A Failed Congress… (“What awaits Americans in 2013 is the result of the failure and refusal of Congress to reform a huge and horrible tax code that even Certified Public Accountants and IRS bureaucrats cannot fathom and…”)

By Alan Caruba Wednesday, December 26, 2012

 

This is for all those who voted to reelect Obama or those who stayed home on Election Day 2012 because they found Republican candidates who talked about unemployment and the need for more jobs unappealing.

 

mussobama (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

The blame falls on the Democratic Party that controls the Senate and the White House. The blame falls on the Republican Party that needs to grow a new backbone instead of looking for ways to compromise with an administration bent on the destruction of the nation.

 

What awaits Americans in 2013 is the largest tax increase in the history of the nation and it is not because the Republicans in the House of Representatives did not propose and pass one plan after another to avoid it.

 

RPREVOLU (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

Warning Signs: Destroying Our Military from Within

 

Saturday, August 25, 2012

 

Destroying Our Military from Within

 

By Alan Caruba

 

“Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.” — Ronald Reagan

 

If you want to know how President Obama feels about the U.S. military, consider that in all the years since D-Day 1945 there have been three occasions when a President failed to go to the D-Day Monument that honors the soldiers killed during the Invasion.

 

The occasions were:

 

GyGRet (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

 

 

obamadash (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

1. Barack Obama 2010

 

2. Barack Obama 2011

 

3. Barack Obama 2012

 

RPREVOLU (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

For the past 68 years, all Presidents, except Obama, have paid tribute to the fallen soldiers killed on D-Day. This year, instead of honoring the soldiers, he made a campaign trip on Air Force 1 to California to raise funds for his reelection.

 

Bill Clinton: Extend all tax cuts temporarily

Former President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that broad tax cuts that expire in January should be temporarily renewed, including for the wealthiest Americans, to give lawmakers time to reach a deal on a longer-term extension that should exclude the rich.

Cover of Bill Clinton

Thomas Sowell to Newsmax: CBO Should Be Abolished (Video interview)

VIDEO AT LINK

Conservative economist Thomas Sowell is calling for the abolishment of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) after it revealed this week that Obamacare may cost American taxpayers nearly twice the $940 billion it originally estimated — $1.7 trillion over the next decade.

“I think occasionally the CBO does something that’s useful,” Sowell told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview. “But by and large, I think it should be abolished.”

In September 2009, President Obama estimated healthcare reform under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would cost an additional $900 billion over 10 years. The CBO initially projected the cost at $940 billion.

Adding insult to injury, the CBO’s latest projections also indicate that some 3 million Americans will lose their employer-based insurance coverage. This comes despite the repeatedly assurances of the president and others that they would be able to stay on their current employer-based policies, if they wished to do so.

In the interview, Sowell says it is time to seriously consider whether the CBO has outlived its usefulness.

McConnell: Obama using radical tactics to divide America

President Obama is dividing Americans through the tactics of the 1960s radical community organizer Saul Alinsky, charged Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a speech at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.“You all know the liberal strategy,” McConnell said. “Pick a target, freeze it, isolate it and defeat it.”The senator summarized the Obama administration’s three years in power:

What Do We Do Now? Focus on Obama

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So what do we do now, folks? That’s the question. Everybody wants to know what do we do now? And what we do now is what we should have been doing all along. I’ll give you an example. Obama‘s on TV this morning. He was in Falls Church, Virginia, doing a campaign speech. And in this appearance he announced yet another plan to bail out people who are underwater in their houses. I don’t know what this is, HARP 2, HARP 3. We alluded to this a few weeks ago where Obama was gonna take people that were underwater and basically refinance their mortgages and have a monthly payment max out at something like six or seven hundred dollars. Not quite forgive everybody’s mortgage, but the effort was to make them think that was going to happen. That’s the reason, one of the many reasons, Obama’s out there saying, “Vote for me today.”

We predicted this a few weeks ago, promising the government will refinance everybody’s loans. No credit checks. No proof of anything. All you have to do is promise to vote for him. And that’s implied. That is understood. I mean that’s the whole point of it. So how do you fight this? What do we do? The only thing that has ever had a chance from the first days of this election, this campaign, has been to make it about Obama. Every day, in every which way possible, on issues, on Obama’s record, on the things you can’t defend. That’s what needs to happen. That’s what our chance is. Our team is not all that good. You know it and I know it. They’re just not.

Do We Need Big Government?

Do We Need Big Government?

CATO / National Review ^ | 2011-12-24 | Michael D. Tanner

Posted on Saturday, December 24, 2011 12:58:30 PM by rabscuttle385

AAs Congress nears approval on a series of 2011 appropriations bills (only three months late, a near-record for recent history), Rep. Sander Levin (D., Mich.) told Fox News that he was encouraged by progress on the bills because “we’re dealing with the lives of people. Those appropriation bills relate to the daily lives of people in middle class of America, and that’s really what this is all about.”

Yet, if that is true, and so many Americans have become dependent on the decisions of federal appropriators in Washington, there seems to be something distinctly wrong.

During the 2011 debate over raising the debt ceiling, President Obama noted that the U.S. federal government sends out 70 million checks every month. Unfortunately, that is probably an underestimate. According to the Washington Post, the president’s estimate included Social Security, veterans’ benefits, and spending on non-defense contractors and vendors. But he did not include reimbursements to Medicare providers and vendors, or electronic transfers to the 21 million households receiving food stamps. (Nor did he include most spending by the Defense Department, which has a payroll of 6.4 million active and retired employees and pays nearly 1 million invoices and 660,000 travel-expense claims per month.) The actual number of monthly federal checks might be closer to 200 million.

CBO: Stimulus hurts economy in the long run

CBO: Stimulus hurts economy in the long run

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/22/cbo-stimulus-hurts-economy-long-run/ ^

Posted on Tuesday, November 22, 2011 5:52:37 PM by kcvl

The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday downgraded its estimate of the benefits of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, saying it may have sustained as few as 700,000 jobs at its peak last year and that over the long run it will actually be a net drag on the economy.

CBO said that while the Recovery Act boosted the economy in the short run, the extra debt that the stimulus piled up “crowds out” private investment and “will reduce output slightly in the long run — by between 0 and 0.2 percent after 2016.”

Undoing Obamacare (Unconstitutionality is just one of its problems)

Undoing Obamacare (Unconstitutionality is just one of its problems)

National Review ^ | 11/16/2011 | Yuval Levin

Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2011 12:30:19 PM by SeekAndFind

The Supreme Court’s decision to take up the challenges to Obamacare is certainly good news for the law’s opponents. At the very least, a decision next year would put Obamacare front and center in the heart of election season when the Democrats would like nothing better than to pretend that Obama’s first two years did not exist. At most, it could also dramatically weaken and undercut the statute itself, helping to clear the way for its repeal.

But opponents of Obamacare should be careful not to let their focus be drawn away to the legal arena—as if the question at the core of the debate is whether the individual mandate is constitutional. That is an important secondary question, but it is not where the future of our health-care system will be decided.

What Happens when Government Tips the Scales? – The Plain Truth – Freedom Watch – Fox Business

Does the government work for us or do we work for the government? Why do we let the government dupe us? Tonight, there is danger when the government is wrong.

Periodically, the huge apparatus of the federal government uses its power to give us information about itself and about ourselves, in the form of statistics.

Whether it is the Department of Labor, the Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, or even the Federal Reserve, the feds are fixated on statistics and they use statistics to make things appear to be better than they are, and to manipulate our thinking.

Jim deMint: We’re Still Not Cutting. Congress refuses to face the fiscal crisis.

Jim deMint: We’re Still Not Cutting. Congress refuses to face the fiscal crisis.

National Review ^ | 11/08/2011 | Jim DeMint

Posted on Tuesday, November 08, 2011 10:28:38 AM by SeekAndFind

Despite bipartisan promises to cut spending after the 2010 elections, Washington politicians are still voting to make the government even bigger and more expensive than ever.

Don’t believe me?

Even though the federal government is nearly $15 trillion in debt, it’s spending at record-high levels. Federal spending has gone up 5 percent in the first nine months of this year alone.

Just last week, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate passed three new spending bills to increase 2012 funding above 2011 funding levels. The bills will increase spending for the Department of Agriculture by $6.4 billion; for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development by more than $2 billion; and for the Commerce, Justice, and State departments by more than $694 million.

Frosty Wooldridge — Illegal immigration: the cost of amnesty = $999 billion

Summary: This option is the bill H.R. 4437 sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner that passed the House of Representatives in 2005. This bill would have been so effective in combating illegal immigration that some 1 million illegal aliens marched in cities around the United States on May 1, 2006 to protest it.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would cost $1.9 billion over the 5 years 2006-2010, which we extrapolate out to the year 2056 using a linear model to account for cost increases.

Older Bloc of Voters Favoring the GOP?

Older Bloc of Voters Favoring the GOP?

Weekly Standard ^ | November 04, 2011 | Jeffrey H. Anderson

Posted on Saturday, November 05, 2011 11:01:32 PM by Steelfish

Older Bloc of Voters Favoring the GOP?

NOV 4, 2011 • BY JEFFREY H. ANDERSON

While some of the Republican presidential candidates continue to focus almost exclusively on the economy, Politico writes, “Medicare-aged seniors could have the biggest impact on the 2012 elections — and that’s a bad sign for the person who just overhauled their health care, according to the LA Times.”

In a striking act of political brazenness, President Obama and the Democratic Congress decided to fund Obamacare through a roughly even mixture of tax hikes and reallocations of funds slated for Medicare. In all, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that $1.125 trillion would be siphoned out of Medicare and other related federal health programs and spent on Obamacare during the overhaul’s real first decade (2014 to 2023). Obama’s signature legislation also established the grisly Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which would be charged with limiting Medicare spending in the future. In his budget do-over speech, Obama proposed to grant the IBAP even more power to cut Medicare spending (thereby, in his words, “further improving Medicare”).

The Los Angeles Times writes, “The U.S. heads into the 2012 presidential contest with a large generation gap in its politics — a rarity in American elections and one that, at least for now, has boosted prospects for a Republican victory, new [Pew Research Center] survey data show….Researchers divided the respondents into four age groups: millennials (ages 18 to 29), Generation X (30 to 46), baby boom (47 to 65) and the silent generation (66 to 83).”

The Times continues,

More Lies: WH Emails Reveal Major Obamacare Accounting Fraud

Does the American public have the bandwidth to follow two Solyndra-style White House scandals at once? As maddening as the Solyndra row has been — and we’ll have an update on that story later this morning — this revelation is probably worse. I reach that conclusion based on the relative scale and consequences of the dueling disgraces’ politically-motivated dishonesty. First, a little bit of background to prime the pump: When Democrats entered their full-court press for Obamacare last winter, they made it clear that nothing would stand in their way. Not hostile public opinion, not sound policy interests, not even a desire to know what was in their own bill. Nothing. One of their boldest plays was to manufacture a CBO score explictly designed to reach the ludicrous conclusion that theor new multi-trillion-dollar entitlement program would actually reduce the deficit. In order to accomplish this feat, they used smoke and mirrors accounting gimmicks that went far beyond even many Beltway cynics’ wildest imaginations.

Rep. Paul Ryan exposed and debunked Democrats’ most audacious tricks…………..

MORE…

via More Lies: WH Emails Reveal Major Obamacare Accounting Fraud.

EDITORIAL: Let the gas tax die

If Congress does nothing, the cost of gasoline will drop 14 cents per gallon on Sept. 30. That not only would be a boon to consumers oppressed by hefty prices at the pump but also would go a long way toward ending one of Washington’s favorite accounting gimmicks. The public is supposed to think the 18.4 cents tossed to Uncle Sam for every gallon of unleaded (24.4 cents for diesel) goes to roads and bridges. Fifty-five years ago, it was true that the 3-cent-per-gallon levy went directly into the concrete and steel that gave us the Interstate Highway System. The authorization for most of the current tax expires next month, and Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist fears President Obama will use jobs as an excuse to boost this tax. “His plan is going to be the highway bill,” Mr. Norquist said in an editorial board meeting at The Washington Times. “Everyone wants highways, but you give them the money, they don’t build highways. They build everything but highways.” Out of the $29 billion in fuel-tax revenue collected this year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated $7.6 billion would be diverted into mass-transit projects. That is only part of the problem. One look at the Federal Highway Administration’s budget shows core spending priorities in the “highway” account frequently have nothing to do with highways. For example, the agency allocates $6.8 billion to a “livable communities” program designed to promote a leftist anything-but-the-automobile agenda. Another $8.9 billion will be blown on “environmental sustainability” schemes, and $2.5 billion will go to safety – that’s the code word for paying local cops overtime to set up speed traps and East German-style roadblocks…more

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com …

via EDITORIAL: Let the gas tax die.

Is Obama a Serial Liar?

Is Obama a Serial Liar?

Is Obama a Serial Liar?

American Thinker ^ | May 9, 2011 | Nancy Morgan

Posted on Monday, May 09, 2011 11:42:39 AM by jazusamo

Accusing someone of lying is a serious matter. Especially when that someone is the President of the United States. Charges of that nature should be leveled based only on absolute proof of a deliberate statement, intentionally made, whose sole purpose is to deceive. Based on this criterion, President Obama is a liar. Demonstrably so. And a disturbing pattern is emerging that allows for the possibility that our president is a serial liar. Consider:

In just the last month,

Obama has made several statements that are just not so. Statements made to the American public that were in direct conflict with known facts.

In April, Obama flatly stated that implementing ObamaCare will reduce the deficit by $1 trillion. A day later, the Congressional Budget Office reported that statement was ‘incorrect,’ pegging the “deficit savings” at $210 billion over 10 years.

In the same April 15 speech, Obama stated that the tax burden on the wealthy is the lowest it has been in 50 years. A simple fact-check proves him wrong. Obama did not correct his false statement and the media didn’t either.

In January of 2009, Obama stated that it was no longer necessary to kill Osama bin Laden to win the war against al-Qaeda. On May 1, 2011, after the successful raid by Navy Seals that killed bin Laden, Obama told the nation that he made the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden a “top priority,” and had instructed CIA Chief Leon Panetta to make this job number one. Which statement is correct?

Last week, several of my friends asked me if I believed that bin Laden was really dead. The questions weren’t surprising, considering the mass of misinformation and conflicting accounts of bin Laden’s death now emanating from the White House…

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com …

via BLOGGER: GUNNY.G.1984.+: Is Obama a Serial Liar?.

Rep. Paul Ryan Isn’t The Savior We Need

Here we see this same trick being used by people trying to pump Rep. Ryan’s budget plan. Being in “primary” balance is a fancy way of saying “still running a deficit and not really in” balance “by any stretch of the imagination”. The word balance is associated with Ryan’s plan and used to get people to support it because it is a positive thing to have our spending and revenues in balance. But the truth is that there is no balance. Again, as Mr. Ferrera points out, the Ryan Plan still is running a $385 billion debt in 2021 for crying out loud!

It does not take a rocket scientist to know what this means. Although it obviously takes someone a little smarter than a United States Representative or a blind partisan by the looks of things. Since I fall between those two extremes I completely understand it. Most likely you do too. It means we are still going to add trillions in debt over the next decade. If in 2021 we are still going to be $385 in the red, and presumably that is the best we are going to do over the next decade, multiply that by ten years and figure out how much more money we are going to saddle our children, born and unborn, with at a minimum.

via Rep. Paul Ryan Isn’t The Savior We Need.

Driver Mileage Could Be Taxed

Policymakers and analysts are considering new sources to fund highway spending.

The reasons, they said, were that federal spending on highways exceeded available funds and current taxes don’t give drivers incentives to consider how much road use costs.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released a study that looked at alternative approaches to highway funding.

The main alternative proposed was taxing motorists for every mile they drive. That didn’t sit well with some motorists.

“Why? We pay for the gasoline, we pay for the cars, we pay for the sales tax, we’re paying tolls,” Austin Horan said.

“Those taxes on gas were designed to pay for the highways, so why should you tax us again?” asked Nick Zambrito.

In its study, the CBO stated there’s a realization that fuel taxes are not giving motorists incentive to use highways efficiently. Basically, people travel, the roads get damaged and there’s not enough money to fix them.

via Driver Mileage Could Be Taxed.

“Remember when smokers begged for people to be a little understanding? Remember when smokers warned that there would be a tax that ALL people would have to pay on something they held dear?” ~ Taxing the Miles You Drive. GPS to Track and Record All Vehicles?

Remember when smokers begged for people to be a little understanding? Remember when smokers warned that there would be a tax that ALL people would have to pay on something they held dear? Well, I think the GPS tax for tracking and taxing every mile you drive just may fit that bill.

This tax, like the cigarette smokers tax, will have devastating consequences on the poor and middle income people. With a tax on every mile we drive, not to mention tracking information on every mile we drive, are we seeing the “hope” and “change” that Obama and the democrats were talking about?

(Excerpt) Read more at associatedcontent.com …

via Taxing the Miles You Drive. GPS to Track and Record All Vehicles?.

$105 Billion secretly tucked into Obamacare without Congressional approval

$105 Billion secretly tucked into Obamacare without Congressional approvalThe Radio Patriot ^ | Mar. 3, 2011 | Andrea Shea KingPosted on Thursday, March 03, 2011 2:56:40 PM by patriotgal1787But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it…”"

It’s morning in America

“The cause of America,” wrote my countryman Tom Paine, “is in great measure the cause of all mankind”. That statement now has a practical, financial truth which Paine couldn’t have imagined in 1776. The US is the world’s leading economy, the dollar its reserve currency. American prosperity is especially critical to Britain, its single largest overseas investor.

That, above all, is why Britons should take satisfaction from the return of candidates committed to restoring order and sanity to the federal budget. Virtually the first thing John Boehner, the new Speaker of the House, said in his acceptance speech was that Congress would “cut government spending”. Not before time. Under Barack Obama, US debt has risen from 40 per cent of GDP to 62 per cent and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it was on course to rise to 87 per cent by 2020, 109 per cent by 2025, and 185 per cent by 2035.

Yesterday, American voters reminded their politicians that they are servants, not rulers: that elected representatives are there to carry out the will of a people who, as the experience of many ages shows, are generally wiser than their leaders. Americans understand that governments, like individuals, must live within their means.

More…

Scott Rasmussen: A Vote Against Dems, Not for the GOP

Voters don’t want to be governed from the left, right or center. They want Washington to recognize that Americans want to govern themselves.This isn’t a wave, it’s a tidal shift—and we’ve seen it coming for a long time. Remarkably, there have been plenty of warning signs over the past two years, but Democratic leaders ignored them.

At least the captain of the Titanic tried to miss the iceberg. Congressional Democrats aimed right for it.While most voters now believe that cutting government spending is good for the economy, congressional Democrats have convinced them that they want to increase government spending. After the president proposed a $50 billion infrastructure plan in September, for example, Rasmussen Reports polling found that 61% of voters believed cutting spending would create more jobs than the president’s plan.Central to the Democrats’ electoral woes was the debate on health-care reform. From the moment in May 2009 when the Congressional Budget Office announced that the president’s plan would cost a trillion dollars, most voters opposed it.

Today 53% want to repeal it. Opposition was always more intense than support, and opposition was especially high among senior citizens, who vote in high numbers in midterm elections.Rather than acknowledging the public concern by passing a smaller and more popular plan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Obama insisted on passing the proposed legislation by any means possible.As a result, Democrats face massive losses in tomorrow’s midterm election.

Excerpt Read more at online.wsj.com …

Obama — The President America Needs Now “Barf Until Your Intestines Are On Floor” Alert

History books will celebrate Barack Obama as one of the greatest American presidents of all time. If we’re smart, we’ll start celebrating him more now.President Obama created at least 800,000 jobs and as many as 2.4 million new jobs through emergency economic stimulus, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Perhaps more importantly, faced with an economic crisis of extraordinary proportions — brought on by failed policies under Republican leadership — President Obama put the breaks on recession and started the slow climb to recovery. According to a survey of 50 independent economists conducted by USA Today, without the actions taken by President Obama, the unemployment rate would be even higher than it is now and a dire situation would be much, much worse.But that’s not all. In addition to stopping a bad short-term recession from becoming a full-blown depression, President Obama has paved the way to a better future for all of us in the long-term. Thanks to President Obama, 32 million previously-uninsured Americans now have health insurance and all of us can stop worrying about being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

Excerpt