Can't hurt. The status quo ain't workin.
Posted on 01/07/2013 7:24:27 AM PST by SeekAndFind
NEWT GINGRICH: Let me ask you this. And I appreciate E.J.'s support here. But I want to make a point that probably he may not be as enthusiastic about. They have two vehicles. They have a continuing resolution, which is at the end of March, and they have the sequester bill. Now, these are legitimate government spending bills. The debt ceiling is different because it triggers all of these international financial problems and triggers the credit of the United States. They don't have to say, "We're going to be wimps." I've helped closed the government twice. It actually worked. Bill Clinton came in and said, "The era of big government's over," after two closings. Not before.
DAVID GREGORY: You also wrote in your memoir that you regretted it from the point of view, you relied too much on the enthusiasm of the activists and didn't factor in the disdain of the American people.
NEWT GINGRICH: But, no, we got reelected for the first time since 1928. And we would argue we would never have gotten to a balanced budget and we would have never have gotten welfare reform without that fight. So I think if the Congressional Republicans want to say, "You're going to have a really hard time with continuing resolution," that's perfectly legitimate. And it's a exactly the right grounds. And then take the president's speech from yesterday in which he said, "Once you have spent it, you have an obligation." And that's when I say, "Terrific. We agree."
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
RE: you were the EX speaker of the House by the end of 1998.
In 1998 Republicans lost five seats in the House—the worst midterm performance in 64 years by a party not holding the presidency. Gingrich, who won his reelection, was held largely responsible for Republican losses in the House.
Newt’s private polls had given his fellow Republican Congressmen a false impression that pushing the Lewinsky scandal would damage Clinton’s popularity and result in the party winning a net total of six to thirty seats in the US House of Representatives in this election.
The day after the election, a Republican caucus ready to rebel against him prompted his resignation of the speakership. He also announced his intended and eventual full departure from the House in January 1999.
STILL, WE HAD A BUDGET SURPLUS AND A BOOMING ECONOMY. If today, accomplishing that same feat means we sacrifice Boehner’s Speakership, I’m all for it.
RE: but in an era where the MSM convinced most of the voters who were exit polled that the crappy economy is still Bush’s fault....I can’t see this working.
So what is the alternative other than to cave and kick the can down the road and continue on our path towards Greece?
If we continue to fear the MSM, we might as well allow them to dictate the agenda for this country.
It only blew up because the liberal faction of his own party set out to destroy him. He was being too effective.
Can't hurt. The status quo ain't workin.
Monica Lewinsky totally needs a new gig.
Post #12 is correct. Newt lost his speakership because he couldn't control his zipper. Not from fallout over the government shutdown.
FWIW, I think Newt was and is an ass. If he had gotten out of the presidential primary race after winning only two states (including Georgia), then it is possible we could be looking at president-elect Rick Santorum. Not likely, given the abject stupidity of this country, but possible.
That being said, the government shutdown was the right thing to do at the time. Were it not for Timothy McVeigh and Bob Let's Make a Deal Dole, it is entirely possible that Newt's communication skills might have been heard over the enemedia at the time. We were a smarter country back then.
McVeigh, even more than Dole, was the man most responsible for getting Clinton re-elected.
. . . which made a convenient excuse to ride Newt out of the speakership when zipper control was the real reason.
For 10 points, name his short-term successor who never took the gavel when it was also revealed that he had zipper control problems of his own. Hint: He was from Louisiana.
Livingston.
RE: Livingstone
The Republican side has more sense of shame than the Democrat side of the aisle.
Livingstone and Gingrich left because of zipper control ( and I remember they also outed Henry Hyde for committing adultery over 30 years back ).
Clinton on the other hand held on, this, considering he had Monica, Jennifer, Paula, Juanita, Katherine, etc. on his resume.
The argument that we can’t hold up the debt limit because of “already incurred debt” is ludicrous. The debt limit is about NEW BORROWING. All existing borrowing was for bills we already paid. And the 14th amendment guarantees that debt — it would be the first thing we would cover with our revenue.
But furthermore, the debt limit is a better vehicle to fight for cuts than the continuing resolution, precisely because the debt limit doesn’t shut down government.
The debt limit simply stops us from borrowing more money, limiting us to spend only what we receive in revenue. So what exactly gets shut down would be all up to Obama, subject to any specific priorities that might have been snuck into specific legislation.
There is nothing that requires the president to do an across-the-board cut of equal value when he loses additional borrowing authority.
The continuing resolution can be used by the senate and the president, if they want, to force republicans to shut down government and get blamed for it. We could pass individual bills to control what gets shut down, but the senate would simply not act, the president would veto if it did pass, and would argue with the media help that we were playing games.
Plus, a government shutdown is a very disruptive thing. Conservatives sometimes like to pretend that they would love the government to disappear, but they don’t mean it, and it would be disastrous. As it is, there are some safeguards that allow the government to continue some core functions during a shutdown (this itself is not clearly constitutional or legal, but nobody seems upset by the idea that the president can continue to pay troops and operate prisons, even if congress has not passed a law which authorizes spending any money on those things; oddly, if congress specifically removes spending for something from the bill they DO pass, we EXPECT the executive to NOT spend that money, but if we pass no authorization at ALL, then it’s OK...)
BTW, the house has passed good bills for spending, but the media doesn’t even REPORT them, so nobody knows that all the spending bills are rotting away in the senate. This protects the senators from having to vote on things they don’t want to vote on, and the president from having to veto programs that are popular because the bills have too little spending on his pet projects.
But the House should get on this right now. We should pass the debt limit bill as part of a budget authorization that limits spending to what we want. The debt limit should include quarterly or yearly increases that precisely match the deficit we have placed in the budget we pass.
Then we should pass small continuing resolutions, one for each of the 13 called-out appropriations, which reflect OUR spending priorities, and include the deficit reduction we want.
We should publish these bills, and then every representative should be out speaking about this, every day, until we break through the media and the nation understands that all the spending is passed, and waiting for the democrats to either pass in the senate, or to pass their own version so we can do conferences and finish the job.
We shouldn’t say ONE WORD about a government shutdown. A shutdown is not part of any plan. Our plan should be to appropriately and sensibly fund government, and we should keep passing bills that do that. Government shutdown should happen only if the democrats refuse to pass a bill, or the president refuses to sign a bill.
Again, that’s the nice thing about the debt limit. There is absolutely no reason we HAVE to pass a new debt limit bill. The current debt limit bill authorized the existing debt, and we have sufficient revenue to pay for essential services. And we’d see what Obama thinks is essential, and could make the argument be of PRIORITIES — “Look, these people aren’t getting a core government service, because Obama is handing out money to wind companies that do us no real good”
Hopefully with Texas’ new senator Ted Cruz, we will hear less from and less about old has-been Newt.
All I know is this congress has failed to pass a budget for four straight years. I say if they don't pass a budget, they can't spend money. Period. No more continuing resolutions, which only guarantee that automatic spending increases happen every year with nobody being accountable for it. No more. If we need to shut the government down to make the Senate do its job, then so be it.
And when the press crucifies them, they can at least hold their heads up and say "The Democrat controlled Senate won't pass a budget, blame them."
A few trillion$ and years late, but still the self-serving clown will sit upon whoever’s couch is perceived to make Newtie look better today.
Don’t waste your time, some people are so blind with their hate for Newt (why they hate him I don’t know) that they wouldn’t agree with him if he said water was wet.
It’s interesting how badly it reflects on their character verses his.
RE: this congress has failed to pass a budget for four straight years
Let’s be more specific. The LOWER HOUSE of Congress has passed a budget. It is the Democrat controlled Senate that held it up and REFUSED to pass a budget of its own.
Wow, a knee-jerk disparaging Newtie defense with no mention whatsoever of any redeeming qualities.
Would you care to mention any?
Do you still think Ann Coulter is a serious conservative?
Newt was the best speaker we have had in my lifetime. Lots of revisionism going on in regards to his accomplishments.Many republicans were swept into office during the gop revolution..including Santorum. As for the charges against Newt..they were all dismissed.
“Among the first pieces of legislation passed by the new Congress under Gingrich was the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, which subjected members of Congress to the same laws that apply to businesses and their employees, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. As a provision of the Contract with America, the law was symbolic of the new Republican majority’s goal to remove some of the entitlements enjoyed by Congress. The bill received near universal acceptance from the House and Senate and was signed into law on January 23, 1995.”
Would this poser please SHUT THE HELL UP? When Noot was Speaker, he didn't have the balls to shut the government down. After Clinton shut it down, Noot allowed Clinton to place all the blame on him. If Noot had been worth a damn, he would have told Clinton, "Damn right I shut it down. And everyone can see now that all that money you spend serves no critical purpose". But no, instead Noot shows what a weak ass he is and immediately increases the debt ceiling for Slick while getting absolutely nothing in return.
We haven't had a balanced budget since 1957. I don't think Noot was Speaker back then.
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