Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
Photo by Bill Herndon
As the drama unfolds regarding the debt limit, the American people are probably unaware of a subtle distinction. When the House of Representatives passed Cut, Cap, and Balance and sent it to the Senate, it was not voted down in the Senate. Instead the Senate voted to table it, pigeon hole it, lock it in a drawer, do everything they could not to actually debate it and vote on it. Why?
When last she held the Speaker’s gavel in the 111th Congress, Nancy Pelosi failed to pass a budget at all. This was the first such failure since 1974. But somehow Republicans are obstructionists. When asked in May of this year about the Senate passing a budget, Harry Reid had this to say, “It would be foolish for us to do a budget at this stage.” Foolish. But somehow Republicans are obstructionists.
Two-faced can be such an overused term, but on the other hand two doesn’t seem to be enough to capture Harry Reid.
He can’t seem to say it enough, the economy is in the tank because of those tax breaks on corporate jets. Well, he didn’t exactly say that, but instead of the trillions of dollars in spending that he demanded and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid delivered, somehow a tax break that amounts to $3 billion over ten years is center stage in the budget battle.
Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a great oration with his “I Have a Dream” speech that moved millions of Americans to action. Howard Dean gave a puzzling oration with his “I Have a Scream” speech that moved millions of Americans to laughter and derision. Tim Bishop flops at oration with an “I Have a Scheme” remarks that will leave hundreds (he’d be hard pressed to reach millions), scratching their heads.
The Democrats are banking on the American people returning to the days of voting by sound bite. They believe the Tea Party is an anomaly that will go down as a blip in the history books, rather than a force for educating the electorate on the issues. It is a strategy that has worked for them, even as recently as the 2010 election. In the First Congressional District of New York, Congressman Tim Bishop ran for reelection entirely on bashing his opponent, and not mentioning his record of voting with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time.
With all the heated rhetoric in the runup to a budget deal it is informative to look at some facts:
Maybe it’s just me. Perhaps not having lived in the rarefied air of academia or politics, I have a more roll up the sleeves, get some dirt under the fingernails approach to what a job entails. Today it seems that politicians like to get in front of the cameras, fire off a sound bite and then go do something more interesting.
Vice President Joe Biden, the man President Barack Obama put in charge of the stimulus spending because, “nobody messes around with Joe,” met with Congressional leaders to talk about the budget for the remainder of this fiscal year. Jingling in his pocket was an additional $6.1 billion in change as all the Democrats had to offer, after the Republicans forced them to agree to $4 billion in cuts to get a two week extension from shutting down the government.
The order in the Middle East has been crumbling, but it seems that the only place President Barack Obama knows where to lead is on the dance floor or when ramming through his socialist programs. When it comes to real solutions to fix the economy or on foreign policy he is utterly lost.
