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Posts Tagged ‘Chuck Schumer’
February 16th, 2016 at 9:05 am
Hypocrite Chuck Schumer

Following the tragic news of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republican lawmakers rightly have been arguing that Scalia’s replacement should be left to the next President.

Predictably, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), Harry Reid’s hand-picked replacement to become the Senate Democrat leader following Reid’s retirement in 2016, is crying foul.  On ABC’s “This Week,” Schumer bemoaned, “You know, the kind of obstructionism that Mitch McConnell’s talking about, he’s harkening back to his old days.”

But it was Schumer, back in July 2007, who argued in a speech to the American Constitution Society that, except for in extraordinary circumstances, the Senate should block any Supreme Court nominations made by President George W. Bush during his remaining time in office.  At the time, Schumer said:

We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.

Schumer went on to add:

We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances.

For the record, there were 18 months left in George W. Bush’s term when Schumer argued that the Senate block any additional nominees the President may have made to the Supreme Court.  The nation is now less than seven months away from electing Obama’s successor.

January 24th, 2014 at 3:18 pm
NY’s Schumer Calls on Dems to Defend Government

Talk about a New York state of mind.

In the run-up to the 2014 election, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “charts an agenda for Congress that includes extending unemployment benefits, raising the minimum wage, making college more affordable and investing in infrastructure,” according to the L.A. Times.

“Times are now ripe for a renewed and robust defense of government,” Schumer said in a speech to the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund. And he clearly doesn’t fear any potential downside. “The best way to deal with the tea party’s obsessive anti-government mania is to confront it directly, by showing the people the need for government to help them out of their morass.”

Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. The real maniacs in Washington, D.C. are liberals like Schumer who think Americans are eager to be told how government will meddle even more in the economy. Raising the minimum wage in an anemic employment market is a sure way to increase joblessness. But maybe that’s the point. The result is more people directly dependent on government outlays for their daily needs.

And then there is the inflationary effect of government spending on the price of college tuition, as well as the fact that ‘infrastructure investment’ is really code for pork barrel projects channeled to public employee unions.

Schumer’s call for a full-throated defense of government may get cheers in the liberal salons of the NYC-DC corridor, but echoing it would bring swift electoral defeat for his colleagues in more conservative states.

May 24th, 2012 at 7:51 pm
Exposed: Senate Dem Hypocrisy on Gender-Pay-Gap

A Washington Free Beacon analysis of salaries paid to staff members of Democratic Senators discovered that 37 of the 50 members in the Democratic caucus paid their female staffers less than male counterparts.

Two of the worst offenders are Senators Patty Murray of Washington and Chuck Schumer of New York.  The gender-pay-gap in Murray’s office is 35.2 percent.  Schumer pays men 36 percent more than women.

The Free Beacon’s report highlights two aspects of the so-called gender-pay-gap.  First, those like Murray and Schumer who’ve used the issue to raise money and demonize conservatives are hypocrites.  Second, the likely defenses for Murray and Schumer – that disparities in pay are due to differences in job titles and responsibilities – are exactly the same defenses that private firms use when challenged by liberals.

Elsewhere in the Free Beacon report it explains why the percentages for Murray, Schumer, and company give the lie to their talking points about grossly disproportionate gender bias in pay rates:

[The percentages for Murray and Schumer are] well above the 23 percent gap that Democrats claim exists between male and female workers nationwide. The figure is based on a 2010 U.S. Census Bureau report, and is technically accurate. However, as CNN’s Lisa Sylvester has reported, when factors such as area of employment, hours of work, and time in the workplace are taken into account, the gap shrinks to about 5 percent.

As Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute has explained, “the famous gender-wage gap is to a considerable degree a gender-hours gap.”  Simply put, women, on average, work less hours than men because many women choose to either work part-time or leave and return to have children and raise families.  Working less hours over the course of a career means less seniority, less promotion, and yes, less pay.

Presumably, the women that make this choice prefer the trade-off.  The point here isn’t to argue in favor of working mothers or those whom stay at home.  Either depends on prudential factors unique to each woman.  Rather, it’s to point out that disparities in pay between women and men – contra liberals like Murray and Schumer – have several other reasonable explanations, all of which align with experience and common sense, than rank gender discrimination.

If Senate Democrats plow ahead as planned with a push to force more votes on legislation to address the so-called gender-pay-gap, then it’s practically the duty of their Republican colleagues to force a debate about the transparent hypocrisy underlying the scam.

February 25th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Dems Are Wrong to Think Govt. Shutdown is a Win for Them

Not so fast, says Fox News columnist Chris Stirewalt.  An important difference between the 1995 shutdown that empowered President Bill Clinton was the lack of public anxiety over the $4.97 trillion debt.  Now, it’s $14 trillion plus, “a sum equal to the size of our entire economy.”

If Democrats in Washington make the same miscalculation as Democrats in Wisconsin, they will suffer brutally at the next election.  Shutting down the government in favor of public employee unions or unsustainable federal spending is a fool’s strategy.  With President Barack Obama and party leaders like Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) daring House Republicans to stand firm on budget cuts, expect to see thousands of pro-shutdown protestors flood Washington if government buildings go dark.

If dormant long enough, perhaps some of those buildings – and the agencies that house them – will never be revived.  The debt and spending issues are more important now than in 1995.  If Democrats fail to realize that, they may help hasten a reduction in government overall.

April 23rd, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Liberals Turning Against Obama’s Disregard for Israel
Posted by Print

As I mentioned in a recent column, President Obama’s seeming contempt for the Israeli government — especially in light of his propensity for coddling hostile regimes — is an embarassment that undermines America’s traditional foreign policy values. Now, that judgment seems to be echoing through the corridors of power in the Democratic Party.

Chuck Schumer, the liberal New York Senator who may well succeed Harry Reid as Democratic leader in the upper chamber next year, had this to say about Obama’s Israel policy during an interview on a Jewish radio program:

I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk,” Schumer told Segal. “Palestinians don’t really believe in a state of Israel. They, unlike a majority of Israelis, who have come to the conclusion that they can live with a two-state solution to be determined by the parties, the majority of Palestinians are still very reluctant, and they need to be pushed to get there.

“If the U.S. says certain things and takes certain stands the Palestinians say, ‘Why should we negotiate?'” Schumer said.

Given the strong ties that America’s Jewish community has to the Democratic Party, this could be the beginning of a widening fissure on the left. Politico has the full story.

January 29th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Moving Terror Trials out of New York?
Posted by Print

That’s the word from the New York Times.  If the grassroots outrage didn’t sway the White House, the objections of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and fellow Democrats appear to be enough for the White House to at least consider moving the terrorist trials.

Even liberal Democrat Chuck Schumer from New York has gently nudged President Obama away from the New York City location.  Schumer recommended to the Administration that they “find suitable alternatives” and that “concerns about costs, logistics and security” might force the trials out of New York.

Since costs could balloon to more than $1 billion for civilian trials in New York, the President is rightly balking from his initial decision.  Let’s hope his newfound ambivalence leads him to the correct decision.

August 24th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Schumer: Democrats Alone on Health Care
Posted by Print