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On The Road To Greek Ruin

CNS reports:

The federal government has accumulated more new debt--$3.22 trillion ($3,220,103,625,307.29)—during the tenure of the 111th Congress than it did during the first 100 Congresses combined, according to official debt figures published by the U.S. Treasury.

That equals $10,429.64 in new debt for each and every one of the 308,745,538 people counted in the United States by the 2010 Census.

What else needs to be said?

How To Wrap A Cat For Christmas

Merry Christmas everybody!

Score Two For The Tea Party

Yesterday, Harry Reid withdrew the Democrats' $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill after the GOP porkmeisters and Dem senators up for reelection in 2012 withdrew their support after last month's election. Later that night, Congress enacted a continuation of the current tax rates after the GOP blocked the Obama plan to raise the top income tax and several business tax rates.

Game, set, match Tea Party.

Appropriately, yesterday was also the 237rd anniversary of the actual Boston Tea Party.

The Lame Duck Ruling Class Enthusiastically Gives Their Voters Both Fingers

This appalling news from the Associated Press:

The spending barons on Capitol Hill, long used to muscling past opponents of bills larded with pet projects, are seeking one last victory before tea party-backed GOP insurgents storm Congress intent on ending the good old days of pork-barrel politics.
You might call it the last running of the old bulls in Congress.

In the waning days of the lame duck congressional session, Democrats controlling the Senate — in collaboration with a handful of old school Republicans — are pushing to wrap more than $1.2 trillion worth of unfinished budget work into a single "omnibus" appropriations bill.

Their 1,900-plus-page bill comes to the floor this week stuffed with provisions sought by lawmakers. It contains thousands of pet projects, known as earmarks, pushed by Democratic and GOP senators alike — despite a pledge by Republicans to give up such projects next year...

This monstrosity actually has a chance to pass because porkmeister RINOs the Tea Party kicked out this year are relishing pissing all over their constituents one last time:

“That’s my intention,” said retiring (fired) Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) when asked if he would support the package.

Bennett said earmarks in the bill might give some of his GOP colleagues reason to hesitate but wouldn’t affect his vote.

“It will be tough for some, but not for me,” he said.

Sir, you are a disgrace to this country and the Senate in which you serve.

UPDATE ONE: ...and the American People return the contempt. The infamous 111th Congress now has the lowest approval in Gallup polling history.

The Credentialed Establishment Ruling Class Does Not Like Being Labeled

First, you had the populist Tea Party campaigning against the credentialed elite establishment. Now you have the credentialed elite establishment offering a “No Labels” alternative:

No Labels was formed by a group of Democratic and Republican political consultants. On the Democratic side, there is Nancy Jacobson, a former finance director of the Democratic National Committee and veteran of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. On the Republican side, there is Mark McKinnon, who worked for former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain before announcing, as the 2008 general election race got under way, that he would no longer work for McCain because, as he said at the time, “I just don’t want to work against an Obama presidency.”

Sounds an awful lot like the short lived “Coffee Party” dropping the facade of a Starbucks “grass roots” movement.

Delegates To UN "Scientific" Global Warming Conference Sign Petition To Ban Water

The indispensable Watts Up With That has the story.

Whiner-In-Chief

This afternoon, a President of the United States with a supermajority of his own party controlling Congress actually compared the minority party to "hostage takers" who are holding the American people hostage and forced poor little Barry Obama to agree to not raise taxes.



It is official. The United States has its first Whiner-In-Chief.



Can Barack Obama make himself any more pathetic?

Hoping For A Terrorist Attack

Because folks now see Obama as a joke, wimp or socialist, Time Magazine sees a massive terrorist attack as the only hope to rally the country around the politician formerly known as The One.

How To Solve The Deficit, Recession And Unemployment Problems

I offered this plan on another blog, but it was too good not to repost here:

Discretionary spending doubled between 2000 and 2010. 2000 was just fine. Go back to the 2000 baseline plus inflation. Half the current deficit is now gone.

Repeal the new Obamacare spending and actually implement the half trillion dollars Obamacare Medicare reductions. Another $50 billion per year in borrowing is gone.

Adopt the deficit commission's Social Security reforms. The current borrowing to satisfy the government IOUs to Social Security is gone for another decade or so.

Use tax revenue growth to eliminate the rest of the deficit by adopting the following reforms:

1) Reduce the cost of hiring employees by:

a) Repealing the minimum wage for everyone below the age of 25 and anyone earning tip income. This will reduce our currently unconscionable 50% unemployment in this age group.

b) Repealing Obamacare.

c) Enacting medical tort reform.

d) Eliminating all federal and state health insurance coverage mandates.

e) Eliminating all union prevailing wage requirements for government contracts

2) Reduce government imposed costs of doing business:

a) Reduce the corporate income tax rate to that of Germany or about half our current punitive rate.

b) Reduce the corporate income tax for overseas earnings invested in the United States from the present 35% to 2% if the corporation has already paid overseas taxes on the earnings. This could bring back nearly a trillion dollars of investment

c) Enact a funding bill for EPA with a rider preventing them from spending money on writing or enforcing any regulations of so called "green house gases."

d) Enact individual funding bills for each regulatory agency with a rider preventing them from spending money on writing or enforcing any regulations costing the economy $100 million or more without Congressional approval.

e) Repeal Obamacare.

3) Reform the tax code along the lines of the deficit commission plan.

Within a year, our economy will be enjoying China level GDP growth, adding over 500,000 jobs a month and our tax revenues will be growing by around 14% a year.

Deficit, recession and unemployment problems solved.

The Imperial Presidency Strikes Back

Yesterday, the new GOP House majority proposed to enact individual spending bills for each agency so a presidential veto of the bills demanding more spending would only shut down that agency rather than the entire government.

The Obama Administration can see what is coming and they are asking the lame duck Democrat House to delegate to the President the House's constitutional power of the purse. Politico reports:

[T]he administration sent to the Capitol more than 50 funding adjustments it wants considered as part of what would be a stripped-down appropriations package for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

Many agencies would be left frozen at their current spending levels, but the documents indicate the White House is seeking more than $11.4 billion in new spending above 2010, chiefly for foreign aid and defense accounts as well as education initiatives and housing assistance for low-income tenants. The administration also wants to a remarkably open-ended authority to transfer funds between accounts — a power that is sure to be resisted by the Appropriations Committee leadership.

In sum, the President wants to avoid the GOP House plans to cut or zero out his spending priorities by having the Dems delegate the House of Representatives' constitutional power to make appropriations to the Executive so Obama can move raid other agencies to fund what he wants.

Thankfully, the Democrats in the House do not appear keen on Obama's proposed revision of the Constitution.

Are They Finally Serious?

After the 1994 elections, the new GOP Congress failed to cut spending because they enacted their cuts in a large spending bill allowing President Clinton to veto the bill, shut down necessary government services and then blame the GOP. Neat example of political judo that.

Apparently having learned that lesson, Politico reports that Speaker Boehner has a different approach in mind:

House Republicans seem intent on blowing up the staid appropriations process when they take power in January — potentially upending the old bulls in both parties who have spent decades building their power over the federal budget.

The plans include slicing and dicing appropriations bills into dozens of smaller, bite-size pieces — making it easier to kill or slash unpopular agencies. Other proposals include statutory spending caps, weekly votes on spending cuts and other reforms to ensure spending bills aren’t sneakily passed under special rules...

Perhaps the most dramatic change is Boehner’s planned Appropriations Committee overhaul to require funding on a department-by-department basis, first reported by POLITICO on Wednesday. His proposal would subdivide the dozen current appropriations bills so that funding for each major federal agency would require a separate House vote.

Politico correctly reports the facts, but misses the strategy. The Constitution requires the House to originate all spending bills. If the GOP House enacts individual spending bills for each agency, the Senate cannot combine them. Thus, the GOP could zero out or lower funding for items in a single agency's budget and the President could only shut down that agency by vetoing the bill. For example, the House could enact a spending bill for EPA with a rider forbidding spending on drafting and enforcing regulations on CO2 and the President has the choice of accepting the limits or shutting down EPA, which almost no one would miss.

Nice strategy.

Destroying The Democrat Brand

Rasmussen just released an interesting report that likely voters are now more willing to self identify as Republicans than as Dems for the first time since Feb 2005. Likely voters are not so much more likely to self identify Republican as the number who are willing to self identify Dem has collapsed to nearly the lowest point in the eight year history of this polling.

Obama may have one upped Bush in destroying his own party brand.