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Panetta: Troop Pay May Be On Table in Future Budget Cuts

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At a packed National Press Club lunch event Tuesday afternoon, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave a talk full, as always, of ire at the unresolved specter of sequestration, but also spent time talking about how to implement further cuts to the Defense Department.

Under the 2011 Budget Control Act, Panetta and the military service chiefs carved out $487 billion from planned spending over the next fiscal decade. But if members of Congress can’t reach a budget deal that finds equivalent savings, the sequestration mechanism will kick in and lop an additional half-trillion dollars off the Defense Department’s bottom line.

“Because of political gridlock, this department still faces the possibility of another round of across-the-board cuts,” Panetta said. “Wherever I visit our troops, they make clear their concerns about those cuts. What does it mean for them and what does it mean for their families. We’re down to the wire now.”

But even while Panetta urged Congress Tuesday to put a halt to sequestration, he joined the new trend of defense hard-liners talking in earnest about additional Pentagon cuts.

“We obviously continue to look at areas where we can achieve efficiencies at the DoD. There’s no question there is duplication, there is overhead in a bureaucracy of three million people,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Porkulus: Senator Begich Gets $150 Million Dollars for Hurricane Sandy Relief in Alaska?

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photo credit: afge

The Senate’s emergency spending bill to cover costs from Hurricane Sandy includes millions of dollars that will never touch the affected Northeast — including money for salmon fisheries in Alaska, cash for an expansion of train service into New York, and funds to preserve and repair historic properties.

Lawmakers begin debating the bill Monday on the Senate floor, where the first thing they will confront is the size and scope of the $60.4 billion package, which aims to repair damage and to build protection against storms.

President Obama submitted his wish list to Congress, but senators added their own priorities. For example, Mr. Obama asked for $32 million to repair part of the Amtrak rail system not covered by insurance, but the Senate multiplied that request more than tenfold, to $336 million, with the extra money going to cover Amtrak’s operating losses and to increase train capacity into New York City.

The Sandy recovery bill also includes more than $500 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which amounts to a full tenth of what the agency spends per year, nationwide.

Part of that is $150 million for “fishery disasters,” which means money could flow to Mississippi’s blue crab and oyster industries, and to Alaska, where one senator said Chinook salmon have suffered.

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Rejects Boehner’s Offer to Boost Millionaires’ Tax Rate in Exchange for Spending Cuts

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President Barack Obama quickly spurned House Speaker John Boehner’s latest compromise offer, as the federal government continues its scheduled progress towards the $600 billion so-called fiscal cliff in January.

The rejection came Sunday, two days after Boehner had offered to raise tax rates for Americans earning more than $1 million dollars per year.

News of Boehner’s compromise will likely spur protest by the GOP’s small-government wing.

On Friday, Boehner also proposed to raise the government’s debt limit by roughly $1 trillion over its current level of $16.3 trillion. That’s also controversial, because Republican advocates of smaller government want to use Congress’ control over the debt-limit to curb the federal government’s 10-year $45 trillion spending plan.

Read more from this story HERE.

Score One for Obama: Boehner Caves on Tax Hikes

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WASHINGTON – House Speaker John Boehner has proposed raising tax rates on people making more than $1 million, a source familiar with the talks told Fox News, in a development that could signal at least some movement toward a deal with President Obama.

According to the source, the latest offer is not being rejected, but there are still issues remaining and there is a serious effort to work out the difference.

At issue are expiring Bush-era tax cuts that would automatically vanish on Jan. 1 for virtually every income tax payer if Congress and the president don’t act. Steep budget cuts are also scheduled to kick in, unless Congress and Obama agree to forestall them with other deficit reduction measures.

Some have warned the economy’s nascent recovery would be reversed by the fiscal cliff. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said this week that the economy has already been affected by the uncertainty, and also warned that the Fed would not be able to offset the impact of the fiscal cliff.

Until now, Boehner had maintained his opposition to raising any rates. Instead, he had proposed to raise up to $800 billion in tax revenue over 10 years by limiting tax loopholes and deductions as part of a broad tax overhaul.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama: ‘I Would Be Considered a Moderate Republican’ in the 1980s

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(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama says he would be “considered a moderate Republican” in the 1980s because his policies are “so mainstream.”

In an interview with Univision 23 on Thursday, a Spanish station based in Miami, the president was asked about the perception among some Americans that he has a socialist vision for the country.

“One issue that Cuban-Americans are worried about is, they believe that you favor a socialist model for our country,” Obama was asked, according to a transcript of the interview compiled by The Hill. “Cubans and Venezuelans especially because of what they have gone through. What do you think of that?”

“I don’t know that there are a lot of Cubans or Venezuelans, Americans who believe that,” Obama replied.

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Army Acknowledges Pedophilia Part of Islam

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A new Army manual that warns American soldiers in Afghanistan to avoid talking about certain topics has unwittingly acknowledged that Western taboos such as pedophilia are an inherent part of Islamic culture.

“By mentioning that pedophilia and women’s rights and saying that soldiers should not mention such things they are tacitly admitting that those things are indeed part of Islam,” said Robert Spencer, founder of Jihad Watch.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a new 75-page Army manual suggests U.S. soldiers are to blame for the large number of deadly attacks on them by Afghan security forces. The manual reportedly says the soldiers may have brought the attacks on themselves because of insensitivity towards Islamic culture.

“Many of the confrontations occur because of [coalition] ignorance of, or lack of empathy for, Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norms, resulting in a violent reaction from the [Afghan security force] member,” the draft report prepared by Army researchers and obtained by the Journal said.

Clare Lopez, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy, said the suggestion that U.S. soldiers are to blame for the attacks on them by Afghan security forces is outrageous.

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It’s the Spending, Stupid

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Barack Obama, who seemingly has remained in campaign mode since first entering public life, continues to insist House Republicans obey his command to hike tax rates on upper income earners. If Republicans do note cede to his demands, Obama is willing to let everyone’s taxes go up and to cut one trillion dollars from the budget, a disproportionate amount of which will come from defense.
Were Obama sincerely interested in solving America’s fiscal dilemma, this would not be his stance.

He continues to make campaign appearances claiming that these higher tax rates are needed to lower the U.S. deficit and cut the national debt.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The amount of revenue collected by the IRS as a result of such a tax rate increase would fund U.S. federal spending for less than nine days.

According to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office, at current spending levels the federal government is borrowing forty six cents of every dollar it spends. Through the first two months of fiscal year 2013 the government is already almost $300 billion in debt.

Medicare, Social Security and interest on the debt are the biggest drivers of the debt. The true costs of Obamacare have yet to be revealed, but given the U.S. federal government’s track record it is safe to predict that it will be far more expensive than projected and finish in the red every year.

Collecting eight days’ worth of spending from upper level incomes will do nothing to affect the level of spending on any of these programs.

Additionally, Obama willfully ignores that at current tax rates, revenues are up by thirty billion dollars over last year.

Obama, his “progressive” political allies and the obedient lapdogs within the “progressive” Party Pravda continue to foster the notion that raising tax rates on the highest income earners, those who already pay forty percent of all income tax revenue, will be a panacea, the magical elixir needed to solve America’s fiscal woes.

They also continue to lay the blame for today’s deficits on former President George W. Bush. Bush’s highest deficit was $438 billion during his last year in office. Obama’s government is poised to post another $1 trillion deficit, which will mark the fifth straight year of $1 trillion or more deficits.

America’s current financial predicament is the result of wasteful “progressive” spending on big government socialist programs.

That is the reason.

America’s debt and deficit dilemmas can only be solved through reduced spending. If and when the United States falls off a fiscal cliff or receives another credit downgrade, it will be because of “progressives”, not Conservatives.

The conversation should be about how to cut spending, not about how to increase taxes.

Political Party or media employer notwithstanding, anyone who says differently is being intellectually dishonest.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates. Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/. His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/

Obama Administration’s ‘Deferred Action’ Program Halts 102,000 Deportations

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photo credit: z2amiller

The administration has issued stays of deportation for 102,965 illegal immigrants under President Obama’s new non-deportation policy, officials announced Friday.

Another 157,151 applications are still under review under the policy, officially known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which grants a tentative legal status to illegal immigrants who qualify — though it does not grant them a path to citizenship.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Homeland Security branch that administers the program, said 12,014 applications were rejected off the bat, while as many as 177,000 more applications are having their biometric data taken before entering the final review.

Mr. Obama announced the policy in June, saying he would no longer deport illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children as long as they haven’t committed any major crimes.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bloomberg News Hid Conflicting Fiscal-Cliff Poll Numbers, Pushed Results Favorable to Obama

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A poll conducted last week by an Iowa-based firm showed Americans are conflicted about whether or not to support raising tax rates on wealthy Americans to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff.” But that’s not how Bloomberg News, which commissioned the poll, reported the results Thursday.

In a story headlined “Americans Back Obama Tax-Rate Boost Tied to Entitlements,” Bloomberg reported that the poll showed most Americans support President Barack Obama’s insistence on increasing taxes for high-income earners.

“A majority of Americans say President Barack Obama is right to demand that tax-rate increases for the highest earners be a precondition for a budget deal that cuts U.S. entitlement programs,” the story, written by reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis, began.

The poll asked respondents, “President Obama has said he will not negotiate with Republicans on cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare, until they agree to raise tax rates on the wealthy. Do you think he is right or wrong to insist on that as a precondition to broader negotiations?”

As Bloomberg reported in its story, 58 percent percent of respondents indicated that the president was “right” to insist on the precondition, while 37 percent said he was “wrong.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: Solar Firms Under Investigation for Stimulus Swindle

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photo credit: mountain/ash

The nation’s three most productive solar installation firms are under investigation for allegedly exaggerating business costs to get larger cash payments through a federal stimulus program.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general is asking SolarCity, SunRun and Sungevity to justify the more than $500 million in federal grants and tax credits they got for their work, according to The Washington Post.

The companies in question received payments through Treasury’s 1603 program, which was designed to increase renewable energy use.

The cash grant program pays installers up to 30 percent of the project cost. So by inflating business expenses, the firms would be eligible for a larger payout.

The firms might have to repay the government if found to have abused the program and could face other penalties.

Read more from this story HERE.