Tag Archives: political parties

Democrats and Those Pesky Laws

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Three senior House members told The Associated Press that they plan to strongly urge the administration to grant a special sign-up opportunity for uninsured taxpayers who will be facing fines under the law for the first time this year.

The three are Michigan’s Sander Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, and Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, and Lloyd Doggett of Texas. All worked to help steer Obama’s law through rancorous congressional debates from 2009-2010.

Because, voters. Because, law? That’s too inconvenient; just ignore it.

The Obamacare law—which Democrats have been trying to stifle debate about by insisting “It’s the law of the land”—specified the signup period. If these worthies want to change the signup period, they need to change the law—which they helped write this way—not ignore it.

The lawmakers say they are concerned that many of their constituents will find out about the penalties after it’s already too late for them to sign up for coverage, since open enrollment ended Sunday.

Wait, what? These Democrats haven’t been talking to their constituents about their responsibilities under these Democrats’ law? Not since 2010? At all!?

Oh, yeah. Voters.

It’s Time

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…for the Party of No to get out of the way and let legislation happen. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) had this to say through her spokesman Drew Hammill about her fellow Democrats’ insistence on shutting down DHS* in favor of protecting President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional “executive actions” concerning immigration:

With only four legislative days left until the Republican Homeland Security Shutdown, Speaker Boehner made it clear that he has no plan to avoid a government shutdown. The speaker’s reliance on talking points and finger-pointing was a sad reflection of the fact that the Tea Party continues to hold the gavel as they insist on their futile anti-immigrant grandstanding.

Government shutdown. Not DHS shutdown. No exaggeration there. Pelosi’s proxy statement more honestly reads

With only four legislative days left until the Senate Democrats’ Homeland Security Shutdown, Minority Leader Pelosi made it clear that neither she nor her Senate colleagues have a plan to avoid a department shutdown. The Minority Leader’s reliance on talking points and finger-pointing was a sad reflection of the fact that the Democratic Party insists on its futile illegal immigrant grandstanding and vote pandering.

Note, too, that the Democrats are willing to hold hostage American homeland safety against preservation of those “executive actions”—”hostage” being their term, not Republicans’.

 

*Never mind, in the Democrats’ panic mongering, that DHS won’t, in fact, shut down in any substantive way: all the protection forces, from TSA to border control will remain on the job. They just won’t be paid on time, courtesy of the Senate Democrats’ constant filibuster of the House-passed bill that fully funds DHS.

Senate Democrats and a DHS Shutdown

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The House has passed a bill fully finding the Department of Homeland Security while canceling President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional “Executive Actions” regarding immigration. The Senate Democrats have successfully filibustered the Senate version of that bill.

The Senate Democrats thus have shown themselves entirely willing to shut down the DHS, severely damaging our nation’s ability to defend itself against terrorist attack—or any man-caused disaster. These Democrats are holding American citizens hostage against their ability to impose their minority position on all of us.

Let Senator Mark Kirk (R, IL) say this about that.

If we have a successful terrorist attack—all the dead Americans from that should be laid at the feet of the Democratic caucus.…

In the end, they have to defend the country. They have sworn the allegiance to do that. They need to live up to their oaths of office. In the Democratic mind, politics is everything. I would say to them, politics is not everything. If you don’t have a country to defend, what is the purpose of politics?

What he said.

Skipping Congressional Addresses

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Will President Barack Obama and his Democrat minions skip this one, too?

Pope Francis will address a joint meeting of the House and Senate on Sept 24, becoming the first pontiff to do so, House Speaker John Boehner [R, OH] said Thursday.

“We’re humbled that the Holy Father has accepted our invitation and certainly look forward to receiving his message on behalf of the American people,” Boehner…told reporters.

Oh, wait, Obama is getting a private audience all his own.

The Party of Stupid on the Right

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A group of young conservatives, dubbed “reformicons,” are making inroads among Republican presidential candidates by arguing the party’s traditional reliance on broad-based tax cuts…isn’t enough to cure middle-class woes.
Instead, they are calling for crafting subsidies, tax credits, and other public-policy tools based on conservative philosophies and tastes to help the unemployed and other struggling middle-income households.

And

“For the past 10 years, our biggest issue was whether the top tax rate was 35% or 39.5%. I don’t care anymore,” said Michael Strain, 33 years old and an economist at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. One of his ideas gaining fans on the right: let employers pay some workers less than the minimum wage as an inducement to hire them and use the federal tax code to bump up salaries.

Leaving aside the abject surrender inherent in that “I don’t care” bleat, Strain’s small point—letting employers pay below-minimum wage rates under certain circumstances—is better achieved by curbing yet another government interference in the market, by getting rid of the minimum wage altogether.

Bob Davis’ article in The Wall Street Journal goes on in this vein, but you get the idea.

The larger point, though, is that these reformicons’ ideas are foolish. Using the tax code for social engineering or for favoring some Americans—which can come only at the expense of other Americans—is an inefficient and immoral use of people’s money. Even when it favors those Americans whom Republicans and Conservatives favor.

Government interference in the free market only inhibits the market, only caps what used to be equal opportunity, only reduces prosperity to the lowest common denominator rather than increasing the general prosperity by elevating the lowest common denominator.

These reformicons’ policies, worse, will only exacerbate the byzantine structure of our tax code and make it even harder to get to a single, low tax rate that every citizen pays; a rate based on all income, regardless of source and devoid of special treatment based on that income’s source; a rate devoid of gerrymandering with tax credits here, subsidies there, loopholes over there. A fair tax rate.