Morning Briefing
For December 6, 2012
1. Reasonableness
The unreasonable Republicans in the House of Representatives are willing to raise taxes by $800 billion.
Anti-tax Republicans will raise taxes. I’m not happy about it, but that is what John Boehnerand Mitch McConnell seem to be offering.
They want to raise that money by limiting deductions instead of raising rates.
They do not want to raise rates because that will impact many small businesses in America whose owners pay their taxes as individuals instead of corporations due to the unreasonable and costly compliance of the American corporate tax code.
Raising rates will affect small businesses. Limiting individual deductions related to state income taxes, charitable deductions, mortgage interest, etc. will not impact those small businesses.
But Barack Obama demands a rate increase. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
2. Fire Boehner: We Only Need 16 Votes to Depose Boehner
If conservatives want to keep the House and win the Senate, we need to fire John Boehner as speaker of the House. We only need 16 House votes to do it.
As most conservatives know, Boehner and the House GOP Steering Committee decided to purge four conservative House members from their committee. Congressmen Justin Amash and Tim Huelskamp were removed from the House Budget Committee, and Congressmen David Schweikert and Walter Jones were cut from the Financial Services Committee.
Amash, Huelskamp, and Schweikert were targeted because they were too fiscally conservative—all three have voted against Boehner’s debt ceiling hikes. Amash and Huelskamp were the only two GOP votes against House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget.
Amash explained that vote at yesterday’s Bloggers’ Briefing at the Heritage Foundation, “It’s unacceptable to have unbalanced budgets until 2040.”
For anyone outside of DC, this statement seems obvious. Only in Washington is balancing the budget radical. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
3. Democrats poised to raise taxes… on their own voters.
Let me sum up this New Geography article (via Instapundit):
Top states with most $250K households: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Washington DC.
- Top metro areas with most $250K households: Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, San Jose, Washington DC.
- States with highest average housing values / mortgages: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, Washington DC.
- Metro areas with highest average housing values / mortgages: Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco.
- States with the highest percentage of people taking itemized deductions: California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Washington DC.
You notice the trend? That’s right: there’s a lot of blue there. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
4. Steve Scalise Fails the First Test for Conservatives
Several weeks ago, Congressman Steve Scalise (LA) was elected chairman of the Republican Study Committee. Many of us felt a deep-rooted disquiet that Scalise would be too closely aligned with leadership. We feared he wouldn’t properly defend conservatives and their policies. Well, his response to the recent leadership purge of conservatives from congressional committees has validated our fears. The fact that he was at the scene of the crime as a member of the Steering Committee makes his response even more troubling.
On Monday, Congressman David Schweikert (AZ) was kicked off the Financial Services Committee, Congressman Justin Amash (MI) was kicked off the Budget Committee, and Congressman Tim Huelskamp (KS) was kicked off both the Budget Committee and the Agriculture Committee. They were unambiguously told that their conservative voting records and their dissent from leadership made them unqualified to sit on those committees.
Outgoing RSC chair, Jim Jordan, delivered an appropriate response for the leader of the conservative caucus. “It’s unfortunate and unhealthy for our party that principled conservatives are being punished for voting their consciences and keeping the promises they made to their constituents,” he lamented.
Incoming RSC chair, Steve Scalise, not only failed to call out leadership for their unprecedented purge, he denied the problem while concurrently driving a wedge between several conservative members. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
5. Food Stamps: Supplemental Assistance or Way of Life
From Katherine Rosario over at Heritage Action for America comes word that Newark (NJ) Mayor Corey Booker is trying to make the case that the government should increase food stamp benefits by means of a self-imposed challenge to rely solely on food stamps to purchase all of his food. The left has pulled this stunt before. Fortunately, Senator Jim DeMint’s (R-SC) website explains the food stamp program is meant to be supplemental, not to pay for complete meal replacements.
This type of liberal propaganda totally distorts the original purpose of the food stamp program or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which was “originally created to distribute surplus food as determined by the United States Agricultural Department and prevent malnourishment during the Great Depression.”
Today, liberals think that more and more money needs to be funneled into these programs. They – both the programs and the liberals’ argument – are very flawed. In fact, Heritage explains, “If converted to cash, means-tested welfare spending is more than five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States.”
Food stamp spending, the second most expensive means-tested aid program, has nearly doubled since President Obama came to office from roughly $39 billion in 2008 to an estimated $85 billion in 2012. And before that, it doubled under President George W. Bush. The program “discourages work, rewards idleness, and promotes long term dependence,” Heritage’s Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley explain.
The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) waiver of the successful work requirement from the 1996 welfare reform law only made matters worse, since the work requirement was the reason for so many people, especially minority children and children in single-mother homes, moving out of a position of dependence to a position of self-sufficiency.
Heritage’s Ryan T. Anderson explains, “Overall assistance should be holistic, oriented not solely at meeting a material need but at transforming lives to be responsible, productive, and independent.”
It’s simply not true that the left cares more for the poor. If they do care for the poor, and do not simply want to breed dependency so that they can stay in power, their political contributions have been totally misguided. From Mayor Booker’s ridiculous self-imposed and totally distorted food stamp challenge to the much more egregious error of gutting the 1996 welfare of its successful work requirement, it’s clear the political left is missing the point.
Anderson continues, “Welfare programs should thus be structured in ways that encourage…productive activities, fostering norms of work, marriage, personal responsibility, and law-abidingness.” That is certainly not what the liberals have in mind.
Conservatives know that people deserve better than spending a huge portion of their life on food stamps.
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