tanning salons, and add 50 bureaucracies to run all this … do ALL this, and since it is not a 100% complete Govt-owned entity, but rather private sector insurance now harrassed, regulated and dictated by the Govt … then its not honest to call it “Government-run health care.” Even though Govt spends 60% of every health care dollar under this plan and the other 40% spent privately is almost all under the direction, dictation and regulation of the Federal Government.

“Government-run health care” is perhaps as honest a four-word description you can come up for the Rube Goldberg device. It’s more honest than ‘bending the cost curve’ or ‘universal healthcare’. Certainly less off-target than the lies such as:

“You will get to keep your healthcare plan” or “This bill will not increase the deficit”
and of course the old chestnut “There is no liberal media bias”.

Despite the attempts by Reid and Pelosi to govern against the will of the people as expressed on Nov 2nd, America did well yesterday. A very bad pork-filled spending bill was stopped, and the possibility of a massive tax hike on January 1 was stopped as well. Good news.

The New York Times spins hopefully, asking: Could the lame-duck be a big win for Obama?

Nope. These are not ‘victories’ for Obama, but a victory against folly. It’s dishonest to talk of this compromise as a ‘tax cut’ bill, all it does is merely extend the current rates in place for 2 more years. It’s a status quo tax rate extension. As such, any claims of immediate success or tragedy are wrong – it is more of the same. No, it will not be bad for the deficit – not compared with trillions in stimulus, spending, pork and govt takeovers that are the real cause of the deficit.

The good part of the tax bill is that with the continued Bush tax rates, the middle-class pays less than they would have (thank you President Bush for that middle-class tax cut that the Democrats seem to refuse to acknowledge you made happen back in 2003), and with the overall tax rates maintained and payroll tax holiday in place for a year, the economy is on surer footing, and economic uncertainty is less. Yet it’s not as if this will instantly supercharge the economy. Unemployment benefit extension may indeed continue to do what his has been doing – induce slower returns of employees to the workforce at a time when a new job may mean a downsized salary for many. The rest of it – ethanol subsidies, some of Obama’s trinkets – are of no use to our economy, and so only a ‘win’ for the deal-making that is so wrong with DC.

While the tax which is why the loss of the $1.1 trillion spending bill is both more consequential, important and GOOD for America. That pork-infested earmark-laden over-spending bill is everything that is wrong with DC politics, and Reid’s attempt to cram it down the senate was an act of political and economic sabotage against American taxpayers and voters. The exposure of the earmarks had chastened Republicans to get off the gravy train and left the bill bereft of support, even though Reid wanted to continue the over-spending past the expiration date. Hint: The Expiration date for over-spending, massive deficits and Government overreach was Nov 2nd.

Now the lame-duck Congress has only one responsibility: Go Home.

The only win for Obama here is how the combination of incompetence and extremism on his own side made an easy tax deal seem hard (causing him to look smaller and less capable than his predecessor-advisor Bill Clinton), and how he avoided looking as foolish as Pelosi and Co. by actually realizing that the Nov 2nd election did have consequences. Yet his churlish, disrespectful and ungrateful way of talking about his Republican counterparts (after he made his deal) and even his liberal critics shows both his leadership skills and his skin are both quite thin. I am not the only one who noticed that Obama blew the politics of the compromise. It will be a rough 2 years.

The Democrats were only able to pass Obamacare because of the antics of December 2009.

Now, with their majorities vaporized in the November elections, the Democrats have less than 10 legislative days to pursue mischief in the lame duck Congressional session.

There is a simple answer to end the mischief. Whatever the issue – DREAM Act, DADT, START treaty – the Republicans in Congress need to say “NO”. End the lame duck ASAP. American people have ALREADY voted for a more Republican Congress, and rejected the liberals, and their is NO reason nor excuse to allow more liberal legislation from passing.

The DREAM Act should not be on the table, nor should DADT, not should START. It is outrageous that Republican leadership would sit on their hands and allow the midnight legislating of Reid and Pelosi – last-minute land-grabs of liberal Governance – and do nothing to stop it. McConnell’s one smart move in the lame duck has been the united front to stop anything other than the tax deal and the budget deal from being discussed until they are done. Good. That stopped the momentum for a ton of mischief, and now Reid is looking for a rifle shot of mischief.

Next step – once they are done with tax and budget, say “Merry Christmas, let’s go home.” if the Democrats want to extend the time … then it’s time for a good old-fashioned real filibuster. If Sen Bernie Sanders could chew up one day with one speech, let the 40 GOP Senators work to chew up every remaining hour to prevent anything other than the tax bill and the budget bill.

The status quo Republicans seem uninterested in doing what will advance conservative values the most, and their failure to stand up on doing whatever-it-takes to stop Reid and Co, as with their failures in the past, is a telling reminder of how they lack the element of courage, boldness and stubbornness required to really bring miscreant liberal Democrats like Reid to heel.

You have one primary duty, Republican leaders: End the lame duck session. End it so this most horrible Congress can legislate no more.

Where do things stand in the Texas Speaker’s race? Let’s recap how far we’ve come. It’s been a month since the Tsunami election delivered a Republican super-majority to the Texas statehouse, and the first ‘surprise’ of Nov 2nd was how many seats flipped, creating the opportunity for a more conservative Speaker, one not beholden to Democrats as Speaker Straus was in the last session.

A review of status and events is below, for your information.

(0) Where things stand right now -

The count of Texas State Representatives publicly calling for a new speaker stands at 21 (most are endorsing Rep Ken Paxton): http://manifestdesigns.com/2010.11.24.GOP.Reps.pdf

The count of Texas citizen-activists and leaders doing the same stands at 6,400 as of Dec 1, 2010.

Add your name to that list here: http://conservativespeakermandate.com/

(1) Flowchart on the Speaker race, created by The Texas Tribune. The flowchart shows the “who’s who” in the Speaker’s race:
http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/texas-house-speaker-race-flowchart/

(2)  Rep Warren Chisum announced his candidacy for Speaker of the Texas House on October 13: http://bit.ly/ewxj8l

(3) Rep Ken Paxton announced his bid for Texas Speaker on Nov 11, and he now has his Speaker of the Texas House campaign website up at:
http://paxtonforspeaker.com/

(4) The Austin American Statesman has a “postcard” history of its coverage of the Speaker’s Race which includes stories way back to January 9th, 2007:
http://bit.ly/eV8x0E

(5) On Nov 4, Texas conservative leaders endorsed Empower Texans’ (Michael Quinn Sullivan’s group) Letter On Leadership that called for a conservative Speaker:
http://www.empowertexans.com/issues/letter_on_leadership

(6) The Dallas Tea Party blog has a lot of information on the Speaker’s Race, and brought out information that made it clear that Speaker Straus had put liberals and moderates, not conservatives, in control in 2009, and that Rep Paxton is the clear and consistent conservative, compared both with Chisum and Straus:
http://dallasteaparty.org/

(7) On Nov 30, State Rep Van Taylor endorsed Ken Paxton for Speaker. This brings the number of newly elected ‘freshmen’ State Reps endorsing Paxton publicly to 9: James White, Erwin Cain, Cindy Burkett, Bill Zedler, Charles Perry, Jim Landtroop, Kenneth Sheets, and David Simpson are also on the Paxton endorsement list.

(8) On Nov 17, Governor Mike Huckabee and HUCK PAC has endorsed Ken Paxton for Speaker of the Texas House (Huckabee is on the Flowchart of Item 1):
http://bit.ly/hlprHR

(9) On Nov 15, FreedomWorks / Dick Armey Oppose Speaker Straus, Announce Support for Paxton (Armey is on the Flowchart of Item 1):
http://bit.ly/fM27jA

(10) On November 10, 2010 Rep Brian Hughes withdraws his pledge to Straus, says that House leadership is trying to oust Reps Flynn and Cain and told Hughes that if he did not go along (i.e. support Straus) he would fall victim to similar retribution. Chairman Hopson’s General Investigating and Ethics Committee investigates the allegations and dismisses them after taking sworn testimony from Hughes and unsworn testimony from Rep Larry Phillips, who made the threats (Hughes and Hopson are on the Flowchart of Item 1):
http://bit.ly/fAmfiN , http://bit.ly/gGnZgX and http://bit.ly/hOTWMf

(11) Straus Chairman Shuts Out Public From Speaker Race “Threats” Information at so-called “Public Hearing”—related to Item 10 above: http://bit.ly/gCgSUT

(12) Video: “The Battle for the Texas House”, http://j.mp/fPGdC2. In this video David Barton sums up what “we the people” seem to be saying—that Texans want a conservative Speaker! It lays out the history and the issues clearly and completely.

(13) Nov 8, Rep Leo Berman, first Rep to file as opposition candidate to Joe Straus (June 23, 2010—see http://bit.ly/i8OkIj and http://bit.ly/eusjYM ) wrote an Open Letter to Joe Straus, full of enlightening information:
http://bit.ly/gFJSY8 and http://ainn.ly/gSTUyL

(14) Nov 15, Erick Erickson (of RedState) blogs that Ken Paxton should be Speaker of the Texas House, bringing the power of Redstate and national conservative activist attention to this race: http://www.redstate.com/erick/

http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/11/15/ken-paxton-should-be-the-speaker-of-texass-house/

(15) Nov 19, Gun Owners of America endorse Ken Paxton for Speaker of the Texas House:
http://bit.ly/hG7JMW

(16) On the other side, we have primarily one group that is the apologist for and promoter of Speaker Joe Straus—that is, Conservatives4JoeStraus:
http://www.conservatives4joestraus.com/home/

(17) Higher Education Committee Chair, Dan Branch questioned the constitutionality of the proposal of a Republican Caucus picking a consensus candidate for Speaker, as mentioned in the Flowchart of Item 1:
http://bit.ly/eqRGbh

(18) If you want to read what Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka is saying in his left-of-center BURKABLOG, you can follow the following link (you might need to use the blog’s search engine to find all the relevant posts):
http://www.texasmonthly.com/blogs/burkablog/

November saw a great election, and a followup of strong statements from the vast majority of Texas conservative activists demanding a conservative Texas House Speaker. This lays down a marker for all the Republican members of the Texas House.  However, conservative activists should not underestimate the power of Speaker incumbency, and Straus has wielded the use of many carrots and sticks (some exposed in recent weeks) to keep ‘pledges’ on board. He doled out over a million dollars in the last election cycle to keep incumbents friendly to him.

This is a classic outsider versus insider battle, the outsiders need to keep the pressure up, find the influencers of the state Reps and get them to support a conservative Speaker. One thing will ensure Speaker Straus’ re-election – if he can avoid a GOP caucus vote.  Without a GOP caucus vote, Straus only needs 25 Republicans, or a fourth of the caucus, and he has at least 20 votes just from the commitee chairs and supporters alone. But a caucus win would require 50 Republican caucus votes. The priority should be to demand a Republican caucus vote, and get all Texas State Reps to agree to it. I further explain why the caucus vote is needed and important over here:

http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-to-choose-texas-house-speaker.html

To have a productive session, the House Speaker must be supported by the majority of the House Republican caucus. To ensure this, the Republican House members should caucus and decide on a nominee for House Speaker. It will be dysfunctional to have a House speaker supported by 50 Democrats but opposed by 70 Republicans. The end result of that may be a repeat of what happened in 2009, when conservative bills that would have passed in a fair floor vote never got the chance to go forward. The further necessity of a Republican caucus is to keep the matter “in the family” of Republicans in the Statehouse, in order to maintain party unity on the House floor. An intra-party fight on the House floor might give the rump Democrat minority excessive leverage and worsen any intraparty split.

The Texas Speaker will be decided on January 11, so there is not much time left to make a difference and get more State Reps on board for Rep Ken Paxton. Now is the time to keep the momentum going through December. 51 declared opponents to Straus and a caucus process and it will be ‘game over’. There are 21 declared opponents now. 30 to go. Direct contact with State Representatives is the best way to go, and they should all be encouraged both to support Paxton for Speaker and to support the caucus process to select a consensus Republican choice for Speaker. This can be done and Texas can have a conservative Speaker, but it will be uphill and the outcome is not yet written. December action will make or break this effort.

“The quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail. But hope remains, if friends stay true.”
- Elf Queen Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring

Updated from cross-posted article here:

http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2010/11/speakers-race-update.html

Maybe Senator DeMint was wrong. ObamaCare isn’t actually Obama’s Waterloo, it’s his Stalingrad.

Hitler made three big mistakes in 1942 fighting the Russians. First, he tried to do three things in the Russian South in the summer of 1942: Take Caucasus oil fields, take the black sea ports and take Stalingrad. He bit off more than he could chew. His 6th Army got bogged down in street fighting in Stalingrad, and a city that had a deadline to be taken in August, which slipped into October and then November, with the city not fully in his control. Then he underestimated the Russians, setting himself up for a trap. In November, the Russians under Genreal Zhukov counterattacked in a pincer movement and in a week were able to surround the German Army in Stalingrad. Hitler then made the third mistake that cost him the whole 6th Army – instead of having them try a breakout retreat, he forced them to hold their ground, as he didnt want to give up Stalingrad. But his Lufwaffe lacked the air superiority to supply the surrounded troops. He lost both the city and his army.

Far be it from me to make comparisons that invoke Godwin’s Law, but President Obama and the Democrat leaders have made parallel mistakes this year to those made by German High Command in 1942: First, they were over-ambitious and put too much politically risky things on the plate. They went in three directions, instead of one consistent vector. The ambitious over-reach ignited a conservative reaction in Tea Parties, and pegged Obama as a left-liberal. The legistative division, in particular the cap-and-trade House vote in June, started to make the wheels fall off of Congressional discipline. Deadlines for legislative accomplishments have been blown, and the big-ticket legislative front – cap-and-trade, immigration amnesty, card check, big spending, ObamaCare – has had middling success, with only the “Stimulus” as the big ticket that has actually passed Obama’s desk. Obama failed to “choose his battles.”

Second, they underestimated the opposition, both disorganized and organized. They’ve insulted the “Teabaggers” and put Republicans they might have got on board bipartisan bills out in the cold, taking a very partisan approach simply because they felt the numbers insulate them. The failed to consider that an energized minority has powerful ability to shape, if not the final votes, at least the debate – as the August recess showed.

Now, they are on mistake number three: Holding on to the ObamaCare prize even as the legislative and lobbying street-fighting make it impossible to fully win a clean bill. Will they make it? Only yesterday, it seemed that maybe they had; they first tried a “Medicare buy-in” trial balloon, and that didn’t work, and then, having given up finally on public option to win over Senator Lieberman, find that progressives are now off the reservation and calling for the bill to be killed. Oh, and Senator Nelson is still a “NO” too.

The bill without public option is the ‘all-pain no-gain’ version, as I mentioned three months back. That is why – even though the votes aren’t really there – they are trying to put public option in. With it out, the liberals say stuff like: “I’ll be D @ M N E D if I’m going to be forced to buy something that is costly and inefficient. ” on HuffPost. The coup de grace may be Senator Burris being a ‘no’ vote if public option is excluded.

Obama’s polling numbers are worse than ever, and the ObamaCare bill gets more and more unpopular. Must be something to do with the trillions it will tax and spend in the next decade. So trying to hold on to a bill for the sake of holding on to it could be the costliest and final mistake of a very mistake-prone first year for President Obama. A flawed reform will only energize and anger opponents, while at the same time demoralizing his own base who a defecting from the bill. Time has run out for Senator Reid’s “A bill by Christmas” deadline.

The Bad Obamacare Bill should just be killed – kick it to January, get out a clean sheet, and do a tailored targeted bill that only does the minimum popular things. But Democrats will probably decide to throw good political capital after already-spent political capital in a desperate gamble of losing teams. Holding the ground didn’t work in Stalingrad 1942 and it won’t work here.

Hey Democrats, You’re Screwed!.

Originally posted at Travis Monitor.

Amending the U.S. Constitution is so hard that we have only done it 27 times in our history, and only 17 times in U.S. histroy if you consider the first 10 as an initial corrective by the founders themselves. Out of frustration, some ask the question:

Should we support having a constitutional convention?

Short answer: NO! An open-ended rewrite of the Constitution permits few opportunities for improvement but has far to many opportunities for mischief and disimprovement, especially with near-majorities of Americans unmoored by the brilliant understanding of limited Federal Government embedded in the Constitution. We have in some ways been saved by the very limitations of the document from further Government-expanding experiments.

As one commenter put it: “There is nothing wrong with our Constitution. The problem is with our politicians, and with the lazy citizenry who refuse to vote them out when they consistently violate that Constitution.”

However, the challenge of getting around the Congressional roadblock on Amendments that curtail the Congress (such as term limits) is a real one. So one very good idea did bubble up out of the discussion:

I would prefer to add a 3rd method of Amendment: If 3/4ths of the States pass an identical Resolution of Amendment within a fixed time window, then that Amendment is placed before the voters at the next Congressional election for ratification, majority vote.

This bypasses Congress when necessary, and strengthens the hand of the States with respect to the Federal Government.

I would propose the language thusly:

State-initiated Constitutional Amendment Process

When 3/4ths of the States have passed in their respective legislatures identical Resolutions of Amendment within the prior 7 year period, the proposed Amendment in that Resolution of Amendment shall be placed before the voters of all the States at the next Congressional election for their approval, in the form of a ballot referendum.

Such an Amendment shall be deemed to have passed the referendum under the condition where a majority of elector-equivalent votes are counted for the proposal, such elector-equivalent votes having been counted as follows: In each district or State where a number of electors are chosen for President, that number is used as the number of elector-equivalent votes. These elector-equivalent votes are considered for or against the Amendment referendum, depending on whether a majority of ballots cast by voters in that given district or State are for or against the proposed Amendment respectively.

Any such Amendment, having been approved through the above process, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution.

This itself is a Constitutional Amendment. Which means it needs to get through Congress. However, since it is generic, clean, and pro-Federalism and supportive of ‘we the people’, it should garner wide support.

I honestly thought it was satire when I read first that President Obama won the Nobel Peace prize. How absurd! A formerly important international prize has now reached the nadir of irrelevent tom-foolery by giving the current President an ‘affirmative action’ Nobel Peace Prize he did nothing to earn. What has he done lately other than embolden violent enemies and lost Olympic bids? It was just last week was satirized by SNL for lack of accomplishments, but the ignoble Nobel clowns didn’t get the memo.

Even the UK Times calls says: absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize, saying: “Sadly, it seems they have so bedazzled the Norwegians that they can no longer separate hopes from achievement. The achievements of all previous winners have been diminished.” The mockery made more notable for the fact that “The deadline for nominations was February 1, meaning Obama was nominated after being in office for just 11 days.” National Review notes:

Every year since 1901, the peace prize has been given by a committee of five Norwegians. They are appointed by the Norwegian parliament, the Storting. The Nobel Peace Prize always reflects the consensus of Norwegian politics. And that consensus is, in a word — a word the Norwegians might well choose — “progressive.” Others might call it left-wing.

The Nobel peace prize has gone off the rails into the deep end of left-wing identity politics and absurd peace awards before (Arafat, Gore, Carter, the fraud Rigobeto Menchu, etc.) Yet now, they are no longer even tethered to the excuse of some accomplishment. All this is about is how un-Bush Obama is, and how he makes the left feel. The Nobel Peace Prize has become the “un-Bush Prize” for the public figure these 5 Norwegians think is least like George W Bush.

The committee has said, “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

Really. Which hope? Is it the $13 trillion in deficits? The 4 million jobs lost since Obama was inaugurated? Or simply the hope of leftists that American supremacy is kaput and America is choosing to decline, and free market capitalism took a beating in the past year?

They said: “In the past year Obama has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations.”

Really. They say this just a week after a vicious attack by the Taliban in Afghanistan left 8 Americans killed. Two weeks after Iran announced more about their nuclear program (which we’ve known about since 2006).

The more things change the more things stay the same. Again this year – Five Norwegian Idiots Pick Another Leftist.

Perhaps I am wrong in the headlines. Perhaps it should be Five Norwegian Leftists Pick Another Idiot. It’s unclear whether this was stupidity or just leftist In any case, it would be useful to get the names of the members of the Nobel committee, to understand exactly who came up with this inspired bit of late-night comedy material.

Another thought: Bill Clinton surely is steamed right about now. Think about it. The logical name to pick, had Hillary won the past election, would have been Bill Clinton for the Nobel “un-Bush” prize as a celebration of her election.

The Baucas ObamaCare bill text is out. It should be known as America’s Death of Healthcare Freedom Act of 2009. This bill has 250 pages and it’s not even the real legislative language. It’s in English … sort of.

The bill forces people, via multiple mandates and taxes and subsidies, to get people into Government-controlled health insurance:

Personal Responsibility Requirement. Beginning in 2013, all U.S. citizens and legal residents would be required to purchase coverage through (1) the individual market, a public program such as Medicare, Medicaid, the Children‘s Health Insurance Program, Veteran‘s Health Care Program, or TRICARE or through an employer (or as a dependent of a covered employee) in the small group market, meeting at least the requirements of a bronze plan, or (2) in the large group market, in a plan with first dollar coverage for prevention-related services as recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force – except in cases where value-based insurance design is used and cannot have a maximum out-of-pocket limit greater than that provided by the standards established for HSA current law limit.

The ObamaCare train has been sluggish, but it IS moving forward. Like with Napoleon and Hitler invading Russia, October is the dangerous month. EITHER THEY GET IT DONE IN THE NEXT 6 WEEKS or the agenda starts to freeze in the winter.

The gameplan is out there.

Keep your eye on the vapor bill. Heritage blogs the Democrats’ game plan:

Here is what we know. Sources on K Street and on Capitol Hill have confirmed the following scenario:

1. Senate staffers from the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate HELP (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee) are in the process of writing the bill RIGHT NOW that the Senate will consider the second full week of October;
2. Senator Reid will have to move to proceed to a House passed tax measure to avoid a “Blue Slip” problem. The term blue slip describes the procedure the House uses to stop the Senate from originating a tax bill. The Constitution states “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” The House passed tax measures that are on the Senate Calendar are as follows:
- H.R. 1664 The AIG Bonus Bill;
- H.R. 2751 A tax bill promoting fuel efficient cars;
- H.R. 2454 House passed Global Warming bill; and,
- Any other tax measure that comes from the House in the next few days.
3. Senator Reid uses all the procedural tactics in his toolbox to shut down debate and control the Amendment process to get this Senate debate completed by the end of October. They can add the Public Option as an amendment on the Senate floor with a simple majority if they have the will.

Our sources further tell us that moderate Democrats are experiencing heartburn over the cost aspect of the bill. If the bill gets a big score from the Congressional Budget Office, moderate Democrats in the Senate are going to rebel. Also, the “Read the Bill” movement in the heartland is having an effect inside the halls of the Capitol. This bill is going to come back over to the House and they are going to have to consider taking up and passing the Senate passed bill or bounce it back to the House. Worst case scenario, a bill may be on the President’s desk by November 1st, because the House will have the opportunity to take up and pass the Senate passed bill to get it to the President.

Well, here it comes folks. Consider the serious violations of basic ethical governance happening right now in the Senate’s mad rush to pass ObamaCare:

- The outrageous and unseemly refusal of the Senate under Reid and the Baucus Senate Finance Committee to properly write legislative language and allow people to read bills before voting on it

- The comments of Sen Carper, Sen Kerry and others laughing at the very suggestion that Senators read bills. see Senator Carper: Read the bill, are you kidding me?

- The refusal to take the time to get the bill scored by CBO for cost.

- The bait-and-switch of voting provisions down in committee and using the ‘nuclear option’ of reconciliation to get public option passed.

There are minefields to cross – on the left:

46 Liberal Dems – Medicare plus 5 or no go.

Then there is the taxpayer funding of abortion – an issue brought fully to life with the defeat in the Senate of the Hatch amendment. Consider this Pew Poll: Americans increasingly pro-life but 4 in 10 don’t know Obama’s position on it, while Catholic bishops skeptical of costly and pro-abortion Obamacare provisons.

So what is a conservative activist to do?

1. Read the Text!

2. Make ObamaCare #1 focus of activism in the month of October. It’s time to realize that ‘public option’ is not the full problem and issue with ObamaCare. It’s the – Taxes, mandates, rationing/care restrictions, over-spending, unfunded mandates, Medicare screw tightening, taxpayer funded abortions, illegal aliens covered, job-killing taxes on business, fees and taxes on health insurance plans, and restrictions on health savings accounts. that’s just the Top Ten. Go back to #1 and find more.

3. Fight the nuclear option. It’s an outrageous way to pass a major bill like this.

4. Fight for every vote. A barely-scraping by vote may be enough to derail it, just as the cap&trade vote was a depressent to that agenda.

This is Fourth and Goal for the Obama side. We need to make a fourth and goal defensive effort. Stop every play, every move, make every effort.

Falling prey to the same type of brain cancer that recently took journalist Bob Novak, Senator Ted Kennedy died yesterday.

In his young years, he was overshadowed by his prominent older brothers. He was the weaker brother, lacking Robert’s passion and intensity and Jack’s intelligence and wit. He got kicked out of college for cheating and then used someone to cheat for him to pass the law exam. On the basis of his Presidential brother and his Kennedy political family strength, yet having no real prior experience or accomplishments save for his name, he became in 1962 a young Massachusetts Senator.

Who would have thought that this man would end up as important a member of the Kennedy clan as any other? Yet he did. Ted Kennedy’s near life-long and almost half-a-century career was as a US Senator from Massachusetts, and in that position he has impacted nearly every issue of this whole era.

Ted Kennedy’s lack of discipline in his personal life led to the tragedy of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. Drunk and with Mary Jo in July 1969, Ted drove off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, submerging his car; he escaped from the sunken car, but instead of seeking help to save her life he ran and swam away. His actions killed Mary Jo, and it took remarkable control of the media and the local judicial process by his powerful family to coverup his true crime and save his political career. In the end, it would doom his chances for the Presidency when, in 1980, he was simply unable to account for and explain his actions. Scandal didn’t leave him. He was accused of using drugs in the 1980s and in 1991 was caught up in the date-rape charge made against his nephew.

Kennedy’s legacy politically will be his actions for 45 years on the Senate floor. Admired so much by liberals, he became for them the ‘lion’ of the Senate. To Ted Kennedy, Federal Government was the hammer and every social issue was the nail. His political legacy, like his personal one, is one of undisciplined liberalism. Unmoored by constraints of fiscal discipline or policy constraints of asking whether Government programs are effective, efficient and worthwhile.

Kennedy pushed through a 1965 immigration bill, predicting wrongly that it would not
Greatly change or expand immigration:

“First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same … Secondly, the ethnic mix (of the country) will not be upset…” — Kennedy, speaking in the Senate in favor of his 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act.

Kennedy was wrong. The immigration bill’s impact was huge, and it helped spawn the ongoing endemic problems of illegal immigration while radically shifting the types of immigrants that come to America.

Kennedy wrongly predicted when the oil and gas prices were being decontrolled in 1981 that priced would skyrocket. The opposite happened. In the 1980s, the price of oil fell as previously high prices put demand down and the new OPEC supplies overwhelmed demand.

Kennedy incited the era of “Borking” and ugly Supreme Court nomination politics with his inflammatory and slanderous charges against Robert Bork on the Senate floor. The truth would not suffice to defeat Bork, So Kennedy scare-mongered against Bork:

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is — and is often the only — protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….

This was not an outburst but a calculated political slander. Kennedy’s lies worked. What was before that time a mostly rubber-stamp confirmation of Presidential picks, which in turn were in many cases guesswork, became a high-stakes arena for the right and left to duke out to control the interpretation of the Constitution.

At various times, Senator Kennedy has made other inflammatory remarks, for pointed political effect. Just as remarkable has been the restrained and often kind way the targets of his attacks have responded. After Kennedy attacked President G W Bush on the Senate floor, in effect accusing him of starting the Iraq war for oil profits, he was lauded by the GHWBush library for his ‘public service’ as a Senator.

Ted Kennedy over the years added gravitas and accomplishments, mainly by pushing through Government expansion bills. Under President Bush, he wrote (his staff wrote) the No Child Left Behind act. President Bush in effect allowed his domestic agenda to get written by Kennedy. Republicans such as Senator Hatch and Senator McCain worked with Kennedy on ‘bipartisan’ bills.

Ted Kennedy’s true legacy is that of liberalism to excess. He would think nothing of proposing more spending in an era of trillion dollar deficits; he ushered in the era of making political blood sport out of judicial nominations. He would think nothing of tearing down a president for political gain. For good or bad, Ted Kennedy has shaped much of politics today. His legacy? Look to our leviathan Federal Government itself. It’s the house that Ted built.

(Crossposted from Travis Mon http://travismonitor.blogspot.com/2009/08/ted-kennedy-legacy.html )

Rep Doggett’s Town Hall today in Austin, Texas, did NOT Go According to Plan. Cut short by protesters and an attempt to escape met with a group that blocked his car. A posting on the incident at Free Republic has the after-action report:

An angry crowd of an estimated 300 people caused Lloyd Doggett to cut short his “office hours” public appearance in Austin. When asked if he would change his vote on health care if it appeared that his constituents did not want it, he stated that he had to use his judgment and just because a few angry people come out it was no reason to change his vote.

Following that he called an end to the discussion and attempted to leave 30 minutes before the published time. He was followed through the parking lot to his car by constituents chanting “just say no”, His car was blocked and he was delayed leaving.

A Doggett supporter described the incident as “a nasty crowd’

Help us show him how these constituents feel.
The next “office hours” meeting is scheduled for 4pm today at the Bastrop County Courthouse. Make your voice heard.

More reporting on it:

WHAT a good time I had today and I must admit I was on the edges and not starting all the chanting and pressuring. I figure I call his office every day so he hears from me, this time it was little old ladies on walkers and they had never done this before.

Almost all the signs, no socialized medicine, keep your hands off my rights, just say no, pictures of Doggett with big X’s across the face.

There was no sound system, so he could only be heard by 5 people at a time. He was asked if this Health care was going to cover illegal alliens and he said, NO.
they started calling him a”liar” and “read the bill”.

I had a copy of the bill (weighs almost 10 #’s) and they pushed me to the front but I didn’t get to question him.

This protest is one week after anti-ObamaCare counter-protesters out-numbered ACORN types at an AFL-CIO pro-ObamaCare event 2-to-1. Conservative / liberty activists are taking it to the street in Austin.

Crossposted to Travis Monitor

The Obamacare bills in Congress are a clear and present danger to the life, liberty and prosperity of Americans. That’s why I call the Waxman House bill the “Destroy American Freedom Act” and urge everyone to learn about how horrible these bills are. The healthcare ‘reform’ engine is based on myths like the myth of 46 million uninsured, but the lies are getting exposed and the Mask is off with this Rube Goldberg bureaucratic monstrosity. These ObamaCare bills could one day literally kill people.

Here are Ten Ways Obamacare will kill things we hold dear:

1. It kills jobs: It contains small business mandates and higher taxes, including an 8% payroll tax on businesses that don’t offer health insurance, that will make businesses shed jobs and crush a weak employment situation.Previous health care tax hikes have already killed jobs and this will be even worse.
2. It kills choice: choice of employers, employees, self-employed, health providers, hospitals, all will have their choices reduced and eliminated by the bureaucratic morass created by the Federal program. Malkin calls it “The Death of Choice.”
3. It kills innovation.
4. It literally kills via inevitable rationing, which has caused suffering in other ‘single-payer’ countries and which Obama has chillingly justified. See “Health rations and you” for a satiric glimpse of the future.
5. It kills productive Americans through higher taxes, pushing top effective tax rates well above 50% in some states, and taxing those who dare to go without expensive mandated health insurance. Is the solution to the uninsured to tax 8 million Americans without health insurance? Even the Washington Post is skeptical of these massive tax hikes.
6. It kills fiscal responsibility: With $1 trillion over ten years and a true cost of $4 trillion, Obamacare ramps up a new $200 billion/year entitlement program that hurtles the Federal Government ever faster to bankruptcy. Claims that it would save long-term health costs are refuted by CBO; it saves no money but adds costs to the Government.
7. It will kill state Government budgets by forcing higher Medicaid costs on states. Says TPPF: It “would hijack Texas’ state budget as part of its government takeover of our health care system” to the tune of $4 billion a year in Texas alone.
8. Over the long-term, it will kill private sector health insurance: The Govt-run health insurance scheme will lead to destruction of private health insurance as the rules and subsidies make it impossible for private health insurance to function in true market-oriented way. It will destroy private health insurance and lead to single-payer.
9. It kills quality care by doctors, bureaucratizing the entire system and cutting quality to cut costs.
10. It kills our freedom: It forbids individual private health insurance outside ‘exchanges’ that are set up to reduce choice in health insurance by channelling people into public care (see #8) – “Individual health insurance coverage that is not grandfathered health insurance coverage under subsection (a) may only be offered on or after the first day of Y1 as an Exchange-participating health benefits plan”; it punishes opting out of health insurance; it outlaws health insurance that doesnt meet burdensome Federal guidelines.

This bill outlaws giving someone a job and only paying a wage for that job. As stated here: “If the government purports to deprive me of my right to contract with a doctor to provide me or my family with healthcare at a price I am freely willing to pay and the doctor is freely willing to accept, that is an act of tyranny warranting open rebellion.”

Ultimately, this bill will kill the health industry as we know it, sending America in a direction where we have fewer rights and choices than even people in socialized healthcare countries. Not that the status quo is great, as both the current system and more government intervention suffer from the same lack of market fundamentals: Little direct-pay natural price controls, barriers to competition, high litigation and regulation costs, massive cost-shifting, excessive system complexity, and not enough consumer responsible and choice. Everything bad about the current system will get worse under ObamaCare. There is an alternative to this nightmare: Put consumers back in control and in responsibility for health care spending.

Stopping this bill may be the last chance we get at having a choice over our healthcare.

Cross-posted at Travis Monitor.