The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom
and individual liberty
"There
is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it
steadily." --George
Washington
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
'85 Percent of Government Is Being Funded'
For
lack of funding, the federal government has shut down "non-essential"
services, but in fact, much of the government is still being funded, Sen. Rand
Paul (R-Ky.) said. "But one of the
under-reported stories here is 85 percent of government is being funded,"
Paul told Fox News's Sean Hannity on Tuesday. "Two thirds of the government is
Social Security, Medicare -- all of that is going on. And then we agreed
yesterday, Harry Reid did come forward when we asked him to, and he finally
agreed to pay the soldiers. So now we're up to that, 85 percent of the
government."
~~~~~~
ENOUGH, TEA PARTY
- E.J. Dionne
The following article is
authored by our favorite Left Wing extremist and Obama apologist - Bolded text
is to demonstrate his altered reality.
You can insert your response to these as you wish!
The tea party Republicans should hang a “Mission Accomplished” banner across the House of Representatives. They could flank it with large portraits of Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who has in fact, if not in name, replaced John Boehner as speaker of the House. The right-wing extremists got exactly what they wanted. Now, what will the country do about it?
In blundering into a shutdown, Boehner has lost any claim to authority. Helpfully, the speaker-in-name only underscored this fact himself on the House floor when he mocked the way President Barack Obama talked. Does anyone remember a real speaker going to the well of the House and making fun of a president of the United States? Can anyone now doubt who is responsible for Washington’s dysfunction? The Republican right still does not accept the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency. This is why much of the government shut down.
The issue here is not that Congress failed to reach a “compromise.” The Democrats already have compromised, lopping about $70 billion off their budget proposal, to the dismay of many liberals. That was meaningless to a tea party crowd that seems to care not a whit about the deficit, despite its fulsome talk. It will be satisfied only if Congress denies health care coverage to about 25 million Americans, which is what “repealing Obamacare” really means.
It needs to be said over and over as long as this stupid and artificial crisis brewed by the tea party continues: Financing the government in a normal way and avoiding a shutdown should not be seen as a “concession.” Making sure the government pays its debt is not a “concession.” It’s what we expect from a well-functioning constitutional system. It’s what we expect from decent stewards of our great experiment. The extremists who have taken over the House do not believe in a normal, constitutional system. They believe only in power.
There’s a profound irony here, since no one talks more about the Constitution than the tea party. Before the Civil War, John C. Calhoun and a variety of nullifiers and future secessionists spoke incessantly about the Constitution, too. We know where that led.
In the course of things in a constitutional and democratic republic, parties win elections on the issues that matter to them. They pass laws or repeal them by majority vote. The tea party could not muster such a majority to repeal the Affordable Care Act because Democrats held the White House and the Senate in the 2012 elections.
Lacking a majority, the extremists chose force. “Do what we want,” they said, “or we will render the country ungovernable.”
That’s what they have done. Everyone says Boehner knew better and did not want this outcome. But he was so fearful for his job that he let it happen.
My conservative colleague Michael Gerson had it exactly right Tuesday: “We are no longer seeing a revolt against the Republican leadership, or even against the Republican ‘establishment’; this revolt is against anyone who accepts the constraints of political reality.”
I would only add: This is also revolt against anyone who accepts majority rule and constitutional constraints.
The burden now is on Republicans who know how deeply radical and, indeed, crazy the tea party has become. These genuine, non-radical conservatives know how irresponsible this shutdown is. They know that playing around with the debt ceiling later this month would be a fundamentally unpatriotic act.
“It’s a dead end,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said of the shutdown strategy.
King, along with Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., had the courage to stand up against the lunacy by voting against Boehner’s last in a series of obstructionist proposals Monday night. Dent told CNN that as many as 200 Republicans were secretly hoping there would be a vote on the Senate’s continuing resolution so the government could stay open. But if those Republicans exist, they are paralyzed, unwilling to stand up to the far right.
There is only one way for this to end: Republicans fed up with hysteria need to tell the far right, “Enough.” They need to overcome their abject fear of Republicans who are under Cruz-control and their cheerleaders in Rush Limbaugh’s world. They need to exit the Boulevard of Self-Inflicted Wounds.
We now know where the tea party’s political experiment leads. If this shutdown does not end the tea party’s reign of intimidation, we will face one unnecessary crisis after another as extremists keep ripping up the roots of our great constitutional system.
~~~~~~
Boehner: Obama Has Slammed Door on Opening Government
By Todd
Beamon
House
Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday blamed President Barack Obama for the first
partial shutdown of the federal government in 17 years, blaming his "scorched-Earth
policy of refusing to negotiate in [a] bipartisan way on his health care law,
current government funding or the debt limit."
"The president isn't telling the whole story when it comes to the government shutdown," the Ohio Republican said in an op-ed piece in USA Today. "The fact is that Washington Democrats have slammed the door on reopening the government by refusing to engage in bipartisan talks. "And, as stories across the country highlight the devastating impact of Obamacare on families and small businesses, they continue to reject our calls for fairness for all Americans," Boehner said.
The federal government shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday after the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House refused to reach an agreement on a proposal to temporarily finance the government through mid-December. The last time the federal government closed was for a total of 28 days between November 1995 and January 1996. The current impasse came over House GOP insistence that funds not be included for Obamacare, the president's signature healthcare law that also took effect on Tuesday. Throughout the weekend, House proposals evolved from a total defunding of Obamacare, to delaying the healthcare proposal for individual Americans for one year.
Still, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repeatedly said that the upper chamber would only pass a "clean" continuing resolution to keep the government operating — stripped of any language regarding Obamacare — and the president said he would veto any legislation that defunded or delayed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act .
And on Tuesday, Obama blamed Republicans for an "ideological crusade" aimed at his healthcare program and urged legislators to keep government operations running without conditions. "They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans," the president said in the White House Rose Garden. "Many Representatives have made it clear that had they been allowed by Speaker Boehner to take a simple up or down vote on keeping government open with no strings attached, enough votes from both parties would have kept the American people's government open and operating," Obama said.
But in his op-ed, Boehner carefully detailed Republican efforts over the weekend to keep the government operating and blasted the Democrats and Obama for their refusal to negotiate on any spending plan that included Obamacare language. "As of this morning, Senate Democrats, acting in concert with President Obama, have rejected four different proposals from the House of Representatives to keep the government running and fund basic services," Boehner said. On Friday, for instance, the Speaker said, "the House of Representatives passed legislation to keep the government running — funding Medicare, Social Security, veterans benefits, and more — while removing funding for the president's health care law, which is driving up costs and hurting our economy.
"The Democratic-controlled Senate rejected this measure," Boehner said. The next day, Saturday, "the House passed another measure to keep the government running, delay the president's health care law for one year, and permanently repeal Obamacare's tax on pacemakers and children's hearing aids," he added. "Senate Democrats rejected the measure on a party-line vote." Boehner further noted that the House also voted to continue paying the nation's military personnel should the government shut down. "Thankfully, that measure was adopted by the Senate and signed by President Obama," he said.
Then, on Monday, another measure to keep the government operating was passed by the House — and it also sought to "ensure fairness for all Americans under the president's health care law," Boehner added. "President Obama delayed the law's mandates on big businesses and insurance companies; this bill would delay the law for everyone. "The Senate rejected this measure too."
And later on Monday, the House sought "a formal conference committee with the Senate to come to an agreement on legislation that provides funding for the federal government and delays the president's health care law for all Americans," the Speaker said. "That is the system the Founding Fathers gave us to resolve differences between the House and Senate. The Senate then opposed that measure as well, so Senate Democrats and President Obama got their government shutdown."
Looking ahead to the negotiations on extending the federal government's borrowing authority to avert the first-ever default on the nation's credit obligations, Boehner said, "Congress must act to raise the debt limit to pay the tab for President Obama and Washington's out-of-control spending. "There is no way Congress can or should pass such a bill without spending cuts and reforms to deal with the debt and deficit and help get our economy moving again. But President Obama refuses to even talk about negotiating such a bipartisan agreement.
"For years," Boehner added, "the president has said that in a divided government, no one gets 100 percent of what they want. "But when will his words match his actions?" he asked. The Speaker concluded by reiterating his longstanding position on how the House Republicans would work during these negotiations. "We will continue our efforts to keep the government running and deal honestly with the problems we face," he said. "We hope that Senate Democrats, and President Obama, change course and start working with us on behalf of the American people."
"The president isn't telling the whole story when it comes to the government shutdown," the Ohio Republican said in an op-ed piece in USA Today. "The fact is that Washington Democrats have slammed the door on reopening the government by refusing to engage in bipartisan talks. "And, as stories across the country highlight the devastating impact of Obamacare on families and small businesses, they continue to reject our calls for fairness for all Americans," Boehner said.
The federal government shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday after the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House refused to reach an agreement on a proposal to temporarily finance the government through mid-December. The last time the federal government closed was for a total of 28 days between November 1995 and January 1996. The current impasse came over House GOP insistence that funds not be included for Obamacare, the president's signature healthcare law that also took effect on Tuesday. Throughout the weekend, House proposals evolved from a total defunding of Obamacare, to delaying the healthcare proposal for individual Americans for one year.
Still, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repeatedly said that the upper chamber would only pass a "clean" continuing resolution to keep the government operating — stripped of any language regarding Obamacare — and the president said he would veto any legislation that defunded or delayed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act .
And on Tuesday, Obama blamed Republicans for an "ideological crusade" aimed at his healthcare program and urged legislators to keep government operations running without conditions. "They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans," the president said in the White House Rose Garden. "Many Representatives have made it clear that had they been allowed by Speaker Boehner to take a simple up or down vote on keeping government open with no strings attached, enough votes from both parties would have kept the American people's government open and operating," Obama said.
But in his op-ed, Boehner carefully detailed Republican efforts over the weekend to keep the government operating and blasted the Democrats and Obama for their refusal to negotiate on any spending plan that included Obamacare language. "As of this morning, Senate Democrats, acting in concert with President Obama, have rejected four different proposals from the House of Representatives to keep the government running and fund basic services," Boehner said. On Friday, for instance, the Speaker said, "the House of Representatives passed legislation to keep the government running — funding Medicare, Social Security, veterans benefits, and more — while removing funding for the president's health care law, which is driving up costs and hurting our economy.
"The Democratic-controlled Senate rejected this measure," Boehner said. The next day, Saturday, "the House passed another measure to keep the government running, delay the president's health care law for one year, and permanently repeal Obamacare's tax on pacemakers and children's hearing aids," he added. "Senate Democrats rejected the measure on a party-line vote." Boehner further noted that the House also voted to continue paying the nation's military personnel should the government shut down. "Thankfully, that measure was adopted by the Senate and signed by President Obama," he said.
Then, on Monday, another measure to keep the government operating was passed by the House — and it also sought to "ensure fairness for all Americans under the president's health care law," Boehner added. "President Obama delayed the law's mandates on big businesses and insurance companies; this bill would delay the law for everyone. "The Senate rejected this measure too."
And later on Monday, the House sought "a formal conference committee with the Senate to come to an agreement on legislation that provides funding for the federal government and delays the president's health care law for all Americans," the Speaker said. "That is the system the Founding Fathers gave us to resolve differences between the House and Senate. The Senate then opposed that measure as well, so Senate Democrats and President Obama got their government shutdown."
Looking ahead to the negotiations on extending the federal government's borrowing authority to avert the first-ever default on the nation's credit obligations, Boehner said, "Congress must act to raise the debt limit to pay the tab for President Obama and Washington's out-of-control spending. "There is no way Congress can or should pass such a bill without spending cuts and reforms to deal with the debt and deficit and help get our economy moving again. But President Obama refuses to even talk about negotiating such a bipartisan agreement.
"For years," Boehner added, "the president has said that in a divided government, no one gets 100 percent of what they want. "But when will his words match his actions?" he asked. The Speaker concluded by reiterating his longstanding position on how the House Republicans would work during these negotiations. "We will continue our efforts to keep the government running and deal honestly with the problems we face," he said. "We hope that Senate Democrats, and President Obama, change course and start working with us on behalf of the American people."
~~~~~
Obama knew about WWII veterans’ request and rejected it
How
sad that Obama would use these heroes as political pawns. The White House and the Department of the Interior rejected a
request from Rep. Steven Palazzo’s office to have World War II veterans visit
the World War II memorial in Washington, the Mississippi Republican told The
Daily Caller Tuesday. Palazzo
helped the veterans commit an act of civil disobedience against the Park
Service Tuesday, when the heroes stormed through barricades around the closed
memorial. (Related: WWII vets storm closed memorial as GOP congressman
reportedly distracts cops) The
veterans were visiting the memorial as part of Honor Flight, a non-profit that
provides veterans free transport to the nation’s capital to visit the memorials
to the wars they fought in.
~~~~~~
59% Believe Voter ID Laws Do Not Discriminate
The U.S. Justice Department announced Monday that it
is challenging North Carolina's new voter ID law on the grounds that it is
racially discriminatory. But voters nationwide continue to strongly support
laws that require proof of identity before voting and don't believe they
discriminate. The latest Rasmussen
Reports national telephone survey shows that 70% of Likely U.S. Voters believe
all voters should be required to prove their identity before being allowed to
vote. Only 25% oppose such a requirement.
~~~~~~
We
are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all
matters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to
promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer
act a farce by pretending to it." –George
Washington, letter to James Madison, 1785
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