Free Republic

<p>As President Barack Obama prepares to pitch a new jobs plan to Congress, he said Tuesday there are steps the government can take that could add up to a million jobs to the U.S. economy and boost growth by 1.5%.</p>

President Barack Obama is eyeing a 2012 campaign modeled on President Harry Truman’s 1948 successful re-election campaign against Congress. First, however, the White House will send to Capitol Hill an assortment of ‘economy-boosting’ legislation in a package that may include a major overhaul of the tax code. “I’ll be putting forward, when they come back in September, a very specific plan to boost the economy, to create jobs, and to control our deficit,” Obama told a friendly audience at a Decorah, Minnesota campaign-event on Monday. “My attitude is, get it done … [but] if they don’t get it done, then...

Reporting from Decorah, Iowa— In the clearest expression yet of his 2012 reelection strategy, President Obama said he would send a jobs package to Congress next month, ask lawmakers to pass it, and campaign against them if they refused. Obama made the declaration in a town-hall-style meeting in Iowa on Monday night. He is facing criticism for not advancing a bold strategy to bolster job growth and his reelection prospects. "I'll be putting forward a very specific plan to boost the economy, to create jobs and to control the deficit," Obama said on the first day of his three-day Midwest...

Not knowing who the eventual Republican presidential nominee will be in the 2012 election, President Obama's supporters are taking the opportunity to blast all of the GOP candidates, using aggressive language to argue that the crop of contenders is either uninterested or incapable of helping Americans. Much of the criticism is focused on describing the candidates as lackeys to the Tea Party, which establishment Democrats have classified as right-wing zealots bent on destroying the U.S. snip "In a Republican field that has already pledged allegiance to the Tea Party and failed to present any plan that will benefit the middle...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Tuesday he's naming Sen. Patty Murray to co-chair a powerful "super committee" charged with finding more than $1 trillion in deficit cuts this fall. Murray will be joined by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Max Baucus, D-Mont., on the panel, which was established last week by hard-fought legislation to increase the national debt.

Three weeks ago on Tuesday, July 19 the House handily passed the bill known as "Cut, Cap, and Balance" by a vote of 234 to 190. The plan imposed caps on federal spending as a percentage of GDP and allowed a debt ceiling increase of $2.4 trillion in exchange for approval by both the Senate and House of a balanced budget amendment.Three days later, the bill was killed in the Senate on a party line vote of 51 - 46. Harry Reid had effectively proclaimed the bill dead on arrival when he called it "the single worst piece of legislation...

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) on NBC's "Meet the Press" and Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod on CBS' "Face the Nation" lead a new propaganda push against the Tea Party movement. First they were "astro-turf", then racist, then stupid, then violent, then dangerous, then terrorists, and now they're responsible for the S & P downgrade even though the Tea Party was pushing for the exact entitlement reforms that would have avoided the downgrade. It's obvious that the White House is fearful that the president will be blamed for the unprecedented downgrade of America's bond rating.

Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the nation’s credit rating gives House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan every right to say “I told you so.” Even earlier this week when President Obama was taking his victory lap for the debt-ceiling compromise, Ryan was disclosing the cold, hard truths of the economic troubles that lie ahead — truths that a jittery Wall Street has been more than aware of. In an oped column in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, the Wisconsin Republican reiterated, of course, that the president really has no budget plan. “The president’s February budget,” he wrote, “deliberately dodged the tough...

Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senator Harry Reid made the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding the only viable debt ceiling compromise to avert a default. Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery:Republicans leaders in the House of Representatives wasted this week pursuing a right-wing proposal they knew from the start could not pass the Senate.From the very beginning the Speaker’s Band-Aid approach was fatally flawed – it would have put us back in this incredible position, fighting the clock to prevent financial collapse, in just a few weeks.It was a concession to Tea Party extremists, yet it...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has revised his plan to raise the debt limit in a last-ditch bid to attract Republican support. The biggest change is that Reid would give the president almost unilateral power to raise the debt limit, borrowing an idea introduced by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Reid would have President Obama request a $2.4 trillion debt-limit increase in two installments of $1.2 trillion each. The requests would be subject to congressional resolutions of disapproval, but these would do little to restrict the president.

The Senate voted to kill a House-approved bill to raise the debt ceiling, leaving the ball in the court of Senate leadership to produce a deficit reduction bill, with just days before the Aug. 2 deadline. The vote was 59-41. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid followed through on his promise to kill the bill, pushed through the House a day late by House Speaker John Boehner. The White House, which has thrown its weight behind a Reid proposal, had promised to veto the bill had it miraculously passed the Senate. The Senate also killed the Cut, Cap, Balance Act last...

The House plans on voting on Speaker John Boehner's debt limit plan this evening, but with its demise imminent in the Senate, some Senate Republicans are considering getting behind Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's alternative plan. "I voted for cut, cap, and balance,'" Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts said today, in reference to the House Republicans' initial debt limit plan. "I'll vote for Boehner, and I'll vote for Reid. I've already said that. We need to move our country forward. It's time." Senate Democrats have promised to reject Boehner's plan, which would only extend the nation's borrowing authority for...

Click on the above. Sorry, can't reproduce the linked PDF file.

"Obvious what is being done in the House is not compromise. It is being jammed through with all kinds of non-transparent dealings, people shuffling in and out of the Republican Leader's office. We're recognizing that the only compromise that there is, is mine," Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said. VIDEO OF THE CLOWN'S REMARKS AT THE LINK.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday that President Obama’s debt ceiling plan is the best-known option at this point. There’s just one problem with that: No publicly available, detailed Obama plan exists. “There is no plan that has been offered, certainly in the last several months, about which more detail is known or has been specified than the Obama-Boehner plan, okay, in terms of the cuts in domestic spending, both defense and non-defense discretionary; the savings coming out of entitlements programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; the kind of tax reform that was envisioned and the mechanisms...

Reid: No Dem votes for Boehner plan By: Scott Wong and Manu Raju July 27, 2011 01:40 PM EDT Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Wednesday that no Democrat in the Senate would vote for Speaker John Boehner’s debt-ceiling plan should it pass the House, where it’s come under fire from conservatives groups and tea-party lawmakers for not going far enough to cut spending. The plan is a “big, wet kiss to the right wing,” Reid said at a packed Capitol Hill news conference. The entire 53-member Democratic caucus signed a letter opposing Boehner’s plan. Democratic leaders also signaled that...

[T]he opposition bloc led by [Jim] Jordan appears to be crumbling, as leadership’s message seems to be sinking in. Sources tells NRO that a number of members who were confirmed no votes against the Boehner plan announced during the meeting that they would be voting yes. One of those members, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R., Texas) told reporters that while he would like to “snap my fingers and change the world like ‘I Dream of Genie’ of Samantha on ‘Bewitched,’” Republicans “need to take what we can get.”…

The CBO has just released its analysis of his so-called "Reid plan", which will only generate $2.2 trillion in savings, half a trillion short of the promised $2.7 trillion. But wait, it gets far, far more idiotic. Per the CBO "The caps on appropriations of new budget authority excluding war-related funding start at $1,045 billion in 2012 and reach $1,228 billion in 2021" - that's right: savings from not fighting future wars - a cool trillion. But wait there's more: "The legislation also would impose caps of $127 billion for 2012 and $450 billion over the 2013-2021 period on budget...

Speaking to a crowd of union workers on Capitol Hill today, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi unloaded on Republican plans to lower the deficit through deep cuts to government services in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Frustrations are running high in Congress with the default deadline rapidly approaching, and Pelosi spoke with a fire that suggested the endless debate over the debt ceiling is taking its toll on her patience. "This isn't just about them saying we should reduce the deficit," she said, adding: "This is an excuse. The budget deficit is an excuse for the Republicans to undermine...

Senate Democrats' inclusion in their proposed debt package of $1 trillion in savings from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may not satisfy ratings agencies threatening a credit downgrade since the wars were expected to end with or without a debt deal. The budget gimmick is one that has been used by both parties. President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner had earlier considered employing it during discussions that have since broken down. Now Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is using the trick in his $2.7 trillion deficit-reduction plan, according to aides. Boehner has not indicated where he would draw...