There simply is no other way to explain the statements of White House Chief of Staff Jacob Lew this morning on CNN’s State of the Union. Lew was asked by Candy Crawley about a recent statement by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid indicating he would not be bringing a vote on the budget to the Senate floor.

CROWLEY: “I want to read for our viewers something that Sen. Harry Reid, the Democrat Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate, who said, ‘We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year. It’s done, we don’t need to do it.’”

LEW: “He’s not saying that they shouldn’t pass a budget. But we also need to be honest. You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support. So unless… unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed.”

This is patently false.

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The left has been messaging for over a year that the Senate should abolish the filibuster.  They now are desperate to seize complete control of one chamber of the federal legislature so they can play defense against Speaker of the House John Boehner’s (R-OH) conservative agenda and lock Senate Republicans out of the legislative process.  Now is the time and the liberals are ready to pull the trigger of what some call the “Nuclear Option” to restrict the rights of individual members of the Senate to engage in extended debate.

Liberals in the Senate are ready for high noon today as the moment for them to start a procedural fight to chip away at the filibuster.  They hope this ploy will result in a successful power grab.  Liberal Senators and allies on the left have been preparing for months for this moment so they can strong arm through the Senate a change in the rules that will grant them complete control over the Senate’s agenda.

Expect liberals in the Senate to offer a resolution to lower the threshold to shut off debate.  They plan on arguing that the Senate is not a continuing body, notwithstanding the fact that the Senate’s rules state otherwise.  They are intent on forcing through this change to the rules with only a simple majority of Senators.  This ploy is a violation of the constitutionally authorized rules of the Senate and may be an unconstitutional power grab.

I wrote almost a year ago on Big Government that the filibuster is the friend of conservatives.

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As some may recall, the filibuster-proof Senate did not move on cap-and-trade. In the past four years of Senate control, they did not try to ratify the US-signed, never unsigned Kyoto Protocol. Even after the filibuster-proof majority was lost by just a vote, the Senate failed to lift a finger to consider cap-n-trade. There just weren’t enough Democrats willing to buy in, or risk their jobs on this folly.

As my colleague Myron Ebell put it in Politico:

“The American people figured out that cap-and-trade was code for higher energy prices and reacted with righteous fury when House Members [passed the bill before going] home after the vote for the Fourth of July recess. After hearing the outcry, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided to postpone Senate debate on cap-and-trade and instead take up health care reform, which enjoyed much more public support.”

Funny ’cause it’s true.

So, naturally, over the weekend the Washington Post op-ed pages spilled forth the ritual line: It’s those mean Republicans wot done it. And boy are they blowing it.

So goes today’s argle bargle from Team Soros, acting out in response to the election and seeing their incremental progress toward energy rationing about to be swept aside. Now, after failing in a Left-wing cram-down, they wag their fingers and lecture us that the global warming agenda really should be a conservative priority but, hey, if we’re willing to cede the ground to them they’re more than happy to take credit! Don’t know what you’re missing! Although this will continue for two years, it is already tiresome.

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I’m mad as hell, and I’m going to do something about it.

I’ve been to Missouri quite a few times since becoming “Joe the Plumber”: Rolling hills, farmland, beautiful rivers, vibrant cities, honest people. So I’m not in the least surprised that the rural town of Caulfield has produced a true statesman. A statesman that all freedom-loving Americans have searched for since the Reagan years.

I AM surprised and disgusted that these same “conservatives” who have been shouting fiscal conservatism from the mountain tops are now throwing a true statesman under the bus instead of rallying to his side.

Chuck Purgason is a State Senator for a portion of southern Missouri. He’s worked his way up from the House to the Senate ever since his “Tea Party” moment in 1996. He has proven the hard way that you actually can be a man of integrity in a government full of wolves. When liberal U.S. Senator Kit Bond (R) decided to retire, he anointed RINO Congressman Roy Blunt (R) to be his heir apparent. After Roy Blunt’s votes for the TARP Bailout, Cash for Clunkers, No Child Left Behind, taking the most lobbyist money, etc. (I really could go on and on and on . . . ) Chuck said there was no way he was going to let Blunt represent Missouri in the US Senate.

State Senator Chuck Purgason threw his hat into the race for US Senate against mega power broker Roy Blunt.

Now this is where the story begins to get interesting. Just a week or so ago, Democratic Governor Jay Nixon ($170,000+ donations from unions) called for a special session to pass a $150M “tax cut” to Ford Motor Company. Every Republican started lining up like good little bees because tax cuts are good – right? Besides, Missouri has a lot of unions – they wouldn’t win their re-elections if they didn’t vote for this bill.

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Rand Paul’s controversial remarks about the 1964 Civil Rights Act illustrate what I have been saying for years, that Republicans would benefit tremendously from knowing and appreciating the heritage of our Grand Old Party.  That landmark legislation was the culmination of a century of efforts by Republicans to protect African-Americans from their Democrat oppressors.  Let’s look at the facts.

On his deathbed in 1874, Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA) told a Republican colleague: “You must take care of the civil rights bill – my bill, the civil rights bill.  Don’t let it fail.”  In March 1875, the Republican-controlled 43rd Congress followed up the GOP’s 1866 Civil Rights Act and 1871 Civil Rights Act with the most comprehensive civil rights legislation ever.  A Republican president, Ulysses Grant, signed the bill into law that same day.

Among its provisions, the 1875 Civil Rights Act banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.  Sound familiar?  Though struck down by the Supreme Court eight years later, the 1875 Civil Rights Act would be reborn as the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

During the twenty years of the FDR and Truman administrations, the Democrats had refused to enact any civil rights legislation.  In contrast, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which had been written by his Attorney General, a former Chairman of the Republican National Committee.  The original draft would have permitted the federal government to sue anyone violating another person’s constitutional rights, but this powerful provision would have to wait until the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  The bill had to be weakened considerably to secure enough Democrat votes to pass, so violations would be civil, not criminal offenses, and penalties were light.  Vice President Richard Nixon helped overcome a Democrat filibuster in the Senate.  The GOP then strengthened enforcement with its 1960 Civil Rights Act.

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The people of Pennsylvania, and Americans across the country, will not quickly forget April 28, 2009 – the day Arlen Specter broke the trust of voters and switched political parties in order to save his political career. After telling voters that he would stay a Republican, Specter announced one year ago today that he would switch to the Democratic Party because he was, “…not willing to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”

To commemorate the one-year anniversary of Specter’s jump, hardworking Americans can tell Specter exactly what they think of his opportunism by logging on to www.SpecterSwitch.com and making a one-time, one-day-only donation.
American families have paid a steep price for Specter’s switch.

Only five weeks after telling voters that he would remain a Republican because it was critical to prevent Democrats from attaining 60 senate votes (The Hill, 03/17/09), Specter jumped ship and quickly became the automatic 60th vote and a rubber stamp for Harry Reid’s extreme and partisan agenda. In fact, just two weeks ago, The Hill newspaper even called Specter “a model Democrat,” (The Hill, 04/07/10).

Because of Specter’s blind obedience to Harry Reid’s big-government agenda, hardworking Americans will be saddled with trillion dollar deficits, sky-rocketing taxes, increased government control over their health care decisions, and more taxpayer-funded backroom deals.   (more…)

Yesterday, Republicans held firm against bailouts to big banks and Wall Street.  They held firm against creation of a super regulatory bureaucracy.  They held firm against a massive government intervention in our economy.  All in all it was a good day.

But a word to the wise:  DO NOT SNATCH DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY.

Republican leaders have been making noises about a compromise measure for a week.  Now is not the time to get weak.

The Democrats continue to deny the bill is a bailout.  But they are slowing losing that battle.

NPR said:

“A vote for reform is a vote to put a stop to taxpayer-funded bailouts,” Obama said in his speech in New York on Thursday.

I cannot find any experts — of any party — who are willing to agree with Obama on this one.

“We’re not seeing a very forceful step on the too-big-to-fail problem,” said Carmen Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland. “If there’s any doubt that the crisis may be systemic, we will bail out again.”

So, if a major bank says, “Hey, save us or the economy will go under,” the government’s going to save the bank. Full stop.

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Just prior to Barack Obama announcing self-imposed conditions on if and when America would use nuclear weapons, he made a North Carolina audience wilt under a 17-minute response to a fairly simple question.

According to a rather humorous blog by the Washington Post’s Anne E. Kornblut, Obama meandered for 17 minutes and 2,500 words in response to a woman wondering if  it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” reform.  “We are over-taxed as it is,” she stated.

His best answer, from his perspective, would have simply been to have said, “Yes.”  But he knows that’s not a popular answer.  Instead, he kept  talking,  on and on, to the point where listeners no longer cared about what he was saying or why. They just want him to shut up.

His discursive answer – more than 2,500 words long — wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, “F-Map”). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as “FICA”).

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From the Associated Press:

A bipartisan jobs bill cleared a GOP filibuster on Monday with critical momentum provided by the Senate’s newest Republican, Scott Brown of Massachusetts.

The 62-30 tally to advance the measure to a final vote on Wednesday gives both President Barack Obama and Capitol Hill Democrats a much-needed victory—even though the measure in question is likely to have only a modest boost on hiring.

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Thanks to numerous BigGovernment.com readers taking action, along with other concerned Americans, several national organizations, and Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) hold on Obama’s NLRB Nominee Craig Becker – several senators changed their positions and voted with the senate’s newest Senator, Scott Brown (R-MA) to continue debate on Becker’s qualifications to serve as one of five National Relations Board Members.

President Barack Obama’s nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board has failed on a 52-33 vote. The nomination required 60 votes to proceed. (Politico)

The two Democrat Senators who voted against cloture are Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Ben Nelson (D-NE).

CAUTION

Though Craig Becker’s was put on hold as a result of the cloture vote; President Obama may still appoint Becker to national Labor relations Board as a recess appointment to the Board as early as February 15^th if congress keeps its current schedule.

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Yet another leftist has attacked the Senate filibuster.  The chorus from the left is growing and one can only assume that this coordinated attack is evidence that liberal Senators are readying a challenge to the Senate’s filibuster.  The left absolutely hates the fact that they have to deal with that pesky Constitution that protects and promotes transparency, debate and dissent.  They are intent on tossing aside the idea in the Constitution that we are a democratic republic with States being represented by two Senators with the right to extended debate and unlimited amendment.

This conspiracy by left wingers has a specific goal — to abolish dissent in the Senate, exterminate Republican participation in the democratic process, and marginalize moderate Democrats.  It seems the left is willing to stomp all over the Senate’s rules to get a public option, regulate Wall Street into the Stone Age and pass global warming legislation before the end of one of the coldest winters on record in American history.

Harold Meyerson groused in the L.A. Times that the Senate has yet to follow the House in establishing government run health care through the establishment of a Public Option for ObamaCare:

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Left wingers (including but not limited to the New York Times, Mother Jones, Think Progress, Washington Monthly and Ezra Klein) are trying to eliminate dissent in Congress by engaging in a coordinated attack on the idea of the Senate filibuster.  Clearly, the left hates extended debate and they are advocating that Vice President Joe Biden eliminate the filibuster by decree as President of the United States Senate.  They have no shame.

If you hate big government, you should love the Senate filibuster.  The filibuster serves the good government purposes of slowing legislation.  This allows citizens to understand and participate in the legislative process, provides scrutiny for complicated legislation and slows the process to confirm nominees.  The left absolutely hates the filibuster, because the filibuster prevents liberal Democrats from steamrolling moderate Democrats and Republicans when trying to pass legislation or confirming extremist judges with minimal debate.  A veteran Senate staffer tells Big Government that “the filibuster is a tool to slow down and make people really consider things. For those that believe in freedom and limited government the less the Congress does the better.”  Of course the left’s goal is to exterminate the filibuster from the Senate rules by setting the table for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to argue that a filibuster is unconstitutional, then for Vice President Biden to order that the rule be ignored.  (more…)

From The Hill:

Opponents of today’s motion to proceed on healthcare legislation who are pressuring others to vote no are practicing “Orwellian” tactics, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said today.

Reid appeared to take a shot at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who spoke right before him.

“Now he said, anyone who votes for this is going to have a lot of explaining to do,” Reid said during his floor speech today. “Now that is really Orwellian. That is Orwellian. Have a lot of explaing to do if they allow a debate to continue?”

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Either Thursday or later this week, Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev) wants the Senate to vote on a “motion to proceed” on the Senate’s version of the healthcare bill. That wouldn’t be so bad except for the fact that it has barely been seen by anyone in the Senate. At least not as far as most Senators are concerned. Why is that? Because the bill has not been shown to them with sufficient time to study it, that’s why.

What Reid wants is for the Senate to vote to proceed on a bill that has not been seen, not read, not studied by the very Senators from whom he wants to force a vote. If this bill is so important, why isn’t it imperative that our Senators actually get to see the thing they are expected to vote on?

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SEIU President Andy Stern, took a couple of minutes to discuss with us recent developments in the Health Care debate, his support for a public option in the bill and the mistakes committed by ACORN.