The Left has frequently salivated over Obama’s post-partisan mojo. This post-partisan rhetoric has been so much hot-air, all show and no stay. Remember the president’s speech shortly after the unspeakable tragedy in Tucson wherein he said, “But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.” How quickly those words were forgotten by the man who uttered them.

Hope of civility and bipartisan cooperation soon evaporated. President Obama wasted no time blaming Republicans for wanting dirty air and dirty water and not caring about the middle class who have suffered the most under his failed policies. He has prioritized his support for his friends in the labor unions while ignoring the failure of Senate Democrats to pass a budget in nearly 1000 days. He has done nothing since his Tucson speech to indicate he is post-partisan; indeed he has simply heated up his rhetoric against Republicans. His decision to reject the Keystone pipeline is just the latest far-Left pandering by his administration; in fact here is what Senate Democrats had to say about the Keystone Pipeline project,

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA): “Landrieu says she’d support Keystone in payroll/ui/doc fix bill. Says ‘good deal’of D & R support for it.” (Trish Turner, Twitter, 12/15/11)

Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK): “Another sticking point is that Republicans inserted in their bill language that would fast-track the proposed Keystone X-L oil pipeline extension from Canada down to the Lower 48.  …Senator Begich is supportive of moving the project forward and his office says that’s not a problem.” (Alaska Public Radio, 12/14/11)

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND): “I personally think the pipeline is absolutely in the national interest.  It’ll help us reduce our dependence on foreign energy, at least foreign sources that are hostile to our interests… I, for one, on this side would hope that this could be part of a final package…” (Floor remarks, 12/14/11)

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Repeal and Replace. That was the common refrain when House Republicans actually repealed ObamaCare in their chamber a year ago. Of course, the Senate Democrats rejected the repeal. But now there is a chance- some would say even a strong chance- that ObamaCare will be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court before the election in November. If the high Court decides that the individual mandate, which forces individuals to purchase health insurance, is unconstitutional, and that President Obama’s signature legislation cannot go forward without that mandate, ObamaCare will stop dead in its tracks. Then what?

That’s where the Replace part comes in. Now, I won’t whine and complain about how things seem to take a long time to get done in Washington, but the replacement for ObamaCare should be on the assembly line, waiting to be packaged and sent to stores near all of us. We know the talking points that make good common sense: purchase health insurance across state lines, own our health insurance policies so they are portable, tort reform, free-market principles, etc. Of course, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), the reliable person that he is, has thought through a great deal of this, and has based his conservative answer to health care reform on his Medicare reform proposal.

But, where are the details and how do we plug ObamaCare’s replacement into our lives if the law is declared unconstitutional?

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Democrats are abandoning their demand for a surtax on millionaires to help finance payroll tax cuts in a sign that lawmakers are trying to broker a compromise on Congress’ highest-profile year-end dispute.

Even so, there is no clear path to quick bipartisan agreement on the legislation, which would prevent an automatic Social Security tax increase on 160 million workers and the expiration of jobless benefits for people out of work the longest. Both would occur Jan. 1 without congressional action.

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From the Associated Press;

A bitterly divided and poll-battered Congress has nearly worked its way out of a nasty fight over disaster aid, but only by abruptly abandoning efforts to immediately refill almost empty federal disaster relief accounts.

Instead, with the administration assuring lawmakers that the immediate infusion of $1 billion in disaster money wasn’t needed to avoid a cutoff this week, Senate leaders moved quickly Monday to jettison the money from a pending Democratic measure and instead pass bare-bones legislation to avert a government shutdown at week’s end.

That measure, approved by the Senate on a 79-12 vote, would keep the government running until mid-November.

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From The Hill:

Senior administration officials met with Senate Democrats for an hour and a half on Thursday to answer their complaints about President Obama’s jobs bill.

Democratic lawmakers voiced objections to several of the president’s proposals to pay for the $447 billion stimulus package, including an elimination of tax breaks for the oil-and-gas industry.

David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the president, acknowledged after a marathon meeting in the Senate’s Mansfield Room that not all Democrats are sold on the plan.

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Senate Democrats, flatlining America one budget at time

Think back to April 29, 2011. Was there anything special about that day? Yes, Prince William married Kate Middleton in a regal affair at Westminster Abbey, but there is something more important about that date for Americans. April 29^th, in fact, marked two years since Senate Democrats last summoned the courage to pass a budget funding the Federal government.  That’s two entire years of shirking their constitutionally mandated duty.

Let’s revisit the past few budget cycles. In 2009, Democrats were riding high and controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. They were able to pass a budget for fiscal year 2010 in a timely manner.  It was certainly not a budget that conservatives celebrated, but, hey, let’s give the Democrats points for actually following the directive of the Constitution. Of course, the winds of change were blowing in 2009, courtesy of the tea party movement.

Fast-forward to the spring of 2010, time for Democrats (still controlling both houses of Congress) to unveil their budget for fiscal year 2011 . . . a budget we’ve still yet to see one year later and we are smack dab in the middle of said fiscal year.  Oh yes, let’s not forget that 2010 was a key election cycle, one that was not favorable to Democrats. Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, saw his seat as being very much in play and did what is becoming all-too-common for the left these days: he punted. Instead of making the tough decisions required of a leader, particularly during the trying economic times we faced last year and continue to face, Reid simply did nothing. He saw his reelection as being supremely more important than solving the country’s woes.

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From Associated Press:

Perilously close to a government shutdown, congressional leaders reached agreement with the White House late Friday night on a deal to cut tens of billions of dollars in federal spending and avert the closure.

House Speaker John Boehner informed the GOP rank and file of the accord, reached in grueling negotiations over several weeks, an official said.

“We have an agreement,” concurred a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Jon Summers.

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According to news reports, Team Obama and House Republicans are at least $50 billion apart in the budget negotiations for FY2011. I’m willing to bet that Team Obama and Senate Democrats won’t agree to even $20 billion in spending cuts.

And that’s a far cry from the GOP’s annualized $100 billion pledge-to-America mark, and an even farther cry from the hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts that are necessary over the next five to ten years. As I recall, the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission suggested more than $1 trillion in cuts to the domestic discretionary baseline over ten years. I think the Paul Ryan plan would do the same.

Surely the Tea Party advocates will push the GOP to stay on message and stay the course. That’s what last November’s elections were all about. And if a satisfactory deal cannot be reached, one that keeps the GOP spending-cut pledge and includes a spending-limit rule with real teeth, then why not shut down the government?

Reading through various reports from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, you get the sense that no great harm will come from a shutdown. Social Security checks will be mailed. Other benefit payments will be met. Air-traffic controllers will do their jobs. Border protection and military operations will continue. Uniformed military personnel will be exempted. The Post Office will do its business uninterrupted. And incoming revenues can be designated for interest payment on the debt.

Doesn’t sound that bad to me. It sure isn’t the end of the world.

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From the Associated Press:

The Senate on Wednesday sent President Barack Obama a Republican-drafted bill to trim $4 billion from the budget, completing hastily processed legislation aimed at keeping partisan budget divisions from causing a government shutdown.

The Senate cleared the measure by an overwhelming 91-9 vote that gives the GOP an early but modest victory in its drive to rein in government. Obama has until Friday to sign the measure and keep federal offices open and operations intact. The House passed the legislation on Tuesday.

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From Politico:

House Republicans passed a bill to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care plan Wednesday, taking their first major step toward rolling back the massive overhaul that has dominated the American political landscape for almost two years.

The vote was 245 to 189, and unanimous GOP support gave the vote the same partisan feel of the March vote to pass the law, underscoring once again the hardened political lines of the health care debate. Only three Democrats backed the repeal, a smaller number than Republicans had once predicted.

The bill will head next to the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has promised to block it. If it did receive a vote, the repeal bill would be unlikely to draw support from even a majority of senators. Even so, House Republican leaders have challenged Reid to give the bill a vote since Democrats, who control the chamber, have little to fear.

Republicans rejected a procedural maneuver by the Democratic minority to make repeal ineffective unless a majority of the House and Senate withdraw from the federal health benefits program within 30 days after passage by each chamber.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the effort was “an attempt to derail an appeal of the Obamacare bill.”

House members flooded the floor throughout the day, delivering short but occasionally impassioned speeches that echoed their party’s talking points.

Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) called the law “a trillion-dollar tragedy.”

Rep. John Duncan (R-Tenn.) described it as “job-killing” and “socialistic.”

Rep. Kevin Duncan (R-Texas) said “health care is too important to get it wrong, and Obamacare got it wrong.”

But Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) took the debate to a new level late Tuesday night, suggesting to an empty House floor that Republican rhetoric around health care reform is akin to Nazi propaganda that fed anti-Semitism during World War II.

Read the whole thing here. Apparently, Rep. Cohen didn’t get the memo about the new emphasis on ‘civility.’ Doesn’t the left get bored with the “nazi” analogies. Anything else in their book of tricks?

From Reuters:

The House of Representatives will resume debate next week on legislation to repeal President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare overhaul, a House Republican spokesman said on Thursday.

The House had been expected to act this week on the repeal bill, but the vote was postponed after a shooting spree in Arizona killed six people and critically wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Debate on the healthcare bill will resume next week, said Brad Dayspring, spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

A vote on repeal is set for Wednesday.

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The Hill has a month-by-month recap of 2010:

The grassroots conservative political movement made its clout felt the entire year, from the healthcare reform debate to GOP primaries and the general election last month.

Senior Democrats, ranging from Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.), aggressively attacked the Tea Party in the lead-up to the midterms, hoping that doing so would soften losses to the GOP. House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and other Republicans embraced the movement, believing its energy would benefit their party at the polls.

In the end, the Tea Party was in many ways a net asset for the GOP as Republicans grabbed control of the House and cut into the Democratic majority in the Senate.

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Today the Senate returns to session having not yet addressed Senator Chuck Schumer’s troubling legislation, the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act (“DISCLOSE Act”).  Senator Schumer sought and failed to pass the DISCLOSE Act – a bill that would restrict the First Amendment rights of Americans – by the Fourth of July, the day on which we celebrate our nation’s independence.

The DISCLOSE Act is a desperate attempt to influence the November elections, and minimize Democrat losses.  Senator Schumer and the legislation’s other sponsors aim to have a law on the books that will take effect prior to November regardless of whether a regulatory system is in place to enforce the burdensome new reporting requirements.  The Act, its reporting burdens, and penalties are set to take effect 30 days after it has been signed by President Obama.

• The DISCLOSE Act will require small businesses, corporations, and non-profit organizations to electronically file burdensome financial disclosure reports within 24 hours of making an independent expenditure.  Without action by the FEC, these groups will have to electronically file a form that does not yet exist, and face a $10,000 penalty should their filing be found inadequate.

• Radically expand the length of disclaimers on televised political advertisements.  The Act will compel the head of an organization to appear on screen in a “stand by your ad” disclaimer.  The top donor to an organization will also have to appear on camera to stand by the ad.  The names of additional top donors to the organization must be listed on screen for a period of six seconds.  These disclaimers will be the end of the 30 second advertisement, because over half of the time will be devoted to disclaimers.

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It seems the Democrats have the art of poor taste down to a science.  Who else would think to use an image of the World Trade Center, destroyed by terrorists in 2001 because the towers were a symbol of American greed, to attack a Republican candidate over Wall Street “greed?”

According to Politico, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ran an ad against Republican Scott Brown, accusing him of opposing a “plan to crack down on greed and corruption.”

Just when I think the Democrats can’t stoop any lower to retain the seat of the former champion of socialized medicine, they sink to using the tragedy of the World Trade Center.  But not in a way to say that Martha Coakley will stand up to terrorists - oh no, instead its used to exemplify what they see as the worst of America.

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The Democrats are holding a press conference at this afternoon to blast Senator Tom Coburn’s demand that new programs and increased spending approved by Congress be paid for.

At issue is a veterans bill that the Senators would like to pass and issue press releases praising themselves for supporting over Congress’ Veterans Day vacation.  Problem is the bill is not paid for and therefore is just another bounced checked to be charged to future generations of Americans who are already inheriting the $12 trillion debt created by Congress’ reckless addiction to borrowing and spending.   In addition to not being paid for, the bill discriminates against many vets who sacrificed for our nation and were injured as a result.

coburn letter –

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