The Daily Gouge, Saturday, January 19th, 2013

On January 18, 2013, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Saturday, January 19th, 2013….and once again, since the Ravens are playing Sunday evening, and we had enough material by 0830 Friday morning for another edition, here’s The Gouge!

First up, as the front page of the WSJ reports, The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight fires back….well, sorta fires back:

House to Vote on Short-Term Increase in Debt Limit

House Republican leaders Friday proposed a three-month extension of the federal debt limit, a significant shift in GOP strategy that could reduce the market-rattling risk of the U.S. running out of cash to pay its bills. The GOP bill, which is expected to go before the House next week, includes a requirement that the House and Senate pass formal budgets by mid-April, but it does not include specific spending cuts.

That is a retreat from Republicans’ long-standing insistence that any debt increase be accompanied by comparable spending cuts and is the clearest sign yet that Republicans are backing away from making the next big budget fight with President Barack Obama over the debt ceiling. By passing a short-term increase in the country’s borrowing limit, GOP leaders would buy breathing room to wage its budget fight with the White House on a different and less fraught battlefield: the automatic spending cuts that take effect on March 1 and a government-funding measure that expires weeks later.

The White House and congressional Democrats have been seeking a longer-term extension of borrowing authority, and reacted with cautious optimism to the new GOP proposal. “We are encouraged that there are signs that congressional Republicans may back off their insistence on holding our economy hostage to extract drastic cuts in Medicare, education and programs middle class families depend on,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney. (No question the ground they’re staking out.)

The shift comes as a growing number of senior Republicans have been warning with increasing urgency the party would pay a steep political price if it is blamed for a delay in the debt-limit increase. The Treasury has said that without action by the end of February, the government would be at risk of missing payments to the military, senior citizens and bondholders, among others.

“We will raise the debt ceiling,” Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (R., Texas) told the Houston Chronicle Thursday. “I will tell you unequivocally, we’re not going to default.” (John Cornyn; the lousiest poker player in Texas.)

The GOP proposal was announced by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) after a three-day retreat where House Republicans engaged in extensive debate not just about the coming fiscal battles but also about how the party should reposition itself in the wake of the 2012 elections. Linked to the proposal would be a requirement that the House and Senate pass a budget blueprint for the next fiscal year—or else members of Congress wouldn’t be paid. Congress has had difficulty approving budget resolutions in recent years amid wrangling over federal spending. (Yeah, it is difficult approving budget resolutions….seeing as the Senate hasn’t passed one in almost four years.)

“Members of Congress will not be paid by the American people for failing to do their job,” said Mr. Cantor. “No budget, no pay.”

We’re frankly doubtful kicking the can down the road an additional three months will change the fact Republicans will inevitably be blamed for anything bad that happens; their fault, Obama’s fault, nobody’s fault. But this assumes the Senate will sign on to the House bill; an iffy proposition at best.

Then again, The Obamao’s enjoying his highest approval ratings in two years, and a lot can happen between now and the end of May. And as Jonathan Tobin, writing at Commentary Magazine suggests, ninety more days may give the GOP the time it needs to to kiss and make up.

….I think those Republicans who want to make a stand on the debt ceiling are right. Even though the odds are against them prevailing in such a battle, the party can’t simply stand by and let President Obama off the hook without at least trying to stop him by whatever means are at their disposal. That sort of surrender would split the GOP and make it harder for them to recover at the next midterm.

But the one given in this equation is that without a united caucus, House Republicans haven’t a prayer of doing anything effective to halt the country’s drift toward insolvency and to head off new taxes.

For all of their pessimism, the GOP still controls the power of the purse. President Obama may have the wind at his back right now but his political capital is finite. So is his time. If conservatives can use the coming weeks to agree on a strategy to exploit his weaknesses — such as the division among Democrats and the president’s refusal to deal with entitlement reform — their position could be stronger than they think. The question is do Boehner, Eric Cantor or even Paul Ryan have the ability to convince their colleagues that if they don’t hang together, their hopes of stopping Obama from worsening the nation’s problems are nonexistent.

Stay tuned.

Speaking of the judgmentally-challenged, Jonah Goldberg offers some advice to those behind the door when the common sense was handed out:

Wake up, socially liberal fiscal conservatives

You’re not just comin’ up for the huntin’, are you, Bob?!?

Dear Socially Liberal Fiscal-Conservative Friend,

That’s pretty toothy, so I’m going to call you “Bob.” But whatever specific name you go by, Bob, you know who you are. You’re the sort of person who says to his conservative friends or co-workers something like, “I would totally vote for Republicans if they could just give up on these crazy social issues.”

When you explain your votes for Barack Obama, you talk about how Republicans used to be much more moderate and focused on important things such as low taxes, fiscal discipline, and balanced budgets. When Colin Powell was on “Meet the Press” the other day, you nodded along as he lamented how the GOP has lost its way since the days when it was all about fiscal responsibility. And, Bob, you think Republicans are acting crazy-pants on the debt ceiling. You don’t really follow all of the details, but you can just tell that the GOP is being “extreme,” thanks to those wacky tea partiers.

So, Bob, as a “fiscal conservative,” what was so outrageous about trying to cut pork — Fisheries in Alaska! Massive subsidies for Amtrak! — from the Sandy disaster-relief bill? What was so nuts about looking for offsets to pay for it?

Bob, I’m going to be straight with you. I never had much respect for your political acumen before, but you’re a sucker. You’re still spouting this nonsense about being fiscally conservative while insisting that the GOP is the problem. You buy into the media’s anti-Republican hysteria no matter what the facts are. Heck, you even believe it when Obama suggests he’s like an Eisenhower Republican.

Oh, and for every 100 basis point increase in the prime, debt service increases $80B/year.

Well, let’s talk about Eisenhower, your kind of Republican. Did you know that in his famous farewell address he warned about the debt? “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage,” he said. “We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”

Bob, we are that insolvent phantom, you feckless, gormless clod. The year Eisenhower delivered that speech, U.S. debt was roughly half our GDP. But that was when we were still paying off WWII (not to mention things like the Marshall Plan), and the defense budget constituted more than half the U.S. budget (today it’s a fifth and falling). Now, the debt is bigger than our GDP. Gross Domestic Product is barely $15 trillion. The national debt is over $16 trillion and climbing — fast. The country isn’t going broke, Bob, it is broke.

When George W. Bush added nearly $5 trillion in national debt in two terms you were scandalized. When Obama added more than that in one term, you yawned. When, in 2006, then-senator Obama condemned Bush’s failure of leadership and vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling, you thought him a statesman. Obama, who wants to borrow trillions more, now admits that was purely a “political vote.”

Yet when Republicans actually have the courage of Obama’s own convictions, you condemn them.

You nodded sagely when Obama said we needed a “balanced approach” to cut the deficit. He said he couldn’t rein in entitlements without also raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.” Well, he won that fight. We raised taxes on millionaires and billionaires exactly as much as he wanted. We also raised the payroll tax on everyone.

Obama’s response to getting the tax hikes he wanted? He says we still need a “balanced approach” — i.e., even more tax hikes.

Anyone who calls himself a fiscal conservative (Or possesses even half a brain!) understands we have a spending problem. Do the math. A two-earner couple who retired in 2011 after making $89,000 per year will have paid about $114,000 into Medicare over their lifetimes but will receive $355,000. When will it dawn on you that Obama doesn’t think we have a spending problem? I ask because when he said “we don’t have a spending problem,” it seemed to have no effect on you.

And yet you still think Paul Ryan’s budget was “extreme.” Do you know when it balanced the budget? 2040. What’s a non-extreme date to balance the budget, Bob? 2113?

Look, Bob, I don’t want to go spelunking in that cranium of yours. I don’t know why you think you’re a fiscal conservative. The simple fact is, you’re not. The green-eye-shaded Republicans you claim to miss would be scandalized by the mess we’re in, largely thanks to voters like you, Bob. Eisenhower would take a flamethrower to today’s Washington.

I don’t expect you to vote Republican, never mind admit you’re simply a liberal. But please stop preening about your fiscal conservatism, particularly as you condemn the GOP for not being fiscal conservatives, even when they are the only fiscal conservatives in town.

Which, at least for a significant segment of the GOP….

….ain’t sayin’ much!

Moving across the aisle, the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel reviews….

Harry Reid’s Great Disappearing Act

He hides divisions among Democrats by turning the Senate into the world’s least deliberative body.

The simplest statements sometimes are the most insightful. For an example, consider this one on Wednesday from Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, in reaction to President Obama’s gun-control proposals: “I would welcome the opportunity to debate these issues on the floor of the Senate, and would encourage Majority Leader [Harry] Reid to schedule a full and open debate.”

In these seemingly innocuous words are a key to GOP revival. What may be the most overlooked story of the past two years is how Harry Reid has subverted the democratic process, successfully allowing him to both protect his party and keep the focus on Republicans. If the GOP wants to start winning a few battles, this dynamic has to change.

The Founders created a legislative process that was deliberately different from the parliamentary systems of Europe. In the “regular order” of things, the House works its will. The Senate works its will. Those two bodies meet in conference. The president may then sign or veto the resulting legislation.

In Mr. Reid’s Washington, the House works its will, the Senate does crossword puzzles. Its committees do not produce bills, its senators do not debate or amend, the body does not vote. The House, to accomplish anything, is forced to engage in backroom wrangling with the White House, the results of which are presented to the nation as a fait accompli. The Senate claims total deniability.

Mr. Reid’s Senate has not produced a budget in three years. The majority leader rarely moves on a bill, and when he does, he uses tricks to block senators from amending legislation, or he shuts down debate in such a way as to kill legislation. Regular order and conference reports are nearly nonexistent.

Mr. Reid’s primary motive is to shield his vulnerable members from tough votes and to hide the huge divisions in his party.He does not want a debate on gun control, as it would force Democratic senators to choose between President Obama and their own pro-Second Amendment constituents. The majority leader would not offer a bill during the fiscal-cliff negotiations because many Democrats disagreed with their president’s proposed tax hikes. He has not produced a budget because to do so would expose the party’s real spending ambitions, which would create political problems back home for his members.

Mr. Reid knows there is a brilliant added bonus to making sure the Senate is inactive: It keeps all the attention on Republicans. The press is by now so used to Senate nothingness that reporters automatically turn every spotlight on the House. (As if they needed any prodding.) This allows the White House and Democrats to avoid ownership of problems that they have created by casting Republicans as the cause of every legislative crisis and as the barrier to solutions. It also keeps the focus on divisions within the GOP.

I coulda been a contendah!

An example of how this works: Tax bills must originate in the House, so the GOP in August dutifully passed legislation to avert the fiscal cliff by extending rates for one year. With regular order, the Senate would have taken this up, amended it and gone to conference. No crisis.

But Mr. Reid didn’t want his members to have to vote on a bill that either undercut the president or undercut their own re-election prospects—so he did nothing. As the clock ticked down to the expiration of the Bush tax rates, the White House (and the press) then claimed it was incumbent on the GOP to either cut a deal directly with the administration or be held responsible for tax hikes on everyone. Mr. Obama sat back to enjoy a public GOP brawl over its tax strategy, followed by his tax victory. Nowhere was it noted (least of all in the MSM.) that the entire breakdown of the process—the entire reason for the crisis—rested on Mr. Reid’s refusal to act.

To America; Love, Harry

Republicans are getting very wise to all this, as hinted by Mr. Coburn’s polite request that the Senate debate gun control. In GOP circles, the talk is increasingly on ways to force Mr. Reid to re-engage with democracy. House Speaker John Boehner’s recent declaration that any further debt deals will be done through “regular order” was in part an acknowledgment that dealing directly with Mr. Obama is folly. But it was just as much a declaration that Mr. Boehner intends to pressure Mr. Reid to do his job.

The constitutional system of checks and balances limits the House’s ability to force the Senate majority leader to act. Republicans nonetheless have the means to elevate this issue in ways that could prove highly embarrassing to Mr. Reid and his party.

Mr. Reid may sense this is coming, which could explain his recent complaints about the filibuster. His intention is to suggest that it is Republicans—not the man in charge—who are to blame for Senate gridlock. The GOP has fought back vigorously against that canard, which is all to the good.

They’ll have to do more. The Democrats’ great victory in recent months has been in making the public forget that they own the majority of power in Washington, and laying everything on the GOP. Republicans need to remind the country of who, in fact, is at the wheel.

And since we’re on the subject of the increasingly irrelevant, at least as a Republican….

Christie: NRA Ad on Obama Daughters ‘Reprehensible’

Chris Christie and his NBF Barry

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is labeling “reprehensible” the National Rifle Association ad that brought President Barack Obama’s daughters into the gun-control debate. The NRA ad accused the president of being a hypocrite for allowing his daughters to be protected by armed Secret Service agents but not embracing armed guards for schools.

The Republican governor and father of four said at a briefing Thursday in Trenton that the children of public figures should be off-limits to political attacks.

We’ll listen to it again, but we thought….

….the ad was, if you’ll forgive the pun, squarely aimed at The Obamao, not his children. Besides, The Dear Misleader doesn’t seem to have a problem using kids to run interference for his hopelessly misguided policies:

As most of you know, we’ve never had the warm fuzzies for Christie. What little inclination we had to support him sharply dissipated during the GOP convention, plummeted following Sandy and his Sandy-aid rant, and now….

….has totally pegged the meter. The only way we can figure it, Rush is right; Fatboy’s out-lefting Hillary in preparation for 2016….running as a Dim.

For more on the Left’s anti-gun obfuscation, we turn to one of our favorites, Hope n’ Change:

No Bang for the Buck

Barack Obama, surrounded by kids, spoke to the American people on Wednesday to tell them about the many gun restrictions he’s putting in place by Executive decree – and the larger ones he wants Congress to pass – in order to help non-aborted children live long enough to pay off the trillion-dollar debts he’s running up.

The president’s actions were theoretically spurred by the many letters he receives from children, which is certainly credible as most of his policies appear to be directed by those who are totally unschooled in math, history, or the Constitution.

Unfortunately, none of the president’s announced initiatives do much other than disarm responsible gun owners, which is likely his actual objective. He failed to address, in any meaningful way, the greater problem of psychotic maniacs – who, unsurprisingly, are frequently found at the scene of mass murders (and occasionally storming our undefended consulates in Libya, or mowing down enemies of the Mexican drug cartels using DOJ-supplied weapons).

The president did, however, recommend much more stringent background checks and psychological profiling for anyone who wants to buy a gun. Hope n’ Change would like to suggest that in the future, that same standard should be applied to the man who controls our nuclear arsenal.

He’s broken up, alright….about as much as Lance Armstrong.

And if you’ve ever wondered how this never-done-anything douchepump can sound so presumptuous, Ted Cruz offers his explanation, courtesy of The Weekly Standard:

Cruz: Obama ‘High on His Own Power’

“High on his own power”….among other things!

Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas said Thursday that Barack Obama is “high on his own power” with regard to the president’s announced efforts on gun control. Speaking on Laura Ingraham’s radio talk show, Cruz, who was just elected to the Senate last November, said “this is a president who has drunk the Kool-Aid.”

“He is feeling right now high on his own power, and he is pushing on every front, on guns,” Cruz said. “And I think it’s really sad to see the president of the United States exploiting the murder of children and using it to push his own extreme, anti-gun agenda. I think what the president is proposing and the gun control proposals that are coming from Democrats in the Senate are, number one, unconstitutional, and number two, they don’t work. They’re bad policy.”

Cruz told Ingraham that he does not believe Obama will be successful in passing gun control legislation and that the political ramifications of pursuing such laws could be bad for Democrats. “I think he’s going to pay a serious political price, and I think the price that’s going to be paid on this is going to manifest in Senate races in 2014, in some red states,” Cruz said. “And there have got to be some Democrats who are up for reelection in 2014 who are very, very nervous right now that Presidnet Obama is picking this fight.”

Oh,….by the way….remember the unemployment figures?

Obama Jobs Council hits 1 year without official meeting

Meanwhile, back at the ranch….

Y’all come to Texas, state official tells New York gun owners

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has a message for New York gun owners: Come to Texas, and bring your guns with you. “Texas is better than New York, and New York just gave us another excuse to say that,” Abbott, a Republican, said on Thursday, after ads extolling Texas appeared on several media websites.

Abbott, a possible candidate for governor of Texas in next year’s election, used campaign money to buy ads on websites of news organizations in New York City and Albany. Clicking on the ad leads to a Facebook page touting the virtues of Texas, including the fact that the state has no income tax so “you’ll be able to keep more of what you earn and use that extra money to buy more ammo.”

On the Lighter Side….