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FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 659 (Republicans in roman; Democrats in italic; Independents underlined) H R 8 RECORDED VOTE 1-Jan-2013 10:57 PM QUESTION: On Motion to Concur in the Senate Amendments BILL TITLE: To extend certain tax relief provisions enacted in 2001 and 2003, and to provide for expedited consideration of a bill providing for comprehensive tax reform, and for other purposes

The fiscal cliff isn't as scary as the looming deficit and debt crisis about to swamp the country All eyes have been on the clear and present danger of the fiscal cliff—understandably—but there's a sound in the mountain range that's even scarier than the cliff. It's the sound made by an avalanche, the trillions of dollars of debt that's heading our way, gathering speed and mass. For most people, it's out of earshot now, and that's the way our government prefers to play it in its financial statements. Liabilities are not set out there in accordance with the well-established norms...

Everywhere from FoxNews.com to CNBC.com, I suddenly see commentators warning of pending doom, economic collapse, and a new Great Depression. Welcome to my club. Perhaps America's politicians and economists should have paid attention to an entrepreneur and small businessman that has been warning of economic collapse and a new Great Depression publicly for over two years. More importantly, none of the current commentaries mention the "why's" of this slow motion economic collapse...beyond the obvious -- mountains of deficit and debt. None of them mention the dysfunctional structure of the current U.S. economy and the massive changes in the work ethic...

“Fiscal Cliff” in plain English Lesson # 1: * U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000 * Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000 * New debt: $1,650,000,000,000 * National debt: $14,271,000,000,000 * Recent budget cuts: $38,500,000,000 Now, let's remove 8 zeros and pretend it's a household budget: * Annual family income: $21,700.00 * Money the family spent: $38,200.00 * New debt on the credit card: $16,500.00 * Balance on the credit card: $142,710.00 * Total budget cuts so far: $38.50 Got It ? ..... OK now,,,,,,,,,,,, ------------------------------------------------------------------ Lesson # 2: Here's another way to look at the "Debt Ceiling": Let's say, you come home from work...

Congress has done such a beautiful job handling the fiscal cliff and debt ceiling that president Obama felt it mandatory to issue an Executive Order Giving Biden, Congress Pay RaisesPresident Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President Joe Biden. According to disclosure forms, Biden made a cool $225,521 last year. After the pay increase, he'll now make $231,900 per year. Members of Congress, from the House and Senate, also will receive a little...

Video at this LINK

WASHINGTON – Getting Republicans to agree to a tax increase on “the rich” is not the ultimate aim of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress, says noted tax activist Grover Norquist. “This is just the first act of a two- or three-act play,” Norquist said in an exclusive interview with WND. Norquist, president and founder of Americans for Tax Reform, said the first act “is to get congressional Republicans to put their fingerprints on what amounts to a minor tax increase.” “After raising taxes on the rich a little bit, the Democrats will come back for serious tax revenue,”...

On November 19, Pravda’s Xavier Lerma wrote an article asserting that President (I use the term loosely) Barack Obama had been re-elected “by an illiterate society.” Some conservatives have been wont to dismiss and ridicule some of the dead-on assessments of the former Soviet newspaper since it was once in fact a Soviet newspaper. Some of this dismissal and ridicule did occur relative to Lerma’s piece; I think however, that such observations made by those who have been there and done that ought to be considered, if not heeded. Lerma writes “He [Obama] is a Communist without question promoting the...

The best thing the Republicans could do right now is to give Obama everything that he wants. Those of us who think, rather than feel, understand that Obama’s course will end up with the United States going bankrupt, because there isn’t enough money on the planet, much less the US, to pay for all the goodies the Democrats want to bestow on their favored constituents. Just to give you an example of how hopeless the situation is, the combined net worth of the Forbes list of America’s 400 wealthiest people is just over $1.7 trillion. So if you confiscate 100%...

Do you want to understand the magnitude and imminence of America’s financial calamity? I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about it over the years, but an accountant, Hal Mason, has prepared a five-and-a-half-minute YouTube video that does a pretty good job of bringing it all home simply and starkly. I advise every American to take a few minutes to view it if you want to understand why Washington is plunging off the fiscal cliff, even while the Democratic and Republican establishment talk about averting it. All one really needs to do is view the 2013 budget from a high...

In the duh department we have this: * * * * * * * * * * * The actual liabilities of the federal government—including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees' future retirement benefits—already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less than one-fifth of the more accurate figure. * * * * * * * * * * * Did you get that?...

With Barack Obama re-elected to the White House for four more years, half the country is wondering what we can do to limit the damage. I actually have an answer. In January 2011, after Republicans took over the House, I launched a campaign that now appears to be our only hope of killing off Obamacare, making Obama’s lame-duck second term a nightmare (for him, that is) and actually moving Washington toward a return to limited, constitutional government. And all it takes to do it is the cooperation of the House Republican majority. After Republicans took control of the House in...

Alan Greenspan Just Called Out Republicans For Exploding Entitlement Spending Linette LopezNovember 7, 2012, 10:48 AM Alan Greenspan is on Bloomberg talking to Betty Liu about the economy and the fiscal cliff in Obama's second term. The former Fed Chairman is just as worried about the issue as everyone else on the Street, and he doesn't really think the election changes much (from Bloomberg): I think it's a very dangerous situation largely because presumption we can resolve this issue without physical pain, spiritual pain or any sort of economic pain whatsoever.... no matter how we resolve it there are negative...

WASHINGTON - The latest sign President Obama fears he's headed for defeat came this week when he said he'd seek a "grand bargain" with Republicans to reduce a $16 trillion debt. Over the course of his campaign, Obama has ignored the monstrous debt he's piled up over the past four years in an orgy of unprecedented annual spending increases and budget deficits. Now, with little more than a week left before Election Day, and the presidential race in a dead heat, he suddenly wants a compromise with Republican leaders in Congress to curb spending and borrowing. Well, he's four years...

In less than two weeks, Americans will either elect a new President, or give Barack Obama four more years to continue carrying out his "transformation" of America. Given their utter failure to get our economy moving again, it's not surprising the Left is trying so hard to keep the public's attention off their performance and on extraneous matters like the supposed "war on women" or the "war on Big Bird." And of course, their populist class warfare language has become their Alamo -- the last line of defense. Our focus must relentlessly remain on the economy and how the big...

Detail & The Donkey: Obama skates on specifics by Daniel Clark Since Mitt Romney announced his tax plan, the media have demanded that he provide more detail. In particular, they want to know exactly which deductions he wants to eliminate while cutting the rates. That’s a perfectly reasonable question, but why is only Romney expected to provide specifics, while President Obama continues to speak in puffy generalities? Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, famously said that Congress needed to pass Obamacare in order to find out what was in it. Even if the legislators had given themselves time to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for a fourth straight year, but a modest improvement in economic growth helped narrow the gap by $207 billion compared with last year. The Treasury Department said Friday the deficit for the 2012 budget year totaled $1.1 trillion. Tax revenue rose 6.4 percent from last year to more than $2.4 trillion, helping contain the deficit. The government's revenue rose as more people got jobs and received income. Corporations also contributed more tax revenue than in 2011. Government spending fell 1.7 percent to $3.5 trillion. The decline reflected, in part,...

Exclusive: John Rocker says sunset of America is upon us based on electoral results Snip: From the implementation of the first broad-ranging social entitlement programs, which were introduced through Johnson’s Great Society back in the ’60s, little by little the American populace has become more and more comfortable suckling at the government teat over the passing decades. No one can argue that the concept of expansive socialism and far-reaching entitlement were ever a component of the founding doctrine of these United States. Yet as with many things which at first are taboo, slowly they become tolerated, then accepted, then expected....

Exclusive: Joseph Farah compares billions given away to what's spent on border security It may be an apocryphal quote attributed to the late Sen. Everett Dirksen: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” There’s really no credible citation one can find that suggests he actually ever said those famous words – though I swear I can still hear him saying them when I was a child. Those words were reverberating in my mind again this week as it was revealed that Barack Obama has increased spending on foreign aid by 80 percent through last...

Since 2009, and since Senate Democrats last passed a budget, the Congressional Budget Office has calculated $1 trillion deficits each year with 2012 being no exception. But now, a new USA Today study shows that last year's budget deficit wasn't $1 trillion....it was actually $5 trillion. The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books. It is well known by now that even if...