Dems: "Going Off The Fiscal Cliff Is A Better Option | Obama Back To Campaigning
Reid & Others Forget "We The People" |
The Senate reconvened at 10 AM today and began a period of morning business. This afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has said he plans to take up the Disability Treaty this afternoon. Also possible for consideration is the Defense authorization bill, S. 3254, which Reid moved to proceed to this morning.
Last night, Democrats failed to get the 60 votes needed to waive a Budget Act point of order that the Tester bill concerning hunting and sportsmen spent more than allowed. The bill, S. 3525, fell short by a vote of 50-44.
The House will reconvene today at 2 PM.
A report in The Washington Times also confirmed our report yesterday that "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will push to change Senate rules and curtail some Republican filibusters next year. WT states, "The fight is not only about the filibuster, but the way the Senate writes all of its rules — of which the filibuster is just one example. Mr. Reid plans to use his newly expanded majority to make the changes on the first day of the new Congress next year, which is the only time rules can be adopted on a simple majority vote. Any other time, a rules change requires a two-third vote, and most major changes are done through the two-thirds method." For a more comprehensive review of this situation read FLASHBACK: Dems on Filibuster: ‘One Of The Most Sacred Rules Of The Senate’.
Also, voices on the left of the Democrat party have continued calls today to allow the country to plunge over the fiscal cliff so Democrats can get mostly symbolic tax hikes.
According to Politico, “It’s the rallying cry for liberal Democrats in Congress: going off the fiscal cliff is a better option than reluctantly accepting a deal that goes too lightly on revenues or too hard on entitlements. . . . Democrats in Congress, led by incoming Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, are much more aggressive in their approach to the fiscal cliff. The Washington Democrat has said that going off the cliff is one way to ‘get past’ the impasse over fiscal policy on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers including Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Democratic Reps. Peter DeFazio of Oregon and Vermont’s Peter Welch have backed Murray. . . . Still, Murray isn’t backing down from her contention that going off the cliff is better than taking a deal that is seen as lacking.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told Politico, “This is not like the debt ceiling debate where in fact, if you don’t pay your bills on a certain date, there are very dramatic repercussions. . . . The truth of the matter is we could go into the next year, and if we can reach an agreement in the new Congress, in the first weeks or months or two, I don’t think a whole lot of people will know the difference. So it’s not like something cataclysmic happens on Dec. 31.”
The Hill notes, “Some Democrats have said the party’s leverage could be greater after the nation goes over the cliff, because pressure would grow on both parties to reduce taxes for the middle class. A Democratic source close to the negotiations said that the White House ‘definitely’ sees running out the clock as to its advantage, since it believes it has more public support for its position of extending middle-class tax rates but increasing them on the wealthy.”
While loud voices among Democrats are clamoring for the country to go over the fiscal cliff, the president still isn’t providing leadership on avoiding it. The New York Times reports, “President Obama plans to try to ratchet up public pressure on Congress to accept his ideas for resolving the looming tax-and-spending crisis with a series of events at the White House and on the road this week. . . . The White House released its public lobbying plans on Tuesday morning even as it had yet to schedule another meeting between Mr. Obama and Congressional leaders to hash out a deal.”
As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said today, “In other words, rather than sitting down with lawmakers of both parties and working out an agreement, [President Obama is] back out on the campaign trail, presumably with the same old talking points we’re all familiar with. Look: we already know the President is a very good campaigner. What we don’t know is whether he has the leadership qualities necessary to lead his party to a bipartisan agreement on a big issue likes this. So let me suggest that if the President wants a solution to the challenges of the moment, the people he needs to be talking to are the members of his own party, so he can convince them of the need to act. We’re not going to solve this problem by creating villains and drumming up outrage.”
He also pointed out, “[A]mid all the talk about plans and proposals, it’s easy to forget that we didn’t get here by accident. We got here because Washington Democrats — from the President on down — have done two things exceedingly well over the past four years: spent other peoples’ money, and kicked cans down the road. For four years, Democrats spent money we didn’t have in the misguided hope it would help the economy. They borrowed trillions of dollars to keep unemployment pretty much right where it was when they started, and here’s what we have four years later: a mountain of debt, and a looming national budgetary crisis. So Republicans are happy to talk about how to solve this mess, but make no mistake: we’ll also talk about how we got here. The reason we’re having these negotiations is because Washington Democrats have spent money without any care for the cost or the future, and refused to do anything to protect long-term spending programs like Medicare, a failure that’s among the biggest single drivers of our debt.”
Besides Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell standing against Dems, Kentucky's second senator is standing talk for his constituents and for America. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said last night on the Fox New's Greta Van Susteren Show, "I made a pledge to the people of Kentucky that I'm not raising taxes. I took a pledge. I signed a statement, an oath that I wouldn't raise taxes, and I'm going to adhere to it. . . . I think you should balance budgets, not spend more than comes in, and I think you should lower taxes, not raise taxes. In fact, if you want to stimulate the economy, I'm for cutting tax revenues. All these Republicans who want to give up their taxpayer pledge and raise taxes, I'm the opposite. I want to lower taxes because that's how we'd get actually more economic growth and maybe more revenue, if you cut tax rates. . . . You don't have to raise rates or even close loopholes," he said. "If your economy was growing -- you know, when the economy was growing for four years after the Bush tax cuts, we had plenty of revenue. Revenue went down when the recession came. The reason we have a lack of revenue in Washington is too much spending and no economic growth. So we don't have economic growth. If the economy were growing at 4 percent right now, we'd have plenty of revenue. But you don't get the economy to grow by raising taxes. That's what they want to do now, and I think it's absolutely the wrong thing to do."
Tags: Washington, D.C. Democrats, fiscal cliff, US Senate, Harry Reid, weaken minority rights, rule change, weaken voter representation To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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