The Two Big Battles : D.C. and Wisconsin

A very interesting post from www.hughhewitt.com about the D.C. Republicans on the Continuing Resolution on the Budget and Wisconsin's governor fighting for his state budget. This follows this post about the House Republicans possibly failing on the budget and and this article about  the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book HERE!


The Two Big Battles

Posted by: Hugh Hewitt




My new Washington Examiner column reviews the stakes in the two big domestic battles underway in Madison and in D.C.



Scott Walker doesn't look the type who is for turning and he realizes he will never be stronger than right now. But that isn't true of all the GOP state senators, and if more than one or two crumble, the governor's task becomes much more difficult. It took just three Republicans in the United States Senate to inflict the stimulus on the country, and probably just as few in Wisconsin to throw away a crucial moment.



Rather than backpeddling, the legislators should be looking at the idea forwarded to me and put into my column: If teachers stay away, their students should instantly become eligible for vouchers.



The Beltway Republicans are hard to predict, and they certainly do not have a communications strategy in place, apparently for fear of being charged with shutting down the government.



They would not be, of course, shutting down a government. The House has passed a new funding resolution, one that barely scratches overall federal spending, but which the president and Democratic senators can turn into Waterloo if they want. If they do so, they will be shutting down the government, and as we are seeing in Wisconsin, the taxpaying public --the makers, not the takers-- have had it with being blackmailed by special interests.



The political class is now busy debating --see the New York Times this morning-- whether the GOP is "overreaching," another display of epic cluelessness about the situation in a country with near double-digit unemployment and where some regions are facing double-the-national-average in joblessness.



The key difference between 1995 and 2011 is that people know we are broker and they know the special interests are asking for us to borrow billions and billions more so they don't have to experience the austerity the rest of the country has already endured three years. The Republicans are doing the right things --the things they campaigned on-- in D.C. and across the new House CR. If they don't defend them now, when will they ever do so?

Grading the Unfolding Fiasco in the House: The GOP In Danger of Flunking

A very interesting post from www.hughhewitt.com about the House Republicans FAILING on the budget. This follows this post about the Left's ability to organize in states like Wisconsin and what conservatives can do about it and and this article about  the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book HERE!


Grading the Unfolding Fiasco in the House: The GOP In Danger of Flunking

Posted by: Hugh Hewitt




The House of Representatives appears close to flunking its first major test in the era of the deficit crisis. The emerging outline of the spending bill as described by Politico's David Rogers is a jumble of narratives, numbers and alleged reductions, but there is scant little in the way of "pelts on the wall" for the genuinely deficit-troubled as obvious black-hole boondoggles like Amtrack and the Legal Services Corporation are still being funded by billions borrowed on the backs of our children and grandchildren by an allegedly conservative House, and the big headline is that the National Endowment for the Arts is being cut by $22.5 million and the SEC is getting less money that it had hoped for.



This is the stuff of a conservative revolution and a new era of limits? Cutting NEA by what, a fourth or a third? (The NEA received $167 million in appropriations in 2010, but it is impossible to peg what baseline the $22.5 million is being deducted from at this point.) This is how the House GOP responds to the fiscal crisis on which they campaigned?



As I tried to explain to House Rules Chairman David Dreier yesterday, the GOP caucus has to win on two levels --with a significant rollback of overall spending, and with at least three significant defundings, trophies to put it bluntly, that mark the beginning of a new seriousness about the deficit, downpayments on the promises of the fall.



Not one Republican ran on a pledge to trim the budget of the NEA.



Not one ran on a CR of $1,087 trillion dollars. It is astonishing, really, how badly the new majority has bungled the messaging and the crucial need for speed.



Now it is in for an enormous shut-down fight with the Senate and the president over what? A billion here and a billion there? And they expect the Tea Party etc to rally to their banners? Unlike Wisconsin where Governor Scott Walker has agreed to battle the public employee unions over an enormous, culture changing set of laws, here the big shutdown battle will be over whether the NEA gets 70% of its budget or 100%. Amtrack's not on the table. LSC isn't either. Still no word on whether the round-heeled GOP chopped NPR and CPB to zero. The Pledge we were promised has become a paradigm of the new math loved by the left for so many years.



Fiasco. That is the word for it. I will spend most of today's program on this subject, and I hope I am wrong about the way I see it setting up, but the Beltway sharpies and message consultants convinced the new GOP leadership to play the wrong game for the wrong prize, and to do so with the MSM as the referees and the score-keepers.



Meanwhile Tim Pawlenty is headed to Phoenix and the gathering of the Tea Party Patriots, where all of the House leadership should be next weekend. But I doubt any of them will go. That would require a great deal more political courage than is on display in D.C. this week.



Bottom line: Why would anyone fight for the House GOP's version of the CR? Why would they get on a plane and go to D.C. to support Speaker Boehner in the negotiations with the Senate and the president? What's the elevator pitch to the public? "We are cutting the Arts Endowment by 22.5 million! Rally to our flag."



Astonishing.

The Battle is in Front of You: What are YOU going to do about it?

A very interesting post from www.redstate.com about the Left's ability to organize in states like Wisconsin and what conservatives can do about it! This follows this disppointing post about the House GOP breaking their budget promises and and this article about  the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book HERE!

The Battle is in Front of You: What are YOU going to do about it?

Get Connected. Get Engaged. Get Activated...Or Get Crushed.



At this very moment, the battle for America’s future is happening in states all around the country as newly-elected governors try to wrest control from tax-eating unions. Today’s battle is just the beginning of what America will be facing through 2012 and beyond. It is a battle that, if lost, will likely have catastrophic consequences on the fiscal well being of many of the states and, as a result, the nation as a whole.



Nowhere is the fight the loudest than in Wisconsin, where over 10,000 union supporters protested Madison’s Capitol Square on Tuesday and about 1,000 protesters demonstrated outside Governor Scott Walker’s private home Tuesday night. Hundreds of union protesters also packed Ohio’s statehouse on Tuesday to condemn Governor Kasich’s efforts to stem the union bosses’ power and reign in out of control spending. In Indiana, hundreds of Steelworkers descended on the Hoosier’ statehouse to protest unemployment reform as well. Even in New York, with a Democrat governor, unions are spending millions on fighting reform.



Make no mistake, this is a battle for America’s economic future. It is one that will ultimately decide whether Americans will be enslaved by debt created by a government beholden to public-sector union bosses, or whether some sort of fiscal sanity can be restored before the system collapses due to the weight from years of cronyism.



As labor activists strategize for “class war,” Leftist union bosses also know they may be losing their grip on taxpayers’ throats and they are desperate to keep it there. They’re not going to let go easily either. They’re organized and they have millions to spend on marches, sickouts, protests, candlelight vigils, and advertising.



So, the question becomes, what are YOU going to do about it?





The answer to that question is simple: Get Connected. Get Engaged. Then…Get Active.



Last weekend, at CPAC, Freedomworks rolled out a new tool for Americans interested in preserving their liberty to use. It’s called FreedomConnector and it is a powerful tool for getting connected, getting engaged and getting active.

House GOP Elects to Punt

A very interesting post from www.hughhewitt.com about the House GOP breaking their budget promises. This follows this post about the GOP not defunding and and this article about  the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book HERE!

House GOP Elects to Punt


House Republicans lost the first round of the messaging battle over the budget last week with a lame attempt to cut less than $40 billion against the Pledge to America's goal of at least $100 billion, but then President Obama forfeited round two with an absurd budget that elicited a genuine bipartisan reaction of scorn for his fecklessness.



Proving themselves equal to the challenge of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the new GOP majority promptly proceeded to block what looked like a clean attempt to defund Obamacare sponsored by Representative Steve King of Iowa and then followed with a series of failed amendments to cut spending featuring numerous senior Republicans voting to defend appropriations for, among other programs, the Legal Services Corporation.



Heading into the weekend the Beltway Republicans of 2006 seem to have returned and to have reclaimed their old ways and their old daze when it comes to communicating with the public.



So what happened?



Four years of watching the MSM fawn over Nancy Pelosi appears to have persuaded the House GOP Leadership that it controls the story line because it controls the gavel. Thus they believed that if they talked about an “open amendment process,” the legacy media would report that script, and that the Tea Party would care. The GOP leadership assumed that if they announced that “We will have many bites at the apple,” then the conservative activists who sent them to D.C. would read about these careful plans and nod in admiring agreement.



They thought that since Speaker Pelosi had had the help of the media in driving various narratives that they too would get acquiescence in the structuring of the storyline.



Wrong party. Wrong media. Wrong attitude towards the base.



The old media still loathes the Republicans new media on the conservative side doesn’t exist to support the GOP Beltway Establishment, just as the new political infrastructure made up of groups like http://www.teapartypatriots.org/ doesn’t relay messages from headquarters to a compliant army of followers. Thus when the House GOP struck out on a path that did not deliver either the deep cuts that were promised, or the ideologically symbolic cuts that were expected like the defunding of NPR and CPB, or the defunding of Obamacare which was trumpeted, the grassroots began to pulse with a disappointment that is trending towards anger. The talking points are not working, but the rising chorus of criticism hasn’t prompted a reassessment so much as a doubling-down by the appropriators led by Chairman Hal Rogers.



There are a lot of conclusions being drawn about the House GOP Caucus as a result, and although the Republicans are pleading for patience, they aren’t getting any.



This isn’t what was supposed to be happening, but the Republicans have once again misjudged the essential nature of what the base demands of them, which is a sense of urgency equal to that which powered the rhetoric of the fall, as well as an eagerness to join the battle, not retreat from it.



Over and over again the House leaders have shrunk back from talk of a shut-down as though a stand-off over principles which decided the November vote would be illegitimate. Despite the soaring deficits and the absurd “budget” submitted by the president, Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy have moved at every turn to dismiss the idea that a showdown looms over spending. There are vague promises of deep cuts down the road a few months, but not now –not when the Republicans have complete leverage over the new Continuing Resolution and the debt ceiling legislation, and not close enough to the election of November 2010 to assert with authority a mandate to act.



“If not now, when?” many are asking. That and “What are they afraid of?”



Imagine if Churchill, who spent most of the ‘30s arguing for rapid rearmament, had arrived back at the Admiralty on September 3, 1939 and announced that he would unveil his plans for the buildup in March of 1940 with a debate over the exact numbers to follow in May or June.



What the GOP did throughout the fall was build expectations for rapid and decisive action and then, presented with the opportunity to force the issue, the party elected to kick off rather than receive.



And then to punt on second down.



The Manhattan-Beltway media elite won’t be helping the GOP representatives dig out of the hole in which they now find themselves. So hopefully they will soon invoke the first rule of holes and stop digging. Time for the Speaker to gather the leadership team and reconsider the course they thought would work. Though the injury to their credibility is significant, it can be remedied, but not by telling the Tea Party youngsters to go along and play while the adults handle the serious work.



The cliff is very close, and even if the aggravation level among the veteran lawmakers is high with those activists who are new to the political scene, the House Republicans have to chose to listen to the voters, not dictate to them.





Hugh Hewitt

Hugh Hewitt is host of a nationally syndicated radio talk show. Hugh Hewitt's new book is The War On The West

Action Alert: Take Down the Rule‏

A very interesting post from http://www.redstate.com/ about the GOP not defunding Obamacare. This follows this post  the GOP's failure to follow through on reducing the deficit and and this article about  the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book HERE!

GO HERE NOW. TELL YOUR CONGRESSMAN TO VOTE AGAINST THE RULE. READ BELOW FOR DETAILS.




Last night, the House of Representatives’ Rules Committee shut down Rep. Steve King’s ability to offer an amendment to completely defund Obamacare on the continuing resolution to fund the government through the end of the year. House Republicans are now hiding behind parliamentary rules to say that it would somehow violate what the new Republican Majority is all about.



This is just complete and utter nonsense.



Obamacare was a mix of what is called discretionary and mandatory spending. King is trying to defund the entire law, but the parliamentarians are arguing that his amendment would be out of order (i.e. against House Rules) because it attempts to mess with programs that are not strictly discretionary.



But the thing that people need to understand about the House of Representatives is that every major bill that comes to the floor is governed by a “special rule” that sets the parameters of the debate and the amendment process for that bill. You don’t need a special rule to consider a bill, but House Rules are viewed as so inefficient and cumbersome that each bill needs its own special dispensation. And that is where the Rules Committee comes in and constructs a special rule that in essence waives House Rules. Normally, in a situation like this, the Leadership of either party, if they support what the rank and file member is trying to do, makes the amendment in order.



So this idea that the Rules Committee (an arm of Leadership) could not have made the amendment in order because they didn’t want to give “special treatment” to it is nonsense. If that is “regular order” then the Rules Committee should be disbanded completely, and the era of special rules be ended. That would actually be pretty good for America.



Furthermore, Leadership put Steve King in this position by not adding the proper language to defund Obamacare in the underlying bill, notwithstanding the fact that these sorts of riders are a matter of routine on appropriations bills. What is not routine is bringing an appropriations bill to the floor of the House without having it be considered in committee where these sorts of amendments could have been more easily included.



The plain fact of the matter is that Leadership doesn’t want a major fight to defund Obamacare on the continuing resolution and are hiding behind House Rules to save face. The continuing resolution is a must-pass bill and prime opportunity for the House to try and shut down Obamacare with its historic “power of the purse.” At least force the Democrats to use political capital to get the provision out of the bill in the Senate.



GO HERE NOW. TELL YOUR CONGRESSMAN TO VOTE AGAINST THE RULE.

How the GOP can keep its Pledge

A very interesting post from www.hughhewitt.com about the GOP's failure to follow through on reducing the deficit. This follows this previous post about this topic and and this article about  the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book HERE!


How the GOP can keep its Pledge

Examiner Columnist

.Political success depends on the maintenance of at least the appearance of integrity. Voters will rightly punish any elected official they conclude has deceived them. So members of the new GOP House majority must take especially great care to live up to the Pledge to America that they revealed with such great fanfare in the fall campaign. Already the deals struck with the president at the end of last year put enormous strain on the idea that the Pledge really did constitute a promise -- the keeping of which could provide a measure of member integrity.

Many voices claimed the Pledge applied to the incoming Congress, not the one headed to the exits in disgrace. Perhaps, but the Pledge is now certainly fully in force. Here is what it said a GOP majority would do about spending, not just once, but twice, on Page 6 and again on Page 21:



"With common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans and our troops, we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone."



So what was the total of "non-security" spending in 2008? The GOP leadership says $387 billion. Fine. The budget being brought to the floor by House appropriators does not reduce "non-security" spending to $387 billion, so House appropriators have broken their Pledge.



Even if the House reduces the non-security spending to $387 billion, even then the Pledge's promise of at least $100 billion in savings from 2010 spending won't be reached. That's strike two.



Strike three is the repeated attempts by various spokesmen for the GOP appropriators claiming that they are keeping the Pledge. This is actually the very worst thing about a deeply disappointing start to the new Congress. Candor is required. Lack of candor loses voters' trust, and that trust won't be easily recovered.



This is the situation the GOP House members, especially the freshmen, find themselves in this week. If they pass a budget that results in more than $387 billion in non-security spending in fiscal 2011, and if they fail to cut at least $100 billion from last year's spending levels, they will have broken their Pledge.



Everyone knows the talk about cutting back from the president's 2011 request is a ruse, and an offensive, condescending one at that, a transparent dodge that says to Republican regulars, conservative activists and Tea Party volunteers alike that they are all easily tricked, too stupid to read and understand the contract they were presented, which said zero about the president's 2011 budget request as a standard.



The Republican members of the Appropriations Committee are begging for a primary challenge by employing this rhetoric. Now the question becomes which freshmen will join in the rush over the credibility- and career-damaging cliff.



There is a choice. Budget hawk Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., will offer two amendments this week that should be called "Pledge-keepers." The first mandates that no more than $387 billion be spent on non-security appropriations. This is a must-vote for those concerned with keeping their promise to voters.



The second Campbell amendment offers one path to the Pledge's promised $100 billion in savings -- via reductions in "security" spending (which does not necessarily mean Defense Department cuts). Some members might prefer to get to $100 billion via deeper cuts in "non-security" areas, but getting there somehow is key.



This is the week the freshmen especially have to check their guts and their past promises. Many people are watching closely and won't forget. It wasn't the House appropriators who sent these new representatives to Congress, and the appropriators won't be able to explain away any credibility gap that opens this week to voters.



Voting for the Campbell amendments isn't just the smart political move, it is also the vote the country desperately needs as a signal of an opening of a new era, one not even the most disconnected Beltway incumbent can miss.



Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at http://www.hughhewitt.com/.







Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/02/how-gop-can-keep-its-pledge#ixzz1Dyb9HY9p

GOP Defaults on Pledge to America

A very interesting post from www.hughhewitt.com about the GOP's failure to follow through on reducing the deficit. This follows this post about Barack Obama's poll numbers and and this article about  the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book HERE!



GOP Defaults on Pledge to America

 The number of Republican Members of Congress who appeared on my radio show between their “thumpin’” in 2006 and their return to power in 2010 who admitted with apparent remorse that “We lost our way” is easily in double digits.



That was the mantra, and embedded within it an implied pledge that, if the voters would just give them another chance, all would be different.



How different? Vastly, completely, transcendently different. And the House Republicans took that implied pledge, made it explicit, and put it all in a “Pledge to America” that promised in key language on page 21 that if a new GOP majority was sent to D.C. it would:



Act Immediately to Reduce Spending



There is no reason to wait to reduce wasteful and unnecessary spending. Congress should move immediately to cancel unspent “stimulus” funds, and block any attempts to extend the timeline for spending “stimulus” funds. Throwing more money at a stimulus plan that is not working only wastes taxpayer money and puts us further in debt.



Cut Government Spending to Pre-Stimulus, Pre-Bailout Levels



With common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to prestimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone and putting us on a path to begin paying down the debt, balancing the budget, and ending the spending spree in Washington that threatens our children’s future.



Well, the voters bit. Like Charlie Brown charging at Lucy's football, the Republican activists and the Tea Party volunteers combined to power a huge GOP wave. The “Lost” were welcomed back to power.



And this week they have proven that indeed they are still lost. Far worse, they are throwing their collective credibility on a bonfire.



Having promised a minimum $100 billion in cuts, the House Budget and Appropriations Committees came up with less than $40 billion in spending reductions, and a line of excuses for failure as long as the distance from their September Pledge to the February reality of their actions.



The effort to define the Pledge away on technical arguments was immediate --"Five months of spending are already behind us!"-- as though the public that swarmed the town hall meetings in anger over “deemed passed” would be willing to accept a 7/12ths argument as a reason not to reset the baseline at "prestimulus, pre-bailout" levels in the Continuing Resolution. A “cut” of $32 billion proposed by the Budget Committee was less than 1% of the total proposed for expenditure in 2011, and nowhere near the slashing needed to get to the Pledge's promises.



Why the refusal to cut? According to Politico's David Rogers, the new Republican Chair of the Appropriations Committee had this set of warnings for his caucus:



Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) warned his colleagues that to cut more now, risks forcing layoffs of federal employees at a time when both parties say their priority is to reduce unemployment.



For example, Rogers said the necessary cuts in the DEA’s budget could put the agency at really pre-1992 levels in some cases, and cuts to FAA operations risk 41 day furloughs for the air traffic controller workforces.



This is extraordinary, a wholesale adoption of Democratic rhetoric, and one sure to outrage conservatives who did not sacrifice their time and money so that senior Republicans could shrink from difficult choices and adopt standard-issue Democratic scare tactics. (The Politico.com article with the Rogers quote has been edited and the two paragraphs have been deleted.)



If the House GOP agrees to send the president a Continuing Resolution with less than $100 billion of cuts in its final form, the blow to its credibility will be deep and lasting, and the electoral consequences to the freshmen who ran on being committed to serious deficit reduction will be disastrous. Semantics and excuses will not fly, and the freshmen will have no one to blame but themselves for allowing themselves to be herded over a cliff.



Hugh Hewitt

Hugh Hewitt is host of a nationally syndicated radio talk show. Hugh Hewitt's new book is The War On The West.

STOPPING THE OBAMA SURGE

A very interesting post from www.dickmorris.com about Barack Obama's poll numbers. This follows this post about making the SENATE repeal Obamacare and and this article about  the recent news about ending the ban on offshore drilling which would encourage American energy independence This is a key issue to prevent money from going to hostile countries such as Iran  and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and you can read a very interesting book HERE!

STOPPING THE OBAMA SURGE

By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann
01.24.2011





All the public opinion polls now confirm that President Obama has moved up sharply and significantly in popularity and job approval since he began to tack toward the center after the November election. Rasmussen and Zogby both have him over 50% job approval for the first time in almost a year. The key event was his high-minded speech in the aftermath of the Tucson shootings and his clear separation from the blame-oriented liberal commentators who tried to pin the killings on the Tea Party and Sarah Palin.



Now, as he prepares to deliver his third State of the Union address, he will have a national audience that will see him for one hour doing what he does best – giving a speech. State of the Union addresses are not to be taken lightly. In the Clinton Administration, I compared them to the towers of a suspension bridge. When the speech was given, the president’s ratings would rise only to fall gradually until they perked up again at the next State of the Union speech.





Obama will, doubtless, be the soul of moderation, bipartisanship, and compromise in his speech and may well see his ratings soar further upward.



But don’t panic. Obama has to begin to take real positions on real issues posed by the Republican Congress. Will he cut spending sharply when the debt limit is increased? Will he agree to defunding Obamacare? Will he go along with banning the EPA from issuing regulations taxing carbon emissions? Will his Administration permit the National Labor Relations Board to ban secret ballots in union elections or let the FCC regulate the Internet and cripple talk radio? Will he veto budgets that have earmarks inserted by his Democratic allies?



On these issues, there really is no center. If Obama wants to cut spending by only a moderate amount, that is not centrism. Half of too much is still too much.



If the Republicans pose these choices starkly, Obama’s so-called move to the center will be exposed as the fraud that it is. He cannot remain protected by his own platitudes and clichés when he has to make real decisions about public policy, choosing between his own liberal/socialist ideology and what America wants.



Indeed, the public will be doubly cynical about him if his move to the center turns out to have no substance. They will feel conned once again by the glib silver tongue in the White House. And Obama will have a hard time fooling the people thrice!



But the Republicans must do their part. To call Obama’s bluff, they will have to pass serious alternatives to his policies – big cuts in spending, defunding of Obamacare and of his administrative orders, and a procedure for state bankruptcies. On the rocks of these issues, Obama’s centrism will smash to pieces and he will be revealed for the radical that he really is.



There will be some Republicans who will want to meet him in the middle and agree to some cosmetic changes in Obamacare and some peripheral cuts in spending. We must not listen to these voices. It is only by posing sharp issues and manifestly different paths that Obama will be forced to choose and, in the process, be exposed.