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Elizabeth Letchworth and I spoke earlier today about the brouhaha going on over at Tea Party Nation’s website about yesterday’s action by House leaders in quashing the Steve King Amendment. (See my earlier post about this.) As a result, Elizabeth addressed the situation at her site GradeGov.com, explaining the strategy behind the decision. With her permission, I’m reprinting it here.
… SO HEALTH CARE REPEAL MAY WAIT
The House began doing the tough work this week of slugging through some 700 +/- amendments that could be in order to the Omnibus spending bill. This is the bill that funds all of the federal government thru the remainder of this fiscal year (Sept. 30, 2011). This bill is needed because the Pelosi/Reid lead Congress of last year failed to pass a single appropriations bill. There are 12 of these bills that when all enacted, fully fund all of the agencies and departments of our government. The levels of spending are set by the annual Budget resolution. However, the Pelosi/Reid lead Congress of last year also failed to pass a budget. So, the feat of constructing this funding bill, making hard cuts in the spending, and knowing what funding levels are real has been a tall order for this newly elected GOP leadership. On top of that, the President added to this multifaceted process by submitting his budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
The POTUS’ budget was so weak that many compare his 5 year freeze at the current spending level to that of leaving an out-of-control spending teenage in charge of the family credit card. The parents also allow the teenager to keep charging on the credit cards and the only restriction is that the credit limit can’t be increased for 5 years. Very few parents would call that kind of discipline good parenting.
As the House debates these amdts, some wanted to conduct a vote on zero funding all agencies that implement the Obama Health Care bill. The leadership carefully considered this option and decided that making the battle lines on the spending of our government be between the GOP real program cuts vs. the Obama “pretend” cuts via freezing would be the best message to send to our creditors. The votes that will occur during today and tomorrow in the House will allow these stark differences to be very apparent without changing the story-line to Health Care repeal. The GOP leadership in both the House and the Senate are 110% committed to dismantling Obama care. In addition, attaching a repeal of HC to this spending bill at this time would cause the spending bill to fail in the Senate. Failing to fund our government at this point in time could do more harm to our global economic reputation than letting Obama care live in the agency regulatory system a few more months.
Finally, the POTUS and House and Senate leaders are meeting today at the WH for the first time ever to begin discussing ways to cut the spending done by the federal entitlement programs. This is by far the biggest part of our government spending. So getting some agreement to collectively cut some of these programs is also a huge step to getting our country’s spending under control.
Under this scenario, the phrase “timing is everything” takes on a whole new meaning and may just lead to stabilizing spending by our great nation. Keep the faith and as always, stay tuned!
Elizabeth will be with us Thursday night on The Andrea Shea King Show with more insider info from Capitol Hill.
Her point about “real vs. pretend” spending cuts is valid. Sadly, so is her point about “sending a message to our creditors”. I doubt that our Founders ever thought about our Congress needing to plan their legislative debates months in advance, in order to send the right signals to our enemies — to whom we owe money. Gag!
All of that said, the REAL SOLUTION to reining in the out-of-control government and its out-of-control budget remains the full implementation of the Germaneness Rule. No more hiding midnight basketball inside a bill to buy fighter jets. That is the fastest and most effective way to “take the credit card away from the teenager”.
But, how do we pay the bill?
There are many facets to the answer, but the foundational REAL SOLUTION is the implementation of the Fair Tax system. It would fix several problems simultaneously. Most importantly, it would tax criminals at the same rate, and in the same manner, as the rest of society. That change alone would generate so much revenue that we could begin to pay off our creditors — thus getting them out of our internal affairs.
ONLY ONE presidential candidate supported BOTH of the above solutions. He was the one that Republican insiders have deemed “unelectable”. He was the ONLY ONE with inside experience in the Reagan administration. He was the one that Republican insiders literally blocked from the primary debates. He was the ONLY ONE that true conservatives should have supported: Alan Keyes.
So… do conservatives REALLY want to fix the country, or do they want to keep voting for the Big Two parties?