Free Republic

What would the Army do against a caravan of civilians, many of them women and children, anyway? Shoot them? The Republicans see this caravan as the perfect issue to rally the base and insure a big, robust turnout for the mid-term elections now two weeks away. Democrats would like to pretend that the caravan is just a giant day-care center filled with needy children that the heartless president doesn’t care about. This crisis calls for reason, patience, compassion and an immediate parlay among the affected nations in Central America, Mexico and the United States. In exchange for leniency and a...

Conservative lawmakers are exploring the possibility of a short-term increase in the debt ceiling, perhaps trying to seize the opening after President Obama said a day earlier he would consider the option. Members of the Republican Study Committee, the most conservative bloc in the House, told Fox News they're looking at that possibility. Their inclination is to consider a short-term increase only if there is an agreement on a broader spending framework.

Republicans are winning the shutdown fight, and Democrats know it. People turning on the news this week came away with the knowledge that it was about Obamacare and kept hearing that Democrats wouldn’t negotiate. They also learned that for some reason the President didn’t want Word War II veterans to tour their own memorial, and Harry Reid won’t turn the funding on for cancer clinical trials at the NIH. Oh, and the rollout for Obamacare is one big glitch. Late yesterday came word that the Amber Alert system has been shut down, but Barack Obama’s federally funded golf course remains...

Many pragmatic House Republicans have come to a simple conclusion: Navigating their way out of this fiscal mess won’t be easy. They think their best chance to fund the government, raise the debt ceiling and extract any concession from President Barack Obama is to strike a big budget deal. Yes, the grand bargain is back. It’s about the only common thread these days that runs from House Republican leadership down through the rank and file. Most House Republicans privately concede they’re fighting a battle they’re unlikely to win, and to avoid a prolonged shutdown and a disastrous debt default,...

President Obama has proposed a "grand bargain" with Republicans: They get a tax cut for corporations, he gets more money to spend on worthless government stimulus. That's no bargain — that's surrender. In the latest attempt by Democrats to disguise GOP capitulation as centrist "compromise," Obama said he'll sign off on a cut in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 28% — with an even lower rate of 25% for manufacturers — if Republicans will agree to spend more on Obama's "investments" and OK a tax hike on U.S. companies doing business overseas. Republicans, beaten up daily by the...

Riding on the curtails of news that Amazon would be hiring 7,000 more workers despite a slow economy, Obama again criticized Republicans for opposing plans to increase government spending, even as a budget crisis looms. Currently, the Treasury department is using emergency measures to avoid going over the $16,699,396,000,000 debt limit approved by congress. The situation is so desperate, that the debt level has been sitting $25 million below that level for a full 70 days. Meanwhile, President Barack Hussein Obama criticized Republicans during his speech in Chattanooga, Tennessee, because they have cautioned against increasing Federal spending...

House Speaker John Boehner has already thrown a wrench into President Barack Obama's latest "grand bargain" offer — just a few hours after details of it began trickling out, and just five hours before Obama is set to deliver a speech detailing the plan in Tennessee. The gist of Obama's grand bargain is a plan to cut the corporate tax rate, while using billions of dollars in revenue generated in business tax overhaul to fund a job-creation program. In a statement, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel shot down the idea, marveling that it left small businesses "and American families behind." "The...

President Obama and congressional leaders negotiated into the evening on Sunday over an elusive deal to lift the nation’s debt limit, increasing the prospect of economic jitters as markets opened in Asia and across the globe without an agreement. -snip- n the conference call, Boehner asked for support. He said compromises were necessary, but he promised to use the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” amendment as a basis for any compromise, according to a source familiar with the call. Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., seen as playing a key role in reining in Boehner from earlier overtures toward a “grand bargain”...

Now, I am no anti-tax purist. When the economy finally stabilizes and Washington eventually gets around to tackling the federal debt, I expect to see a plan that cuts spending and raises revenue. But with a nationwide unemployment rate of 9.2 percent and the economy hobbled by public skepticism that Washington actually can reduce spending, this is no time to raise taxes -- even if, as President Obama likes to point out, the increases do not take place until 2013. While pundits scold Republicans for not supporting the "grand bargain," it is not clear the package could pass even if...

[Lamm] told us in mid-June 2005: Yes, it is a speech I gave a year and a half ago in Washington D.C. It was a 5 minute speech, and I am amazed and gratified it has received so much coverage. He also passed along to us the following "revised version" of his speech: I HAVE A PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA RICHARD D. LAMM I HAVE A SECRET PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA. IF YOU BELIEVE, AS MANY DO, THAT AMERICA IS TOO SMUG, TOO WHITE BREAD, TOO SELF-SATISFIED, TOO RICH, LETS DESTROY AMERICA. IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO DO. HISTORY...

Posted on Tue, May. 08, 2007 Martinez, activists spar over immigration BY CASEY WOODS Sen. Mel Martinez, stung by a national immigrant advocacy group campaign urging him to be more aggressive on immigration law reform, defended his work on the issue Tuesday.''It's disappointing there are groups out there ready to drive wedges and politicize this critically important issue,'' Martinez wrote The Miami Herald in an e-mail. ``I've been working since day one on this matter, and for clearly partisan groups to design a national campaign and put out advertisements signals to me that they're more interested in creating a...

Immigration deal is near, says Specter By Elana Schor May 09, 2007 The Senate’s bipartisan immigration talks yesterday yielded the first stirrings of a “grand bargain,” but the fate of the compromise remained uncertain amid political pressure from interest groups and a potential filibuster. Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican and leader of recent negotiations on immigration reform, took the floor to announce the progress and ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for more time before the next week’s floor deadline. “We have come to an agreement on what we have called a ‘grand bargain,’...

'Grand bargain' reached on immigration: US senator 12 minutes ago Talks between US lawmakers and President George W. Bush's administration have produced the outlines of a "grand bargain" on proposed immigration reform, a Republican senator said on Tuesday. "We have come to an agreement on what we have called a, quote, 'grand bargain,' unquote, which is the outline of an immigration bill," said Senator Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), number two on the Senate Judiciary Committee. But the lawmaker said the final text of the compromise still had to be worked out and called on the leader of the...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - With 6.6 million Californians uninsured and costs soaring, state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi called Wednesday for a series of reforms to save the health care system from what he called a "death spiral." Garamendi released a 73-page report entitled "Priced Out: Health Care in California" that, among other things, showed the average health insurance premium in the state increased 61 percent between 2000 and 2004. He said Californians are paying more for health insurance but getting less as employers offer fewer benefits or pass on a greater share of costs to workers. The increasing cost "is...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Vicente Fox called recent U.S. measures to stem illegal immigration a step back for bilateral relations on Friday and said Mexican migrants do jobs "that not even blacks want to do." In comments likely to raise the temperature of the immigration debate, Fox defended the role of undocumented Mexican workers in the United States to a group of Texas business people meeting in Mexico. "There is no doubt that Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States," he...

Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceGlobal Policy Program International Migration Policy Program /event On February 15, 2001, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace International Migration Policy Program hosted a breakfast briefing featuring three members of the U.S.-Mexico Migration Panel, which released a report on February 14 to U.S. President George W. Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox including proposals to change and improve the relationship of the U.S. and Mexico regarding migration. Speakers included Demetri Papademetriou, Co-Director of the International Migration Policy Program and the U.S. Convenor of the panel; Frank Sharry, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum; and B....

Ever since our independence, the general view in Ottawa has been that we do not need a foreign policy for dealing with the United States. The core belief in official circles has always been that we should deal with disputes with the United States on an ad hoc basis, each issue being addressed on its own. In Pierre Trudeau's time, a massive review of foreign policy, remarkably, did not address Canada's relationship with the United States. A few years later, his government proclaimed the Third Option -- an ill-fated attempt to diversify our trade relations with other countries so as...