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McConnell Prepares to Betray Tea Party, Aid Obama’s Debt Ceiling Power Grab

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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

Gang of Six gambit revives spending shell game

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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

Melson’s Testimony Proves Fast and Furious was an Obama Plot

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On July 4th, Acting ATF Director Ken Melson testified for hours before representatives of the Grassley/Issa congressional committees. Personal counsel in tow, Melson made a number of allegations concerning the Department of Justice and two agencies under DOJ control—the FBI and the DEA.

According to his testimony, not only did the DOJ refuse his repeated requests that the ATF be permitted to provide information demanded by the congressional committees, the Department also arranged for tax dollars from the FBI and DEA to help finance Fast and Furious straw buyers.

And as Fast and Furious supplied weapons were found at the murder scenes of both ICE agent Jaime Zapata and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, it means that both killings were financed by American taxpayers.

Equally disturbing to Sen. Chuck Grassley and Congressman Darrell Issa is the fact that the Justice Department tried to “conceal from Congress the possible involvement of other agencies in identifying and maybe even working with the same criminals that Operation Fast and Furious was trying to identify.”

That is, the FBI and DEA were working with the same drug dealing, gun trafficking higher ups the ATF was ostensibly targeting and hoping to unmask with Fast and Furious.

Read More at Floyd Reports By Doug Book, Floyd Reports

Rep. West: Obama is ‘Sad,’ ‘Pathetic,’ ‘Fear-Mongering’ on Debt Ceiling

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Rep. Allen West calls President Barack Obama’s actions on the debt ceiling debate “sad”, “pathetic” and “fear-mongering”.

In an interview with CNSNews.com, West was asked about his recent comments that the president was fear-mongering when using the issue of Social Security payments in the debt ceiling debate.

“To come out and just say, we’re not going to – I don’t think we’re going to be able pay seniors, I don’t think were going to be able to pay veterans that’s not leadership. That’s why I said it was sad, it was pathetic, it’s fear-mongering and it’s trying to turn people against other folks who are trying to come up with viable solutions. That’s not what I think a president should be doing,” West said.

West claims the president needs to decide how to best prioritize the programs that he wants to see funded in the country, “I think the thing that the president needs to do, is sit down and say. With the revenues that we have coming in, with the revenues that we have existing in the Social Security trust fund right now. You know, what are we going to prioritize as far as spending here in the United States of America.”

 Read More at CNS News by Eric Scheiner, CNSNews.com

Both Sides Hardening in Debt-Limit Imbroglio

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The gulf between President Obama and a divided Congress grows ever wider as the debt-limit crisis stumbles toward a potentially catastrophic deadline.

Tempers flared Wednesday at the high-level negotiating session, with Obama walking out of the meeting at one point, angrily warning House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, “Don’t call my bluff. You know I’m going to take this to the American people.”

But apparently the president, who thinks he can tax his way out of this mess, is unaware that Americans are strongly behind Cantor and the Republicans on the issue of tax increases versus spending cuts.

The Gallup Poll reported Thursday that when people are asked how Congress should deal with the mountain of deficits and debt that threaten to sandbag our economy, 50 percent “prefer spending cuts to tax hikes.”

The nationwide poll showed 20 percent saying the debt should be dealt with only through spending cuts, while another 30 percent said “mostly spending cuts.”

Read More at Townhall by Donald Lambro, Townall

Obama’s Tear-Jerking Story About His Uninsured Dying Mother was a Lie

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Despite our political and philosophical differences, one of the most touching and humanizing aspects of Barack Obama was his mother’s tragic death of uterine and ovarian cancer in 1995. Obama frequently stated his self-employed mother spent her last days frantic, desperately trying to assure the insurance industry would not deny her coverage, instead of resting and preparing to meet her Maker (Whom she apparently did not believe in). As it turns out, the entire story was, at best, greatly exaggerated and at worst calculated fabrication. Unlike so many of the president’s scandals, this lie has been reported not simply in conservative outlets like The Washington Examiner and The Blaze but in major Establishment media sources like Politico, and the New York Times.

Candidate Obama took little shame in cashing in on his dead mother’s lingering illness on the campaign trail. Byron York collected a few examples:

“I remember in the last month of her life, she wasn’t thinking about how to get well, she wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality, she was thinking about whether or not insurance was going to cover the medical bills and whether our family would be bankrupt as a consequence,” Obama said in September 2007.

“She was in her hospital room looking at insurance forms because the insurance company said that maybe she had a pre-existing condition and maybe they wouldn’t have to reimburse her for her medical bills,” Obama added in January 2008.

“The insurance companies were saying, ‘Maybe there’s a pre-existing condition and we don’t have to pay your medical bills,’” Obama said in a debate with Republican opponent Sen. John McCain in October 2008.

Read More at Floyd Reports by Ben Johnson, the White House Watch

“Republican Candidate” Extends Lead vs. Obama to 47% to 39%

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Registered voters by a significant margin now say they are more likely to vote for the “Republican Party’s candidate for president” than for President Barack Obama in the 2012 election, 47% to 39%. Preferences had been fairly evenly divided this year in this test of Obama’s re-election prospects.

The latest results are based on a July 7-10 poll, and show that the Republican has an edge for the second consecutive month. Obama held a slight edge in May, when his approval rating increased after the death of Osama bin Laden. As his rating has come back down during the last two months, so has his standing on the presidential “generic ballot.”
Gallup typically uses this question format when a president is seeking re-election but his likely opponent is unknown, as was the case in 1991-1992 and 2003-2004, when incumbents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, respectively, were seeking re-election.

The elder Bush held large leads over his generic Democratic opponent throughout 1991, but early 1992 preferences were more evenly divided and Bush eventually lost his re-election bid. The younger Bush also consistently maintained at least a small advantage over the Democrat throughout 2003, before winning re-election in a close contest in November 2004.

Thus, the results more than a year ahead of the election do not have a large degree of predictive ability, and underscore that things can change greatly in the final year or more before an election.

Read More at Gallup by Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup

Obama’s Drug of Choice: Welfare Addiction

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Once upon a time, people’s hands were busy putting food on the table and they were too busy or too proud to consider extending those same hands out to the government for a handout. But that time has long passed, and time is running out before America the Great turns into America the Nanny State.

Let this Conservative go on record: When used properly, welfare can be a force for good for those most in need. Unfortunately, we have an administration, whose failed (0-97 in the Senate) 2011 budget bulged with middle-class handouts meant to expand the welfare state. Democrats are bent on making addicts of otherwise perfectly capable citizens to the designer drug of taxpayer dollars. In an attempt to make this addiction permanent, the administration rolled out Obamacare.

In 2008, anxiety over a failing economy and soaring costs of healthcare helped to propel Obama to the White House, but, three years later, and after the passing of Obamacare, the anxiety has morphed into anger – as the truth about this poorly constructed bill unfolds to find that it is nothing more than a compilation of mistakes, bloopers, paybacks and blunders that fix healthcare about as well as handing a bandage and bottle of blood thinner to a gunshot victim.

The most recent “blunder,” which involves dropping people from the middle class and rolling them onto the welfare rolls, will not only add billions of dollars of cost to the bill; it will throw millions of middle class retirees into the Medicaid program. Medicaid was created to help the most needy in our society. Medicare actuary, Richard Foster, told the House Budget Committee that a provision in Obamacare did not consider social security benefits when calculating eligibility for early retirees, effectively branding those making up to $64000 per year as destitute. Talk about the destruction of the middle class.

Most troubling is the White House admits Democrat lawmakers knew this provision was in the bill and passed it anyway. Come hell or high water, the Democrat-controlled Senate and House insisted on ramming Obamacare down the throats of Americans against our wishes, and did not care that it would apply more pressure to state budgets already buckling underneath the weight of exorbitant Medicaid costs.

 Read More at Floyd Reports by Susan Stamper Brown, Floyd Reports

The “Obama Line”

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This chart compares the progress of unemployment levels for recessions prior to 1948 by using the nadir of unemployment as the zero point in time for each depression. Thus one can compare the relative progress of employment loss and subsequent employment recovery for each different recession. Notice the lowest line,which I call the “Obama Line”,shows the current recession is far worse than any since 1948 in terms of both depth of employment loss,as well as duration. In fact,the duration trend is extremely frightening,because unless something dramatic changes,we are unlikely to return to current employment levels for at least another decade.

The “Obama Line” thus starkly illustrates the destructive economic policies promulgated by the Democrat-Marxist-Progressive-Socialist-Obammunist ideologues have been wildly successful in promoting their stated and desired goal of “shared sacrifice”for we,their subjects,instead of shared prosperity for everyone. But then that’s the reality of socialism laid bare:history has repeatedly shown that “shared sacrifice” is the best any socialist economy can aspire to. Never once in the history of mankind has a socialist economy brought sustained and increasing prosperity for generation after generation.

Unfortunately,for those of us peasants who actually live on the Obama Line,Obama’s job-killing policies are an abject failure and cause for soul-destroying misery. Even worse,there is no chance for improvement until the Obammunist leadership is replaced,because no one in their right mind is going to invest inU.S.economic growth as long as Marxists are in charge of the economy.

It makes no sense to take additional risks to try to increase profits if those profits are simply going to be stolen by Obama and “redistributed”;whether such redistribution occurs via Obamacare,increased taxes,increased regulation,deliberately increasing energy prices,deliberate destruction of the currency via insane inflationary policies,or deliberate destruction of the Constitution and rule of law by simply ignoring them.

Those are the real reasons our economy is in the crapper today. And it will remain in the crapper until leadership is elected who will actually promote an economic environment conducive to job creation rather than merely pretending to think about it,while in reality deliberately killing U.S. economic power like the Obammunists have been doing every day since they came into power.

Read More at Coach is Right by Coach Collins, Coach is Right