Submitted by: Suzanne
Obama's Bargain Debasement
After 24 hours, the President's
"grand bargain" sounds more like a grand failure. Not long after the
President delivered his big speech in Tennessee, even his reliable
friends in the Washington Post and New York Times
didn't hesitate to pan the proposal -- which promised more middle class
jobs in exchange for funding the Left's pet projects. Most experts
(including liberals) accused the President of re-gifting failed ideas.
"Only the packaging was new," said the Times. The reporters on the Post's political beat said flat out that the "bargain" was "not going anywhere."
In exchange for lowering the
corporate tax rate (from 35% to 28%), the President is essentially
asking for another stimulus project -- chock full of infrastructure and
education waste. Of course the irony, blasts Rep. Paul Ryan
(R-Wisc.), is that liberals accuse the GOP of catering to big business,
when in reality, the tax cuts can be seen as nothing but payoffs for
the President's most generous supporters.
"The President is playing
favorites," said Ryan. And it isn't the first time. "He wants to give
some businesses relief from ObamaCare. But he refuses to give the same
relief to families. The President claims his economic agenda is for the
middle class. But it's actually for the well-connected. There's no doubt
that it works well for them. But for the rest of us, it's not working
at all. Today we have record poverty and high unemployment... So he
might call his plan a grand bargain. But I call it a raw deal."
While both parties agree that
Congress needs to reform corporate tax rates, they're only part of the
problem. Small businesses, which make up almost half (49.2%) of private
sector jobs, are still paying an individual tax rate as high as 39.6%,
are just as desperate for relief as the President's corporate donors.
Even Roll Call, which rarely takes sides in the political debate, was blunt
in its assessment. "It's not particularly grand. Nor is it necessarily a
bargain. Or even new. It's mostly a repackaged offer of proposals the
President has offered before."
Over at the Wall Street Journal, where for years editors and columnists have pleaded for a tax code overhaul, the reaction was abject frustration.
"This isn't a serious proposal, and he knows it... [T]he President's
speeches aren't really about tax reform or the economy. They're about
preparing the political ground for 2014. On that score, he adopted once
again his charming habit of casting those who disagree with him as
motivated purely by political spite. No wonder even Democrats want the
President out of the room when they try to negotiate on immigration.
He's a deal killer."
The media likes to talk about the
GOP as "the party of big business," but let's face it: big business is
supporting President Obama -- and this is just another attempt to reward
them for it, while every day Americans suffer. If President Obama's
looking for a grand bargain for middle class jobs, try repealing
ObamaCare. According to the CBO, that would save 800,000 jobs instantly!
On Marriage, Pitts and Corbett Raze Kane
Either
the President's lawlessness is rubbing off -- or some state officials
have forgotten how to read. Nothing else seems to explain the decision
by Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who is refusing to
defend the laws she swore to protect. The controversy started after the
U.S. Supreme Court's marriage ruling, which (although it had no bearing
on Pennsylvania's marriage law) led a rogue Montgomery County clerk to
issue Pennsylvania "marriage" licenses to same-sex couples in spite of Pennsylvania's ban on homosexual "marriage."
County official Bruce Hanes,
who's issued 34 counterfeit licenses so far, is acting in complete
defiance of the law -- and now, Governor Tom Corbett (R). At the Governor's request,
the Pennsylvania Health Department filed a "cease and desist" order
against Hanes. In another letter, the Governor strongly rebuked Kane for
abrogating her duty as Attorney General. "The clerk's actions are in
direct defiance of the express policy of the commonwealth that 'marriage
shall be between one man and one woman.'"
Kane, who not only inspired Hanes
-- but supported him -- has openly called Pennsylvania's marriage law
"unconstitutional." Now, like the President, she refuses to defend it --
despite the Supreme Court's very clear directive that "definition and
regulation of marriage" remains "within the authority and realm of the
separate states." We applaud Gov. Corbett (and you can too)
for standing up for the people in Pennsylvania -- and the democratic
process, which the state's own attorney general tried to circumvent.
In a letter to Corbett,
Congressman Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) expressed his outrage that Kane was
trying to impose her own personal political agenda on the state. "The
Court did not strike down Section 2 of DOMA, which protects states from
being forced to recognize relationships between persons of the same sex
that are treated as marriage under the laws of other states...
[A]s the Supreme Court has expressed, Pennsylvania has the right to
defend its marriage policy, which it has done by defining marriage
between one man and one woman... The Supreme Court's recent decision in
no way impacted the constitutionality of state laws defining marriage;
on the contrary, the Court emphasized the state's prerogative to define
marriage."
Hopefully, other states will actually read the Court's ruling before
making the same mistake. For now, our hats go off to these two leaders,
who upheld the will of Pennsylvanians when others refused.IRS Ignores Congress before Our Very Issa
What
else is the IRS hiding? Congressman Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) is trying to
find out -- a task made more difficult without the agency's
cooperation. Yesterday, Issa, chairman of the powerful House Oversight
and Government Reform Committee, lashed out at acting IRS chief Daniel
Werfel for trying to block Congress's investigation. If "the IRS
continues to hinder the committee's investigation in any matter," he said bluntly,
"the committee will be forced to consider use of compulsory process."
In a letter co-signed by our good friend Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Issa
blames the IRS for trying to "delay, frustrate, impede, and obstruct"
the probe, raising serious concerns about what else the committee might
uncover about the agency's targeting of specific conservative and
religious groups.
The IRS's obstruction is causing
even greater heartburn among Americans, who recognize that Werfel's
agency is the one tapped to enforce ObamaCare. Who knows what kind of
harassment conservatives will face when the government is in charge of
their medical decisions? That's why Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) introduced
his "Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act," which would block the
agency from enforcing any part of the ObamaCare law. Until the IRS
starts complying with the House's investigation, Price's policy is
sounding better by the day.
**
FRC Action's Executive Director, Josh Duggar, is "the new face of faith
and politics." So says CNSNews.com, which just published an extensive
profile on FRC's new (but familiar) face. Check out the piece on Josh here!
No comments:
Post a Comment