McCain Seeks to Aid Obama; Democrats Stuck On More Spending & More Tax Hikes

Pix via Comedy Central's Indecision

Today in Washington, D.C. - June 21, 2011:
The Senate at noon today confirmed (64-35) the nomination of Michael Simon to be a district judge for Oregon.

Around 4:15 PM, the Senate will vote on the Panetta nomination. Immediately following that vote, the Senate will vote on cloture on S. 782, the bill reauthorizing the Economic Development Act.  If cloture is not invoked on S. 782, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), has scheduled a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 679, the nominations reform bill, which streamlines nominations and removes some low-level non-policymaking positions like press secretaries from the Senate confirmation process.

President Obama opted to play Golf with Speaker Boehner and others rather than responding by last last Friday to letter from the US House signed by Speaker Boehner. Last Tuesday (a week ago), Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) sent a letter to President Barack Obama warning that the commander in chief may be in violation of the law if he refuses to ask Congress for that authorization. In his letter, Boehner noted that the President is just days away from violating the War Powers Resolution, which maintains that, without congressional authorization, the President can deploy U.S. military forces for 90 days but without notification forces must be removed within the 90 days. In his letter, Boehner demanded that Obama provide legal justification for the operation in Libya by last Friday.

President Obama did not seek congressional consent when he launched air strikes against Gadhafi's forces on March 19. As detailed in the above letter, he is in violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution that requires approval of the legislative branch within 60 days, with a 30-day extension. That deadline has passed. The White House, in a report to Congress last week, said the limited U.S. role in the operation did not amount to hostilities thus the President did not have to comply and this argument has further inflamed lawmakers.

Forbes is reporting that "Two top senators today unveiled a resolution giving President Barack Obama limited authority in the three-month-old war against Libya. Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ), the leading Republican on the Armed Services Committee, introduced the bipartisan resolution that would allow the mission to continue but would impose a one-year limit on the NATO-led operation, a period McCain said is "more than enough time to finish the job." It also would prohibit American ground forces in Libya. . . . Seeking to quell the outrage, Kerry and McCain proposed their measure and urged lawmakers to consider the implications of abandoning the mission."

One can understand a discredited former military officer like Democrat Sen. John Kerry running out to protect President Obama, but it continued to be disturbing that Republican (Often-in-Name-Only) Senator John McCain continues to aid President Obama. Millions of conservatives remain very disappointed that they ever supported Sen. John McCain in his former race for the presidency, and they are certainly tired of his continued actions to protect the incumbent president, Barack Obama, and his administration from their failures verses protecting the American people. The above image from Comedy Central's InDecision says it best.

This morning Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell went to the floor and addressed the importance of doing something serious and significant about our fiscal crisis. He said, “Right now, ratings agencies are threatening to downgrade U.S. debt, putting us on red alert that the kind of economic crisis we’re seeing in parts of Europe could very quickly happen here. We know that failing to do something significant about our fiscal problems would be a serious drag on jobs and our economy. And that’s why, over the past several weeks, I’ve come to the floor of the Senate and spoken up at press conferences, with a now-familiar refrain: the time to act on significant reforms is now.”

Despite this reality, it appears Democrats remain fixated on their years-old playbook of more spending and higher taxes. Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), a member of Senate Democrat leadership, called for even more spending, saying, “[E]conomists will tell you that when you build infrastructure, it creates new jobs. And we should be doing something like that. Our roads, our highways, our water and sewer, that’s the old type of infrastructure. And we should be doing some more of that. We should also be doing some new types of infrastructure a-- like a national power grid, making sure every home gets broadband.”

Host Bob Schieffer certainly recognized the meaning behind what Schumer was saying, asking him, “You’re really talking about some very grandiose plans there . . . . I guess the question—first question has to be how you’re going to pay for any of this?”

Earlier this month, The Hill had a clearer picture of how Democrats might go about implementing Schumer’s idea, reporting, “Senior Senate Democrats are growing frustrated by what they see as President Obama’s passivity on the economy, and are beginning to discuss a large infrastructure package funded by tax increases. Some Democrats, such as Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who serves as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, think such a package could lower the unemployment rate by as much as two percentage points. . . . ‘The last election was about jobs and the economy, and now we’re in a position where we really do need some economic pump-priming by the federal government,’ he said. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, endorsed Harkin’s argument for more infrastructure spending, and said it is gaining support in the broader caucus. ‘There’s very broad support,’ Rockefeller said. ‘There’s no other way to get at this problem.’”

The GOP Leader pushed back on these status quo taxing and spending ideas from Democrats today, “First of all, is there anyone outside of Washington, D.C. who really thinks that with 14 million people looking for work in this country, the solution is to raise taxes? The last thing you want to do in the middle of a jobs crisis is raise taxes. Even the President has said as much. It’s just common sense. But even if we weren’t in the middle of a jobs crisis, it would be foolish — and completely dishonest. We’re in the middle of a debt crisis right now because we spend too much. The solution is to spend less. Government spending has gone up, and a bad economy has caused revenue to go down.  That’s the reason the debt has gone up 35% since the President took office. And now Democrats want to use that bad economy as an excuse to lock their spending levels in place. They want to use it as an excuse to raise taxes. Which would only make the economy worse, cause us to lose even more jobs, and make it even harder to create new jobs. So let’s just be clear about what’s going on here. Right now, Washington is borrowing roughly $4 billion every day above what it collects in taxes. And Democrats don’t want to admit we have a spending problem?”

Republican Whip Sen. Jon Kyl told Roll Call, “One sure way not to create more jobs is to kill the economy with tax increases. . . . What are the Democrats asking us to do? Raise taxes.”

If this country is going to tackle its debt crisis and start creating jobs again, Democrats will need to face the reality that their shopworn prescriptions of ever more government spending and tax hikes will only make things worse.

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Tags: Washington, D.C., US House, US Senate, Libya, John McCain, Barack Obama, Democrats, more spending, more taxes To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!