The Senate is expected to adjourn for the week early this afternoon, so Senate Democrats can attend their retreat out of town. Appears that Reid's delay in bringing the Senate back into session was not enough for them to whip all the democrats into line. ; And with CPAC in Washington, D.C. this week, the democrats sure don't want those conservatives knocking on their office doors.
At the White House, consider the posturing of insanity or blatant lies! Which option do you prefer? Two days after President Obama told millions of people watching him, “I didn’t raise taxes once,” The White House advances a plan for jobs that raise taxes on job creators. Unbelievable. Their solution: enslave the golden goose and starve it to death.
This morning, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “In their Monthly Budget Review, the Congressional Budget Office said that if the current spending levels are frozen at the same level as they are now, and Congress were to enact no other legislation affecting spending or revenues, the federal government would end this fiscal year with a deficit of $1.5 trillion—or about $200 billion more than the deficit Democrats ran last year.
“In other words, even if we don’t add another dime to the current spending levels, the deficit will get even worse than last year. That’s what would happen under the President’s best offer, which is to lock in the dramatically higher spending levels from the past two years and put the budget on cruise control. The deficit wouldn’t stand still — it will grow by $200 billion, over the next several months.
“So yesterday’s predictions by the CBO should be a wakeup call to anyone who thinks they can hide behind a spending freeze.”
Apparently even some Democrats are realizing that this is an untenable situation. Politico notes that Democrat senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Mark Warner (D-VA) joined GOP senators Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Mike Crapo (R-ID) to discuss reviving proposals from the president’s deficit commission, none of which he mentioned in his State of the Union address. Politico writes, “Democrats admit their own frustration that the president has not been more forthcoming in addressing the debt issue. For example, ‘The Easy Cuts Are Behind Us’ was the headline for a weekend op-ed by White House Budget Director Jack Lew promising that Obama’s 2012 budget will ‘look beyond the obvious’ in cutting spending. But Lew is already months behind his fellow Democrats on one of his prime examples — cuts from the Great Lakes restoration initiative.”
Roll Call reports, “Other Democrats have been pushing hard for steep spending cuts. Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) recently signed on to a proposed spending cap that would slash trillions in spending over the coming decade, telling the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that her own party is in ‘denial’ over how big the problem is. Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (N.D.) has also struggled to get his fellow Democrats to support a multitrillion-dollar deficit reduction package, with many Democrats, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) averse to touching Social Security.”
Yet according to Roll Call, Democrat leaders are apparently planning to ignore the debt problem and instead attack House Republicans for daring to cut spending. “Democrats smell an opportunity to define House Republicans as irresponsible and unready to govern when they vote on the specific details of their budget cuts in the next two weeks. . . . Democrats are gearing up to take on the cuts as extreme and damaging to a host of popular programs, according to leadership aides on both sides of the Capitol. But they don’t want to be seen as merely defenders of big government either, and they acknowledge the public’s concern about the deficit. ‘It’s definitely going to be threading the needle,’ one senior House Democratic aide said.”
But if Democrat leaders are simply going to attack proposals to cut spending, can they be taken seriously when they proclaim their shared concern about the deficit? Obviously, not; but, they will be serving their fellow democrats the "Kool Aid" this week at their retreat.
As Leader McConnell said today, the new CBO projections mean we can no longer continue down the road of greater spending which the Democrats put the country on over the last two years. “This is a dire warning that business as usual is a recipe for disaster. If we don’t immediately reduce the size and scope of the federal government, the deficit will be even bigger than last year’s record deficit.”
Tags: US Senate, US House, CBO, democrats, Kool Aid, spending, taxes, FAA reauthorization To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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