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Top Dem: Shutdown ‘May Widen our Path’ to Re-Taking House

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Photo Credit: DonkeyHoteyBy Alexandra Jaffe.

House Democrats believe the shutdown will help them put the lower chamber in play this cycle.

Democratic candidates running against vulnerable Republicans have wasted no time in hammering the incumbents as key actors in what they’re characterizing as a Tea Party-led shutdown that’s hurting Americans.

Many of those Republicans, in a signal they’re concerned about the possible political ramifications, are calling for an end to the stalemate — like Reps. Scott Rigell (R-Va.), Pat Meehan (R-Pa.) and Jon Runyan (R-N.J.), all of whom are facing reelection in difficult districts and all of whom called this week for the passage of a clean CR to end the shutdown.

Multiple polls, too, have shown Americans are placing the blame for the shutdown on Republicans.

Democrats need to pick up 17 seats to win back the House, a tall order under any circumstances, and even taller in an off-year when the party holding the White House typically loses seats.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: © Images.com/CorbisThe Shutdown Is a Sideshow. Debt Is the Threat

By Niall Ferguson.

In the words of a veteran investor, watching the U.S. bond market today is like sitting in a packed theater and smelling smoke. You look around for signs of other nervous sniffers. But everyone else seems oblivious.

Yes, the federal government shut down this week. Yes, we are just two weeks away from the point when the Treasury secretary says he will run out of cash if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. Yes, bond king Bill Gross has been on TV warning that a default by the government would be “catastrophic.” Yet the yield on a 10-year Treasury note has fallen slightly over the past month (though short-term T-bill rates ticked up this week).

Part of the reason people aren’t rushing for the exits is that the comedy they are watching is so horribly fascinating. In his vain attempt to stop the Senate striking out the defunding of ObamaCare from the last version of the continuing resolution, freshman Sen. Ted Cruz managed to quote Doctor Seuss while re-enacting a scene from the classic movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

Meanwhile, President Obama has become the Hamlet of the West Wing: One minute he’s for bombing Syria, the next he’s not; one minute Larry Summers will succeed Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve, the next he won’t; one minute the president is jetting off to Asia, the next he’s not. To be in charge, or not to be in charge: that is indeed the question.

According to conventional wisdom, the key to what is going on is a Republican Party increasingly at the mercy of the tea party. I agree that it was politically inept to seek to block ObamaCare by these means. This is not the way to win back the White House and Senate. But responsibility also lies with the president, who has consistently failed to understand that a key function of the head of the executive branch is to twist the arms of legislators on both sides. It was not the tea party that shot down Mr. Summers’s nomination as Fed chairman; it was Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the new face of the American left.

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Democrats say House Vote for Back Pay Shows GOP Wants Government to Stay Closed

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Photo Credit: REUTERSThe Republican-led House passed a bill Saturday to give thousands of furloughed federal workers back pay when the government reopens, but Democrats promptly characterized it as a signal the GOP doesn’t want the partial shutdown to end.

“Now we’re saying to federal employees: We’re going to pay you when this is all over with,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said minutes after the 407-to-0 House vote. “But right now, you just stay home … watch TV, play chess, whatever you’re going to do, because we won’t let you work.”

The Senate is expected to OK it as well but adjourned Saturday without a vote. The Democrat-controlled chamber will not scheduled a vote until at least Monday afternoon, when members return to Washington.

The back-and-forth comes on the fifth day of the partial government shutdown and marks the second straight weekend that members of Congress are on Capitol Hill trying to agree on a spending bill to end the saga.

At the same time, House Democrats extended Reid’s talking point while also adding that both sides have agreed to spending levels for a temporary funding bill to end the partial shutdown, so House Republicans should drop their effort to defund or delay ObamaCare and vote this weekend to fully re-open the government.

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Obama Uses American Tales of Shutdown Woe to Pressure GOP on Spending Bill

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Photo Credit: AP/Charles DharapakBy Ben Wolfgang.

With the federal shutdown headed toward its second week, President Obama on Saturday continued to pressure House Republicans to immediately pass a “clean” spending bill to get Washington back up and running.

In his weekly radio and internet address, the president read two letters he received from “Americans dealing with those real-world consequences” of the shutdown.

Mr. Obama, who was forced to cancel a trip to Asia and has seen other legislative priorities grind to a halt as Capitol Hill remains deadlocked, read the story of an Alabama woman who says her Head Start agency had to close its doors on Tuesday.

He also cited a North Dakota family in danger of losing its federal home loan as a result of the government closure.

Reciting such tales is Mr. Obama’s latest strategy to prod Congress to action.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Obama, the Sultan of Sob Stories

By Jeannie DeAngelis.

In order to advance his agenda, Barack Obama has become the sultan of sob stories. For every unpopular policy he endeavors to impose, the president has busloads of individuals to fit every occasion.

Take for instance the president’s enthusiastic desire to curtail Second Amendment rights. To address that issue, he has mentioned and put on display shooting survivor and former Arizona congresswoman Gabby “deserves a vote” Giffords many times.

Mr. Obama has spoken at prayer memorials, exploited the grieving families of the Sandy Hook victims, and given seats of honor at the State of the Union speech to slain Chicago teen Hadiya Pendleton’s parents, Cleo and Nat. The president has read letters from terrified albeit amazingly articulate schoolchildren convinced that without drastic gun control measures they’ll be gunned down in school, and even went so far as to assume symbolic parenthood of shooting victim Trayvon Martin.

For immigration reform, we now know all about DREAM actors, those fresh-faced illegal immigrants that any American would be proud to see marry their son or daughter. In addition, we’ve heard stories about innocent Latinos just trying to buy ice cream cones for their children being harassed for their “papers” by mean xenophobes in Arizona.

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Coded Message from the Alaska National Weather Service? ‘PLEASE PAY US’

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Photo Credit: Yahoo

Photo Credit: Yahoo

Someone at the Anchorage, Alaska, branch of the National Weather Service seems to have a very important message regarding the federal government shutdown: “PLEASE PAY US.”

The acrostic message appears to have been included in the first paragraph of a weather alert issued from the office on Friday. In an acrostic message or poem, the first letters of each sentence in a paragraph combine to spell out a word that is separate from the larger text.

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Blue Ridge Parkway Inn’s Act of Defiance to Feds Lasts About 2 Hours (+video)

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Photo Credit: Jon Ostendorff

Photo Credit: Jon Ostendorff

At a spot 5,000 feet above sea level and 20 miles from the nearest town, an innkeeper decided Friday to defy the federal government and reopen his lodge.

That stand lasted about two hours as National Park Service rangers blocked the entrances to the privately run Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway after owner Bruce O’Connell decided to reopen his dining room, gift shop and country store at noon Friday for lunch. The federal government had forced the inn, in a leased building on federal land, to shut down at 6 p.m. ET Thursday at the height of fall foliage — and tourism — season.

The inn normally is open April 1 to Oct. 31.

O’Connell said Wednesday he would rebel against the order to shutter after seeing World War II veterans reopen their memorial in Washington when barricades blocked the entrances. But he had backed down by the Park Service deadline to close Thursday.

“Conscience, conviction. That’s about it,” O’Connell said of his decision to reopen after thinking about the situation overnight. He said he would take guests for the weekend as long as the doors were able to remain open.

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‘Disgusting!’ Ranger Reveals Shutdown Orders

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Even some media outlets supportive of Barack Obama’s presidency are starting to acknowledge his manipulation of the partial government shutdown is going too far.

Some federal government funding ran out earlier this week when Senate Democrats, and Obama himself, refused to negotiate with majority Republicans in the House over a spending bill that defunds Obamacare

Tasked with selecting which functions of government should be shut down, the Obama administration created a firestorm of negative publicity this week when it ordered rangers to barricade otherwise fully accessible public areas in Washington, including war memorials.

An angry Park Service ranger indicated to Washington Times columnist Wesley Pruden that there is a political motive behind the closure of the open-air memorials.

“We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can,” he said. “It’s disgusting.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Boehner: ‘This isn’t Some Damn Game’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged Republicans to stick together Friday at a closed-door conference meeting, leaving for another day talk of a possible “grand bargain” to end standoffs over the government shutdown and raising the debt ceiling.

“This isn’t some damn game,” Boehner told reporters after the conference, angrily responding to reports that the White House thought it was winning the showdown.

Lawmakers emerging from the meeting said Boehner told his colleagues they are locked in an “epic battle” with President Obama and Democrats on the shutdown, and vowed they would not “roll over.”

They said Boehner sought to hype up his conference a day after reports emerged that the Speaker has told some members he would not allow the country to default and is willing to bring legislation to the floor that would depend on Democratic votes for passage.

Speaking to reporters, Boehner continued the recent GOP strategy of casting Republicans as the party interested in talking, and blaming Democrats for stonewalling them.

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What a ‘Shutdown’ Means: $63B Spent, $26B Taxed; $1.6B Borrowed; $1B Paid in Salaries–in Just 2 Days

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

In general terms, politicians and the press may be referring to what has been happening in Washington, D.C., over the past few days as a government “shutdown” or a “partial government shutdown,” but the actual accounting sheets of the U.S. Treasury show that massive amounts of taxed and borrowed money were flowing in and out of the government during the first two days of fiscal 2014.

According to the Daily Treasury Statement for Oct. 2, which was released yesterday at 4:00 p.m., the Treasury spent a total of $63.262 billion in the first two days of fiscal 2014. At the same time, it took in $25.681 billion in tax revenue.

The Treasury also sold $1.648 billion in new Treasury securities–which is government debt.

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Leon Panetta to Congress: ‘Put Politics Aside,’ End Shutdown (+video)

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Photo Credit: Cliff Owen

Photo Credit: Cliff Owen

Former Secretary of State and CIA director Leon Panetta urged a bitterly divided Congress to fund the government until mid-December — and then hold a summit on contentious issues – like entitlements and tax reform — that are holding up an agreement to end a four-day-old shutdown.

“The first thing is to … put politics aside and take the steps necessary to solve this crisis,” Panetta told CNN’s “The Situation Room.”

“The Speaker [of the House John Boehner] has to allow the House to vote” on funding the government and “on lifting the debt,” he said, adding that a later summitlike conference could “negotiate issues involving entitlements … [and] tax reform” toward a “deal that would restore some confidence.”

“I suspect the majority of Republicans and Democrats would support a clean [continuing resolution,” he added, scolding lawmakers: “You can’t let the extremes control the party … work needs to be done.”

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Rand Paul Caught on a Hot Mic – What He Really Feels About Democrats and Their Shutdown Rhetoric

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Screen shot 2013-10-04 at 1.13.38 AMA local Kentucky TV news station caught Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul Wednesday morning discussing some congressional Republican messaging strategy regarding the showdown with Democrats over the government shutdown.

“I just did CNN and I just go over and over again ‘We’re willing to compromise. We’re willing to negotiate,” Paul is seen on-camera telling McConnell, who is standing by for his own interview remote from D.C. “I don’t think they (Democrats) poll tested ‘we won’t negotiate.’ I think it’s awful for them to say that over and over again.”

“Yeah, I do too and I — and I just came back from that two hour meeting with them and that, and that was basically the same view privately as it was publicly,” McConnell said back.

Read more from this story HERE.