Free Republic

The terms: Government re-opens and is funded until mid-December, debt ceiling is raised for another six to nine months, and Democrats maybe agree to repeal ObamaCare’s medical-device tax and reinstate anti-fraud measures for O-Care applicants — depending upon what Republicans give them in return.Peace in our time? The proposal would set up a framework for larger budget negotiations with the House over the automatic sequestration spending cuts and and other major deficit issues, the sources said…McConnell is still reviewing the offer and is privately huddling with groups of GOP senators Monday who could be key to providing enough votes in...

Senate leaders attempting to avoid a U.S. debt default remained at loggerheads Sunday and escalated the standoff by reopening the contentious issue of automatic spending cuts... Many Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), oppose retreating from those cuts. That set up a clash that seemed almost as intense as the one that caused budget talks between House Republicans and President Barack Obama to collapse Friday. Senate Democrats have been strengthened by the sidelining, at least for now, of House conservatives, who dropped nearly all their major policy demands only to see Mr. Obama reject their proposal for...

Rolling back the automatic budget cuts known as the "sequester" has emerged as a critical sticking point in the negotiations to reopen the government and avoid default. Democrats don't want to lock in 2014 government funding at the reduced level required by the sequester, but Republicans refuse to increase spending and say Democrats are overplaying their hand. “The dispute has been how to undo the sequester,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on "Face the Nation" on CBS on Sunday, explaining that Democrats want a mix of entitlement reforms and revenue increases. But Republican lawmakers on the Sunday talk shows vowed...

Journalism icon Bob Woodward wrote in a new Washington Post op-ed first that the sequester was the "brain child" of the White House...

Maybe the rest of the world, the part that keeps loaning us money will see Republicans standing firm as a good thing! I sure do!Senator Obama had no trouble voting against raising the debt limit! He called the rising deficit a failure in presidential leadership! What's happened since he became president? Our national debt is more than two times what it was when he took office! Is that a failure in leadership? The Democrats are like spoiled kids. If they don't get their way they throw tantrums, yell and scream, threaten, and call you names! Sounds like a first grader!...

Quick: how much were Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps cut by the sequester? Zero, you say? Those programs were exempted from sequester cuts, and Medicare was reduced by only 2%? Correctomundo! So what was Andrea Mitchell thinking when she claimed on her MSNBC show that the sequester "gutted" social programs? You tell me. View the video here.

Whenever Republicans attempt to scale back government spending, Obama goes on a retaliatory rampage like a child with a temper tantrum. Even though Obama invented the 'sequester', he blamed it on Republicans then closed public tours of the White House. He did this to punish the American citizen thinking they'd blame Republicans for it. Among other things, Obama cancelled Fleet Week and other military parades following the sequester. This was punishment, depriving citizens of expressing their pride for their country. This is foreign, UNamerican politics. The sequester did not stop the First Lady from going on a $100 million vacation...

Welcome to Thunder Dome. Well, at least sequestration was supposed to bring about a post-apocalyptic world until President Obama realized Republicans weren’t going to capitulate to his will (again) and raise taxes (again) to replace the sequester he birthed in 2011. There was a distinct change in tone from the White House this week on what sequestration would mean. In little more than a week we went from roving bands of teacherless children wandering darkened streets filled with uninspected rancid meat, illegal aliens and pre-convicted felons released because of lack of funds setting fires there aren’t enough firefighters to extinguish...

One of the biggest mistakes President Obama is making in the current debate over the threat of a government shutdown and the failure to raise the debt ceiling is his repeated and stubborn refusal to negotiate. In speech after speech, Obama crusades against negotiation. Has anyone ever seen anything like this? He's the president. Supposedly, he's the chief executive. But Obama doesn't want to dirty his hands by talking to Republican congressional leaders. Now, this is an odd paradigm given the fact that the president and his lieutenants are willing to negotiate with Russia's Vladimir Putin, Syria's Bashar al-Assad, and...

U.S. military personnel will face a disruption in pay if Congress doesn’t quickly pass a budget and raise the debt ceiling, President Barack Obama warned in his weekly address Saturday. “The government will shut down. So will many services the American people will expect,” Obama said, speaking of the consequences he says the country will suffer if Congress can’t come to an agreement on a continuing resolution bill. “Military personnel, including those deployed overseas, won’t get their paychecks on time.” On Friday, the House stripped funding for the president’s landmark healthcare law from a continuing resolution bill to fund the...

President Barack Obama will appeal to business leaders on Wednesday to urge Congress to approve an increase in the U.S. debt limit and avoid a default that is possible as early as mid-October. Obama is to address the Business Roundtable as part of a renewed push to focus on domestic budget and economic issues after a month dominated by foreign policy. The U.S. Treasury is expected to exhaust measures to avoid exceeding the $16.7 trillion debt limit as soon as mid-October. If the cap is not raised, the United States will not be able to pay all of its bills...

[UPDATED BELOW] Three times on Tuesday morning, CNN mentioned sequester cuts as a possible culprit behind the security breach at the Navy Yard that led to Monday's shooting there. A CNN headline actually read "Did Government Cuts Put Lives at Risk?" This came AFTER a former Navy commander warned on CNN that blaming the sequester was "very premature." And just before noon, correspondent Dana Bash reported that "what I've been told is the answer is absolutely not" as to the sequester having a role in the security breach.

President Obama gave a speech touting how far the US has come since the jarring Lehman Brothers collapse five years ago. “The U.S. has come a long way since September 2008,” according to President Obama. Well, not in terms of household income since REAL median household income continues to decline. household-income-monthly-median-growth-since-2000 (1) And the less than 1% of the population continues to suffer. [Note how the top 1% fared under President Clinton!] inomr Mortgage purchase applications have tanked along with the employment-to-population ratio. empopombapurch And the labor force participation rate continues to fall along with M2 Money Velocity. lfpm2v We...

President and Mrs. Obama Monday night will host their third “command performance” since the sequester began in March, grooving in the East Room to the sounds of Hispanic music. Obamas danceAmong the stars who will appear to serenade the first couple are Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin, Raul Malo, Prince Royce, Natalie Cole, Lila Downs, Arturo Sandoval, Romeo Santos, Alejandro Sanz and Marco Antonio Solis. While workers are being furloughed throughout the government, services are cut, and White House tours remain on ice, private concerts for the Obamas somehow remain beyond the budget axe. The Obamas hosted a “celebration” of Memphis...

The last year has been highly informative for Americans who have been looking for information on hypocrisy, shabby intellectualism, broken promises, opportunism, populist dreck, and IPhones. Since almost the moment Obama celebrated his re-election with Republican leader John Boehner by proposing to raise taxes on all of us, God has played an enormous practical joke on liberals. In only ways He could, God has shown that liberals are wrong. Not just wrong, but really, really, seriously wrong.  Demented even. And yeah, I’m talking about Ezra Klein. No, the world really doesn’t work the way liberals want, they’ve found out, and...

With officials from the Judicial Branch demanding that Congress end across the board budget cuts from the sequester, federal judges from the Tenth Circuit start to gather today for a judicial conference at a "five star" Colorado resort that features three golf courses and a "scenic mountain backdrop." The Tenth Circuit gathering at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs was postponed from a year ago because of budget concerns, but court officials argue canceling the gathering entirely would have actually cost taxpayers money. ... "The primary cost of judicial conferences is judges' travel and lodging, and in 2010, that totaled approximately...

At the start of the Labor Day weekend, President Obama proposed Friday to raise the pay of civilian federal employees by 1 percent, which would end a three-year freeze on their wages. The president also proposed to raise the monthly basic pay for military service members by 1 percent. In a letter to congressional leaders, Mr. Obama said civilian federal employees “have already made significant sacrifices” due to the pay freeze. He said he is balancing that consideration with the reality that “we must maintain efforts to keep our nation on a sustainable fiscal course.”

The Treasury Department’s latest official daily accounting of the U.S. government’s receipts, expenditures and borrowings—released this afternoon at 4:00 p.m.—indicates that the legally limited debt of the federal government has now been exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for 100 straight days. The Daily Treasury Statement released today showed the status of the government’s accounts as of the close of business on Friday, Aug. 23. Because the Treasury does no business over the weekend, the federal government’s debt did not change on Saturday or Sunday. The statement for Aug. 23 said the federal debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress was $16,699,396,000,000—or...

“Why would the president do this for the cameras? It’s one thing to take a vacation but is this pose shoving it down the throats of the American people?” she asked. “Many are out of work. They can’t afford to spend the day working on their golf game in one of the most expensive places to vacation. Is this what leadership looks like?”

The biggest underreported story out of Washington this year is that the federal budget is shrinking and much more than anyone in either party expected. Consider the numbers: According to the Congressional Budget Office, annual outlays peaked at $3.598 trillion in fiscal 2011. After President Obama's first two years in office, many in Washington expected that number to hit $4 trillion by 2014. Instead, spending fell to $3.537 trillion in fiscal 2012, and is on pace to fall below $3.45 trillion by the end of this fiscal year (Sept. 30). The $150 billion budget decline of 4% is the first...