The rapid-fire succession of floor votes in the House this year has triggered lawmaker confusion and mistakes.
With dozens of votes stacked in a lengthy series on recent bills, a number of House lawmakers have cast the wrong votes.
Read More at the Hill by Molly K. Hooper, the Hill
The jobless rate in America hovers at 9.1 percent. The national debt ticks upwards of $14.3 trillion and small businesses collapse daily due to costly bureaucratic regulations. The President has failed to offer a viable plan that will put America’s economy back on a path to prosperity. It is in this context that President Obama invites questions about jobs and the economy via Twitter tomorrow afternoon for the nation’s first presidential Twitter town hall.
If you ever wanted to put President Obama on the spot for these things and more, the Twitter town hall may be your opportunity. The President will sit in the East Room of the White House for a live webcast answering the selected Twitter questions in a forum moderated by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey recently announced that Larry Summers, the President’s former economic adviser, will join the board of directors of another company he started, Square.
The handle @townhall will summarize the President’s answers, though he will not respond via Twitter to the questions. According to the New York Times: “Twitter will select the questions, using curation tools and a group of Twitter users to help identify the most popular questions raised both before and during the event. Twitter will be relying on its own search and curation features as well as a company called Mass Relevance to help find questions and topics that are most frequently mentioned.”
So using the hashtag #AskObama, you should have the opportunity to ask the President all those burning questions you have about the broken economy, especially if enough of you ask the same question. The Heritage Foundation has a few questions for the President. We’d love for you to follow suit, or tweet these. It is important that conservatives make their voices heard using #AskObama tomorrow.
1. Background: Conservatives in the House of Representatives passed a serious budget proposal with necessary reforms and responsible steps. Liberals haven’t passed—or even offered—a budget in over two years, making their concerns voiced about America’s fiscal future seem false. The President’s own budget was defeated 97–0 in the Senate.
Read More at Heritage by Ericka Andersen, Heritage Foundation
On a sparkling Independence day in Clear Lake Iowa, Republican presidential candidate Michelle Bachman worked a parade crowd and asserted a bit of independence from the GOP pack of candidates. Bachmann, along with Republican Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, is one of only two Republican contenders not to sign a pledge to cut, cap and balance the federal budget. That pledge, the brainchild of the Republican Study Committee, has been gaining steam in recent days as another litmus test for Republican candidates. It calls for immediate spending cuts to reduce the deficit by half next year. It would also impose enforceable caps that bring spending in line with average revenues at 18 percent of the GDP. And finally, it would require House and Senate passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. Some say the pledge offers an escape from the debt ceiling gridlock presently paralyzing Congress. But Bachmann wants it to go further, by defunding President Obama’s Affordable Healthcare Act. She says she’s “mulling over” signing the pledge. Huntsman, the other pledge resister, prefers a stand-alone balanced budget amendment. Seven other Republican candidates, as well as over a hundred members in the House and a half dozen Republican Senators, see the pledge as a way out of repeated legislative snafus over budget problems. “If we could for the first time in American history, pass through the House and the Senate a balance budget amendment, send it to the states for ratification, that’s historical,” says Jim Jordan, Republican Congressman from Ohio. “This could be one of those defining moments in American history, where we get the right things put in place so that we never get to this point again where we’re on the verge of a debt crisis.”
Read More at Fox News by Doug McKelway, Fox News
This Fourth of July we are reflecting on the Founding Father’s intensive study of the Roman civilization. Knowing history, they embraced Rome’s virtues and eschewed her vices. The Founders understood the currents of history which gave us a collective heritage unrivaled. Sadly, we as a nation are turning our backs on the morality that made America special. The country has convulsed in the past 30 years as a new modern morality has supplanted the currents of culture built nearly two thousand years ago along the shores of Galilee. This new culture is not yet fully defined, but we stand horrified as we peer into the future. The culture of the Roman world was brutal and nasty. Ironically, we see its worst practices reviving with vigor. Please give us a moment as we recount a history seldom taught today’s students. The Roman Empire had a twisted view about the value of human life. These views were banished by the ascendency of Christ’s teaching. Infanticide was both legal and encouraged in ancient Rome. Pagan societies, such as the Carthaginians, Romans and Greeks went so far as to kill their children outside the womb, sometimes as a religious sacrifice to their gods. According to Plutarch, the Carthaginians “offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs of young birds; meanwhile the mothers stood by without a tear or moan.” We see a modern American society which looks at children as a burden, and a generation of mothers who have decided by their own “choice” to sacrifice a generation. Population control is now an international objective.
Read More at Floyd Reports by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, Floyd Reports
As if the American public’s tolerance for political chicanery hasn’t been tested beyond the breaking point, now comes news that several shyster Progressives and Democrats are floating the notion that the debt ceiling is – get this – unconstitutional. Far be it from me to ask, but why is it the only time Progressives and Democrats concern themselves with the constitutionality of issues is when its concern their ability to spend money?
US Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) – you remember him, he’s the candidate that Delawareans deemed better suited to represent them than Christine O’Donnell; the one who wrote an article for his college newspaper, entitled “Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist” – is quoted as saying:
“This is an issue that’s been raised in some private debate between senators as to whether in fact we can default, or whether that provision of the Constitution can be held up as preventing default…I don’t think, as of a couple weeks ago, when this was first raised, it was seen as a pressing option. But I’ll tell you that it’s going to get a pretty strong second look as a way of saying, ‘Is there some way to save us from ourselves?’”
Great choice, Delawareans…you should be proud.
Now, most clear thinking Americans, when examining the depth of the financial crisis – the deficit spending and the debt accrued – have already come to the overwhelming conclusion that our elected officials – and the apparatus they have constructed in the federal bureaucracy – have taken to outrageous, unacceptable and, in no uncertain terms, grotesque spending habits. They have created such a financial catastrophe that in poll after poll, the American public agrees that spending by the US federal government must be not only reined in, but limited from this point forward so that the ideologues and social engineering zealots can’t bring our nation to the brink of non-existence, such as we find ourselves today.
Make no mistake, when I say federal government I am not just speaking of Democrats; many Republicans and, without question, each and every Progressive are included. In fact, where Progressives are concerned – seeing as their ideology is basically Marxism with a Madison Avenue sell job – spending other people’s money “for the good of the people” is in the DNA.
Read More at GOPUSA by Frank Salvato, GOPUSA
If the GOP is really serious about winning back the presidency, it needs to win the deficit debate. The government of these United States is broke — flat broke — and if the nation is to survive as the prosperous nation it has long been, Republicans must restore fiscal sanity and call a halt to spending money we don’t have!
That’s what the Republicans promised us they would do last November, and largely on the strength of that pledge we let them take back the House. After all, it’s obvious that we can’t trust the Democrats to spend the public’s money wisely and well.
President Obama is promising to seek $3 in spending cuts for every $1 of new taxes, exactly as my father Ronald Reagan sought to do. When my dad passed away in 2004, he was still waiting for that $3. Barack Obama can expect the same dismal outcome.
Ask the first President George Bush how it worked out when he cut a deal with the Democrats in 1991 to reduce the deficit by $500 billion. All he had to do was go back a little on his “Read my lips — NO NEW TAXES” pledge and raise taxes just a little bit.
The Democrats promised not to use the tax issue in the 1992 elections. They promptly hung President Bush with it. So I say to the Republican leadership, as Margaret Thatcher once said to GHW Bush, “Now is not the time to go wobbly.” Stick to your guns and call a halt to spending nonexistent dollars.
Read More at Floyd Reports by Michael Reagan
The federal government is arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court that police investigators and other authorities should be allowed to track American citizens in the U.S. to develop the “probable cause” needed for search warrants and other investigative tools.
But a team of civil-rights experts says such permission would pose a grave danger to freedom-loving citizens who may become the targets of the political influences that hold power at any given moment.
The Supreme Court announced yesterday it will weigh in on the controversy of police attaching GPS tracking devices to citizens’ vehicles to obtain information that may lead to the “probable cause” necessary for search warrants and arrests.
“The court of appeals’ decision, which will require law enforcement officers to obtain a warrant before placing a GPS device on a vehicle if the device will be used for a ‘prolonged’ time period, has created uncertainty surrounding the use of an important law enforcement tool,” said the government’s brief in the case, U.S.A. v. Antoine Jones.
“Although in some investigations the government could establish probable cause and obtain a warrant before using a GPS device, federal law enforcement agencies frequently use tracking devices early in investigations, before suspicions have ripened into probable cause. The court of appeals’ decision prevents law enforcement officers from using GPS devices in an effort to gather information to establish probable cause.”
Read More at WND by Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily
The Supreme Court continued its rollback of campaign finance “reforms” that have seriously infringed our First Amendment rights over the past 35 years. The court, in a 5-4 ruling Monday, struck down as unconstitutional Arizona’s public financing system for state elections.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, issued in the final week of the court’s term, sealing the fate of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act.
The Arizona law challenged in Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett benefited candidates for state office who accept public financing. The law allowed them to receive more taxpayer money in direct response to the campaign activities of privately financed candidates and independent groups.
A candidate got these additional matching funds if his or her initial funding was exceeded by the combined spending of a privately financed opponent and that of independent groups either opposing the candidate or supporting his or her privately financed opponent.
The result? For every dollar spent by privately financed candidates on political speech and political activity above a certain low threshold, their publicly financed opponents received an additional dollar.
Read More at Human Events by Hans von Spakovsky, Human Events
The Texas conservative, who’s weighing a late entry into the GOP field, beats other candidates among Tea Party members.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is the top choice of Tea Party supporters for a Republican presidential candidate, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
The Texas conservative, who’s weighing a late entry into the field of GOP candidates, beats other candidates among members of the Tea Party, the conservative grassroots wing of the Republican Party that’s battling to shape the race for the nomination.
Twenty percent of Tea Party supporters would like to see Perry as the nominee, according to a McClatchy-Marist poll released Wednesday. Perry displaces former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) as the top Tea Party candidate in Marist’s April poll; Huckabee’s since withdrawn from the race.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) is the second choice of the Tea Party, at 17 percent, followed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) at 16 percent and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) at 12 percent.
Read More at the Hill By Michael O’Brien, The Hill
Speculation is running rampant about why House Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked out of debt ceiling talks with Democrats. Most of the speculation is credited by pundits to insider maneuvering between Speaker John Boehner and Cantor. The Washington Post reports the debt deal maneuvering this way, “One analysis of the House GOP right now is that there are two players in the GOP who can cut a budget deal: Eric Cantor and John Boehner … One of them is going to have to do it. Which means one of them is going to lose his job. The optimistic take is that what we’re seeing right now is a game of musical chairs over which one of them it’ll be.”
Our analysis is different, and the Washington media will never understand it. The GOP’s inability to make deals is a direct result of the effectiveness of the Tea Party movement. Washington media always wants a deal between the forces for permanent government growth. For the first time in our lifetime the forces in support of actually limiting government have gained power. John Boehner and Eric Cantor understand this new dynamic. The very future of the Republican Party depends on it.
Clearly, John Boehner is frustrated by the new political realities. He wants to play golf with President Obama on the weekends and make nice with him during the week. Boehner has done his best to strong arm Republicans into forfeiting their only budget leverage and vote to raise the debt ceiling. His problem is he doesn’t have the votes, and a speaker that cannot pass legislation is doomed to be replaced.
Republican members of Congress have been flooded by messages from citizens to not raise the debt limit. They pour in daily by FAX, FedEx, mail, and telephone. Citizens intuitively understand that the solution to a debt problem is not more debt. The solution to the problem needs to come in the form of budget cuts. The Tea Party Caucus, Michele Bachmann and a movement called “Cut, Cap, Balance” are winning the battle inside the Republican Party. Tea Party leaders are threatening to bolt the Republican cause if Boehner and Cantor don’t produce an acceptable deal.
The mainstream media, as usual, are oblivious.
Read More at Floyd Reports by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, Floyd Reports