Carolina Politics Online

Appearing before Graham on ABC’s “This Week,” Axelrod had brushed off Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-Mass.) criticism of healthcare reform, saying that Brown had voted for a very similar package for his home state of Massachusetts.

“Senator Brown comes from a state that has a healthcare plan that’s similar to the one we’re trying to enact here,” Axelrod said. “We’re just trying to give the rest of America the same opportunities that the people of Massachusetts have.”

That argument rubbed Graham the wrong way.

“The American people are getting tired of this crap,” Graham said of Axelrod’s comments. “No way in the world is what they did in Massachusetts like what we’re about to do in Washington.”

The Hill

While it is true that America has grown tired of the lies and deception of the Obama administration, it is ironic that Senator Graham is tuned into that frequency, yet he cannot see that many of us here in South Carolina are as equally tired of Senator Graham’s crap.

I went out to my mailbox a few days ago and found this letter from the Census Bureau.  I think to myself, “Ah, the Census is here,” but no.  To my dismay, I opened the envelope to find a letter sent to me from the Census Bureau informing me that they will be sending me the Census form in the coming weeks.  Yes, they sent me a letter to tell me they will be sending me a letter.  Assuming they did this for every resident in the country, I can only imagine how many zeroes were involved in the cost of sending these out.  Perhaps, it was really a back door bail out for the U.S. Postal Service.  We do know how the Federal government loves those.

This is just incredible.

Spratt defended his support of the Affordable Health Care for America Act, a bill that has been debated by U.S. Congress for months. He champions the bill, as well as President Barack Obama’s involvement in trying to pass the bill in Congress.

“I would have liked to see the bill done a bit differently, but he’s (Obama) done a magnificent job on it,” Spratt said. “This is something Presidents Truman, Nixon, Ford and Clinton have tried to do before, and I give him credit for trying.”

The Lancaster News

Those are the words Congressman John Spratt used to describe ObamaCare while speaking at the Lancaster County 2010 Democratic Convention.  I think this man needs to stop puffing on the magic dragon.  The entire process of this health care plan has been carried out in a fashion of Mafia thuggery masquerading as the legislative process.  It’s been filled with backroom deals, bribes, and threats and intimidation.

If this is what Bubba thinks is magnificent then he has either been in Washington too long and/or senility is setting in.

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

That’s a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

ESPN

Of course it was a charade. Obama doesn’t give a damn about what the public thinks about anything. He’s demonstrated that pretty consistently throughout the past year.

So what is the point of this? The states have been managing the use of their waterways with little to no problem for over 200 years. Well, it turns out that this whole unconstitutional power grab is being orchestrated by the radical left environmental movement.

As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled “Transition Green” shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper.

Then in late summer, just after he created the task force, these groups produced “Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy.” This document makes repeated references to “overfishing,” but doesn’t once reference recreational angling, its importance, and its benefits, both to participants and the resource.

Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with “facts,” in attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.

That same tunnel vision, in which recreational angling and commercial fishing are indiscriminately lumped together as harmful to the resource, has persisted with the task force, despite protests by the angling industry.

As more evidence of collusion, the green groups began clamoring for an Executive Order to implement the task force’s recommendations even before the public comment period ended in February. Fishing advocates had no idea that this was coming.

The commercial and recreational fishing industries have already been taking a big hit in both North and South Carolina and the last thing we need is further encroachment by the Federal government.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has already exhibited plenty of incompetence in the way it enforces U.S. fisheries laws such to the effect that Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC-03) has called for a halt to all prosecutions of fishermen by the NOAA and a complete overhaul of how the laws are enforced.

Morlock fears that “what we’re seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served us so well. There’s no basis in science for the agendas of these groups who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.

“Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It’s all just an excuse to put us off the water.”

In the wake of the task force’s framework document, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) and its partners in the U.S. Recreational Fishing & Boating Coalition against voiced their concerns to the administration.

“Some of the potential policy implications of this interim framework have the potential to be a real threat to recreational anglers who not only contribute billions of dollars to the economy and millions of dollars in tax revenues to support fisheries conservation, but who are also the backbone of the American fish and wildlife conservation ethic,” said CSF President Jeff Crane.

Morlock, a member of the CSF board, added, “There are over one million jobs in America supported coast to coast by recreational fishing. The task force has not included any accountability requirements in their reports for evaluating or mitigating how the new policies they are drafting will impact the fishing industry or related economies.

“Given that the scope of this process appears to include a new set of policies for all coastal and inland waters of the United States, the omission of economic considerations is inexcusable.”

This is not the only access issue threatening the public’s right to fish, but it definitely is the most serious, according to Chris Horton, national conservation director for BASS.

“With what’s being created, the same principles could apply inland as apply to the oceans,” he said. “Under the guise of ‘marine spatial planning’ entire watersheds could be shut down, even 2,000 miles up a river drainage from the ocean.

“Every angler needs to be aware because if it’s not happening in your backyard today or tomorrow, it will be eventually.

This is what happens when you put an out of touch ideologue beholden to radical special interests in the highest office in the land. The fact that Obama intends to implement this with an Executive Order completely bypassing Congress gives credence to the accusation that he is becoming an elected dictator, much like Hugo Chavez.

This won’t be used to just regulate fishing either. Rest assured that the bureaucratic entities created to manage all of this will also be used to thwart any oil or natural gas exploration off our coastal waters, thus effectively reinstating the Federal drilling ban that just expired less than two years ago.

There is already talk of a ban on bottom fishing all the way down the North and South Carolina coasts to Georgia.  Thousands of jobs in these states can potentially be effected by this at a time when they are experiencing double digit unemployment rates. That aside, there is also the element of this being yet another chipping away at the block of individual freedom and liberty that Americans have enjoyed for over two centuries and that the President and this Congress spit on daily.

If this is put into place it seems like El Presidente will get to decide when and where you go fishing. With the industry being so large I am hoping this will end up in the Supreme Court with a Constitutional challenge if Obama makes good on this move.

That will be a cold day in Hell.  This man is becoming more incredible by the day.

I can say with the utmost certainty right now that I will not be fingerprinted by the Federal government and treated like a common criminal just so I can have a job and if Lindsey Graham thinks that the people of this state are going to stand for this he is sorely mistaken.

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

“It’s the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. “If you say they can’t get a job when they come here, you’ll stop it.”

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

“It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people’s privacy,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We’re also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification.”

The Wall Street Journal

Damn right it will. That’s the same thing that happened with Social Security. Your Social Security number was only supposed to be used within the parameters of that program and it ended up turning into a national identifier for just about every aspect of our lives, credit, employment, loans, etc. This proposal is a back door to the National ID that people have been pushing back against.

We don’t need an Orwellian government tracking program to stop illegal immigration. We just need to enforce the existing laws on the books.

Lindsey Graham needs to be stopped.  He is morphing into an oppressive fascist who no longer has any respect for our Constitution nor the freedom of the American people.

He’s at it again.

Reporting from Washington – Despite steep odds, the White House has discussed prospects for reviving a major overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, a commitment that President Obama has postponed once already.

Obama took up the issue privately with his staff Monday in a bid to advance a bill through Congress before lawmakers become too distracted by approaching midterm elections.

In the session, Obama and members of his Domestic Policy Council outlined ways to resuscitate the effort in a White House meeting with two senators — Democrat Charles E. Schumer of New York and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — who have spent months trying to craft a bill.

According to a person familiar with the meeting, the White House may ask Schumer and Graham to at least produce a blueprint that could be turned into legislative language.

The basis of a bill would include a path toward citizenship for the 10.8 million people living in the U.S. illegally. Citizenship would not be granted lightly, the White House said. Undocumented workers would need to register, pay taxes and pay a penalty for violating the law. Failure to comply might result in deportation.

Los Angeles Times

This sounds like the same stupid idea Bush trotted out a few years back.  Who is going to register and pay all of these penalties when they can just stay here under the radar and milk the system?  Notice that there is no definitive punishment for not complying.  It says who do not may get deported, not will.

With 16.8% unemployment nation wide and South Carolina’s unemployment rate over 12%, why in the hell is Lindsey Graham trying to legalize another 10 million people and bring them into the mainstream work force?  American citizens can’t even find a job right now.

Additionally, with all the problems the Obama administration has had with health care, Cap and Trade, spending, and everything else they’ve tried to do, why would Obama even want to go anywhere near this political hot potato?  Does he not remember the backlash that occurred around this country when Bush brought up his amnesty bill?  People are already seriously pissed off at this administration and the overall government in general.  The Democrats are already plenty damaged over the health care bill.  Can you imagine what is going to happen once they start pushing forward with amnesty again?  Sometimes I am convinced this man wants his party to get obliterated in November.  Is he really this obtuse?

Using the Antiquities Act, President Carter locked up more land than any other president had before him, taking more than 50 million acres in Alaska despite strong opposition from the state.

President Clinton used the authority 22 times to prohibit hunting, recreational vehicles, mining, forestry and even grazing in 5.9 million acres scattered around the country. The law allowed him to single-handedly create 19 new national monuments and expand three others without consulting anyone.

One of the monuments President Clinton created was the Grande Staircase-Escalante in Utah, where 135,000 acres of land were leased for oil and gas and about 65,000 barrels of oil were produced each year from five active wells. But, President Clinton put an end to developing those resources.

President Obama could do the same in other energy-rich places unless Congress takes action. At least 13.5 million acres are already on his Department of Interior’s real estate shopping list.

This includes a 58,000-acre area in New Mexico. The memo said this should be done so the lesser prairie chicken and the sand dune lizard will be better protected. Are these animals going extinct? No. The bureaucrats wrote that the land should be locked up to “avoid the necessity of listing either of these species as threatened or endangered.”

In Nevada, the Obama administration might make another monument in the Heart of the Great Basin because it, supposedly, is a “center of climate change scientific research.”

In Colorado, the government is considering designating the Vermillion Basin as a monument because it is “currently under the threat of oil and gas development.”

Americans should be wary of any plans a president has to seize land from the states without their consent. Any new plans to take away states’ freedom to use land as they see fit must be stopped.

That’s why I sponsored an amendment to block Mr. Obama from declaring any of the 14 lands listed in the memo as “monuments.” Unfortunately, the Senate, led by Democrats, rejected it on Thursday evening by a vote of 58-38.

Read more at The Washington Times

The Antiquities Act of 1906 was signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt (R) initially to stop the raping of American Indian artifacts in the southwest.  It gave the President the power by executive order to declare any government owned public land as restricted.  The problem is that it’s since been used over 100 times since its conception and one person should not be allowed to have that kind of authority.  The Office of President was purposely made weak by the Founders for a reason.

I can see instances in which the Federal government may need to restrict public land use at times, but that should be done by a vote of the full Congress so that there is input from the American people.  The proposals shouldn’t be sealed away in a secret document and then carried forth through executive order by one man.  That’s simply not the way America was designed to work.

But Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent working with Graham and Kerry, said a detailed outline of a bill could come within days and that it will have to include a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions that drops in future years.

Last June, the House narrowly passed a climate change bill with cap-and-trade as its centerpiece and a carbon-reduction target of 17 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels.

But the initiative has stalled in the Senate, despite Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approval of a similar bill.

But, as a result of work in the past few months, Kerry said he was feeling “more confident” that a climate change bill could be presented to the Senate for passage this year.

“We’re looking at a new way of coming at this that we think can attract greater support,” Kerry said.

Environmentalists have speculated the bill the senators will produce could take a “sectoral approach” by imposing a new carbon-pricing mechanism on utilities, which account for about 40 percent of the emissions blamed for global warming.

Sources also have said there is talk of a transportation tax. Pollution controls on manufacturers could be put off for a few years to give time for more affordable alternative energy sources to come on line, they have said.

Reuters

I would really like to wonder exactly when it was that someone beat Lindsey Graham with the stupid stick because that guy has nothing but shit for brains.  A transportation tax?  It’s not clear as to what exactly that would entail, but one thing is for certain.  The result will not be good for South Carolina.  Any tax on transportation, but whether its an increase in the gas tax, a tax on transportation companies, on the airlines, etc is going to smack everyone in this state in their back pocket.  A tax on truckers transporting goods would be absolutely criminal because it would cause prices to rise in just about every sector, socking the poor and the middle class harder than anyone.

And yet Graham can’t figure out why he keeps getting booed when he speaks around his own state, oblivious to the fact he is alienating his own constituents in the name of junk science.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 24, 2010

Contact: Aaron Groen

202-225-2071

WASHINGTON—The National Taxpayers Union (NTU) today awarded Foxx an “A” grade for her record of consistently voting to reduce spending and keep taxes low.  In NTU’s detailed rating of more than 300 House votes in 2009 Foxx scored a 94 percent, giving her the highest score out of North Carolina’s congressional delegation.

“Working hard to keep federal government spending in check and to keep North Carolina families’ taxes low is one of my top priorities,” Foxx said.  “So I’m pleased that NTU recognized my commitment to fiscal responsibility and limited government in their 2009 vote ratings.”

NTU’s rating of members of Congress’ votes covers 333 House votes in 2009 that had a significant affect on taxes, spending or debt.  Foxx’s “A” grade reflects her voting record on these 333 votes and also earns her the NTU’s “Taxpayers’ Friend Award”.

For more information on NTU’s congressional ratings, how the ratings are calculated and what roll call votes are used please visit www.ntu.org.

The so-called “jobs” bill passed the Senate by a vote of 70 – 28 and will result in throwing away another $15 billion in money we don’t have and in the end will do absolutely nothing to help our ailing economy.  It is estimated by some that the bill will create 250,000 jobs, a smidgen of the 8 million that have been lost, but what happens when the money runs out?  Well, so do the jobs and that’s the main problem.  These are temporary jobs that are nothing more than band-aids.  In the long run our economy will still be in the crapper.

Part of the incentive that will allegedly create these jobs is an exemption from the payroll tax for businesses that hire new workers and an extra $1,000 credit if they employ them for at least a year.  So let’s think about that.  If I hire a new employee for, say, $40,000 a year, I don’t have to pay the 6.5% payroll tax on their salary and I get a $1,000 credit from the Feds a year from now.  Perhaps my math is fuzzy, but I’m still out $39,000.  In a down economy the demand for my services isn’t picking up, so what good will it do me to bring on this extra employee?  Legislation like this is living proof that anybody off the street can run for office.

Your two North Carolina Senators, Richard Burr (R) and Kay Hagan (D), supported wasting your hard earned money and adding more to our already chronic national debt.

COLUMBIA — Gov. Mark Sanford said Tuesday that President Barack Obama’s decision to abandon a decades-old plan for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain could cost South Carolina $1.2 billion and leave the permanent storage of thousands of tons of nuclear waste in question, and the governor is prepared to sue over it.

Sanford urged Obama to back off his Feb. 1 decision and stick to the 23-year bipartisan compact to use the Nevada facility as a resting ground for the country’s nuclear waste, including 4,000 metric tons temporarily housed at the Savannah River Site and elsewhere in South Carolina.

The two-term Republican governor said Obama was motivated to reverse course as a way to ensure U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s re-election in Nevada.

The president decided to eliminate all funding for the facility and withdraw its license application with the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Post and Courier

The Yucca Mountain nuclear storage containment site is something that I happen to know a bit about.  My father lived back in Las Vegas during the 1990s and worked on this project for a government contractor.  There is absolutely nothing unsafe about this containment facility nor does it pose any threat to the people of Nevada.  The Yucca Mountain is over an hour away from Vegas and in the middle of friggin nowhere.

I agree with Sanford that this all a political ploy by Obama.  He’s willing to cost our state over a billion dollars and throw billions more away to try and save Harry Reid’s political carcass which has already started rotting and sticking up the place.  Of course people in Nevada have protested against it.  Nobody wants to have nuclear waste in their backyard, but that isn’t happening in Nevada nor would it if the Yucca Mountain project were to commence again.  The bulk of the outcry is based on ignorance.

That move by Obama contradicts his claim that he is suddenly supportive of nuclear power.  How can he says he wants to see more nuclear power plants built while simultaneously shutting down one of the major nuclear storage projects in the country?  He can’t have it both ways.

Welcome to George Bush’s third term. It seems Obama has warmed up quite nicely to the neocon policies of the previous administration.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their–or at least their cell phones’–whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that “a customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records” that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department’s request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans’ privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.

Feds push for tracking cell phones | Politics and Law – CNET News

I some how doubt the signers of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence would have agreed there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley has cast herself as the one candidate who would reject federal stimulus money and corporate bailouts.

But Haley, a state representative from Lexington, cast a vote last year to accept a disputed $700 million in federal money.

Haley said she cast the vote before it was clear that the state could reject the money – new stimulus legal wrinkles emerged almost daily last spring.

The State

The porkulus bill is pretty much an issue of the past at this point, but my thoughts on it are this.  If the money would have never been spent at all had we not taken it, then it should have been refused.  It was a complete waste of money by the Federal government and its had next to no effect whatsoever in helping the economy recover.  All it has done is add to our incredibly high debt.  However, if the money would have just been reallocated to another state, which was the case, then we should have accepted it.  If it’s going to be spent anyway it may as well be spent here.  Ultimately, the state legislature forced Sanford to accept the money, so that is that.

Is Haley trying to have it both ways?  I guess that’s up to you to decide.

Despite the vote, Haley said she has been consistently against the federal money. After the vote, Haley said she spoke with the offices of Sanford and U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint who assured her the state could reject the money. Haley later voted against final passage of the stimulus-boosted state budget.

“Everybody knows I was against it,” she said. “I’m the only one that can consistently say that.”

Just days after President Obama boasts of spending freezes to quell the public uprising over his administration’s breakneck spending spree, he insults the entire nation by introducing a record $3.8 trillion fiscal budget with a projected record breaking $1.56 trillion deficit.  To add insult to injury, our own Congressman here in the Fifth District, John Spratt, sends out a press release that may as well have “I’m With Stupid” written at the top accompanied by an arrow pointing to us.  He must believe we are to write this tripe and he may very well be correct considering a recent polling of his reelection bid shows that 46% of this district still thinks he should be reelected.

Let’s take his piece by piece.

“Our economy began backsliding into recession in December 2007, one full year before President Obama took office. Within weeks after President Obama was inaugurated, his Administration and Congress approved a large recovery bill to get the economy moving.

A recovery bill that was an epic fail and may have made things incredibly worse by some estimates.

“The Recovery Act added to a deficit already swollen by recession and the Bush Administration’s budgets and bail-outs. But according to the Congressional Budget Office, in the second half of 2009, the Recovery Act raised real GDP by 1.3% to 3.5%.

Tell that to all the people who continue to lose their jobs, particularly those in Chester County where unemployment is in excess of 20%.  Also, there is no way I am letting the hypocrisy in that first sentence slide by.  Spratt’s right, it was the Bush administration’s bailout, but Spratt voted for the damn thing!

In the last quarter of 2008, the economy shrank by 5.4% and 741,000 workers lost their jobs in January 2009 alone. In the last quarter of 2009, the economy grew by 5.7%, and job losses averaged 69,000 a month.

Job losses in December rose to 85,000 and unemployment held steady at 10%.

“The Obama Administration has realized from the start that it will be impossible to bring the deficit down unless the economy is up. The budget the President is sending Congress today puts a priority on those objectives. It keeps one eye on the economy and the other on the deficit.

He must have a lazy eye because each year that deficit gets larger, breaking the previous Guinness world record.

“We have brought the economy back from the brink, but too many Americans are still feeling the recession and not the recovery, and no one can be satisfied when unemployment nationwide averages 10% and in many places is worse.

Back from the brink?  Really?  When the hell did that happen and why are companies still laying off thousands?

“The President’s budget keeps an eye on the bottom-line. The deficit is cut by half, from $1.556 trillion in 2010 (10.6% 0f GDP) to $727 billion (4.2% of GDP) in 2013.

Ah yes, he trotted out the ole “we’re going to cut the deficit in half” bull shit, the deficit he and Obama raised through the roof and then they say when it falls back down to $727 billion, which is still incredibly higher than any of Bush’s record deficits, Spratt tries to hoodwink us into thinking he’s doing us a favor. Well, please don’t.  Just leave.

The budget continues to bring the deficit down, until it reaches 3.9% of GDP in 2014. The President also proposes a bipartisan fiscal commission to develop proposals to bring the deficit down further.

The commission is only needed because elected officials like John Spratt are too damn incompetent and cowardly to do the job they were elected to do.

“At the same time, the President’s budget funds additional initiatives to spur job creation – such as tax credits for small businesses that hire new workers. And the emphasis is on Main Street rather than Wall Street. The budget freezes non-security discretionary spending overall, but singles out priorities like education for funding increases well above a freeze.

“A three-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending and a bipartisan fiscal commission are concrete commitments on the President’s part to bringing down the deficit, even if additional steps will be needed.

Please, the spending freeze is a joke and I cannot believe the hubris behind this.  We’re supposed to believe that the Congress is acting responsibly, despite hiking up the budget deficit to another record high, because they are freezing discretionary spending at a “paltry” $447 billion a year, after they just hiked it up 24% over the past ten months.  Why don’t you just kick me in the balls?

“We proved in the 1990s that it is possible to reduce deficits responsibly, but it cannot happen without concerted effort. Later this week, the House of Representatives will take a step in the right direction by voting to reinstate a statutory Pay-As-You-Go system modeled on the rules that helped turn record deficits into record surpluses in the 1990s.

Well, not exactly.  The calculation of the so-called Clinton “surplus”, which never existed, ignored intergovernmental holdings, in other words, money the government owes the government, IOUs for Social Security, etc.

“On both the budget and the economy, there are hard choices ahead of us, but the budget sent up by the President today marks one more step toward moving the economy up while bringing the deficit down.”

You’re right about one thing, Bubba, there are hard choices ahead and you sure as hell aren’t willing to make them.

John Spratt is the chairman of the House Budget Committee so if this passes you all know where the buck stops.

The U.S. Senate today voted to increase the nation’s debt ceiling another $1.9 trillion to continue to pay for entitlement programs, war mongering,  and other unconstitutional government spending that we can no longer afford.  The vote went down by a straight party line vote of 60 to 40.  This new debt increase amounts to $45,000 for every single American.  New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg (R) summed up the situation nicely.

“It took 200 years to build the federal debt to a total of $1.9 trillion,” Sen. Judd Gregg, a Republican, said. “Now the majority wants to increase the current limit … by $1.9 trillion so that we can finance the government’s borrowing binge long enough to get us past the November 2010 elections.”

The AP

For those of you in North Carolina, call Kay Hagan’s office and ask why she is sentencing your children and grandchildren to lives of indentured servitude to the U.S. government in order to pay for her piggish greed today.  This woman is an unqualified embarrassment and that might explain her 29% approval rating across the state right now.

Washington D.C.
521 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-6342
Fax: 202-228-2563

Greensboro
701 Green Valley Rd; Suite 201
Greensboro, NC 27408
Phone: 336-333-5311
Fax: 336-333-5331

Raleigh
310 New Bern Avenue
Raleigh, NC 27601
Phone: 919-856-4630
Fax: 919-856-4053

Charlotte
1520 South Boulevard; Suite 205
Charlotte, NC 28203
Phone: 704-334-2448
Fax: 704-334-2405

Asheville
82 Patton Avenue; Suite 635
Asheville, NC 28801
Phone: 828-257-6510
Fax: 828-257-6514

A few months back I wrote about an organization that sprouted up out of Charleston called Change the Congress in 2010, the brain child of a Ms Catherine Welborn with the explicit intent of removing as many incumbents from Congress as possible.  The group has crossed the border into North Carolina and now has their eyes set on Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry.

Late last week, the group came out and publicly endorsed one of McHenry’s Republican primary opponents, Iredell County Commissioner Scott Keadle.  I exchanged emails with Ms Welborn and she cited her motivation being a great many grievances with the current sitting Congressman.  Among them were several improprieties that have shown up in the media over the past few years.  These include the 2007 indictment of one of McHenry’s campaign aids, his 2005 appearance on “ABC World News Tonight” in which he defended then House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s Congressional ethics violations, and a voting scandal in which McHenry claimed a owner occupied tax deduction on a Washington D.C. home, while still voting in North Carolina.

What seems to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, however, was the recent release of an article by the John Locke Foundation.

Fighting the pay raise

A few lawmakers have consistently fought automatic pay raises. Among them is Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, who, according a recent Deseret News article, has tried vainly every year since he was first elected to Congress in 2000 to force a straight up-or-down vote. With the economic downturn, Matheson predicted lawmakers in the new 111th Congress might be more interested in forcing the issue to a vote.

Early in 2009, three bills were introduced in the House and one in the Senate to deal with this issue. All members of the N.C. delegation were contacted. Of those who responded, most added they would likely support any bill to stop pay raises, should one come up for a vote.

The first bill, H.R. 156, would prevent members of Congress from receiving any automatic pay adjustment in 2010. N.C. delegation cosponsors are Reps. Walter Jones, R-3rd, Howard Coble, R-6th; Sue Myrick, R-9; Larry Kissell, D-8th; and Heath Shuler, D-11th. Rep. David Price, D-4th, plans to cosponsor the bill, according to his spokesperson, and added the decision was made prior to being contacted about his position on this issue.

Rep. Virginia Foxx , R-5th, is a cosponsor of H.R. 346, which would repeal the law that provides automatic pay adjustments for members of Congress.

Coble is also a cosponsor of H.R. 201, which would prevent automatic pay raises for members of Congress in the year following a fiscal year in which there was a federal budget deficit.

S.B. 102 would repeal the law that provides automatic pay adjustments for members of Congress. Deputy Press Secretary David Ward said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has voted against automatic pay increases in the past and would do so again. Colleen Flanagan, a spokesperson for Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., said Hagan is opposed to any automatic pay adjustments, given these economic times.

Something is glaringly missing here.  Patrick McHenry.  Every member of the North Carolina Republican Congressional delegation has co-sponsored one of these bills, including a few Democrats, seemingly except for Patrick McHenry whose name is no where to be found.  I too found this somewhat curious and I emailed his press secretary last evening, whom I get frequent press releases from each week, asking about this.  At this point I have not received a response regarding my question, although I did receive a new press release this afternoon.

Regarding Mr. Keadle’s candidacy and her endorsement of him over McHenry, Welborn based her support upon Keadle’s promise to not be a career politician, but to serve no more than three terms in the House.  He has also pledged to oppose Congressional pay raises and to not accept the Congressional pension upon leaving Congress.

Welborn also stated, “Scott Keadle is not a career politician.  He is not in anyone’s debt, not beholden to any group or organization except the people of NC-10.  He believes that it’s time to take back our country.  He believes that it’s time to replace career politicians with people who have real experience working at real jobs.  He believes that it’s time to send real people to Washington, people with real experience dealing with families and the emergencies involved with families.”

I have to say, it’s difficult to argue with her logic.

Maybe.  David Waldman of The Daily Kos makes the case that the fate of the Democrats’ lack of health care reform bill is in the hands of my very own Congressman, John Spratt.  In a nut shell, as chairman of the House Rules Committee, Spratt can put together a package of changes, attach them to H.R. 3200, the original bill that made it out of committee in early fall, then present it to the House Rules Committee and pave the way for reconciliation.  Waldman has spelled it out in a bit more detail, but that is the general idea.

It’s an interesting proposal, one that could put Spratt in an unusual pickle.  Does he support the President’s ill fated agenda and ram this through as suggested above?  After all, according to rumor, Spratt wanted permission from Queen Pelosi to vote against the health care bill in the House and he was denied.  He’s proven to not have the testicular fortitude to stand up to the power brokers and listen to the people he actually works for, me and the other residents of the Fifth Congressional District.  A move on reconciliation would almost ensure Spratt’s defeat in November, but then I wouldn’t put it past him to do so and then decide to retire from the House after all.  Then Pelosi is happy, Obama is happy, and Spratt escapes all consequences back home.

I have my doubts, however, that after the Massachusetts Senate race the votes exist to pass this through both chambers even with a simple bare majority.  At least right now.  Frankly, I don’t know why Kos would even want them to do this.  This is nothing close to what Obama and the Democrats promised the people.  The left was promised a public option, which this bill lacks.  Furthermore, they are always railing against the profits of insurance companies.  It’s one of their biggest beefs with privatized health care, yet this health care bill is a giant corporate give away to those very same interests.

Keep an eye on John Spratt.  It’s the quiet, sneaky ones you need to pay attention to.

I agree with the following press release from Congressman McHenry’s office, however, I think there is more than just dissatisfaction with the health care bill that drove what we saw last night.  This Congress, which Nancy Pelosi said would be the most open and ethical in history, has been the most sneaky and underhanded I think we’ve ever had in my lifetime.  They are supposed to be representatives of the people, not aristocrats, and they have shown nothing but a snobbish contempt for the American people.  I would like to think what happened in Massachusetts last night will serve as a warning shot over the bough of the Democrats’ sinking ship, but I’m not holding my breath.

“If you’d told me a month ago that a Republican running against President Obama’s health care plan would win Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat, I’d have said you were crazy.

“If the Obama health care bill has sparked such a massive backlash in Massachusetts, I can’t imagine what Democrats in red and purple districts are hearing back home. Democrats should take the hint and stop pushing their unpopular plan on the American people.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 8, 2010
Contact: Josh Kahn
(202) 225-2576

McHenry: Geithner Must Come Clean on AIG Actions

WASHINGTON – Congressman Patrick McHenry (NC-10) released the following statement on House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns’ (D-NY) decision to hold hearings on the growing American International Group (AIG) disclosure controversy.

McHenry earlier joined Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) in calling on Chairman Towns to hold a hearing and bring Secretary Geithner before the committee to testify.

“We owe it to taxpayers and investors to find out why Secretary Geithner pressured AIG to withhold important disclosures from the public, and what precisely he was trying to hide. When billions of dollars are funneled to foreign banks right out of taxpayers’ pockets, both Republicans and Democrats have a fiduciary duty to get to the bottom of it. I hope Secretary Geithner will choose to testify at the hearing voluntarily, but if he declines he must be subpoenaed and compelled to tell the American people the full story.”

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