Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Legislative Branch’

When Congress returns from its summer recess, members will face a pivotal decision about the expiring Bush tax cuts. President Barack Obama has called for their permanent extension for singles with incomes below $200,000 and married couples with incomes below $250,000, but has proposed that most of the tax cuts for households with higher incomes be allowed to expire.

To buttress this position, the president and his supporters have repeatedly asserted that the expiration of these cuts will have little impact, because they affect only a tiny fraction of the wealthiest Americans, people who “can afford it.”

The numbers are clear. According to IRS data, fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations reported on tax returns went to households with incomes above $200,000 in 2007.  Would Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Biden deny that the more successful firms owned by individuals in the top income-tax bracket are disproportionately responsible for investment and job creation?

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

More Dems buck plan to let taxes increase for rich

The Facts About the 2003 Tax Cuts

The Soak-the-Rich Catch-22

The Business of America Is Business

When the Founding Fathers issued the Declaration of Independence, they proclaimed: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, have made it clear that they are willing to operate without such authority in order to pass their “cap-and-trade” energy-tax legislation. For the sake of our representative government, they must be stopped.

On Nov. 2, the American people will give their consent to the candidates whose legislative agenda they support. Based on the discontent throughout the country, both sides of the aisle think the upcoming midterm elections will reduce the size of the current Democratic congressional majority. A widespread loss of Democratic seats would be an unmistakable condemnation of the far-left legislative agenda being pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Obama administration.

Incredibly, this forecasted repudiation of big government could be greeted by ousted politicians with a repudiation of voter intent. After the election, but before the newly elected Congress is sworn in in January, the current Congress may call a lame-duck session in November and December. During this session, congressmen and senators removed from power may still vote to enact new legislation. Some Democrats already are talking about their plans to exploit this session to address unpopular issues.

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lieberman have been particularly unabashed about their hopes to advance the cap-and-trade bill in a lame-duck session where defeated congressmen and senators would be estranged from the will of people. This bill – which intentionally would raise the cost of energy produced by fossil fuels so we would use less of it – has not had enough support to pass. In fact, the bill was shelved recently by Mr. Reid, who clearly stated, “We know we don’t have the votes.” They don’t have the votes because congressmen do not want to vote for another expensive, unpopular bill just before a highly contested election. Of course, those congressmen who lose their election will no longer be accountable to the people in a lame-duck session.

Mr. Lieberman admits that “there is a certain awkwardness in a lame-duck session. But these are big and important issues. …” Perhaps it is the opening words of the Constitution are the cause of that “certain awkwardness.”

“We the People” speak with our votes and already have spoken out resoundingly against this energy agenda. If those who support cap-and-trade are voted out of office, Mr. Lieberman and his colleagues should respect that message.

Read more at the Washington Times

The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy: Push through union ‘card-check,’ cap and trade, and more

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

View on YouTube – Part 1

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View on YouTube – Part 6

Attacks on Freedom

The Original Tea Party

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The Civil War and Gilded Age

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Progressivism

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FDR’s State And LBJ’s Society

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Big Gov’t and Tea Parties

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The Constitution and Freedom

Woodrow Wilson and the roots of Progressivism

Barack Obama and “The Second Bill of Rights”

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

We the Serfs

WHO has changed how the constitution is interpreted?

Only seventy?  Somehow I get the feeling they neglected to mention this fact to the voters…

Gateway Pundit reports:

The Socialist Party of America announced in their October 2009 newsletter that 70 Congressional democrats currently belong to their caucus. 

This admission was recently posted on Scribd.com:

American Socialist Voter –
Q: How many members of the U.S. Congress are also members of the DSA?
A: Seventy

Q: How many of the DSA members sit on the Judiciary Committee?
A: Eleven: John Conyers [Chairman of the Judiciary Committee], Tammy Baldwin, Jerrold Nadler, Luis Gutierrez,
Melvin Watt, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Steve Cohen, Barbara Lee, Robert Wexler, Linda Sanchez [there are 23 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee of which eleven, almost half, are now members of the DSA].

Q: Who are these members of 111th Congress?
A: See the listing below

Co-Chairs
Hon. Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07)
Hon. Lynn Woolsey (CA-06)

Vice Chairs
Hon. Diane Watson (CA-33)
Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18)
Hon. Mazie Hirono (HI-02)
Hon. Dennis Kucinich (OH-10)

Senate Members
Hon. Bernie Sanders (VT)

House Members
Hon. Neil Abercrombie (HI-01)
Hon. Tammy Baldwin (WI-02)
Hon. Xavier Becerra (CA-31)
Hon. Madeleine Bordallo (GU-AL)
Hon. Robert Brady (PA-01)
Hon. Corrine Brown (FL-03)
Hon. Michael Capuano (MA-08)
Hon. André Carson (IN-07)
Hon. Donna Christensen (VI-AL)
Hon. Yvette Clarke (NY-11)
Hon. William “Lacy” Clay (MO-01)
Hon. Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05)
Hon. Steve Cohen (TN-09)
Hon. John Conyers (MI-14)
Hon. Elijah Cummings (MD-07)
Hon. Danny Davis (IL-07)
Hon. Peter DeFazio (OR-04)
Hon. Rosa DeLauro (CT-03)
Rep. Donna F. Edwards (MD-04)
Hon. Keith Ellison (MN-05)
Hon. Sam Farr (CA-17)
Hon. Chaka Fattah (PA-02)
Hon. Bob Filner (CA-51)
Hon. Barney Frank (MA-04)
Hon. Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11)
Hon. Alan Grayson (FL-08)
Hon. Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)
Hon. John Hall (NY-19)
Hon. Phil Hare (IL-17)
Hon. Maurice Hinchey (NY-22)
Hon. Michael Honda (CA-15)
Hon. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02)
Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30)
Hon. Hank Johnson (GA-04)
Hon. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Hon. Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI-13)
Hon. Barbara Lee (CA-09)
Hon. John Lewis (GA-05)
Hon. David Loebsack (IA-02)
Hon. Ben R. Lujan (NM-3)
Hon. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)
Hon. Ed Markey (MA-07)
Hon. Jim McDermott (WA-07)
Hon. James McGovern (MA-03)
Hon. George Miller (CA-07)
Hon. Gwen Moore (WI-04)
Hon. Jerrold Nadler (NY-08)
Hon. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (DC-AL)
Hon. John Olver (MA-01)
Hon. Ed Pastor (AZ-04)
Hon. Donald Payne (NJ-10)
Hon. Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Hon. Charles Rangel (NY-15)
Hon. Laura Richardson (CA-37)
Hon. Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34)
Hon. Bobby Rush (IL-01)
Hon. Linda Sánchez (CA-47)
Hon. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09)
Hon. José Serrano (NY-16)
Hon. Louise Slaughter (NY-28)
Hon. Pete Stark (CA-13)
Hon. Bennie Thompson (MS-02)
Hon. John Tierney (MA-06)
Hon. Nydia Velazquez (NY-12)
Hon. Maxine Waters (CA-35)
Hon. Mel Watt (NC-12)
Hon. Henry Waxman (CA-30)
Hon. Peter Welch (VT-AL)
Hon. Robert Wexler (FL-19)

If your “honorable” representative is on this list, I recommend you immediately google their opponent in the next election, make a donation and get involved in taking back congress from avowed socialists! 

American Thinker observes:

That’s 70 out of 255 Democrats in the House who are avowed socialists. You also wonder how many are still in the closet.

Again, we see the cowardice of these people. If they really had courage, they would run as both Democrats and socialists and be proud of it.

If the RNC were smart – and they’re not – they would make an effort to get the facts about these anti-free market congressmen known far and wide. And what these Democrats have signed on to by being members of the Socialist Party of America is quite plain.

From the Preamble of the SPA:

We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.

We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources,meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.

Note that some of what they stand for is boilerplate from both Democrats and Republicans. It is their “vision” of a “humane social order” that is based on the “equitable distribution of resources” among other nonsense that sets the socialists apart from rational people.

An examination of that list would tell you that the overwhelming majority of those Democrats are from extremely safe districts so its not like a revelation like this would mean their political careers are over. But it is still shocking to know that 20 years after the fall of Communism, so many lawmakers would still be enamored of such a spectacularly failed economic and social system.

What Obama means by the word “democracy”

Quick quiz: What do we call a system of government in which an unelected cadre of self-professed wise men make decisions for a nation of millions, all the while insulting those millions as ignoramuses? We used to call it tyranny. Now, apparently, we call it an “independent judiciary.”
 
At least that’s the way the left sees it. The role of the judiciary in this country, according to liberals, is to act as a sort of super-Senate, qadis on the hill who decide based on whim and fancy how the rest of us should live. The American people are benighted morons; the judiciary is full of brilliant moral thinkers. They must rule us.
 
This perspective, of course, would have sickened the Founding Fathers, who established an independent judiciary in order to adjudicate legal disputes, not to rewrite laws at will. In fact, the founders recognized the threat of judicial omnipotence, which is why they wrote the Constitution so as to limit the judiciary: The judiciary cannot control its own purse strings, nor can it even define its own jurisdiction. Under Article III of the Constitution, Congress’ power over the judiciary doesn’t end with up-or-down judicial nominee votes—Congress actually has the power to take whole areas of law away from the judiciary completely.

Read more at CNS News

Liberals see Supreme Court as backup legislature

The summer of 2010 is turning out to be a hot one – and not just because of the weather. The duration and depth of the recession, exacerbated by the high-tax, big-spending policies of the Obama administration, has led Americans to take a closer look at those who purport to “lead” us. We don’t much like what we see.

The problem? It’s the sense of entitlement, stupid. Democrats, who are in control of Washington, have long decried the excesses of “the rich.” President Obama has repeatedly called for “sacrifice,” meaning tax increases for those earning over $200,000 per year. In the meantime, his wife describes traveling to Denmark at taxpayer expense to lobby for the US Olympics as a “sacrifice” – long before setting off on the first of the eight vacations she is enjoying this summer (including one at a five-star Spanish resort).

 In a democratic republic, government employees are supposed to be the people’s servants, not their masters. Unfortunately, America is now ruled by a government class occupied by too many who are too far removed from the lives of those they are supposed to serve. Some, like Daschle and Geithner, benefit from a special set of rules reserved for the powerful and connected. Others – like the President– make plenty of money from the easy celebrity won through pursuit of public office. Yet others (like Rangel) use the power of their government positions to raise money for their own personal projects.

Read more at Townhall.com

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

Class War: How public servants became our masters

U.S. Military Serving as Chauffeurs, Babysitters for the Pelosi Kids: Receipts That Will Blow Your Mind

We’ve gone as a nation, in less than two years, from Hope and Change to “hope we can change the stuff we hoped for.” Still, a question — one of pointed interest to Republicans — looms: change to what? Meaning, what are you all going to do, assuming you take the House and/or the Senate, to fix the problems you identified as reasons for throwing out the Obamacrats? People who push themselves as political saviors, like the Democrats two years ago, come to think of it, eventually find they have to start saving. It can be messy.

A Washington Post story by Perry Bacon Jr. underscores the GOP challenge: to wit, “Rep. Ryan pushes budget reform, and his party winces.”

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin’s First District, one of the smartest men in politics insofar as I can tell, goes around touting his brilliantly conceived free-market, limited-government approach called “Roadmap for America’s Future.” Whose main defect appears to be that in facilitating economic recovery it would change the ways Americans interface with federal social programs and the tax system that supports them. The prospect of that seems to disturb colleagues; thus … well, hear out Bacon: “[M]any Republican colleagues … even as they praise Ryan for his doggedness, privately consider the Roadmap a path to electoral disaster.”

In other words, do the right thing and the wrong things happen to you. Voters fume and rage. Some undertake to eject you from office, forcing you to resume the practice of estate law in Pascagoula or Pomona.

Read more at Townhall.com

Reservations with Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap”

Have the Republicans Learned Their Lesson?

The dog days of summer are almost upon us, and as autumn approaches and the midterm elections loom, the American people have many important issues on their minds. One of the most important issues is whether Congress will elect to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, which are due to expire on January 1, 2011. President Obama has made clear his opinion that the tax cuts should expire for families making over $250,000 a year. Some liberal economists and pundits go further, pointing to our skyrocketing deficits and budgetary woes as compelling reasons why none of the tax cuts should be extended. Thus, as a new year – and a new chapter in our nation’s political and economic history – looms, Americans in every socioeconomic bracket face a potential tax hike.

Is a tax increase the answer to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? Is it the best way to stimulate economic growth, create jobs, and renew confidence in the American dollar at home and abroad? How one answers these questions depends, fundamentally, on one’s belief about the role of government and its relationship to and impact on the economy. Is government the greatest engine of economic growth and prosperity or should the fate of America’s financial future be determined by the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people?

Clearly, President Obama and his allies in Congress believe that all social questions, be they economic or otherwise, are best addressed by government. This is the philosophy that has driven the various bailouts and stimuli of the past three years (a philosophy that, to many conservatives’ chagrin, was shared in part by former President George W. Bush), and the philosophy that led Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to assert recently that unemployment benefits create jobs faster than any other kind of economic activity.

Read more at the Christian Post

The Facts About the 2003 Tax Cuts

The Obama Tax Trap: How some Republicans are preparing to walk right into it

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn made it official: Illinois will have a special Senate election just for the lame duck session.  Thus Illinois joins Delaware and West Virginia (both having special elections) as the three states whose winners on election day will—barring a disputed election result—be seated for a lame duck session in December.  A fourth, Colorado, is less clear but may also be in play.

The lame duck session looks increasingly likely—and increasingly ambitious.  Sen. Kerry continues to stress that cap-and-trade will be on the agenda, and Sen. Harry Reid (who may be a lame duck himself after Election Day) confirmed it to the Netroots Nation audience, saying: “We’re going to have to have a lame-duck session, so we’re not giving up.”

Along with cap-and-trade, a lame duck will likely consider the recommendations of Obama’s deficit commission — a package that will include enormous tax hikes and could draw the support of some departing Republicans like Judd Gregg of New Hampshire George Voinovich of Ohio, and Robert Bennett of Utah.

And organized labor, seeing the lame duck as their last chance for a legislative return on their political investments for years, will also demand lame duck action.

While Sen. Tom Harkin is still promising some version of card check, more likely is Sen. Bob Casey’s proposed union pension bailout, S. 3157, which would relieve unions of their pension obligations – with a potential price tag for taxpayers in the hundreds of billions.  Democratic Whip Dick Durbin signed on as a co-sponsor yesterday, indicating this bill is a top priority.

The winners in Delaware, Illinois, and West Virginia could be the vital deciding votes on these major policy issues.

Read more at Big Government

The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy: Push through union ‘card-check,’ cap and trade, and more

With Congress gridlocked on an immigration bill, the Obama administration is considering using a back door to stop deporting many illegal immigrants – what a draft government memo said could be “a non-legislative version of amnesty.”

The memo, addressed to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas and written by four agency staffers, lists tools it says the administration has to “reduce the threat of removal” for many illegal immigrants who have run afoul of immigration authorities.

“In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidance and regulations, exercising discretion with regard to parole-in-place, deferred action and the issuance of Notices to Appear,” the staffers wrote in the memo, which was obtained by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican.

The memo suggests that in-depth discussions have occurred on how to keep many illegal immigrants in the country, which would be at least a temporary alternative to the proposals Democrats in Congress have made to legalize illegal immigrants.

Read more at the Washington Times

GOP Lawmakers Want Explanation of Draft Memo on Amnesty for Thousands

Obama may issue amnesty to illegals by executive order

Government caused the problem, so of course the solution is… more government and violation of 4th Amendment rights.   How about we register and fingerprint the POLITICIANS who were responsible for the mortgage crisis, starting with Chris Dodd and Barney Frank?

Mortgage loan originators will have to be fingerprinted and sign up to a central registry to do business in future, according to final rules issued on Wednesday by the Federal Reserve and other regulators.

The rules are part of the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act of 2008, also called the S.A.F.E. Act.

They were issued by the Fed, Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, Office of Thrift Supervision, Farm Credit Administration and National Credit Union Administration.

Mortgage brokers came under tough scrutiny in the wake of the 2007-09 financial crisis, with some lawmakers and regulators sharply critical of underwriting standards and practices that were seen as so loose they helped foster a housing price bubble.

Read more at Reuters

Dodd-Frank Finance ‘Reform’ Sows Seeds of Next Financial Crisis

How Government Caused The Mortgage Crisis

Obama seizing control of Wall Street

First came the New Deal, then the Great Society, and now comes President Obama’s special brand of interventionalist tactics with redistributive aims. When it suits him, the president wants the power to take from some and give to others. But how do you keep the public from correctly identifying this as stealing? You do as his predecessors did: You call it charity.

Thomas Jefferson wrote,

To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

Adding to that, James Madison said succinctly, “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

Today, the idea that it is wrong for the government to take in taxes and spend in “charity” would be considered ludicrous. It is generally accepted that government is there to “help others,” and not only ourselves, but foreign nations and aliens in our midst. America is a country of great generosity. Liberal progressives harness that generosity to advance socialism. They accomplish this by saying how important it is to help others, and politicians are unwilling to oppose bills proposed and presented under this rubric of charity.

Read more at American Thinker

Charity: Not in the Constitution

Not Yours To Give

The War on Private Charity

Obama’s Destruction of Charitable Giving

The Government Loves Spending Your Money

President Obama signed into law Wednesday the massive 2,400-page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act – the most consequential piece of legislation affecting the financial sector since the Great Depression.

Touted as a much-needed solution for Wall Street greed, President Obama said, “Because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes. There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period.”

Yet, before the ink had dried, the first signs of the law’s negative effects emerged.

The three largest credit-rating agencies – Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings – immediately alerted bond issuers not to use their ratings, as they assess their legal exposure created by the bill.

This will affect the $1.4 million bond market, made up largely of consumer loans.

New bond sales – required by law to include credit rating information in all mortgage, auto, student loan and credit card loan documentation — will come to an abrupt halt.

Unfortunately, most Americans are unaware of the new law – much less how it will directly affect their daily lives.

The bill was passed with nearly unanimous opposition by Republicans, citing the bill will hurt families still hurting from the recession.

“Millions of Americans are struggling to find jobs,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., “And yet all they see in Washington are Democrats passing massive bills that, at their core, seem to have one thing in common: more job loss.

“The White House will declare this bill a victory. But for millions of Americans struggling to find work, for millions of small-business owners bracing themselves for all the new regulations they’ll have to deal with, for ordinary Americans who just wanted to see an end to the bailouts, this bill is no victory.”

House Republican leadership has called for the financial law’s repeal.

“The real pain caused by this bill will be felt on Main Street,” said Republican Study Committee chairman Tom Price, R-Ga. “Ordinary companies will now face much higher costs if they try to hedge against common business risks like rising energy prices.  And the new agency, supposedly charged with protecting consumers, will actually make even credit-worthy families and businesses unable to access the credit they need to invest in their futures.

“Dodd-Frank would not have prevented the current financial crisis, and it will not stop the next one. This is not financial reform.  House Republicans introduced a plan over a year ago to fix the financial sector with common sense reforms aimed at the actual root causes of the crisis. Democrats instead chose to give Washington unprecedented control over Americans’ economic choices while ensuring the practice of taxpayer bailouts continues uninterrupted.”

Derek V. Baker, director of congressional affairs for Americans for Limited Government, said, “Only in Washington can a bill be signed in to law in response to one of America’s greatest financial collapses with two of the prime culprits of the collapse on hand to receive praise for their efforts. Though there are multiple reasons for the housing market collapse and subsequent financial meltdown that ensued, it is a fact that the government policies aggressive pursued and implemented by Sen. Dodd and Rep. Frank to rig the market and force lenders to meet artificial loan thresholds and quotas were a driving force behind the 2008 financial crisis as well.

“And yesterday, they got rewarded for their efforts with an ‘attaboy’ from the president of the United States.”

Read more at CitizenLink

Dodd-Frank Finance ‘Reform’ Sows Seeds of Next Financial Crisis

The Dodd-Frank Assault on Economic Recovery

Contrary to Barack Obama’s rhetoric about protecting consumers, his new financial reform law represents a dangerous big government power grab that willfully ignores the true roots of the recent financial crisis.

It is also the latest example of America’s “march to Marxism,” the not-so-gradual implementation of a command economic system in which the free market is taxed and regulated into oblivion while new and expanded government bureaucracies wield unprecedented power.  Like last year’s failed economic stimulus (which was nothing but a bureaucratic bailout) and this year’s health care reform law (the largest entitlement expansion in a generation), Obama’s latest Orwellian scheme is once again being sold to the public as a necessary, even responsible measure.

“Because of this reform, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes,” Obama said. “There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts, period.”

Of course as Obama was making this pronouncement, the taxpayer tab for bailing out government-owned mortgage behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to soar.  That bailout will now cost taxpayers at least $400 billion, according to the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, although a deteriorating housing market could push the total above $1 trillion.

Among the chief culprits of the 2008 collapse, Fannie and Freddie became a central repository for much of the toxic debt associated with government-mandated, high-risk loans – like the $2.4 trillion pumped by the government into “mortgages for affordable housing” in 2000.

“Had Fannie and Freddie not been there to buy these loans, most of them would never have been made,” writes Mark A. Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. “And had the taxpayer not been standing behind Fannie and Freddie, they would have been unable to fund such large purchases of subprime mortgages.”

Ironically, the chief author of Obama’s so-called reform bill – Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) – has had a front-row seat to this brewing crisis for years.  Yet rather than correctly diagnosing and fixing the problem, he used his influence to block efforts that could have helped prevent the meltdown.

Read more at Rasmussen Reports

Dodd-Frank Finance ‘Reform’ Sows Seeds of Next Financial Crisis