Big Dogs House

111th Congress Accumulated More Debt That First 100 Congresses Combined

Dec 30, 2010 Political

Nancy Pelosi took the reigns pledging that there would be no deficit spending and that they would employ the pay as you go philosophy of governing. After her tenure as Speaker the 111^th Congress has accumulated more debt that the first 100 Congresses combined adding $10,429.64 for each person counted in the 2010 census.

The years the Democrats were in charge were the four most expensive in our history as they set records for deficit spending.

The Democrats like to talk about how George Bush wasted a surplus (a surplus never existed as the US still had debt for the period the claim is made) and they like to discuss how he spent us into debt.

It looks like all the blowhards who were screaming about deficit spending are the worst offenders of all.

It is sad that we, our children and our children’s children have been saddled with this additional debt through generational theft by Congress but what is really sad is that half of the country will never have to pay any of the debt off.

The top 50% will be paying the bill for a long, long time.

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: 111th congress, debt, deficit, lies, pay go, Pelosi, spending

Obama Will Focus On Deficit

Oct 24, 2010 Political

Barack Obama said that he will spend the next two years focusing on the deficit. This is the same Barack Obama who has run the deficit sky high during his first two years. It also happens to be the same guy who said he would halve the deficit by the end of his first term. That simply will not happen. The deficit is simply too high and it will be impossible, barring manipulating the CBO with numbers, to halve it.

If Obama plans to focus on the deficit like he did jobs (he was going to focus like a laser beam) then we are even more screwed. The article discussing Obama’s plans lays out what he intends to do in his second term as he faces the reality of not having a majority in the House:

Obama will try to make gains on deficit reduction, education and energy. He will enforce his health care and financial overhauls and try to protect them from repeal should Republicans win control of Capitol Hill. He will use executive authority when blocked by Congress, and steel for scrutiny and investigations if the GOP is in charge. Yahoo News [emphasis mine]

Basically, Obama plans to do what he wants and if Congress does not give him his way then he will use executive orders to get what he wants. Fat chance this will work for long because Obama does not have the authority to appropriate money via executive or any other authority. Congress has sole responsibility for appropriating money and I have a feeling that Republicans will stop appropriating money for those things that Obama demands or tries to get using executive authority.

Congress has the power of the purse and though a Republican led Congress might not have enough votes to override an Obama veto, it will certainly have the power to withhold money.

Isn’t it funny how Barry Obama, the man-child, was so against the “abuse” of executive power by George Bush but will abuse it himself to get what he wants.

I predict Republicans will pick up more than 55 seats in the House and will have a large enough majority to prevent Obama from doing any more damage to this country.

The only unanswered question is; will they have the testicular fortitude to actually do so.

Cave Canem!
Never surrender, never submit.

Tags: deficit, executive authority, majority, Obama

The Health Care Shell Game

Mar 19, 2010 Political

The CBO numbers came out and Democrats are giddy. They believe the numbers reported mean that the health care takeover bill will save money and reduce the deficit. This is far from the truth. The CBO can only grade what they are given and they are only given items that are expected to give the desired result. It is a shell game that all politicians play when they want to hide the true cost of any legislation.

The reality of the health care takeover is that it will increase the deficit. The doc-fix is something that has been going on for a long time. In order to reimburse doctors the amount needed for Medicare patients, a separate bill is introduced each year to fix the problem. The fix is usually added to some other spending bill to reduce the cost of Medicare. Last year it was added to the Defense bill so the cost, on paper, was not borne by Medicare.

The doc-fix was supposed to be a part of the health care takeover bill and it should be. It would have been a permanent part of health care so that there would be no future need for doc-fixes. But that fix caused a deficit so the Democrats removed it from the bill and made it a separate piece of legislation. The money must still be spent but removing it from the health care takeover bill kept the CBO from scoring it against the bill. Keep in mind, this is still a cost that must be borne no matter what bill it appears in.

The CBO states, despite what Democrats claim (Obama made the claim today), that the health care takeover would increase the deficit. This is an assessment based on including the doc-fix in the health care takeover bill.

The Congressional Budget Office said Friday that rolling back a programmed cut in Medicare fees to doctors would cost $208 billion over 10 years. If added back to the health care overhaul bill, it would wipe out all the deficit reduction, leaving the legislation $59 billion in the red.

The so-called doc fix was part of the original House bill. Because of its high cost, Democrats decided to pursue it separately. Republicans say the cost should not be ignored. Congress has usually waived the cuts to doctors year by year. Yahoo News

Republicans are correct in saying that this cost should not be ignored because it is a cost associated with health care. Democrats are deliberately ignoring it to give the false impression that the health care takeover bill will reduce the deficit.

It will actually cause the takeover to be 59 BILLION dollars in the red. That is 59 Billion more dollars added to the deficit.

This is a shell game being played in order to get this takeover passed. The bill is not about health and it is not about care. It is about control. Once the government controls health care it will control the people and this is what Democrats want, control over you.

Keep in mind that VP Biden said that the government would control the health care companies (it is about control) and Nancy Pelosi said that this was the start and that more would be done after this passes. They want the public option and this is what she is talking about. When Obama was being skewered by Bret Baier this week he disclosed that this is a start and that they were working incrementally to get more. He has stated in the past that the public option was the goal and he alluded to that in the interview. He pointed out that Canada did not get where it is all at once, that they did it in steps. This health care takeover is the first of many steps to get to a public option and take complete control of our lives.

To ensure that we are controlled by the government the bill puts the IRS in charge of checking on each of us every month to make sure we are insured. If we do not have insurance they will fine us and take the money from any refund due or otherwise fine us. The government will use the IRS to enforce the dictatorial rules on us and that will cost about 10 BILLION more dollars that will have to be paid but will not be counted against the cost of the legislation even though the expense is a direct result of it.

The process is unconstitutional and it is contrary to what a free people expect. Once government controls our lives we have lost our freedom and this is what Democrats want.

We also need to understand that Obama is in favor of using the same jaded and unconstitutional processes to pass the rest of his agenda. How far will this go? How far does it have to go before Americans revolt?

I do not know the answer but I know that I will not relinquish my freedom without a fight.

And all true Americans feel the same.

We will teach these people that they work for us and that we are not their servants.

One way or another they are going to learn this lesson.

Tags: constitution, deficit, health care, irs, lies, Obama, shell game

By His Own Definition Obama Is A Failed Leader

Dec 12, 2009 Political

I was watching one of the shows on Fox last evening and a Democrat was gushing over Obama’s leadership and how wonderful he was as a leader but Barack Obama is not a leader. Obama could not lead a group of people out of a burning building. Sure, he has followers but more like the Pied Piper had followers. I imagine that people follow him but only out of morbid curiosity.

It does not matter what I think about Obama’s leadership (even though I have more leadership experience than he does) what matters is what Obama says about leadership and what he said is that he is not a leader or more accurately, he is a failed leader.

The Democrats are set to raise the debt ceiling to 14 TRILLION dollars. They say only raise it 1.8 trillion to make it sound better but they are raising it to 14 TRILLION. This is the Democrat party that voted as a group not to raise the debt ceiling when Bush asked for it. Obama was one of the Senators who voted against it and he gave an impassioned speech (he is good at speeches) on the floor in opposition to raising the debt ceiling:

“Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren,” Obama said in a 2006 floor speech that preceded a Senate vote to extend the debt limit. “America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.” The Hill

OK Obamabi, if Washington was shifting the burden of bad choices onto the backs of our children when the debt ceiling was being raised to a lower amount back then, what changes anything now that you are raising it higher?

If it was a debt problem back then why is it not a debt problem now? And the kicker is, Obama said that this was a failure of leadership which means that raising the debt ceiling now, to an even higher level, is a failure of leadership.

I know that B-HO is now running around saying that deficits are bad and we have to curb spending but he spent like there was no tomorrow and ran up huge deficits in 11 months. He has spent more than any other and we still have three years to go.

So let’s be clear, Obama has stated that raising the debt ceiling is a failure of leadership and he is raising the debt ceiling. Therefore, it is a failure of his leadership. Additionally, those Democrats who voted en masse not to raise the limit are going to vote to do it now. This is all coming from the people who brought you the collapse of our economy, the Democrats who were in control when it happened. The Democrats who promised the most transparent, honest, ethical, and open government (Pelosi made that promise) are the ones who crashed the economy and are hiding everything. The Democrats who told you America’s debt problem and raising the debt ceiling were the results of failed leadership are now the leaders raising the ceiling. They have failed us and Obama is a failed leader.

But it will be hard to convince Democrats of this. There is a woman named Deborah White who wrote a scathing post about the Republicans and spending and discussed how responsible Democrats were. Her post came when Republicans raised the debt ceiling to 9 Trillion so I wonder how she will handle this Democrat raise to 14? I am willing to bet that White will not change what she wrote even though Obama has broken all the records and exceeded the things she discussed as bad when Republicans did them.

Democrats like to point to the so called four straight years of surpluses in government revenue just prior to 2001. Of course there was no excess because of intergovernmental debt and because of the way they count but if I give the Democrats the benefit of the doubt on this and agree then I would have to be willing to admit that Republicans “balanced” the budget and created surplus. If there was a surplus then Newt Gingrich was responsible for it because Congress is responsible for the budget. Liberals credit it to Clinton but presidents do not have the authority to spend or money (or not spend it). Congress makes the budget, not the president.

So we went from being fiscally responsible and balanced when Gingrich did it to overspending after Gingrich was gone to a collapse once Democrats took over…

And we have gotten a man, who by his own admission, is a leadership failure.

I am willing to bet that some liberal will comment here and say it was Bush’s fault or different because Obama must save us all…

Related Items:
USA Today
Cleveland.com
Osmoothie

Tags: debt ceiling, deficit, failed leadership, Obama

New York Times Errs In Reporting Protest

Sep 13, 2009 Political

There was a huge protest in DC with an estimated 1.3 to 2 million** people descending on the Capitol to protest out of control government and its out of control spending. The protests were about the health care overhaul as well as the stimulus, the cap and trade and all the other items that have led to a deficit of 1.3 TRILLION dollars. People have awakened to how out of control government is, a condition that is not specific to any one party. Government has been out of control for years and Republicans have been as bad as Democrats when it comes to fiscal responsibility.

We now have the party of big government and the party of bigger government from which to choose.

The New York Times though, saw it differently. They reported that the protest was against Obama. This is how most liberals (except those who were at the protest) see any condemnation of government. It, to them, is against Obama.

As President Barack Obama flew to Minnesota on Saturday to rally support for his health care plan, a sea of protesters filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall on Saturday in the largest rally against Obama since he took office, a culmination of a summer-long season of protests that began with opposition to the health care overhaul and grew into a broader dissatisfaction with government. Statesman.com (reprint of NYT story) [emphasis mine]

The protest was not against Obama and was not a conservative only event though I am sure his ego leads him to believe this. Certainly the partisan NYT holds this view as does the Washington Post which reported that:

Tens of thousands of conservative protesters, many complaining that the nation is racing toward socialism, massed outside the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, angrily denouncing President Obama’s health-care plan and other initiatives as threats to the Constitution.

The protest no doubt consisted mostly of conservatives but there were many liberals and moderates as well. The common thinking in the ivory towers of the media is that no logical person would oppose this government (and in their view, Obama) so it must be the conservatives who are protesting.

Lost in all of this are the Democrats in Congress who oppose the legislation. They have the numbers to get done what they want but are unable because their own oppose the legislation. This is because their constituents, people of all political beliefs, let them have an earful during the August recess.

The media wing of the Democratic party would have America believe that the only people opposed to the government’s actions are conservatives and that the protests are against Obama. Both of these statements are incorrect and show a lack of journalistic integrity.

Americans of all political stripes are concerned about the out of control spending of the government and of the way that item after item is rushed through with little debate and with no one reading what the bills contain. People are also tired of being lied to.

Americans do not want the bills for the government’s inability to exercise fiscal restraint passed on to their children and grandchildren.

People have had enough and are demonstrating to show politicians their distrust and dissatisfaction.

They have that right under our Constitution in the same Amendment that allows freedom of the press.

It is too bad that the press lacks the integrity of the people who protest.

**This number is from earlier reports that were attributed to ABC News. ABC is saying it never made those estimates. The numbers now reported are from 75,000 to healthy 6 figures depending upon who you ask. The issue in the post is how the news attributed this to a protest against Obama by conservatives, which is a lie. But since someone was kind enough to point out the number issue I wanted to make it clear.

Tags: deficit, lies, Obama, protest, spending, washington dc