After originally pledging to cut $100 billion in spending this year the House GOP leadership settled for a cut of $30 billion. Then, the Tea Party-backed freshman caucus weighed in and forced a rethink. Early this morning, the House voted to cut $60 billion in this year’s budget.
That’s real, measureable progress. Getting 60% of a loaf may not satisfy everyone’s hunger for budget cuts, but it is still a victory for fiscal conservatives. Well done.
Who says Iran’s leaders don’t know how to lighten the mood? With tensions in the Middle East boiling over – and Iran rumored to be behind many of the region’s revolutionary protests – the Islamic Republic is trying to downplay the threat of its decision to send two warships through Egypt’s Suez Canal and emerge off the coast of Israel.
Hard to blame Israeli officials in Tel Aviv for fearing the truth of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad’s repeated promises to destroy the Jewish state after getting the news about his navy’s surprise trip. But as proof of Iran’s peaceful intentions the government offered two assurances. First, the ships won’t carry any weapons or nuclear or chemical material. Second, the duo is headed to Syria for training.
Unfortunately for Iran, its dishonest record of nuclear enrichment and ties to terrorist organizations in Syria and elsewhere aren’t fooling anyone – except the weakened Egyptian government looking to avoid a confrontation.
It’s worth noting that an Iranian warship going through the Suez Canal under the Mubarak reign is unthinkable. Now, Israeli officials must consider more unthinkable scenarios with its sworn enemy soon sailing within sight of the Jewish homeland.
If you ever doubted the indivisibility of disparate Leftist causes, then for proof look no farther than Madison, WI. A community organizer-turned-POTUS is sending his minions to supplement Badger State public employee unions. Jesse Jackson is leading a march in support of workers’ rights. (Apparently, the only color in Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition these days is red.)
All we need now is a cadre of eco-friendly celebrities to descend on the Wisconsin state capitol and declare their love for collective bargaining (while demanding A-list treatment in their next film contract). With the battle over union overreach spreading to other states, this may the beginning of a very tense year in states across the country.
The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel describes perfectly the triumph of democracy that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) made possible this week by opening up the budget bill to floor amendments from anyone.
Neglected questions were once again asked. Should we get rid of federal funding for the arts? Should the government be designating federal monuments? What’s the role of NASA? And Congress finally got to air some dirty secrets.
One of this week’s more symbolically rich cuts came from Arizona’s Republican Jeff Flake, who won an amendment erasing $34 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown, Pa. The center, despite serving no real purpose, had been protected for decades, via earmarks, by the late Defense appropriations chair John Murtha.
A little later, Strassel identifies the best aspect of Boehner’s new regime:
This week’s exercise forced members to read the underlying spending bill; to understand the implications of hundreds of amendments; to remain on the floor for debate; and to go on record with votes for which voters will hold them accountable.
Indeed, John Murtha and corrupt legislative processes are dead. Long live this new era under Speaker Boehner’s new House rules where members of Congress can finally earn their money.
This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:
Senik: Tea For Two: Richard Lugar, Orrin Hatch and the Tea Party’s Role in the 2012 Elections
Lee: WARNING: Defense Cuts May Be Hazardous to Our Health
Ellis: Studies Show Connection Between Free Markets and a Cleaner Environment
Freedom Minute Video: The Gipper at 100
Podcast: CFIF’s Timothy Lee on the Left’s Attempt to Reshape the Judiciary
Jester’s Courtroom: Run Geezer Run
Editorial Cartoons: Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz: Question of the Week
Notable Quotes: Quotes of the Week
If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.
In response to questioning from Senator Jeff Sessions during a Budget Committee hearing yesterday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted President Obama’s proposed budget creates an “excessively high interest burden” that is “unsustainable.”
The president’s proposal would add $13 trillion in new gross debt and would increase interest payments on the national debt to $844 billion annually by 2021.
As commemorations and retrospectives continue to accompany the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth, the far left is taking its chance to recycle the anti-Reagan propaganda it’s had to keep on ice for the last quarter century. And when it comes to radical revisionism, no one’s better that MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, the dean of wise old leftists insulated from reality by the tenure system.
In an appearance on the program “Democracy Now”, Chomsky offered this summation of the Reagan Legacy:
“What happened after Reagan left office was the beginnings of an effort to carry out – this Reagan legacy to try to create from this really quite miserable creature as some kind of deity and amazingly it succeeded,” Chomsky said. “I mean, Kim Il-sung would have been impressed. The events that took place when Reagan died, the Reagan legacy, this Obama business – you don’t get that in free societies. It would be ridiculed. What you get it is in totalitarian states.”
Apart from the fact that this world-renowned linguist has all the syntactical finesse of a five year old, what’s most telling is Chomsky’s bogeyman invocation of totalitarianism. Remind us again, Noam, what was your role in bringing down the Soviet Union? And what is it exactly that Hugo Chavez finds so appealing about your books?
Along with his status as America’s most famous military historian and classicist, Victor Davis Hanson is also the operator of a family farm in California’s San Joaquin Valley. In a recent article for RealClearPolitics, VDH speaks from experience about the disastrous state of U.S. agricultural policy:
We need a drastic reset of agricultural policy. The use of prime ag land to grow corn varieties for ethanol biofuel makes no sense. Why divert farmland for fuels when the world’s poor are short of food, and there are millions of un-farmable areas in Alaska and the arid West, as well as off the American coast, that are either not being tapped for more efficient gas and oil or are only partially exploited?
When North Americans do not fully use their own fossil-fuel resources, two very bad things usually follow: 1) someone else in Africa, Asia or Russia is far more likely to harm the environment to provide us oil; 2) precious farmland will be diverted to growing less-efficient biofuels instead of food – and billions worldwide pay the price.
No supporter has ever been able to explain why the advent of massive subsidies over the last half-century coincided with the decline, not the renaissance, of “family farmers.” Nor has anyone offered reasons why cotton, wheat, soy, sugar and corn are directly subsidized, but not, for example, nuts, peaches or carrots.
A funny thing happened when House Republicans opened up the process to allow amendments to spending bills: a bipartisan coalition voted overwhelmingly to cancel a $3 billion boondoggle.
Interestingly, the project killed was the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s alternative engine. Following a well-trodden path to budgetary immortality, contractors General Electric and Rolls Royce spread the work around many states hoping enough Congress members would vote to keep the money flowing to their districts.
No more. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have called for the termination of the alternative engine program as a way to cut waste in the Pentagon’s budget. After years of work and billions in spending everyone involved anticipates billions more in appropriations before the engine becomes operational.
With yesterday’s vote to stem the tide of red ink on the books, let’s hope there are more chances for an open budget process that saves taxpayers money.
Yesterday, CFIF Senior Fellow Troy Senik described the different approaches Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) are taking toward their state’s Tea Party movements. Hatch is accommodating while Lugar is dismissive.
Count Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) in the Hatch camp. The Maine moderate is raising the eyebrow of one home-state commentator by giving a lengthy response to questions about opposing Sharia law, repealing ObamaCare, increasing the debt ceiling, and Social Security spending, among other issues.
Snowe should get credit for answering those questions publicly and in-depth. Time will tell if it helps her win another term in 2012.
Two months ago, when Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed its “Net Neutrality” proposal by a partisan 3-2 margin, we guaranteed that it would inevitably be defeated via legislation, the courts or both.
Sure enough, last month Verizon Communications challenged the FCC’s rogue vote in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the same court that unanimously ruled last April that the FCC doesn’t possess lawful authority to impose Net “Neutrality.” Now this week, both the House and Senate introduced resolutions to repeal the FCC’s rogue action. The resolutions were introduced pursuant to the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to review and overrule federal agency regulations via simple majority. Importantly, such resolutions are not subject to normal Senate filibuster hurdles.
“Net Neutrality” constitutes a destructive and illegal federal intrusion into the Internet, which has managed to flourish just fine over the past two decades without Obama Administration micromanagement, thank you very much. The American public opposes it by a 2-to-1 margin, courts have rejected it unanimously and Congressional opposition is bipartisan. While “Net Neutrality’s” demise is a matter of when, not if, it is still absolutely critical that we as citizens maintain our resolve to spare the Internet sector from becoming bureaucrats’ tech version of ObamaCare.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
There were many fine speeches from last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that deserved the attention of thoughtful conservatives. First among equals, however, was the address that Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels gave for Friday night’s Ronald Reagan Centennial Dinner.
The speech — written by Daniels himself — shows that the potential 2012 presidential candidate is not only a brilliant manager and a canny politician, but also an extremely sophisticated (and subtle) writer. In its defense of a prudent conservatism, the speech demonstrated that Daniels, not Barack Obama, is the great literary talent of 21st century politics. For unlike The One, Daniels speech was drenched in substance.
As such, the speech deserves no less than to be read in its entirety. Failing that, however, no passage deserves isolated quotation as much as Daniels’ definition and defense of fiscal conservatism, a masterpiece of dictional economy:
We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose, because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer. When we do find it necessary, we feel a profound duty to use that dollar as carefully and effectively as possible, else we should never have taken it at all.
That’ll do, Mitch. That’ll do.
Finally, some good news to report on the Collegegate front.
A bipartisan group of Congressional Republicans and Democrats is preparing to take action that would interrupt the Obama Department of Education’s plans to unfairly cripple career colleges. Chairman John Kline (R-MN) of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) of the Subcommittee on Higher Education, and Representatives Alcee Hastings (D-FL) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) are expected to offer an amendment later this week blocking Education Department funding for implementation of the abusive so-called “Gainful Employment Rule.” In order to put an end to this overly burdensome regulation, we must show our support for providing education opportunities for students who attend career colleges, and urge Congress to support defunding the Gainful Employment Rule. Please use CFIF’s directory to call your Member of Congress now, and tell them to support the Kline/Foxx/Hastings/McCarthy Amendment to the Fiscal Year 2011 Continuing Resolution on Gainful Employment.
Last month, we noted with alarm that the Congressional Budget Office forecast a record $1.5 trillion federal budget deficit for fiscal 2011.
It’s apparently even worse than that. Today, the Obama Administration unveils its proposed budget, projecting that this year’s deficit will actually reach $1.6 trillion. So after telling Americans during his 2008 campaign that he was going to go through the budget “line-by-line” and reduce the deficit, Obama has given us deficits of $1.4 trillion, $1.3 trillion and now a record $1.6 trillion. And what to show for it? Unemployment remains at or above 9% for a post-World War II record 21st consecutive month, despite Obama’s promises that it would top out at 8% in October 2009 and decline to between 6% and 7% today.
As for those who continue their mindless “Blame Bush” rationalization crusade, they must explain how three years into the Age of Obama, the deficit is increasing, not decreasing, from $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion (an almost 25% increase).
This week heard two U.S. Senators – Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Jim Webb (D-VA) – announce their retirements. In 2012, Kyl will complete his third six-year term; Webb his first. Their time spent couldn’t be more different.
Kyl leaves as the number two Republican in Senate leadership. He compiled a record of legislative achievement on tax and defense policy unrivaled by his colleagues. Moreover, he did it by laboring outside the media limelight.
Though Webb helped pass a major G.I. Bill, he didn’t seem to emulate Kyl’s ability to balance the demands of being a senator (endless fundraising, piecemeal victories) with the drive to be a successful politician.
It’s obvious from his record that Kyl wanted to be a senator to enact programs like pro-growth tax policy and missile defense. Webb ran for office in 2006 because he was against the Iraq War and the continued marginalization of his Southern Scots-Irish clan.
Reflecting on the editorials that have been written about both men, it seems that there is at least one lesson to draw from Kyl’s success and Webb’s frustration: in the long run it’s far better to be for something than against everything.
Apologies for the post-Super Bowl football metaphor, but Jay Cost’s newest commentary made me do it. Cost argues that “The Fred Thompson Experience” proved that the right strategy for announcing a presidential candidacy is to wait until voters actually start tuning in to candidates. That doesn’t happen 21 months before the election. By letting his rivals expend time and money placating the media’s interest for months, Fred Thompson easily catapulted to the front of the line for one simple reason: he was new to the field. (His failure to capitalize was another matter.)
For just about every serious GOP contender speaking at CPAC this weekend the temptation will be to ride the media wave into an early announced run for president. After reading Cost’s analysis, perhaps they should wait until the House GOP and President Barack Obama have sparred this year to see which issues are the most relevant when voters start caring.
The uniqueness of Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Jim DeMint (R-SC) in joining their chamber’s Tea Party caucus shone forth again when yet another freshman conservative declined to join their ranks. Tea Party darling Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) refuses to join. Now, it’s John Boozman’s (R-AR) turn.
Officially, Boozman says he doesn’t want the public to confuse the tri-partisan nature of the Tea Party (Republican, Reagan Democrat, and Independent) with being an arm of the GOP. But closer scrutiny of Boozman’s rationale to ABC News indicates he’s not ready to balance the budget by cutting agricultural subsidies.
“But it doesn’t sound like ag subsidies will be at the top of your list for things to cut,” Karl said.
“We’re going to have to look at everything but ag subsidies are like everything else. That affects jobs,” the senator said. “Now listen, the one thing about agriculture is we’ve lost our manufacturing, we’ve lost a great deal of jobs overseas, lots of our industry. The last thing in the world we need to do is lose the ability to produce our food.”
Chances are Boozman doesn’t want to tie himself to unqualified budget cutters like Paul, Lee, or DeMint. Boozman’s calculation may be that it’s far better to fight for certain cuts while arguing to keep tax-supported jobs in his home state.
Senators like Rubio and Boozman argue that caucus membership in the Senate isn’t as important in the upper chamber as it is in the House. Any member of the Senate can unilaterally slow or kill legislation he doesn’t like. While that’s true, it’s also a way to sidestep a measure of accountability. After all, if your major theme is cutting the budget, why not join a group that won’t make exceptions for pet pork projects?
Eventually, Paul, Lee, or DeMint might prove the truth of the single senator theory by killing bills favored by Rubio or Boozman. If that happens, don’t be surprised to find Rubio and Boozman caught between their rhetoric and their record.
This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:
Lee: Meet the New Obama, Same as the Old Obama
Ellis: Obama and the New Incrementalism: Thumbing His Nose at the Law
Senik: Democrats Close the Door on Sanity
Ellis: Kauffman Foundation’s “Rules for Growth” Is Roadmap Out of Recession
Freedom Minute Video: The Gipper at 100
Podcast: Reagan’s Legacy and Obama’s Health Care Debacle
Jester’s Courtroom: “Start your day with Nutella Spread” … and a Lawsuit
Editorial Cartoons: Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz: Question of the Week
Notable Quotes: Quotes of the Week
If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.
This month marks the 100th birthday of President Ronald Reagan. In this week’s “Freedom Minute,” CFIF’s Renee Giachino looks back on his commitment to America’s founding principles and the cause of liberty. “A good president would have reminded us that America has the potential to be a shining city on a hill,” says Giachino. “But because he was a great one, Ronald Reagan took action to ensure that we would become that city.”
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