Posted on 07/26/2011 5:00:49 PM PDT by RummyChick
Fellow Conservatives:
I have troubling news. I’m very careful about criticizing my party’s leaders, but what is happening in Washington right now cannot be ignored. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has abandoned the Cut-Cap-Balance Act and is now pushing a new plan that is nearly identical to the one proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
The Boehner-Reid plan gives the President an immediate increase in the debt limit and only promises to cut spending in the future. It violates all three principles of the Cut-Cap-Balance Pledge because it does not substantially cut current spending, it does not truly cap future spending, and it does not require the passage of a strong Balanced Budget Amendment before raising the debt limit.
In short, I oppose the Boehner-Reid plan because it won’t balance the budget and stop the debt that is destroying our country.
The Boehner-Reid Plan
You will hear many claims about this plan over the next few days as it is pushed through the House and Senate. Some of these claims will be true, but many will be false. Here are the facts. The Boehner-Reid plan:
* Provides two increases in the debt limit — $900 billion and $1.6 trillion — totaling $2.5 trillion. It gives the President an immediate $900 billion increase given that Congress does not vote to disapprove it. It gives the President another $1.6 trillion increase next year if a bill written by a new Super Committee passes both houses and becomes law.
* Reduces spending by only $1.2 trillion over the next ten years. This amount won’t even come close to balancing the budget, as the debt is expected to grow by as much as $10 trillion over the next decade. The plan also reduces spending by only $6 billion in 2012. Considering that our government currently spends $10 billion a day, $6 billion is far too little to cut over the first year of the plan.
* Calls for a vote on the Balanced Budget Amendment but does not require its passage. Without passage of a strong Balanced Budget Amendment, Congress will never break its addiction to spending.
* Makes it virtually impossible to stop the debt limit from going up. The debt ceiling increases can only be stopped if Congress passes a resolution of disapproval and then votes to override the President’s veto with two-thirds support in the House and Senate.
* Creates a new, 12-member Super Committee to write another “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit by at least $1.6 trillion. It does not, however, prohibit the Super Committee from writing a bill to raise taxes and destroy jobs. The bill can then be fast-tracked through the House and Senate with no amendments.
Why It Should Be Rejected
After reviewing the details of Boehner-Reid plan, I cannot support it. It won’t balance the budget and stop the debt. Even if the cuts called for in the plan were real, the debt will still increase by $7 trillion over the next ten years.
* It won’t protect our AAA bond rating. According to financial reports, this plan will not reduce long-term spending by enough to prevent a downgrade. If we lose our AAA rating, it will create higher interest rates and cause our debt to grow even faster.
* It will likely result in higher taxes that will destroy even more jobs. The unemployment rate is over 9 percent. We cannot afford to lose more jobs when so many Americans are struggling to find work.
There are some in my party who think I should ignore the flaws of the Boehner-Reid plan, bite my tongue, and support my party’s leaders. If I thought this were a political game, that might make sense. But the future of our country is at stake, I don’t believe this plan will save it, and I have a moral obligation to say so.
The Way Forward
Fortunately, there is a much better solution.
The Cut-Cap-Balance Act would balance the budget, stop the debt, and protect our AAA bond rating. This legislation passed the House with bipartisan support but was blocked by Democrats in the Senate.
The votes in the Senate for Cut-Cap-Balance are there if Republicans stand firm. 23 Democrats in the Senate have expressed support for the Balanced Budget Amendment at some point in their careers. They’re blocking it now because they believe Republicans will blink and agree to something much less.
And that’s exactly what will happen if the Boehner-Reid plan is passed. It gives the big spenders in Washington everything they wanted — an increase in the debt limit, phony spending cuts, and a mechanism to pass tax increases.
Please call your senators today and urge them to oppose the Boehner-Reid plan and to demand passage of the Cut, Cap, Balance Act.
May I be the first to offer my sincerest condolences.
Oh, and don't forget to decontaminate before you leave DC. LOL
In 2012 we can call him Majority leader De Mint
LOL! I had better get that bedbug spray before I go!
I wonder if it works on congresscritters and childish POTUS’s.
Yeah. Were that it was that easy.
So that little dog-and-pony show Boehner and Obama put on last night was all for OUR little benefit?
DC is a freakin’ cesspool. I am so tired of these RinoCrat clowns peeing all over Americans and telling them its raining out!!
bttt
We need CCB since it cuts enough to avoid a credit downgrade.
I have been pretty happy with Boehner and then he pulls this.
I would have been okay with a smaller plan in the short-term as long as it was tied to a longer-term plan that cuts the NEEDED 4 trillion dollars.
But, this plan doesn’t do that and is TOO small and pathetic. Disappointing, Mr. Boehner.
I know...i heard her this morning and i’m thinking...WTF!
I really do like Laura, but she has moments were she really sounds like she has “establishment” tendencies. Maybe living too close to DC...maybe spending too much tome around Ted Baxter.
She’s completely wrong on this.
I worked for a major education Corp. About once a year when the higher ups thought earnings weren’t gonna be where they wanted them to be they would tell us...not one dime, you can’t spend a penny. No advertising, etc. We couldn’t even order office supplies lol. We were calling branches all over the state and country if we had to to get something as simple as printer paper and envelopes.
But our rich govt can’t really cut one thin dime. Disgusting.
Breaking: wednesday vote on Boehner plan postponed.
The Tea Party would have essentially put them on notice.
“Seemed” and “sounded” are words that generally describe anyone without a backbone.
Boehner is a pussy who deserves a punch in the frigging mouth.
You got THAT right! bttt
Rich Galen - Wednesday July 27, 2011
http://www.mullings.com/
....Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh) had a bill ready to go to the floor for a vote that was supposed to cut $1.2 trillion. But when the Congressional Budget Office “scored” it - which means they came up with the official amount of the budget cuts involved - it fell short of the goal with only $850 million. ....
....So the Speaker had to put 100 budget monkeys in a room with computers that can handle really, really large numbers and have them be re-crunched. A vote is now tentatively scheduled for Thursday.
According to the Clerk of the House there are 240 Republicans; 193 Democrats; and 2 vacancies. That means it will take 217 votes (if everyone is in attendance) to guarantee passage of the Boehner plan.
There are also, by the NY Times’ count, 85 Republican freshmen - the vast majority of whom believe they were elected to cut spending and generally rein in government.
If none of them vote for the Boehner program that leaves only 155 votes on the GOP side of the aisle. Boehner would need 62 Democrats to vote with him and that is, to use a highly technical term, unlikely.
Say Boehner gets 20 Democrats to come along. That gets him to 175 and he would still need 42 of the 85 freshmen, about half of them, to come on board.
It is no small deal to refuse to back the Speaker of the House when he or she is of your own party. There are committee assignments you will never get. Redistricting help you will never see. Paris Air Shows you will never attend. And fundraisers which will be thinly attended if the Speaker’s people put out the word they are keeping track of who is helping whom.
The timing of all this is unfortunate as the August recess is scheduled to begin on Monday August 8. That means, because there won’t be votes on Friday the 5th, the Members will head for what they hope will be the friendly confines of their home Districts as soon as the House quits on Thursday.
As we have discussed before, the seeds of the Great Political Tsunami of 2010 were sown during the August recess of 2009 when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama sent Democrats home to sell an unformed, yet still unpopular, health care proposal.
Republican freshmen do not want to have footage of them being shouted off the stage at town hall events; of being picketed in front of their district offices; or, being chased from the American Legion Auxiliary French fry stand at the county fair.
To help them better understand what may be at stake, it was reported yesterday that representatives of Standard & Poors will be on Capitol Hill Thursday to brief freshmen members on the dangers of a drop in America’s sovereign credit rating.
It seems to me that bringing S&P in to talk about credit ratings is a little like asking Kim Jong Il to send some folks to Iowa to explain the benefits of centralized planning for agriculture.
My guess? Boehner’s folks will come up with a new plan that meets (or exceeds) the $1.2 trillion target, it will go to the floor on Thursday and to the horror of every single studio host on every single cable news network, it will pass.
Then it becomes Harry Reid’s problem in the U.S. Senate. ......”
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