GOP: Democrats' budget will ‘crush American workers’

A senior Republican launched a preemptive political strike Saturday against the budget plan that Senate Democrats will offer next week, alleging it won’t address the national debt or help workers.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, used the GOP’s weekly address to make his party’s case against the 10-year plan that Democrats hope to steer through the committee.

He said that debt is slowing the economy and depressing wages, and that balancing the budget and ending the deficit – which Sessions calls “the great challenge of our time” – can be achieved by holding annual spending growth to 3.4 percent annually.

“But I fear the Democrat proposal will fail this defining test and will never achieve balance. I fear it will crush American workers and our economy with trillions in new taxes, spending and debt,” Sessions said.

“I fear Chairman Murray will follow the President’s lead: raising taxes to enrich the bureaucracy at the expense of the people,” he said, referring to Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

The blueprint to be unveiled Wednesday is the first formal budget plan that Senate Democrats have tried to move through the chamber in several years.

Sessions's remarks are part of intense political positioning on fiscal policy by both parties at a time when Republicans are resisting White House calls for new tax revenues to be included in any deal on spending and entitlements.

The coming week will offer contrasting visions on Capitol Hill because House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who was the GOP’s vice presidential candidate, will unveil the House Republicans’ budget plan.

“Government has never been bigger or more out of control. They say there is no problem with waste, fraud, and abuse; they say the problem is you; they say you are not sending them enough money; they say they have wisely spent every penny. So, you must just send them more. And, if you don’t? Well, they won’t stop spending, they’ll just borrow more,” Sessions said.

“These destructive policies cannot continue. We are at the breaking point,” he said.

Sessions said Republican plans will create jobs and boost pay without adding to the debt.

His address touts an array of plans such as ensuring welfare offices become “employment and job training” offices; making more areas available for oil-and-gas drilling; ending “burdensome” regulations; enforcing an immigration policy that “protects legal U.S. workers from unlawful competition,” and several others.

Sessions devotes much of the speech to alleging that Democratic policies are failing the poor and that federal anti-poverty programs are ineffective, alleging that “Compassion demands that we change.”

“President Obama speaks of his deep concern for struggling Americans, yet his plans are focused on growing government – not the economy. He has no effective plan to create better jobs, more hiring or rising wages."

The comments arrive amid a larger effort by Republicans, following their failed 2012 White House campaign and loss of seats in Congress, to make the case that their policies as helpful to struggling workers.

Republicans plan to move legislation through the House next week called the “Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills (SKILLS) Act,” which would streamline and reorient nearly three-dozen federal job training programs in a way that supporters say will better connect workers to job openings.

This is how you deal with communists:

On 26 May 1973, Chile’s Supreme Court unanimously denounced the Allende régime’s disruption of the legality of the nation in its failure to uphold judicial decisions. It refused to permit police execution of judicial resolutions that contradicted the Government’s measures.
Chamber of Deputies’ resolution

On 22 August 1973, with the support of the Christian Democrats and National Party members, the Chamber of Deputies passed 81–47 a resolution that asked “the President of the Republic, Ministers of State, and members of the Armed and Police Forces”[18] to “put an immediate end” to “breach[es of] the Constitution . . . with the goal of redirecting government activity toward the path of Law and ensuring the Constitutional order of our Nation, and the essential underpinnings of democratic co-existence among Chileans.”

The resolution declared that the Allende Government sought “. . . to conquer absolute power with the obvious purpose of subjecting all citizens to the strictest political and economic control by the State . . . [with] the goal of establishing a totalitarian system”, claiming it had made “violations of the Constitution . . . a permanent system of conduct.” Essentially, most of the accusations were about the Socialist Government disregarding the separation of powers, and arrogating legislative and judicial prerogatives to the executive branch of government.

Specifically, the Socialist Government of President Allende was accused of:

ruling by decree, thwarting the normal legislative system
refusing to enforce judicial decisions against its partisans; not carrying out sentences and judicial resolutions that contravene its objectives
ignoring the decrees of the independent General Comptroller’s Office
sundry media offences; usurping control of the National Television Network and applying ... economic pressure against those media organizations that are not unconditional supporters of the government...
allowing its socialist supporters to assemble armed, preventing the same by its right wing opponents
. . . supporting more than 1,500 illegal ‘takings’ of farms...
illegal repression of the El Teniente miners’ strike
illegally limiting emigration

Finally, the resolution condemned the creation and development of government-protected [socialist] armed groups, which . . . are headed towards a confrontation with the armed forces. President Allende’s efforts to re-organize the military and the police forces were characterised as notorious attempts to use the armed and police forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks.[19]

By 7:00 am on 11 September 1973, the Navy captured Valparaíso, strategically stationing ships and marine infantry in the central coast and closed radio and television networks. The Province Prefect informed President Allende of the Navy’s actions; immediately, the president went to the presidential palace, La Moneda, with his bodyguards, the Grupo de Amigos Personales (GAP) (Group of Personal Friends). By 8:00 am, the Army had closed most radio and television stations in Santiago city; the Air Force bombed the remaining active stations; the President received incomplete information, and was convinced that only a sector of the Navy conspired against him and his government.

President Allende and Defence minister Orlando Letelier were unable to communicate with military leaders. Admiral Montero, the Navy’s commander and an Allende loyalist, was rendered incommunicado; his telephone service was cut and his cars were sabotaged before the coup d’état, to ensure he could not thwart the opposition. Leadership of the Navy was transferred to José Toribio Merino, planner of the coup d’état and executive officer to Adm. Montero. Augusto Pinochet, General of the Army, and Gustavo Leigh, General of the Air Force, did not answer Allende’s telephone calls to them. The General Director of the Carabineros (uniformed police), José María Sepúlveda, and the head of the Investigations Police (plain clothes detectives), Alfredo Joignant answered Allende’s calls and immediately went to the La Moneda presidential palace. When Defence minister Letelier arrived at the Ministry of Defense, controlled by Adm. Patricio Carvajal, he was arrested as the first prisoner of the coup d’état.

Despite evidence that all branches of the Chilean armed forces were involved in the coup, Allende hoped that some units remained loyal to the government. Allende was convinced of Pinochet’s loyalty, telling a reporter that the coup d’état leaders must have imprisoned the general. Only at 8:30 am, when the armed forces declared their control of Chile and that Allende was deposed, did the president grasp the magnitude of the military’s rebellion. Despite the lack of any military support, Allende refused to resign his office.

By 9:00 am, the armed forces controlled Chile, except for the city centre of the capital, Santiago. Allende refused to surrender, despite the military’s declaring they would bomb the La Moneda presidential palace if he resisted being deposed. The Socialist Party proposed to Allende that he escape to the San Joaquín industrial zone in southern Santiago, to later re-group and lead a counter-coup d’état; the president rejected the proposition. The military rebels attempted negotiations with Allende, but the President refused to resign, citing his constitutional duty to remain in office. Finally, Allende gave a potent farewell speech, telling the nation of the coup d’état and his refusal to resign his elected office under threat.

Annoyed with negotiating, Leigh ordered the presidential palace bombed, but was told the Air Force’s Hawker Hunter jet aircraft would take forty minutes to arrive. Pinochet ordered an armoured and infantry force under General Sergio Arellano to advance upon the La Moneda presidential palace. When the troops moved forward, they were forced to retreat after coming under fire from GAP snipers perched on rooftops. General Arellano called for helicopter gunship support from the commander of the Chilean Army Puma helicopter squadron and the troops were able to advance again.[32] Chilean Air Force aircraft soon arrived to provide close air support for the assault (by bombing the Palace), but the defenders did not surrender until nearly 2:30 pm.[33]

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