Freedom Line Blog

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

One-third of the way through the president’s term, CFIF’s Renee Giachino quips on ten lessons learned from the Age of Obama.

Watch this week’s Freedom Minute below.

Remember when both Candidate Obama and President Obama promised (on more than one occasion) that no family making less than $250,000 per year would see any of their taxes increase – not “one single dime?”

Well, that promise held true for a little while… yeah… for about the political equivalent of five minutes.

Indeed, according to House Way & Means Committee Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI):

Since January of 2009, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have enacted into law gross tax increases totaling more than $670 billion, or more than $2,100 for every man, woman and child in the United States.  The list of tax increases includes at least 14 violations of the President’s pledge not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than $200,000 for singles and $250,000 for married couples.” [emphasis added]

Rep. Camp has compiled all the tax increases in a nice and easy to read chart.  Check it out here.  It will come in handy the next time your liberal neighbor suggests that President Obama is actually working to reduce taxes on middle class families.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

In these week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the Obama Administration’s education policy.  While the president has taken some steps in the right direction, there are still other, more troubling aspects of the policy that need to be addressed.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

In a speech in Iowa City, Iowa today, President Obama urged Republicans to “Be my guest,” and, “Go for it,” in efforts to repeal ObamaCare.

His tone was mocking, taunting, laying down a political challenge.

We don’t know the tone of the American people polled by CBS News yesterday.  Presumably it was serious.  They were asked, “Should Republicans continue to challenge the health care bill?”  Overall, sixty-two percent said yes, including 89 percent of Republicans, 66 percent of Independents and 41 percent of Democrats (who somehow seem to have taken a pass on the Inside the Beltway Democratic exuberance).

Go for it, indeed, because those are tripartisan landslide numbers, anyway you slice them, anyway you dice them.

Less than 48 hours after Democrats in the House of Representatives passed their government-run health care bill, President Obama this morning signed it into law.

In doing so, the president violated yet another promise he made to the American people.  In fact, the “ethics” page of Obama’s “Organizing for America” website still reads:

Sunlight Before Signing:   Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them.  As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.” [emphasis added]

Then again, the president has reneged on that specific promise on at least 32 occasions prior to today.  At this point, why even bother counting? 

H/T:  ATR’s Center for Fiscal Accountability and Real Clear Politics

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

According to Gallup:

President Barack Obama’s job approval is the worst of his presidency to date, with 46% of Americans approving and 48% disapproving of the job he is doing as president in the latest Gallup Daily three-day average. …

“Americans hold Congress in far less esteem than they do the president — 16% approve and 80% disapprove of the job Congress is doing.”

High unemployment and the struggling economy are without a doubt a major source of the American people’s frustration.  But it is no coincidence that the president’s job approval numbers have toppled to a record low during the same week, as Gallup reports it, “in which the White House and Democratic congressional leaders are working to convince wavering House Democrats to support healthcare reform, which they hope to pass using a series of parliamentary maneuvers in the House of Representatives and Senate.”

Yet, with two out of every three Americans opposed to ObamaCare, the Associated Press informs us that the president is telling fence-sitting House Democrats that “their political fates are linked to the bill’s passage.”

Huh?

Ask anyone on your local street corner if they think politicians in Washington are out of touch with the people they claim to represent.  Nine times out of ten (if not 10 out of 10) you’ll get the obvious answer, “Yes!”   But simply being “out of touch” doesn’t even begin to describe the audacity of this president.

One thing about Lyndon Johnson – as Senate Majority Leader and as President.  If he made a deal, he was more than likely to honor it.

Not this new crowd.  President Obama wasn’t in the Senate long enough to make any deals, and Harry Reid has made some of the worst, most odorous in recorded history.

Now, it seems, in his desperation to pass ObamaCare (which only passed the Senate based on the deals Reid made the first time through), President Obama wants to get rid of some of the smelliest, according to politico.com.

Imagine that you are Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson or Florida Senator Bill Nelson. 

Old Ben cut the “Cornhuster Kickback” for his “yes” vote, only to pretty much guarantee the loss of his political future with Nebraska voters, who don’t like the bill and don’t like things done that way.  Will he switch to “no” in an effort to at least salvage his dignity?

Old Bill cut “Gator-aid,” which would protect some Florida seniors from having their Medicare Advantage ripped away.  That one never got the attention it should have, because it was wrapped in some complicated, deceptive language meant to hide the fact that it was only going to really apply in three heavily Democratic Florida counties that are the mainstay of Old Bill’s votes and fund raising.  What’s he going to do when those voters find that he can’t keep the deal?

Strangely, the mother of all the deals, Mary Landrieu’s upwards-of-$300 million “Lousiana Purchase” still seems safe, under the rubric that “it would apply to any state in which all the counties have been declared a disaster zone.”  Even the genius of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is unlikely to pry any loose change out of that bayou babe.

So what does Landrieu have that no one else does?

Someone should ask the President.  Someone should also ask him what new deals he’s going to cut to get through the next round of votes, because he doesn’t have the votes without them, and, as they say on the Hill, “the candy store is open.”

Somewhere up there, Lyndon is laughing at the amateurs.

As desperation to pass ObamaCare grows, so do the number of peripheral schemes.

Today’s, according to the AP, is an Obama plan to hire bounty hunters, “in this case…private auditors armed with sophisticated computer programs to scan Medicare and Medicaid billing data for patterns of bogus claims.  The auditors would get to keep part of any funds they recover.  The White House said a Medicare pilot program recouped $900 million for taxpayers from 2005-2008.”

Well, we have questions:  Wasn’t 2005-2008 during the Bush administration?  Where’s Obama’s union scam for this one?  Can you picture “Dog” wearing a green eye shade running his “sophisticated computer program?”

John McCormack of The Weekly Standard reported yesterday:

Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.”

First it was the “Louisiana Purchase.” Then, the “Cornhusker Kickback.”  Is the president now trading federal judgeship’s for health care votes?  Read McCormack’s entire piece, then you decide.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Time and again – in polls, in protests, in an avalanche of personal, direct pleas, in the Massachusetts Senate election of Scott Brown – the American people have told President Obama to focus administration and congressional activities on jobs and the economy and to start over on “health care reform.”

Time and again, he has refused.  Today, he defiantly raised the stakes, not only presenting a new version of the old versions (with a few pretzel twists) but raising the costs by billions.

In doing so, the President who came into office preaching that dialog could resolve the animosities of the world looks like nothing so much as the current government of Iran.

The more things change, the more they stay the same…

The White House this morning released a summary of President Obama’s latest proposal to reform the U.S. health care system.  Billed by the administration as an “opening bid” for discussion at the president’s so-called “Bipartisan Health Care Summit” later this week, the new plan closely mirrors the Senate-passed legislation. 

In other words, ObamaCare 2.0 3.0 … 12.0 (sorry, we lost count) is filled with the same tired proposals that the American people have already overwhelmingly rejected:  an individual mandate, drastic cuts to Medicare Advantage, taxes on so-called “Cadillac” insurance plans, etc., etc., etc. 

The release of the administration’s latest proposal comes on the heels of reports that Congressional Democrats are leaning heavily towards passing ObamaCare via reconciliation, a procedural trick enabling them to circumvent a filibuster of the legislation in the Senate.  Indeed, according to White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s latest health care plan was carefully crafted with that in mind.

The proposal is designed to provide “maximum flexibility to ensure that we can get an up or down vote if the opposition decides to take the extraordinary step of filibustering health reform,” Pfeiffer said on a conference call with reporters this morning. 

Will someone please remind us again what opponents of ObamaCare stand to gain by participating in the sham that is Obama’s “Bipartisan” Summit on Thursday?

Earlier today, by Executive Order, President Obama instituted a commission to make recommendations for deficit reduction.  Whatever the recommendations are, whenever they come, they will have no binding authority. 

This comes after Congress, which along with the administration is busily increasing the deficit, refused to set up a commission for deficit reduction.

The commission will have eighteen members.  Including co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, Obama will appoint 6 members, Democrat leaders will appoint 6 and Republican leaders will appoint 6.  Take out Simpson, a Republican, and we make that eleven to seven, meaning that President Obama, if nothing else, can really do that political math.  But, we are assured, all recommendations will require 14 votes for adoption, so they will be, wonder of political math wonders, “bipartisan.”  Those would, of course, be the recommendations of no binding authority.

Remember all those jobs Americans wouldn’t do?  Well now we know the jobs the President and Congress won’t do – precisely the ones they were sent to Washington to do.  And they wonder why so many Americans are disgusted with government…and their stewardship of it.