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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(Reuters) – The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed on Thursday a bill to curb insider trading by lawmakers and other government officials, despite objections from both Democrats and Republicans that it was weaker than a version passed by the Senate last week.

The House voted 417-2 to pass the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, even though it did not include a provision to impose new regulations on Washington insiders who collect “political intelligence” from lawmakers and sell it to Wall Street. The Senate version included this proposal.

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The GOP Establishment we keep hearing about is real, and it is also doomed.

That will not change whether the Establishment’s candidate Mitt Romney wins in November or not.  After the election, the battle really starts; what is happening now are just skirmishes in a fight for control of the Republican Party.  Not the soul of the party – if it had one, it auctioned it off long ago – but the mechanism of the party.  The Grand Old Party matters only as a vehicle to carry our banner forward.

To do that, we need to seize control, and we do that by destroying the Establishment starting next November 7th.

Superficially, it might seem that we – the outsiders, the Tea Party, the conservatives, whatever the label – are outgunned by opponents with their hands on the reins of power, money in amounts we can’t hope to match, and pals in the media backing them.  But if we understand our strengths, and our opponents’ weaknesses, we can not only compete but eventually prevail.

First, let’s understand our opponent.

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On Thursday, the Senate voted 96-3 to ensure that the same insider trading laws that apply to citizens also extend  to members of Congress.

But as the Associated Press points out, elected officials enjoy at least seven legal exemptions that the rest of us do not:

The Senate’s 96-3 vote to ban members of Congress from using nonpublic information to inform their private investments brought with it important additional amendments that stand to shape the debate next week as the House takes up the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act.

In addition to outlawing members of Congress and their staffs from engaging in insider trading and requiring a 30 day public disclosure rule for all investments, an amendment by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) successfully expanded the STOCK Act to also include the executive branch’s 28,000 workers.  Sen. Shelby said the reason for his amendment , which passed on a 58-41 vote, is simple:

It only seems fair that executive branch officials who are already required to file annual financial reports, also be directed to meet the same additional reporting requirements being imposed on the legislative branch.

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The Senate voted 96 to 3 Thursday to prohibit members of Congress from using non-public information for personal financial gain but beat back a slew of amendments to further limit congressional perks.

The Senate action puts pressure on House Republicans to pass similar legislation to quell allegations of congressional self-dealing at a time when Congress’s approval rating is at an all-time low.

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Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s battle against congressional insider trading will enter a critical phase this week as the Senate is set to vote on a bill banning members of Congress from using material, nonpublic information to make private investments.

From USA Today:

Aware that most Americans would like to dump them all, members of Congress hope to regain some sense of trust by subjecting themselves to tougher penalties for insider trading and requiring they disclose stock transactions within 30 days.

A procedural vote Monday would allow the Senate later this week to pass a bill prohibiting members of Congress from using nonpublic information for their own personal benefit or “tipping” others to inside information that they could trade on.

The Senate is considering passage of the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act, which would ban members of Congress and their staffs from engaging in insider trading and would include a 30 day reporting requirement on all investments.  The Senate version of the bill is cosponsored by Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).  Prior to Peter Schweizer’s book Throw Them All Out and the 60 Minutes report based on his book, the STOCK Act had only four cosponsors in Congress.   Now, the bill has 230 cosponsors.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Aware that most Americans would like to dump them all, members of Congress hope to regain some sense of trust by subjecting themselves to tougher penalties for insider trading and requiring they disclose stock transactions within 30 days.

A procedural vote Monday would allow the Senate later this week to pass a bill prohibiting members of Congress from using nonpublic information for their own personal benefit or “tipping” others to inside information that they could trade on.

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As others have noted, this past Tuesday marked the 1,000th day since the Senate has passed a budget. Heritage’s Mike Brownfield explains:

Instead of respecting the people’s money and putting it to its appropriate use, the Senate has chosen to pass short-term “business as usual” continuing resolutions, one after another, all while government spending continues to skyrocket, deficits are exploding, the country’s credit rating is in jeopardy, Social Security and Medicare are in crisis states, and future generations are left holding the bag.

As we point out in our new video, plenty of great achievements in history have been made in less than 1,000 days. And all the American people are asking of the Senate is that they pass a budget. If Christopher Columbus can discover the New World in 70 days, why can’t the Senate pass a budget in less than 1,000 days?

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As Newt Gingrich’s challenge to the anointment of Mitt Romney heats up, the newest line of attack against the erratic former Speaker by the Romneyites is not so much that Newt is unelectable – that’s assumed, and not unreasonably.  It’s that in November the voters will recoil in horror at the Republican presidential ticket, and that Newt will take the GOP’s hopes for the Senate down with him, leaving Obama in total control of the Republic.

There are plenty of problems with a Newt Gingrich nomination – most of them a direct result of Newt’s own antics – but the developing conventional wisdom that he will be toxic to Republican Senate chances may just be totally off-base.  In fact, a Newt nomination could be the best possible thing for winning a GOP Senate majority – ironically because of people who don’t think he has a chance in hell in the general election.

The GOP has great expectations for the Senate in 2012 – winning just four seats (five if Senator Kirk fails to recover from his recent stroke and the Democratic governor of Illinois appoints another Roland Burris as the replacement before his traditional indictment) will capture the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body from the clutches of Harry Reid and the Democrats.

With the Democrat party playing defense on many more at-risk seats, the percentages are in the GOP’s favor.  Moreover, many of the senators up for elections are “conservative Democrats,” which mean flaming liberals who talk a good game about being “fiscally conservative” and “moderate” back home in their blood-red states.  With the Obama economy especially painful in the middle of the country – the administration’s stimulus money disproportionately rewarded the urban and academic communities whose support Obama is unshakeable – it should be a cakewalk not only to grab the majority but press on toward the magic number of 60.

Enter Newt.

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U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk underwent surgery today at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after suffering a stroke, his office said.

“On Saturday, Senator Kirk checked himself into Lake Forest Hospital, where doctors discovered a carotid artery dissection in the right side of his neck,” his office said in a statement.

“He was transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, where further tests revealed that he had suffered an ischemic stroke,” it said. “Early this morning, the senator underwent surgery to relieve swelling around his brain stemming from the stroke. The surgery was successful.

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On the heels of Newt Gingrich’s trouncing of Mitt Romney in the South Carolina primary, Republican Party brass are privately expressing deep concerns that former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s high unfavorable rating in national polls could prove catastrophic to the so-called “down ballot”–the House and Senate races under the presidential race–and may even threaten the Republican Party’s control of the House of Representatives.

GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, who previously served as Sen. John McCain’s senior campaign strategist, told MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow that if Mr. Gingrich wins next week’s Florida GOP primary, there will be “a panic and a meltdown of the Republican establishment that is beyond my ability to articulate in the English language. People will go crazy.”

Mr. Schmidt said he believes Mr. Gingrich’s near universal name recognition indicates that perceptions of Mr. Gingrich have calcified over time and are therefore unlikely to change.  With a national unfavorable rating that he puts at 60 percent, Mr. Schmidt says he believes a Gingrich candidacy could spell disaster for Republican hopes of holding the House and regaining the Senate.

Newt Gingrich has a 100% name ID, has a 60% national unfavorable number and it’s a number so high that with the 100% name ID it’s impossible to come back from. You’re not electable in a general election, in a 2012 presidential election if your unfavorable numbers are that high. Particularly against a president, that while vulnerable, is still a net positive in that number. So people look at Newt Gingrich and don’t see him as a plausible candidate in the general election, so the Republican establishment who thinks that the president is vulnerable and beatable is going to begin to melt down if Gingrich’s momentum continues.

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Senator Tom Harkin, whose outspoken opposition to Wall Street generally and for-profit schools specifically has made him a leading voice in Congressional regulation of career and for-profit colleges. His office is set to release a report this month – the second in a series – detailing the horrific ramifications of applying free market principles to higher education, but it seems his office may have much to be concerned about given recent details that have emerged about the Senator’s direct involvement in not only the creation and distribution of faulty past reports, but in back-door dealings that should give any American pause.

Last fall, Harkin released a report that his office claimed detailed a host of transgressions on the part of for-profit or “career” colleges from misuse of student loan money to misleading counseling services and high default rates among graduates. The report was criticized by Senate Republicans as “unfair,” and Republicans boycotted subsequent hearings. It was later revealed that the report, compiled – with Harkin’s help – by the GAO, was faulty and many of its findings either fabricated or unusable and the GAO issued fix:

In November 2010, the GAO was forced to release a significantly changed report. The correction affected 16 of the 28 findings in the original report. The bias of the original report was also reflected in the fact that all 16 revisions were all of the same type: changing flawed statements that cast the for-profits in the worst possible light. Error after error took statements out of context or did not accurately portray what was said.

The report, however, had Harkin’s desired effect. Just days after the report was presented at a Senate hearing, the value of for-profit schools’ stock dropped 14% and companies that ran free-market educational facilities lost over $4 billion dollars.

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Congress owes America better start for 2012, and not to repeat the way it ended 2011.

Even if the Senate is hopelessly dysfunctional, the House could do better.  The final House session of 2011 was a prime example of how to lose public confidence.  The body was gaveled into session on short notice Friday morning, December 23^rd, and a mere ten members approved legislation for the entire 435-member House.  The others had left for the holidays, so instead of a roll call vote on a controversial two-month lowering of the “payroll tax,” the bill passed by “unanimous consent” of the handful who were there.

House leaders had given Members insufficient time to return to Washington.  Representatives who had scattered for the holidays were informed at 5 pm that Thursday of a key vote at 10 am Friday.  This unusual procedure for a major vote was possible only because the House a few days before had voted for a “martial law” procedure that removed the normal requirement for greater advance notice.

That is why only ten House Members were present for the vote according to the Washington Times—four Republicans and six Democrats.

The rush was purely political.  Had Members been told to return for a vote after Christmas, no deadline would have been missed and the public would have the accountability of a regular roll call vote.  Many Republicans had publicly opposed the two-month extension, but we will never know how they would have voted.

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INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – A Republican-dominated Indiana Senate committee endorsed the right-to-work bill that has prompted a three-day standstill in the Indiana House.

The Senate labor committee voted 6-4 to send the bill to the full Senate, where the GOP holds a 37-13 majority and the party’s leader has made its passage a top priority. The bill would prohibit contracts between companies and unions that require workers to pay representation fees.

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The most successful Obama campaign meme–repeated ad infinitum by the mainstream media–is the idea that the country is saddled with a “do-nothing Congress.”

The implication–brilliantly conveyed, though completely untrue–is that we have a “do-nothing Republican Congress,” though in fact the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has been extremely active.

It would be more accurate to say that we have a “do-nothing Senate“–by design, since it’s clear that the Demcorats’ leaders in the Senate believe that legislative gridlock works to their political advantage. It’s been nearly 1000 days since the Demcorat-controlled Senate even passed a budget–a violation of the Congressional Budget Act.

With tomorrow’s official unemployment number looming, and with today’s ADP employment report for December 2011 suggesting some improvement could be on the way, it’s worth asking what happened to Obama’s “Jobs Bill”–without which, he warned, “there will be fewer jobs.” Voters wanted Washington “to do something big and something bold,” Obama said–even if it was a stimulus packed with boondoggles and bailouts, much like the “Porkulus” that launched the Tea Party.

Lo and behold–there is a little bit of life in the job market; manufacturing is improving moderately; and consumer confidence, while still shaky, is up significantly from where it was when Obama was demanding his jobs bill.

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(Reuters) – President Barack Obama plans to use a recess appointment to install Richard Cordray as head of the country’s new consumer financial protection watchdog, sidestepping Republican congressional opposition to his pick.

“Today in Ohio, President Obama will announce the recess appointment of consumer watchdog Richard Cordray,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer announced in a tweet.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law to police the market for consumer products such as credit cards and mortgages.

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Senate Republicans have been holding up the confirmation of Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until changes to the agency’s structure are made to provide oversight and accountability at the agency. But sources from inside the Capitol tell Capitol Confidential that a recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the unconstitutional CFPB could come as early as tomorrow.

“We have been hearing consistently from the Senate offices that the President is considering a recess appointment of Richard Cordray along with a slew of other controversial nominees in the brief period between the two sessions of Congress,” a key Senate source said. “Now we are hearing from Senior Democrat staffers that something big is coming tomorrow [Jan 4].”

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides the president with the power to “fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate.” The problem for the president and his liberal allies is that the Senate has not recessed and technically remains in session. However, liberal groups are pressing the White House to invoke the “Roosevelt Option” to stack key government positions with radicals ready to carry out an anti-business, pro-big labor regulatory agenda. The Roosevelt Option is coined from the actions of Teddy Roosevelt who in 1903, in a split-second between two congressional sessions of Congress, made more than 100 recess appointments. In 2012, Congress will need to move from the First Session of this current Congress to the Second Session. Liberals claim the fraction of a second between the sessions is enough to trigger presidential power.

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Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2011 list of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The members of the Senate on the list include:

Former Senator John Ensign (R-NV)

Dishonorable Mentions for 2011 include:

• Former Senator John Edwards (D-NC)

Former Senator John Ensign (R-NV): John Ensign, former U.S. Senator from Nevada and former Chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, was forced to resign from office in May 2011 as the result of an investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. In a scandal that first broke in 2009, Senator Ensign publicly admitted to an affair with the wife of long-time staffer Douglas Hampton. Ensign then allegedly tried to cover up the affair by bribing the couple with lucrative gifts and political favors.

According to The New York Times, after Hampton discovered the affair involving his wife Cynthia, the senator bought his silence by giving him “a strong boost into a lobbying career.” Ensign asked political backers to find Hampton a job. “Payments of $96,000 to the Hamptons also were made by Senator Ensign’s parents, who insist this was a gift, not hush money. Once a lobbying job was secured, Senator Ensign and his chief of staff continued to help Mr. Hampton, advocating his clients’ cases directly with federal agencies.”

These lobbying activities seemingly violated the law related to the Senate’s “cooling off” period for lobbyists. According to Senate rules, former Senate aides “may not lobby the Member for whom he worked or that Member’s staff for a period of one year after leaving [their] position.” Hampton began to lobby Ensign’s office immediately upon leaving his job on Capitol Hill. (more…)

From PJMedia:

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) caused a bit of a stir when he announced he was not seeking re-election. Frank, a high-visibility member of Congress for more than 30 years, is in one of the safest Democratic districts in the nation. Yet he is not alone: there are several other Barney Franks fleeing the 112th Congress. Eight other veteran House Democrats who reside in safe congressional seats are throwing in the towel.

The problem isn’t merely in the House. Just this week, U.S. Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska announced he won’t seek re-election this coming November. Nelson is one of seven Senate Democrats who have decided to “voluntarily” retire ahead of the 2012 elections. This is a repeat of the 2010 elections when a flood of Democrats decided to retire rather than face certain defeat.

The retirement of rank-and-file Democrats is an especially bad sign for the Democrats if they have any hope of retaking the U.S. House. The nine House retirements are even more notable because each ranks high in seniority for key House committees — if the House returned to Democratic rule, they would be in line to assume chairmanships.

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