Congress will have the Back of the Republican Nominee

Finally it comes out the Do-Nothing Senate has a purpose:  Stall all  initiatives from the House so the House will look bad for the 2012 elections.  With their willing members of the mainstream, inside the beltway media it has been working to a degree.  Now the Republican Leadership are speaking up with their ideas for invigorating the American economy and putting Americans back to work.  They are putting the blame where it belongs on the do nothing, obstructionist Democrat Senate who cannot even pass a budget and a President who is more interested in his election then doing what is right for the Country.

Obama helped kill the Keystone Pipeline behind the scenes but even then it only failed by four votes.  Would expect in January 2013 that it will be one of the first bills introduced in the Congress so we can get the pipeline started for the entire length not just from Cushing, Oklahoma, to the refineries in Port Arthur, Texas.

Now Obama has praised the Republican Jobs bill but will he work behind the scenes with Majority Leader of the Senate Reid to kill that as well?  We are saying yes because that doesn't fit the Obama and the DNC narrative of the do nothing Republican House for the 2012 elections.

The president and Reid now face another awkward situation. A jobs bill to help small business, endorsed by Obama, was approved by the House last week, 390-23. Rather than adopt the House bill, Reid said he prefers something “similar,” perhaps to give it a Democratic flavor. 

When Reid will schedule a Senate vote is unclear. 

Despite Reid’s desire for the Senate to be a graveyard for legislation in 2012, it’s bound to be a battleground in the presidential race. Last week, Senate Republicans sought to amend a transportation bill to force Obama to approve construction of the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. 

It came close to passage. The amendment got 56 votes, 4 short of the 60 required. But the pipeline actually had 59 supporters. Two Republicans (John Thune, Mark Kirk) were absent for personal reasons, and one Democrat (Mark Warner) who favors the pipeline voted no, presumably at the president’s request. Obama, fearing embarrassment, lobbied to kill the bill.

What we have now is a President and Democrat leadership that put reelection as a top priority and if they cannot get the credit for a bill, then it will be defeated in the Senate.  What a way not to run the Government.  Time to send the Democrats leadership to the unemployment line in the Senate and take Obama with them.  This group has no interest in righting the ship unless it benefits them and their donors.

They’ll Have His Back 

What congressional Republicans will do for the GOP nominee.
Mar 19, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 26 • By FRED BARNES 

Jack Kemp, the Republican congressman from Buffalo, met with Ronald Reagan at the Airport Marriott in Los Angeles in early January 1980. Kemp, an enthusiastic supporter of supply-side economics, had authored the Kemp-Roth tax cut to reduce income tax rates by 30 percent across the board. He was eager to persuade Reagan, who had expressed sympathy for the tax proposal in radio broadcasts.

Everybody fall in line, now (NEWSCOM)

Kemp succeeded, and their alliance proved to be enormously fruitful. Reagan adopted the Kemp tax cut and economic growth as the centerpieces of his presidential bid. It led, after he won the nomination, to a united campaign with congressional Republicans—and to enactment of a 23 percent tax cut once Reagan was elected.

Now Republicans would like to revive party unity and repeat the Reagan-Kemp success story. House speaker John Boehner and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell are planning to confer with the Republican nominee, once one emerges. Their aim: agreement on a joint agenda. 

McConnell has specific ideas about what the presidential candidate and Republicans in both houses of Congress should promote. “Obamacare should be the number one issue in the campaign,” he says. “I think it’s the gift that keeps on giving. 

”Next are the deficit and national debt. These, in turn, would make entitlement and tax reform important issues against Obama. “We’re not interested in small ball,” McConnell says. 

And there’s another Republican initiative on Capitol Hill aimed at thwarting President Obama and Democrats. Republicans plan to keep up a steady stream of bills and proposals, mostly coming from the House, to foil the charge that Obama’s policies have been undercut by a “do-nothing Congress”—that is, a Republican Congress. 

There isn’t a do-nothing Con-gress,” a Republican consultant says. “There’s a do-nothing Senate.” Democrats control the Senate. Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he hopes to call a minimal number of votes this year. The Senate hasn’t passed a budget in three years. 

A third strategy reflecting Repub-lican unity would aid the victorious presidential candidate after the primaries end in late June and before the GOP convention in late August. This is a period in which the nominee, assuming there is one, is likely to be out of money, having exhausted his resources in winning the nomination. 

At least one independent political action committee, American Crossroads, is committed to taking up the slack and countering attacks by the Obama campaign on the Republican candidate. Other so-called super-PACs may join the effort with heavy buys of TV ads.
The White House has already implemented its do-nothing tactic by hiding instances of Republican cooperation. In August, Obama delivered a Rose Garden speech urging the re-authorization of funding for the Federal Aviation Administration. He was joined by AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka, who called it a jobs bill. 

Last month, Republicans and Democrats negotiated a long-term extension of FAA funding. After it passed the House and Senate with strong bipartisan majorities, one might have expected a signing ceremony at the White House for a bill whose importance had been touted in a Rose Garden speech. Instead, the press secretary merely issued a statement saying the measure had been signed privately.

Excerpt:  Read More at The Weekly Standard 

Most amazing part of this article is that the Republican leadership in the House and Senate have a plan for the 2012 election and are putting it into operation in this 2nd half of the session.  For many years we have thought that the Republican leadership has been too quick to join in growing Government but looks like those days are coming to an end as they put American workers first not with handouts but a path to jobs by loosening regulations.  Would be willing to bet if more regulations were loosened or done away with, our economy would make a real turn around.

If we took one agency at a time to do away with unnecessary regulations and bullying, my first nominee would be the EPA as they are the leader in killing jobs and costing industry and the states billions of dollars since they were established.  Republicans believe in clean air and water along with conserving what our forefathers left us.  We do not believe in putting a spider or a Salamander that buries down into the mud during times of drought over people.  That is ridiculous.  Every time cities reach the goals for clean out or water, the EPA comes along and makes the rules harder to reach and more expensive.

EPA needs reigned in and be put back under a cabinet secretary.  All of their rules affecting our states should be approved by Congress not mandated by the EPA or the President.  The time for mandates by the Federal Government needs to stop.  Executive Orders have gotten out of control as well as regulations.  Just like some companies have gotten too big, there are agencies of the Federal Governor that are so large they have no clue what others in their agency are doing.  Do away with duplication to also save money.  It can happen with the right leadership.

Democrats have shown their leadership increases the national deficit at a record pace so time to give Republicans another shot at the Senate as it seems they have finally learned from their mistakes that growing Government is not the way to prosperity.  We need some more conservatives elected to the Senate not a big Government Democrat like former Senator Kerrey from NE who is out of touch with his own state.

This is a great first step by the Republican leadership of the House and Senate and we hope to see much more in the days ahead.

GOP lawmakers mark 1,000 days since last Senate budget

Looks like the Senate Democrats have a different version of what a budget entails then the rest of us:

The Senate Budget Committee, chaired by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), released an analysis asserting that the deal reached in August to raise the debt ceiling was, for all intents and purposes, a budget.

That is not how budgets are supposed to work in the Senate but when you have nothing else to hang your hat on, guess you will grab onto to anything.  Why didn't the Senate consider the budget bill from the House they passed in April 2011?  What happened to the Obama budget for FY 12?  It seems like all this Administration and Democrat Senate want to do is pass continuing resolutions so the agencies/departments can be funded at the same rate.  Guess the Democrats are afraid to make actual cuts preferring to spin their actions.

How long will it take the Senate to do a budget for FY13 that begins October 1st, 2012, or is this going to be the case they don't have enough time since it is an election year?  The American people need to tell the Democrats in the Senate to do a budget this time or get out of the Senate.  Head of the Budget Committee Conrad is retiring so maybe he is providing the Democrat rhetoric knowing full well he couldn't get reelected so he retires.   North Dakota should be a pickup for Republicans in the Senate.  It would put us closer to taking back the Senate and actually doing a yearly budget.

One Thousand Days without a 'real' Senate budget and the Democrats don't seem to see a problem.  Bet they would if it was reversed and Republicans had not done a budget.  Voters need to look at the House where they passed a budget in April, but the Senate refused to hear or vote on the House budget.  It is important to realize the House Budget Committee  Republicans are doing their job and need reelected.

Cannot believe it is time for another State of the Union by the President with all the rhetoric included in his teleprompter speeches.  How is Obama going to spin the Keystone Pipeline decision not to build that even Democrats in Middle America don't understand or will he ignore as it doesn't fit his agenda?  Cannot remember the last State of the Union I watched -- probably in 2005.  I prefer to read the speech and the fact checking.   Tomorrow, we will report on the reaction by people who do watch the Obama State of the Union.

GOP lawmakers mark 1,000 days since last Senate budget
By Bernie Becker and Erik Wasson - 01/24/12 12:33 PM ET 

Senate Republicans slammed their Democratic colleagues on Tuesday for not passing a budget in exactly 1,000 days, accusing Democrats of shirking their duty in a period of soaring deficits.

Four senators at a Tuesday news conference said President Obama should be more of a leader on reining in deficits. GOP lawmakers have for months pointed out the time elapsed since the Senate last passed a budget.  

“It is imperative that we get our federal budget under control and the first step – the minimum thing that Congress should do – is follow the law that it passed to put discipline on itself,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who also called the lack of a Senate budget “a national scandal.”
Johnson also said that he would procedurally tie up the Senate if the chamber hasn’t passed a budget by April 15, a move he also made last June to protest the budget situation. 

“The other side really does need to put their plan, their budget, on a piece of paper,” Johnson added. “Not just say that they’re for a grand bargain, not just say they’re for fiscal control.”
Republicans’ latest push on the issue comes the same day that the president is scheduled to head to the Capitol to deliver his State of the Union address.

GOP aides said that it was a coincidence that the president was invited to speak to Congress on the 1,000-day anniversary of the last Senate budget. Obama also delivered his 2011 State of the Union address on the fourth Tuesday in January.

For their part, Senate Democrats on Tuesday pushed back on the GOP claims that the Senate had not cleared a budget plan.

The Senate Budget Committee, chaired by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), released an analysis asserting that the deal reached in August to raise the debt ceiling was, for all intents and purposes, a budget.

The Budget Control Act (BCA) included caps on discretionary spending and examined entitlement programs and revenue, the analysis said. “Republican rhetoric aside, Congress did pass a budget,” the fact sheet added. 

"Either they don't know what they did or they are misrepresenting what we all did," Conrad said on the floor. 

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said that Democrats should be embarassed to claim the budget act as their blueprint because it "fell far, far short of solving this country’s fiscal problems." 

"If the BCA is their answer to fiscal sanity and preventing a debt crisis, then heaven help us," Ryan said. 

The office of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) pointed out that Senate Democrats did write a budget resolution but refused to mark it up in committee last year. 

Sessions said that the U.S. still faced a dire debt situation, even with the caps included in the debt ceiling deal and the automatic cuts scheduled to go into effect due to the failure of the deficit-reduction supercommittee. 

“The limits that we have are not sufficient,” Sessions said. “They were the best that could be accomplished under the circumstances, with the threat of a government shutdown.”
In all, the debt-ceiling deal will lead to north of $2 trillion in spending cuts, while bipartisan commissions have said that the U.S. needs more like $4 trillion in fiscal restraint over a decade.

“Is it not the responsibility of the president, the chief executive office, to tell the American people that the $2 trillion is not enough?” Sessions said, hours before Obama's State of the Union address.   

Source:  The Hill

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Four key (Republican) senators abandon online piracy bills amid web protests

Google Protest at Google.com 

We are now up to four Republican Senators who have backed out of co-sponsoring the Senate IP Protect Act.  Looks like the on-line protest  is working by Google and others.  There doesn't seem to be any way that Senator Reid (D-NV) can get the 60 votes necessary to advance this bill.  Every Republican in the Senate who votes to advance this bill needs to think twice if they have an election coming up this fall.  Between Romney as the potential anointed candidate and Republican Senators who support this bill, conservatives who call the Republican Party are not happy and that home may be someplace else for the general election.

The Democrat controlled leadership of the Senate can demand a vote on this but they haven't passed a budget.  Their priorities are upside down on what is important as they bow down to some of their big donors in Hollywood.  

Four key senators abandon online piracy bills amid web protests
By Brendan Sasso and Gautham Nagesh - 01/18/12 02:56 PM ET 

Congressional support for controversial online piracy legislation eroded dramatically on Wednesay in the face of an unprecedented online protest supported by tech titans such as Google, Wikipedia and Facebook.  

Several key senators withdrew their support from the Senate's Protect IP Act, including Tea Party favorite Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), an elected member of his party's leadership.  

Sen. Jon Cornyn (R-Texas), who leads the Senate GOP campaign team, said the legislation should be put on hold, while Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a sponsor and the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, retreated from the bill.  

Thousands of websites went dark on Wednesday to protest the two Internet piracy bills, the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Senate's Protect IP Act (PIPA). At least two California Democrats, Rep. Anna Eshoo and Zoe Lofgren, joined the protests by blacking out their web sites. 

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a leader of Senate conservatives, also came out against the bills, calling them "misguided bills that will cause more harm than good." 

"When protecting intellectual property rights, we must not undermine free speech, threaten economic growth, or impose burdensome regulations," DeMint tweeted. 

Opposition is also building in the House. Two of the original Republican co-sponsors of SOPA, Ben Quayle (Ariz.) and Lee Terry (Neb.), withdrew their support Tuesday before the protests began, and scores of other lawmakers took to Twitter Wednesday to affirm their opposition.
The coordinated online protests are aimed at bringing down legislation that would empower the Justice Department and copyright holders to demand that search engines delete links to sites deemed to be “dedicated” to copyright infringement. Ad networks and payment processors would be prohibited from doing business with the sites. 

Where the protests left the legislation, which is supported by the Motion Picture Association of America and recording industry, among other groups, is unclear. The Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural vote on the legislation next week, but it is uncertain whether the 60 votes to move forward can be found. The fight over the bills has broken across party lines, with House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) leading opposition in the House against Rep. Lamarr Smith (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. 

Hundreds of millions of Internet users, most of whom may have been unaware of the bills until Wednesday, are likely to have noticed the protests.  

Google, the most visited site in the world, plastered a black box evoking censorship over its logo and claimed the bills would "censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American businesses." Users who click on the black box are re-directed to a petition urging Congress to drop the piracy legislation on a page.   

Excerpt:  Read More at The Hill

Time for more Republicans who are co-sponsoring these two bills in both Houses to stand up and withdraw their sponsorship and support.  It is bad enough when Democrats want to do this but to have Republicans get on board is absolutely disgusting and they also should be sent to the unemployment line.