Kincaid: Obama Poised to Win Budget Battle and Slash Defense
Another discussion by liberal talking heads on CNN yesterday depicted House conservatives as fanatical budget-cutters standing in the way of a “deal” on federal spending and debt. But the Cut, Cap, and Balance Bill, which has been portrayed as draconian and fiscally conservative, actually raises the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion. Nine House Republicans voted against the bill for this and other related reasons.
Coverage of the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act (H.R. 2560) has been extremely misleading. The coverage is reminiscent of how the media portray cuts in the rate of growth of federal spending as actual cuts.
In this case, however, the House Republican leadership went along with the ploy, in order to portray themselves as serious budget cutters. The liberal media were only too willing to oblige, setting up a final showdown in which Obama stands to come out the big winner and make cuts that will undermine our national defense—a constitutional obligation of the federal government.
Indeed, one of the “popular” alternatives, now being touted by some in the liberal media, is a plan by “conservative” Senator Tom Coburn to cut $1 trillion from the U.S. defense budget. His options include cancelling aircraft carriers, “reforming” the Joint Strike Fighter program, delaying production of the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle, terminating a mobile air defense system, reducing nuclear weapons, and reducing purchases of the V-22 Osprey.
At Commentary magazine, Alana Goodman writes of the Coburn plan that “it’s far more radical than Obama’s own recommendation to slash the defense budget by $400 billion.” She adds, “Military spending is not the reason why we’re in a fiscal crisis. Getting rid of wasteful spending in the defense budget is one thing, but strangling it with cuts will endanger our troops and dangerously diminish America’s standing in the world.”
Read More at GOPUSA By Cliff Kincaid, GOPUSA
McConnell Prepares to Betray Tea Party, Aid Obama’s Debt Ceiling Power Grab
Even as freshman Congressmen passed the Cut, Cap, and Balance proposal last night, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell quietly planned to sell them out. Insiders report McConnell is going through the motions of voting on the House measure but has invested his energy in cutting a deal with Democrats and give Barack Obama unconstitutional and near-dictatorial powers to raise the debt ceiling.
The Hill newspaper exposed the betrayal:
Publicly, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) have made votes on the Cut, Cap and Balance Act and a balanced-budget amendment their priority this week.
But GOP aides say the leaders are already looking past those votes to a potential deal with Democrats to raise the debt limit before an Aug. 2 deadline and spare Republican lawmakers from a political backlash.
“McConnell is going to let cut, cap and balance have its vote and then immediately move to plan B,” said a GOP aide in reference to the fallback debt plan McConnell is negotiating with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
McConnell’s “Plan B” would allow Barack Obama to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling in three portions over the next year. Only a supermajority of more than two-thirds of Congressmen could override him.
Read More at Floyd Reports by Ben Johnson, The White House Watch
Joe Miller agrees to pay legal fees
Joe Miller, who lost a 2010 senate bid against Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, announced he won’t be appealing a court order requiring that he pay state legal fees incurred in his fight to overturn the election results.
“Given the amount at issue, it simply does not make good financial sense to move forward with the appeal,” Miller said in a statement Thursday. “Pyrrhic victories are not my goal. Accordingly, this court fight ends today.”
After losing to tea party-backed Miller in the Republican primary, Murkowski ran as a write-in candidate in the general election in November.
When Murkowski won by 4.5 percentage points, Miller called on the Division of Elections to review the ballots in accordance to state election law, which says write-in votes must match the name of the candidate. Miller claimed all ballots with misspellings should be thrown out in a recount.
But the state had ruled as long as a voter’s intent was clear on the write-in, then a misspelled ballot could be counted. The Superior Court judge rejected Miller’s lawsuit, and the state’s Supreme Court upheld the decision.
Read More at CNN by Ashley Killough, CNN
Here is the press release: https://www.joemiller.us/2011/07/miller-chooses-not-to-appeal-legal-fees-ruling/
Miller Chooses Not to Appeal Legal Fees Ruling
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Fairbanks, Alaska. July 21, 2011 — After much consideration, Joe Miller has decided not to appeal the Superior Court’s award of attorney fees from the suit with the State of Alaska, Division of Elections.
Spokesman Randy DeSoto stated, “We still have concerns with the Court’s reasoning, particularly with respect to the false and insulting notion that Joe’s run for the United States Senate was driven by selfish financial gain. Joe’s reasons for public service have not changed. It is the same love of country that motivated him to risk his life in combat as an Army officer.”
Joe Miller added, “The Court’s claim that I was motivated by a U.S. Senator’s salary is wrong and has no factual support in the record. The truth is I ran for the Senate because I wanted to serve my country and represent the people of the great State of Alaska. I was stirred to action by a deeply held belief that our country was (and is) headed in the wrong direction, and I wanted to be part of the solution. I’ve chosen not to appeal, recognizing that course would have spent money that hard-working Americans entrusted to me. Given the amount at issue, it simply does not make good financial sense to move forward with the appeal. Pyrrhic victories are not my goal. Accordingly, this court fight ends today. I’m directing my counsel to contact the Alaska Attorney General’s office today and make arrangements to pay the fees required by this court ruling in an expeditious manner.”
Though the court battle ends today, Joe’s commitment to public service, and his fight for the future of our country, will continue.
Fox Host: Mitt Romney Obviously Not a Christian
Mitt Romney is “not a Christian” and therefore he may not have a good chance of raising big money among Christians if Rick Perry runs for president, “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt said Sunday.
The discussion on Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s possible run for the White House Sunday morning led Earhardt, Fox News correspondent and weekend co-host of the daily news analysis, to pronounce what many evangelicals and mainstream Christians believe: former Massachusetts Gov. Romney, a Mormon, is “obviously not a Christian.”
The talk turned to Romney, the presumptive frontrunner, when host Dave Briggs said he wasn’t sure if Perry could “get in and raise money with Mitt Romney.” Co-host Clayton Morris replied that many Republican thought he couldn’t. But Earhardt disagreed. “Well the Christian coalition … I think [Rick Perry] can get a lot of money from that base because [of] Romney obviously not being a Christian … Rick Perry, he’s always on talk shows, on Christian talk shows, he has days of prayer in Texas,” she said.
This comes amid efforts of Romney, one of the two Mormon presidential contenders apart from Jon Huntsman, to woo evangelical voters. Both Romney and Huntsman spoke at the last month’s Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, D.C., in an apparent attempt to show their commitment to key social issues and to conservative voters.
However, many evangelicals say the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Romney’s denomination, is non-Christian. While a June 2011 Pew poll showed that 58 percent of white evangelicals didn’t see a problem in supporting a Mormon candidate, evangelicals are warning the voters to be careful.
Read More at Christian Post By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post
$6.2 Mil To Train Poor Minorities For “Green Jobs”
The federal agency that’s spending a fortune to bring “environmental justice” to poor and minority communities around the U.S. has just dropped an additional $6.2 million to train low-income residents for “green jobs” in one city alone.
It’s all part of the Obama Administration’s costly crusade to help underserved populations obtain the same degree of protection from health and environmental hazards as their wealthy counterparts. Here’s how it works; the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gives money to leftwing groups—including some dedicated to helping illegal immigrants—that teach black, Latino and indigenous folks how to recycle, reduce carbon emissions through “weatherization” and participate in “green jobs” training.
In the last few months alone the EPA has doled out nearly $10 million for environmental justice causes that include a multi million-dollar study on how pollution, stress and social factors affect “poor and underserved communities.” A New Jersey nonprofit (Lazos America Unida) that advocates on behalf of the “Mexican immigrant community” and a Missouri farm workers’ group that will increase awareness about the dangers of sun and heat exposure in migrant populations were among the recipients of that grant.
As if this weren’t bad enough, the EPA keeps wasting taxpayer dollars on these dubious causes. The latest allocation of $6.2 million will go to 21 “community groups” that will “recruit, train and place unemployed, predominately low-income residents in polluted areas” in Atlanta. Uncle Sam’s investment will “create good, green jobs that protect the health of local families and residents and prepare communities for continued economic growth,” according to Obama’s EPA chief, Lisa Jackson.
Program participants will master valuable skills such as “environmental site sampling” and “green building techniques” as well as “construction and demolition debris recycling” and “energy auditing and weatherization.” Graduates will use their skills to improve the environment and people’s health while supporting economic development in their communities, according to the EPA. Ideal candidates are “hard to place residents that live in the disadvantaged communities that will benefit the most through these projects.”
Gang of Six gambit revives spending shell game
The combined forces of Democrats, the liberal media, and squishy Republicans are working to stampede Republicans into ratifying the expansion of the federal government from an average of under 20% of GDP up to 25%, where it stands after two and a half years of Obama. This is being done in the guise of the Gang of Six Plan (summary here), based on the Simpson-Bowles Commission, whose work was snubbed by President Obama when it was delivered several months ago.
The script being played out today is by now familiar in the age of Obama. Rather than confront problems in a timely manner, Obama waits until a crisis looms, scare-mongers about a nonexistent “crisis” (in this case, alleged “default” even though there is sufficient federal revenue to service debt and cover Social Security and Defense), and seeks to stampede Republicans into a “compromise” in which they provide real and immediate concessions in return for vague promises of something good happening sometime in the future.
The Gang claims “savings” of $3.7 trillion over ten years, but Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has seen the plan scores the actual cuts at 1.2 trillion. But “savings” promised beyond the current Congress are meaningless, since no Congress can obligate a future Congress’s ability to spend )or do anything else). In return, they are asked to buy into higher taxes, many of them in the form of “tax reform” eliminating “loopholes” such as the mortgage interest deduction. (If you think housing prices have crashed, just wait until mortgages are no longer deductible. I can think of no better way to further devastate the ressidential construction industry and the personal wealth of the middle class.)
Daniel Mitchell of Cato provides a guide what the GOP is being asked to accept as “compromise.”
Some key points (read the whole thing):
The entire package is based on dishonest Washington budget math. Spending increases under the plan, but the politicians claim to be cutting spending because the budget didn’t grow even faster.
Read More at American Thinker By Thomas Lifson, American Thinker