Obama: We Must Make Sure DC Doesn't Shut Down, So I'm Going Out Of Town to Campaign

We're supposedly facing a huge deadline this Friday. Either Congress is going to get the government funded for the rest of the year, or it is going to get shut down. Many are decrying that it would be catastrophic, if they let this happen. So, our president would be sure to stay home and make sure that this is done. Right? Er....wrong:

A fiery President Obama insisted Tuesday that if he and congressional leaders couldn’t reach a deal to avert a government shutdown, “I want a meeting again tomorrow here at the White House.”

“I will invite the same folks that we invited today,” he added. “And if that doesn’t work, we’ll invite them again the day after that. And I will have my entire team available to work through the details of getting a deal done.”

Obama’s team may not include the president himself. Despite the impasse in Washington over federal spending, the president as of early Wednesday was scheduled to give two speeches outside of Washington: one on energy in the Philadelphia suburbs, then another Wednesday evening to a group of black political activists in New York.

If the schedule remains intact, it will be the president’s first trip outside the capital since he officially declared Monday he will seek a second term. And while Obama (D) and his aides have repeated said he will not focus on his campaign in the next few months, his schedule may contradict those words.

Sadly, this is just par for the course for Obama and the Democrats. The Democrats were too scared that it'd hurt them politically to pass a budget with a huge deficit right before the midterms. So, they punted it until the next year.

Obama, also, has had a habit of staying clear of the tough issues. It took Obama months to go down to Louisiana, after the BP spill. Even with his key legislation, ObamaCare, he handed it completely over to Pelosi and Reid. His lack of leadership is just astounding and appalling. We hired him to lead not go to Pennsylvania to shill for his green agenda, while Rome burns.

Quid Pro Quo: Did Senate Republicans Trade Food Bill For Uncontested Continuing Budget Resolution?

The Republicans shocked everyone last night by completely folding their advantage over the Democrats regarding their flawed Food Safety Bill:

The Senate unexpectedly approved food safety legislation by unanimous consent Sunday evening, rescuing a bill that floated in limbo for weeks because of a clerical error.

The Senate passed the Food Safety and Modernization Act on Nov. 30 by a vote of 73-25. But the bill was later invalidated by a technical objection because it was a revenue-raising measure that did not originate in the House — Senate staff had failed to substitute the food safety language into a House-originated bill. …

Reid announced he would send the legislation — this time properly attached to a House-originated measure — back to the lower chamber for final approval.

So, the GOP went 60-to-0 in 10 seconds flat on this debate. Why did the Republicans go from having this bill all but blocked to acquiescing to Harry Reid and the Democrats and voting unanimously with them on this? Ed Morrissey explains that they may have done this in order to get the Democrats to agree to a clean, simple continuing budget resolution that'll last until next session of Congress:

From that sequence, it appears the GOP may have given up the food-safety bill for a clean CR.  They didn’t want the CR to become a “minibus,” a concern that had arisen when Congress passed a three-day CR on Friday night to fund the government through Tuesday.  Rumor had it that the Democrats wanted a blend of CR and omnibus that would set funding for the rest of the year on some key agencies, and the GOP want to go through a normal budget process instead.    It shouldn’t take three days to write a CR anyway, and the fact that they gave themselves that kind of breathing space indicated that Democrats intended to treat the CR like a Christmas tree.

If that’s the deal, then at least the unanimous consent on the food-safety bill would be explicable.  If the Senate produces a minibus anyway, then this gift to Reid is a strange collapse by the Senate GOP.

If this is the case, then, this would be a good compromise. I just hope that Senator Reid and the rest of the Democrats hold up their end of the deal. If not, they just tapped out for nothing.

Senate Republicans Hold Firm on Promise Not to Support Any Bill Before Taxes, Budget Are Addressed

Harry Reid tried to put two bills up for a vote today that was defeated by almost of the the Republican's voting against the measure. They did this, by-in-large, because they had promised not to let any other bill come up for a vote, until the tax and budget issues are taken care of before the lame-duck session is closed.

The first one rejected was the one that dealt with a bill that was designed to compensate 9/11 survivors' for lingering health issues stemming from inhaling dust from the World Trade Center collapse:

Senate Republicans on Thursday derailed a bill to aid people who got sick after exposure to dust from the World Trade Center's collapse in the Sept. 11 attack.

Supporters were three votes short of the 60 needed to proceed to debate and a final vote on the bill that would have provided as much as $7.4 billion in health care and compensation to 9/11 responders and survivors. The bill failed on a test vote, 57-42.

Fifty-seven Democrats voted for the bill and 41 Republicans opposed it. Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, switched his vote to 'no' at the last moment, a parliamentary move that allows him to bring the measure up again for a vote.

Backers of the legislation see this lame-duck session of Congress as possibly its last chance. The bill has passed the House.

Republican senators have promised not to consider any other bills until the Senate acts on funding the government and extending tax cuts.

That one is a bit tricky because the Democrats have already used their no votes as a way to label Republicans as not being compassionate to those who survived the tragedies of 9/11. Republicans must speak out on this to make sure that Americans know why they voted against this bill. They can't let the Democrats frame this debate without their side of the story being expressed.

Even in the next Congress, this has a chance to be passed later on, but for now, it is not an issue that must be acted on immediately.

The second bill was on the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy:

The Senate on Thursday rejected a Democratic bid to open debate on repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning openly gay and lesbian soldiers from military service, possibly killing any chance for it to get passed in the current congressional session.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, called the vote without an agreement from any Republican senators to support the motion, ensuring it would fail.

The vote was 57-40 in favor of the cloture motion that required 60 votes to pass.

While most polls show that the majority of Americans favor the repeal, this won't be as toxic for the GOP because most Americans, also, realize that this issue doesn't need immediate attention.

Senate Republicans Warn Reid of Nuclear Option If Tax Cuts, Budget Aren't Dealt With First

The Republicans in the Senate sent a letter the the Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warning him that the Republicans will throw a monkey wrench in his agenda, if the extension of the Bush's tax cuts and a federal budget isn't passed before even discussing the liberals' wishlist:

Dear Leader Reid,

The nation’s unemployment level, stuck near 10 percent, is unacceptable to Americans.  Senate Republicans have been urging Congress to make private-sector job creation a priority all year.  President Obama in his first speech after the November election said “we owe” it to the American people to “focus on those issues that affect their jobs.”  He went on to say that Americans “want jobs to come back faster.”  Our constituents have repeatedly asked us to focus on creating an environment for private-sector job growth; it is time that our constituents’ priorities become the Senate’s priorities.

For that reason, we write to inform you that we will not agree to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers.  With little time left in this Congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities.  While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate's attention, we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike.

Given our struggling economy, preventing the tax increase and providing economic certainty should be our top priority.  Without Congressional action by December 31, all American taxpayers will be hit by an increase in their individual income-tax rates and investment income through the capital gains and dividend rates.  If Congress were to adopt the President’s tax proposal to prevent the tax increase for only some Americans, small businesses would be targeted with a job-killing tax increase at the worst possible time.  Specifically, more than 750,000 small businesses will see a tax increase, which will affect 50 percent of small-business income and nearly 25 percent of the entire workforce.  The death tax rate will also climb from zero percent to 55 percent, which makes it the top concern for America’s small businesses.  Republicans and Democrats agree that small businesses create most new jobs, so we ought to be able to agree that raising taxes on small businesses is the wrong remedy in this economy.  Finally, Congress still needs to act on the “tax extenders” and the alternative minimum tax “patch,” all of which expired on December 31, 2009.

We look forward to continuing to work with you in a constructive manner to keep the government operating and provide the nation’s small businesses with economic certainty that the job-killing tax hike will be prevented.

###
SENATE REPUBLICAN COMMUNICATIONS CENTER

This is going to be a bit of a risky move for the Republicans. The left has already leaped onto this claiming that the Republicans are obstructionists. However, I believe that this will ultimately be seen as a bold, but needed move by most of Americans.

The tax cuts and the budget are far more urgent than repealing DADT, START, DREAM Act, or anything else that the Democrats can up with in between now and the end of the year.

Business, especially small businesses, are waiting to hear from Washington. Until they do, they will know how much their taxes will be next month, and they will be holding off on doing any major hiring until they know exactly how much taxes will should be taken out of their hiring budget.

Businesses aren't the only ones that will have their taxes go up in January, if nothing is done. The taxes of ALL Americans will go up in less than a month. Since we're already two months into the fiscal year, the budget is already way past due, too.

Considering that for a bill to pass it must go through the House, Senate, and Congressional Reconciliation before it even gets to the White House, there is only a limited amount of items that can actually be achieved in just three weeks. They won't be able to address them all, no matter how much they say otherwise.

The only reason why they are pushing for the more liberal bills to be passed ahead of the tax or budget bills is because it'll be much harder for them to pass it in a month, when the Republicans gain the House and a few seats in the Senate. If the election results were reversed, and the Democrats would have huge gains, it would be a completely different story. The Democrats would be waiting until January for all of those non-essential bills. They are playing politics and pandering to their base at the expense of our economy and all of our livelihoods.

Gibbs Does Alot of Assuming About Obamacare

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, made some very interesting assumptions about Obamacare:

“We're one vote away from getting health care reform,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. “We think it's good policy…The President has said we should be realistic about what our assumptions are, but also assume -- if we're going to propose something, I don't think it makes much sense to not assume that it should be in the budget.”

The first problem with that is the legislation has stalled especially in the Senate. Harry Reid says that there's "no rush" to pass the bill. Why is there no rush? Well, it's probably because Democrats that are up for re-election this year, like Blanche Lincoln (AR), Russ Feingold (WI),and Reid himself, are getting walloped by their constituents at home, especially in traditionally red states. Even those not up for re-election this year, Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson, are feeling the heat for their votes. Not to mention that people have lost faith in the bill.

Let's get to what he was main aspect of the budget that he was referring to in that statement:

President Obama’s budget projects $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade – some of which comes from health care reform legislation.

“We took a very simple approach,” said Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag. “Since both the House and Senate had passed legislation, we took the average of the two” using numbers from the Congressional Budget Office.

That means the administration is counting on $150 billion in deficit reduction from a health care reform bill that is -- for now -- stalled in Congress with no clear path forward.

Basically, Obama is taking credit for an alleged reduction in the deficit that most likely won't happen. This type of misinformation is what has become all too typical from this Administration. In reality, he is a spendthrift not a deficit hawk. He trying perform a magic trick that David Copperfield wouldn't dare to try: making the American people believe that he's worried about the deficit.