Free Republic

There are a few good men. And by “a few,” I mean five. Certainly there are far more than five good men in America. But in the U.S. Senate, there are just five moral Republicans. Who am I referring to? Let me introduce you to the five men in the Senate who stood their ground while their Republican peers (save two abstainers) voted for a fiscal cliff deal that essentially codifies theft: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). I think conservatives and libertarians should praise...

Here’s two ways to think about the “fiscal cliff” deal that just took place in Washington. You are sitting at dinner and television is on, broadcasting the news. There is one story after another about things you don’t want to hear. Recession. Unemployment. You walk over to the TV, turn it off – or switch to a sitcom or sporting event - and sit back down to finish your meal in peace. Or a more personal version. You take your mail out of the mailbox and see the bills that are due. Without opening the envelopes, you throw them into...

The nation’s problems are almost all economic ones. That’s not to say that we don’t have social problems too, or that we don’t have defense problems too. But even those can be somewhat alleviated by fixing our economic problems. Too many of us don’t go to church or synagogue every week… too many of us don’t have intact families. And our nation is beset with threats from criminals from across our border and from terrorists from across the ocean. But if we were to fix our economic problems, one byproduct of that fix would be that those other problems would...

nfluential conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer has praised Republican House Speaker John Boehner for preventing a ‘rape of the Treasury’ by blocking a larger relief bill for the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Bohener and the GOP leadership have been criticized by New York-area Republicans for failing to pass a $60 billion bill to the floor, with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie calling it ‘disgusting.’ Instead, the House passed a much smaller bill dealing solely with flood insurance on Friday, with a larger bill set to follow. Speaking on Fox News’ Special Report on Friday, Krauthammer claimed that Boehner had done the...

... With one crisis for the short term [fiscal cliff], Obama faces new battles in Congress over raising the country's $16.4 trillion borrowing limit, as well as more than $100 billion in automatic spending cuts for the military and domestic programs which were delayed by two months under the compromise. Lawmakers promise to replace those across-the-board cuts with more targeted steps that could take longer to implement. Obama, speaking from Hawaii, where he is on vacation with his family, said he is willing to consider more spending cuts and tax increases to reduce the deficit. But he said he "will...

The politics of the “fiscal cliff” deal is debatable: On the one hand, Boehner got the “Bush tax cuts” made permanent for most Americans; Obama was forced to abandon his goal of increasing rates for those earning $250,000. On the other, on taxes Republicans caved to the same class-warfare premises (the rich need to pay their “fair share”) they’d successfully fought off a mere two years ago; while on spending the Democrats not only refused to make cuts, they refused to make cuts even part of the discussion. Which of the above is correct? Who cares? As I said, the...

The fiscal cliff is over. And it turns out it was just a reality TV show that was devoid of reality. Taxes are going up on everyone. Make sure you check your paycheck, because you’re included too, not just the dirty, rotten rich. Now that Fiscal Cliff, the TV show has been cancelled, Wall Street is back to concentrating on the normal cliffs they usually worry about: the earnings cliff, the interest rate cliff, the money printing cliff (QE4EVER! <3 <3) and whatever other cliffs that worried traders can dream up for gullible journalists to write about. I always find...

The debt ceiling is the last leverage that Republicans have to prevent out-of-control Federal spending and on various policy issues. Liberals know this: even as Senate Democrats talk of ending the right of Republicans to filibuster, liberals are seeking to defang the Republican House of Representatives as well. They are also now peddling a new theme that the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional under Section 4 of the 14th Amendment. Therefore, President Obama may simply ignore the debt ceiling. The looming debt ceiling fight could allow Republicans to soundly defeat Obama's overspending. In the "fiscal cliff" deal, Republicans succeeded by...

Do you believe the 113th Congress will accomplish more than the 112th Congress? Yes No

What if the threat of a voluntary default by the United States could be erased by simply turning one tiny scrap of platinum into a coin? That's right. No debt ceiling problem. No bickering in Congress. No market jitters. The only thing needed is for the Treasury Department to mint a platinum coin with a face value of $1 trillion. ---- If Congress does not act to raise the debt ceiling, the U.S. will default on its debts. Not good. But this is where the platinum coin comes in. Normally, the Federal Reserve is charged with issuing currency. But U.S....

Republicans in Congress screwed up big time in voting for President Barack Obama’s tax hike on Americans. All in the name of letting Obama “have his way” in sticking it to the rich, the deal to avert the country’s cliff dive doesn’t do anything but stall the country’s fall for another two months. Republicans, yes, REPUBLICANS, voted for the first time since 1991 to raise taxes on Americans, a lot of taxes and postponed dealing with the $1.2 trillion sequester, cuts to government spending, until February 2013. There are no government cuts in this bill, making it nothing more than...

The late night drama cast Senator Mitch McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden as heroes. They did what Obama and Boehner failed to do, come together on an agreement to limit the bite of the fiscal cliff's tax hikes. That agreement led to bipartisan Senate action. But the appearance of the Senate coming to the rescue obscures the fact the Senate has recklessly refused to act for months, sitting on the House-passed bill to avert the tax hikes, H.R.8, for fully five months before jamming a massive amendment through when there was no time to consider any changes, or even...

The rout was complete, the retreat disorderly. President Obama got his tax hikes — naked of spending cuts — passed by the ostensibly Republican House of Representatives. After which, you might expect him to pivot to his self-proclaimed “principle” of fiscal “balance” by taking the lead on reducing spending. “Why,” asked The Post on the eve of the final fiscal-cliff agreement, “is the nation’s leader not embracing and then explaining the balanced reforms the nation needs?” Because he has no interest in them. He’s a visionary, not an accountant. Sure, he’ll pretend to care about deficits, especially while running for...

The New Year’s First Heist By Douglas French 01/03/13The high priests of the civic religion are very worried that people no longer seem to trust government. The law stands discredited. Once-hallowed institutions are under fire and losing status. People are openly loathing public officials. Movies, television, and best-selling books urge revolt. Most people don’t bother to vote. And these priests wonder why. Here’s an example of why. As the year opened, the House, Senate, and president all collaborated to enact the largest tax increase in human history — under the cover of night on the first day of the year,...

Congress Avoids The Fiscal Cliff By Selling Us Down The River Politics / US PoliticsJan 04, 2013 - 07:22 AM By: Peter Schiff With the possible exception of the New York Times' editorial board (and the cast of The Jersey Shore), everyone on the planet understood that the United States Government needs to cut spending, increase taxes, or both. Instead, after months of political posturing and hand wringing, the Federal Government has just delivered the exact opposite, a deal that increases spending and decreases taxes. The move lays bare the emptiness of budget legislation, which can be dismantled far easier...

At the Potsdam conference with Harry Truman and Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill learned that the voters of the nation he had led for five years through World War II had just voted to throw him out of office. "It may well be a blessing in disguise," said his wife Clementine. "At the moment, it seems quite effectively disguised," replied Churchill. Republicans must feel that way today. For they have survived their own Dunkirk. They may have left their helmets, canteens and rifles behind, but they did finally get off the beach. That Republicans suffered a rout, as the British did...

The president may be a big-spending liberal, but his willingness to give ground on taxes should prove that he’s not out to ruin the country. The fiscal-cliff deal settled nothing in terms of the desperate, ongoing struggle to bring Washington’s devastating deficits under control, but it should put an end, once and for all, to a bitter debate that’s damaged the conservative movement for the last four years. With the president participating in successful last-minute efforts to prevent crushing, automatic, across-the-board tax hikes that would have done disastrous damage to the U.S. economy, it’s time for Barack Obama’s angriest critics...

I hate to break it to those deniers who believe that President Obama's tax-guzzling capacity has somehow been diminished by the fiscal cliff provision to fix "permanent" tax rates. You're dreaming. Several smart columnists and respected conservative editorial pieces tell us that a major silver lining in the crisis deal just concluded is that by agreeing not to reinstitute the Clinton tax rates (and leave the Bush rates in place) for all but the "wealthy" (income of $400,000 for single filers and $450,000 for marrieds), Obama and the Democrats made a major concession. They argue that if Democrats couldn't do...

For the record, count me among the opponents of the fiscal cliff-averting measure that passed the House and Senate this week. But please do not count me among those for whom this was a do-or-die litmus test for conservative veracity. There are things members of Congress could do that would explode their reputations with me-- endorse Obamacare, back Roe v. Wade, cozy up to terrorists-- but when all is said and done, these days of intra-party angst are about differences in strategy, not goals. From my North Texas base, I watched our area’s Republican contingent vote no, with opposition extending...

By all accounts, President Obama won the fiscal cliff showdown. Why anyone would take much pride in this kind of "win" is beyond me. It's a bit like being the least filthy toddler in the mud pit. One of the main reasons Obama won, according not only to Obama but an at times cheering press, is that he had a mandate. He ran on the need for the wealthy to "pay their fair share." To his credit, Obama never said raising taxes on the "rich" will solve all of our problems. What he did say, however, is that he couldn't...