Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Pelosi’

Last month, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi claimed that unemployment benefits “creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”

Following Nancy Pelosi’s logic, she should be thrilled to hear that the number of first-time filers for unemployment insurance rose to 500,000 last week—the highest in nine months. However, paying more people not to work will not stimulate the economy or create any jobs. As Arthur Laffer explains in his Wall Street Journal column,

The flaw in their logic is that when it comes to higher unemployment benefits or any other stimulus spending, the resources given to the unemployed have to be taken from someone else….While the unemployed may spend more as a result of higher unemployment benefits, those people from whom the resources are taken will spend less. In an economy, the income effects from a transfer payment always sum to zero. Quite simply, there is no stimulus from higher unemployment benefits.

Unlike the private sector, government is unable to foster economic growth since it does not have any wealth of its own. Nancy Pelosi who claimed that “we could slip back and have another recession” if Congress didn’t pass an unpaid $34 billion unemployment insurance bill, fails to acknowledge the danger of excessive unemployment benefits.

Currently, unemployed American workers can generally collect unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks—about 2 years. But how much further is Nancy Pelosi willing to extend these unemployment benefits? At what point is enough, enough?

Read more at American Majority

American reliance on government at all-time high

In a welfare state, how much is ‘enough’?

Pelosi to Aspiring Musicians: Quit Your Job, Taxpayers Will Cover Your Health Care

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

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Why don’t they start with investigating who’s funding this multi-level monument to radical Islam?   Hamas, a terrorist organization, has come out publicly in support.   Are they not the least bit interested in whether terrorists are funding it? 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is suggesting a coordinated effort is behind the opposition to a proposed mosque and community center near Ground Zero, saying the whole dispute has been “ginned up” for political purposes and she supports a probe into those opponents. 

Commenting publicly for the first time on the Park 51 project, Pelosi said the issue was posing a distraction and that some organized force is behind it. 

“There is no question that there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some,” she said in remarks posted Tuesday in a video on the San Francisco Chronicle website. “And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque (is) being funded.” 

Read more at Fox News

Pelosi supports probe of mosque opponents

Feds funding Ground Zero imam’s Mideast trip

The President Distorts Arguments on Ground Zero Mosque

Ground Zero Mosque: An Islamic Victory?

It cannot be said often enough that Washington is a city of endless fairy tales. Politicians in both parties can be found spinning these fantasies, but the yarns have been coming especially fast and furious since President Obama and his two best buddies — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — have been running the government. They spun two new fantasies just this week.

The first was that without the latest Obama-Reid-Pelosi government bailout, at least 100,000 teachers would lose their jobs this fall. That’s why the $26 billion “stimulus” bill passed by the House in an “emergency” session included $10 billion for “job creation.” That’s a charming legend for the gullible.

The reality, as the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci noted, is that “it’s common practice for school districts to overestimate the number of teachers that will be laid off in advance of budgets being set, and in advance of the school year.” So the vast majority of those dire warnings of 100,000 teachers being laid off were mostly just hot air.

And here’s something else to ponder: If it cost $10 billion to save 100,000 teachers’ jobs, they are each being paid $100,000 a year. Since the national average teacher salary is just over $54,000 a year, somebody — federal bureaucrats? — is making a bundle on overhead.

The second was the assertion by the Medicare trustees in their annual report to Congress that Obamacare “improves the financial outlook for Medicare substantially.” That assessment was based on multiple assumptions that, frankly, defy political reality.

Read more at the Washington Examiner

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

Democratic House members are so worried about the fall elections they’re leaving Washington on July 30, a full week earlier than normal—and they won’t return until mid-September. Members gulped when National Journal’s Charlie Cook, the Beltway’s leading political handicapper, predicted last month “the House is gone,” meaning a GOP takeover. He thinks Democrats will hold the Senate, but with a significantly reduced majority.

The rush to recess gives Democrats little time to pass any major laws. That’s why there have been signs in recent weeks that party leaders are planning an ambitious, lame-duck session to muscle through bills in December they don’t want to defend before November. Retiring or defeated members of Congress would then be able to vote for sweeping legislation without any fear of voter retaliation.

In the House, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters last month that for bills like “card check“—the measure to curb secret-ballot union elections—”the lame duck would be the last chance, quite honestly, for the foreseeable future.”

Other lame-duck possibilities?  Senate ratification of the New Start nuclear treaty, a federally mandated universal voter registration system to override state laws, and a budget resolution to lock in increased agency spending.

Then there is pork. A Senate aide told me that “some of the biggest porkers on both sides of the aisle are leaving office this year, and a lame-duck session would be their last hurrah for spending.” Likely suspects include key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congress’s “favor factory,” such as Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter and Utah Republican Bob Bennett.

Conservative groups such as FreedomWorks are alarmed at the potential damage, and they are demanding that everyone in Congress pledge not to take up substantive legislation in a post-election session. “Members of Congress are supposed to represent their constituents, not override them like sore losers in a lame-duck session,” Rep. Tom Price, head of the Republican Study Committee, told me.

It’s been almost 30 years since anything remotely contentious was handled in a lame-duck session, but that doesn’t faze Democrats who have jammed through ObamaCare and are determined to bring the financial system under greater federal control.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

And “the Word”, in Pelosi’s view, would support, say, killing unborn babies, and stealing from your neighbor so you can “do good” with the spoils?   Apparently it’s OK for Leftists to invoke religion in politics, so long as they can twist it to support their radical agenda.  Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.  

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says she believes she must pursue public policies “in keeping with the values” of Jesus Christ, ”The Word made Flesh.”

Pelosi, who is a Catholic and who favors legalized abortion, voted against the ban on partial-birth abortion that was enacted into law in 2003.
 
At a May 6 Catholic Community Conference on Capitol Hill, the speaker said: “They ask me all the time, ‘What is your favorite this? What is your favorite that? What is your favorite that?’ And one time, ‘What is your favorite word?’ And I said, ‘My favorite word? That is really easy. My favorite word is the Word, is the Word. And that is everything. It says it all for us. And you know the biblical reference, you know the Gospel reference of the Word.”

“And that Word,” Pelosi said, “is, we have to give voice to what that means in terms of public policy that would be in keeping with the values of the Word. The Word. Isn’t it a beautiful word when you think of it? It just covers everything. The Word.
 
“Fill it in with anything you want. But, of course, we know it means: ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.’ And that’s the great mystery of our faith. He will come again. He will come again. So, we have to make sure we’re prepared to answer in this life, or otherwise, as to how we have measured up.”

Read more at CNS News

The Ugly Side of “Social Justice” Theology

What Would Jesus Steal?

From the Washington Examiner:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., blamed the Bush administration for any lack of oversight leading up to the Gulf oil spill. The Obama administration, on the other hand, is blameless.

From Talk Radio News Service:

“Many of the people appointed in the Bush administration are still burrowed in the agencies that are supposed to oversee the [oil] industry,” Pelosi said when asked if Democrats could have prevented or mitigated the crisis by keeping a closer watch on the industry.

Added the Speaker, “the cozy relationships between the Bush administration’s agency leadership and the industry is clear…I’ve heard no complaints from my members about the way the president has handled it,” Pelosi stated.

On Friday, the Washington Examiner requested that Speaker Pelosi’s office release the list of Bush appointees to whom she was referring. We’ll let you know when we hear back.

Obama’s Oil Spill Response Key Objective: Blame Bush

Dick Morris: Obama Should Quit Blaming Bush for Oil Spill

Never a dull moment with these clowns. 

View at EyeBlast.tv

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this week that thanks to the new health-care reform law, musicians and other creative types could quit their jobs and focus on developing their talents because taxpayers would fund their health care coverage.
 
“We see it as an entrepreneurial bill,” Pelosi said, “a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.”

Read more at CNS News

This woman is SUCH a piece of work!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she has told Catholic cardinals, archbishops and bishops that she wants them to speak from the pulpit for immigration reform and tell Catholics who oppose it that reform “is a manifestation of our living the gospels.”

“I want you to instruct your, whatever the communication is — the people, some of them, oppose immigration reform are sitting in those pews and you have to tell them that this is a ‘manifestation of our living the gospels,’” said Pelosi. “Our patron saint of San Francisco, St. Francis of Assisi, he said, ‘preach the gospel –sometimes use words.’ We need the words to be said because it isn’t being picked up automatically.”
 
Pelosi, a Catholic and a Trinity College alumnus, said the estimated 12 million people currently living in America illegally cannot be told by society to go back to where they came from or “go to jail.”
 
“We have to respect that dignity and worth (of the indiviual), and recognize that the Church has an important role to play in that,” she said. “We don’t — as a practical matter, we can’t say to people, 12 million of you, ‘go back to wherever you came from or go to jail.’”

Read more at CNS News

Funny, Pelosi has never applied the church doctrine of the “dignity and worth” of individuals to the unborn.   Now she wants them to apply it to her chosen potential voting bloc?   How convenient!

Perhaps Pelosi can offer a scripture reference that supposedly supports her position that lawbreaking trespassers can’t be told to leave or face the consequences?

They don’t want people to see how bad it’s gotten, just before an election.

With the clock ticking on Congress’ working calendar in this midterm election year, it appears increasingly unlikely the House Democratic leadership will pass a budget resolution for the coming fiscal year — a move Republicans will seek to exploit for political gain in November.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has candidly acknowledged that politics is a factor in the Democrats’ decision-making on the issue. 

“It’s difficult to pass budgets in election years, because they reflect what the [fiscal] status is,” the Maryland Democrat told reporters last month. “We will see whether we have the votes to pass it.”

Even though Hoyer and his fellow Democrats argue that it was the Bush administration that plunged the country into deep deficit spending, many Democrats — especially the fiscally conservative “Blue Dogs” — are loath to face constituents after voting in favor of a budget so heavily burdened by deficit spending, as any passed this year would surely be. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the deficit for this fiscal year will reach a record $1.5 trillion.

Read more at Fox News

Another power grab neatly tucked into a bill about something completely different. Way to be “transparent”!

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported on another little Easter egg in a bill cruising through Congress that would normally have followed Nancy Pelosi’s policy of discovery ex post facto. Democrats have pushed hard to get the financial-regulation reform bill unstuck in the Senate, mainly playing on class-warfare themes in painting the GOP as the party of eeeeeeevil Wall Street robber barons. However, the House version of the bill contains provisions that would put the Federal Trade Commission in position to start issuing rules on Internet transactions that would not only slow down business growth but also have no relevance at all to the financial collapse that prompted the bill.

This has become a pattern with this Congress and administration. Despite having large majorities in both chambers, Democrats refuse to use the legislative path to pass regulation — mainly because the regulations they want are too radical to pass. Instead, they shift the creation of regulation to agencies like the EPA and its “endangerment” finding for CO2, which would then require Congress and the President to undo rather than vote to impose in the first place.

Even considering that pattern, this is something out of the ordinary. Neither the FTC nor the Internet had anything to do with the Wall Street meltdown in 2008.  If this financial-regulation bill is so desperately needed, why did House Democrats lard it up with this power grab at the FTC?  Why does the FTC need any further authority over the Internet, where fraud and abuse regulations apply already?   The Internet economy has been one of the bright spots throughout a dismal period of recent history.  Do we need to attack the one area that shows growth and promise?

Nancy Pelosi knows that her Democratic majorities won’t last much longer.  She wants to leave behind a Byzantine structure of unaccountable bureaucrats and embedded power to accomplish what she can’t get through the legitimate processes of lawmaking, and she’s hiding those efforts in so-called emergency legislation.  Keep an eye on this during the conference committee on the financial-regulation bill; it’s not in the Senate version, but will almost certainly reappear in the conference report.

Read more at Hot Air

With the stunning emergence of the consumption-based Value Added Tax (VAT) as a legitimate public policy option, the Obama administration has now all but made it official: There is no European economic idea too extreme for 21st century America. Even if the Europeans themselves are largely headed in the opposite direction.

The only reason VAT is even on the table right now is that bureaucrats like VAT enthusiast Nancy Pelosi have an appetite for spending that far outpaces Americans’ willingness to cough up their hard-earned dough. Every statehouse and city council across the land is literally out of money, and turning to the only people who can print the stuff: Washington.

The federal government spent $3.5 trillion last year while taking in just $2.1 trillion, producing a deficit-to-Gross Domestic Product ratio of 10%, a level not seen since World War II. By contrast, the European Union requires member countries to keep deficits at 3% of GDP. If America was in Europe, we’d be Greece.

Read more at the New York Post

This just in: the “most ethical congress in history” has agreed that adding a second story will make government more efficient.

Hatch Says It’s ’Nuts’ to Think House Vote Ends Health Issue