Baucus Answers Why He Did Not #STANDWITHRAND
We questioned earlier why Senator Max Baucus did not stand with Senator Paul yesterday with his republican and democrat colleagues to defend the constitution. Senator Baucus and Senator Tester skipped the event, no surprise Baucus skipped, but Senator Tester pledged to “always fight” for constitutional civil liberties. Unfortunately for Montana, the only one defending Montana’s constitutional rights in the Senate was Congressman Steve Daines.After Bozeman residents protested Senator Baucus’s office today for his failure to protect constitutional rights, Max Baucus finally responded to why he never showed up. Buzzfeed reports:
Asked why more Democrats didn’t come to Paul’s aid, Sen. Max Baucus of Montana said, “Each has his own view. To be honest, I haven’t been focused as much on that issue, and a lot of others probably haven’t either. I assume that’s the reason.”Each has his own view? Focused on other issues? A quick glance at Max’s schedule tells us the Senator was busy with a call to Secretary Jack Lew, an investment banker and Democratic crony who was bailed out by the American taxpayer, meeting with staff three separate times, and calling it a day at 4:30 PM. What was Max focused on for the next 7.5 hours after he called it a day? Chances are he was at home with his
What about Jon Tester? Tester has yet to respond as to why he did not stand with Rand. However, the same day Rand Paul was on the Senate floor filibustering until he received an answer about the use of drones, Senator Tester submitted legislation that would prevent the new Distinguished Warfare Medal from ranking ahead of medals awarded for direct combat. The legislation was proposed in opposition to a Pentagon decision to create a new medal for drone operators that ranks higher in precedence than the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Similar legislation is proposed in the House already, but Senator Tester and another democrat joined with two republicans to put legislation on the Senate side.
Interesting that Baucus was too focused on something not scheduled to show up, and Senator Tester was talking about drones–not the constitutionality of killing Americans on American soil–but instead proposing legislation that already exists in the House of Representatives.
http://www.treasurestatepolitics.com/2013/03/baucus-answers-standwithrand/
Medicare vs. Medicaid
By Dick MorrisOnly a small suffix separates the two major health care programs run by the federal and state governments, but their relative political, budgetary, and equity considerations are miles apart. When Obama lumps “entitlements” together, he inevitably means Medicare and Social Security. But the entitlements that need reining in are neither of these; they are Medicaid, food stamps, disability, subsidized housing, and welfare.Republicans, from Congressman Paul Ryan on down, must take aim at the means tested entitlements and leave the Democrats to propose cuts in Social Security or Medicare.
Last year, Medicaid costs rose by 12.3%. Spending on food stamps has risen 135% over the past four years. Disability rolls are up by 50% since 2003. These are the programs that must be reined in. By contrast, the growth in Medicare and Social Security has been less than 10%.
The Republican Party has got to focus the debate over entitlement reform on Medicaid and other means tested entitlements. The Ryan Plan to block grant these programs to the states and to let them run them makes a great deal of sense and must be the prime Republican response to the need for entitlement reforms.
If the Republican Party becomes identified in the popular mind with cuts in Medicare or Social Security, it will not win another national election for a long, long time.
The likes of Paul Ryan will complain that we cannot balance the budget without cutting these two sacred cows. But the fact is: Who needs to get the deficit to zero? What difference would that make? True, we cannot run deficits in the trillion dollar range as we are now. But if we bring the deficit under control — to one or two percent of GDP ($100-$300 billion in current dollars) — we will have reversed the upward spiral in national debt as percentage of the economy and saved our nation from bankruptcy.
In coping with the deficit, perfection is the enemy of gradual improvement. If the Republican Party lets itself be dashed against the rocks by advocating cuts in Medicare and Social Security, it will lack the political clout for any deficit reduction or cuts in federal spending at all.
We must temper fiscal responsibility with political realism. Medicare and Social Security are the third rails of our politics and Republican must stay far, far away. It does no good to argue that a voucher system can work better for Medicare (renamed a “premium support program”). Voters and the elderly won’t believe it.
It does no good to say that those now over 55 — or 56 — won’t be impacted. Those over that age won’t believe it and those under it will look at the difficulty of amassing savings in a zero interest environment and will react harshly to any limitations in Social Security or Medicare. When the economy was doing well, they would look on the future with confidence and feel that they would amass savings which would make both programs optional. No more.
The Tea Party movement must not pressure Republicans into committing suicide. We don’t need to get to zero at the expense of cutting Medicare or Social Security. Close is good enough.
http://www.dickmorris.com/medicare-vs-medicaid/?utm_source=dmreports&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports
PK'S NOTE: The really shocking aspect of the policy is that it targets “ordinary savers
IMF Marxists Tax and Seize Personal Funds in Cyprus – Crickets Ensue
Very few things give me nightmares… Yesterday’s event in Cyprus was one of them and the media is conspicuously silent. What do you get when you combine worldwide Marxist elitists, bankers and the media?
A worldwide depression and a new dark age. The IMF (in case you are wondering who they are) is using Greece as a proving ground for the rest of us. It is a fascist Petri dish. They just implemented an across the board tax on all bank accounts over a holiday with no warning and no recourse. 9.9% if you have over 100,000 Euros in the bank, 6.75% is you have less than that. This is money being seized by the IMF, the European Union and the government of Greece to attempt to cover some of their debt. It is theft and it could have been a lot worse. The IMF had proposed a 40% haircut on all accounts. This is how it went down:
Banks first cooperated with the EU by sealing off the amount of the proposed levy—a 6.75 percent tax on deposits under €100,000 and 9.9 percent on those above —making it impossible for depositors to access their full amount. The only means bank customers have left is the ability to draw from the rest of their funds via ATM machines this weekend. Many depositors made their way to the machines on Saturday to drain their accounts. But the few banks that opened on Saturdays did so only briefly, and no international transfers will be able to go through until Tuesday, with Monday being the holiday. Cyprus’ Parliament is expected to meet Sunday to pass the required legislation., or after the deed was done. The deal also needs the approval of several eurozone parliaments; at the time of writing it was unclear how fast they can act and what will happen to bank deposits in the meantime.The Daily Mail:
What’s happening in Cyprus should send a chill over the entire world.
Politicians working with complicit big banks need no rule of law; no parliament debates to close in on the bank accounts of average people.
Cash machines EMPTIED across Cyprus and 60,000 British savers face losing MILLIONS after £8.7bn EU bailout imposes tax of up to 10% on all bank accountsNever let an emergency go to waste, eh? Cyprus’ President claims he had no choice. I don’t believe him. He made a deal with the devil, saved himself and gave up his own people. Very reminiscent of Nazi Germany. It’s fascist deja vu all over again. By the way, they did this before it was approved of by the legislature. Think it can’t happen in America? One day you could wake up and be staring down the same seizures and soon. And Martial law and jackbooted thugs will not be far behind, trust me.
- Lines formed at ATMs as people scrambled to pull their money out
- Word spread that rescue package included a one-off levy on deposits
- Restrictions stopping people emptying accounts or moving money abroad
- Up to 3,000 British service personnel are based on the bankrupt island
- President Nicos Anastasiades agreed to raid with European finance chiefs
- Said country in ‘state of emergency’ and not acting would be ‘catastrophic’
- But expats accused the island of ‘plain theft’ as violent protests sparked
- Britons have about £1.7b of deposits on island and could lose up to £170m
- Parliamentary official: Vote scheduled for today pushed back to tomorrow
- G. Osborne: This is what happens if you don’t show you can pay your way
Over a number of years, the Marxist elitists in Europe and the United States (make no mistake, Obama and the head of the IMF are BFFs) have put in place draconian financial policies, regulations and bailouts that have cost Trillions – in fact, more money than actually exists on the planet by no small measure. This is not money out of thin air, these are taxes. Taxes taken while promising growth and recovery that has never materialized, never will materialize and was never meant to materialize. This is a step in a global reset of all markets and a planetary redistribution of wealth that would have made Marx blush and stammer. Remember, the US is a huge contributor to the IMF. You don’t actually think that Obama didn’t know about this and had input, right?
What happened yesterday in Cyprus was a test for the rest of us. What’s more, what was implemented will not solve the problem. What it will do is perhaps start worldwide bank runs and create chaos and riots, a la Cloward and Piven. The global Socialists are making their move and beginning to bring an iron fist down on individuals, their freedoms and their money. This has the potential to make the crash of 2008 look like Spring break. The Marxists are not limiting themselves to bank accounts; they are now going after retirement accounts, gold and whatever else they can grab as the whole scam starts to implode. The run on the Cypriotic banks and ATMs yesterday was just a taste of what is heading our way. The Deutsche Bank global head of FX strategy, Bilal Hafeez, was correct – only Jesus can save the EU now. However, I think He is more likely to speed their demise with all the money changing in His temple occurring and all.
From SHTFplan.com:
Restrictions have been imposed to stop people emptying their accounts or moving their money out the country after the Cypriot government announced that up to ten per cent of deposits will be seized and used to bailout the island’s crisis-hit banking system.In case you weren’t aware, Cyprus is a hub of offshore accounts. One of the biggest hurt by this move were Russian mobsters. But before you justify that, remember, people all over the world had their funds there. It all depends on how you define taxation:
The deal with other eurozone finance ministers is the first time that ordinary citizens’ deposits have been directly raided in this way.
…
One furious expat said: ‘This is plain theft. I’d love to hear someone explain to me why it isn’t.’
…
Under the deal, all bank deposits over €100,000 will be hit with a levy of 9.9 per cent. Those with smaller savings will pay 6.75 per cent.
…
The move sparked panic and violent protests yesterday as crowds desperately tried to withdraw their money at cash machines.
…
‘Why would you risk putting your money in Greek, Spanish or Portuguese banks after this?’
British expats were stunned by the news, with many left high and dry by the restrictions on accounts.
Cash machines had been working, but many ran out of notes because of the panic withdrawals.
…
But financial experts said the raid – designed to stop Cyprus crashing out of the euro, potentially destroying the currency – would send shock waves through the eurozone.
If savers in other troubled nations fear their accounts might be next, they could withdraw their money and spark a catastrophic run on the banks.
Source: Daily Mail
As Market Ticker’s Karl Denninger notes, “Like hell that’s a tax. That’s direct confiscation of the funds of people who did nothing wrong!”People need to wake up and fast because this train is coming to each of us and soon. There is no safe haven on the planet for money or investments now. The New World Order has arrived and it is hungry. A planetary government of elites who have colluded to strip the wealth from nations has descended to rip the fabric of civility apart and we are all on the menu.
I can’t put it any better than Mac Salvo:
It should now be obvious. There is no recovery. There never was.You didn’t think all that ammo, arms, food and medicine was for a rainy day, did you? Well, if so, it is pouring. Our Marxist leaders have made preps for themselves, the rest of us be damned and we have just let them do it. Shame on us.
No matter where you live, your government is likely preparing measures to deal with the coming financial and economic collapse. This means they are going to be coming for anything of value that they can get their hands on.
If you have the majority of your net worth allocated in bank accounts, money market funds, retirement plans, stock markets or the host of other ‘safe’ assets recommended by your financial adviser, then you are playing Russian roulette.
And in this version there’s a bullet in every chamber.
When they come, they will take everything they can.
http://www.trevorloudon.com/2013/03/imf-marxists-tax-and-seize-personal-funds-in-cyprus-crickets-ensue/
Sooner Or Later Progressives Will Get Around To You
First, they came for the smokers.No one would argue smoking is good for you. But it’s legal; growing tobacco is even subsidized by the government. Yet, when governments started limiting the right of people to smoke in places public and private, non-smokers did nothing. They didn’t like smoke; they’d heard second-hand smoke was dangerous. Why should they allow owners of private establishments to choose whether those establishments allowed people to engage in a legal – in fact, subsidized -- activity?
Then, they came to “clean up” the healthcare mess. They would take the sick and poor off our hands. We would no longer have to join together as a community to provide for those who can’t provide for themselves; dear, benevolent government would do this for us. First, with Medicare for the old. Then, with Medicaid for the poor. Then, the definition of poor would expand … and expand … and expand ... and nobody would speak up because who wants to come out against the old, the sick and the poor?
And then it wasn’t just the poor. It also was the uninsured. Some were uninsured because they were unemployed. Others because their income level didn’t permit them to buy health insurance. Can’t be for allowing them to just hang there. No convincing evidence they were dying in the streets or were significantly underserved by the healthcare system regardless of their health insurance status. And plenty had the money to buy health insurance and chose not to.
But hey, when you’re a Progressive, and you’ve tried for a half-century to take over health care, who are you to let minor details such as this stand in the way? And when you get your chance – so much disaffection with a spendthrift Republican president that Democrats could grab control of both houses of Congress and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, you grab that chance and you pass the most sweeping Progressive legislation since the New Deal – Obamacare.
And when the rest of us find we can’t afford our health insurance because of all the new requirements placed on it by our Progressive friends and their enlightened legislation, nobody can do much more than complain. Who defends greedy insurance companies? Who defends faceless corporations when costs finally reach the point where they drop their plans, forcing their employers into the Obamacare system where Progressives have wanted them all along, or even drop their employees?
The secret is the impact is felt gradually. It’s like a boa constrictor. By the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late.
Now, they come for our guns. It’s for our own good. Otherwise, we’ll have more school shootings, such as the terrible incident in Connecticut. Never mind the guns used that day were stolen. We hear about the need Newtown illustrates to limit weapons and ammunition clips that can fire several rounds per minute. We are never reminded the killer at Newtown shot 24 people in 22 minutes. Speed or power of the weapon was not an issue. One person somewhere in that school with a weapon would’ve saved many lives.
But most of us don’t think of those details, and we don’t own guns … particularly the geniuses in Washington who make these decisions. So we don’t complain sufficiently, and the Progressive agenda advances.
They also have come for the rich people. I’m not rich; what do I care if the rich get taxed a little more? Never mind that I might like to be rich one day or that almost certainly a rich person pays my salary. Never mind what it might mean to him paying salaries that his taxes keep going up. He is indefensible. He’s taken more than his fair share. Tax him. And tax him some more. And when that’s not enough, tax the rest of us … but do it in a way we don’t really see it. Not income taxes. Payroll taxes. They’re gone before we even get our checks.
If there’s one thing progressives love it’s a power grab in the name of “doing good,” and the “good” they most often wrap themselves in is “for the children.” When they eventually discover the “good” they sought to accomplish by quashing a little piece of our personal liberty did not come to pass, they never reverse course and retract their government intrusion. Instead, they offer a solution that seizes a little bit more. It’s a never-ending cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies, a Yellow Brick Road that leads to an Emerald Prison of mini-tyrannies populated by a disconnected people who stood by doing nothing because the power government was exerting did not affect them.
But sooner or later government will run out of other people to tax, other things to ban, other choices to regulate and, like a caged tiger, it will turn on the hand that feeds it. It’s its nature.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t want his people to be fat. So he tried to ban “sugary beverages larger than 16 ounces” but was rebuffed by a court, at least temporarily. Progressives do not quit, or get deterred, when voters reject their ideas, what chance does a court have?
He’s now going after Styrofoam containers to leave a “better” planet for the children. This will lead to higher costs to restaurants, which will lead to higher prices for customers. Customers will ignore it or blame the restaurants. There’s always another kabuki dance.
What do the non-rich care if taxes were raised on people who were not them? What do those with health insurance care if government enacts a requirement that everyone who doesn’t have it buy health insurance?
Tyranny seldom comes all at once, it comes slowing, incrementally, in small doses cloaked as something else, something good. Each thread appears innocuous and unimportant but is part of a tapestry rarely recognized as what it is until too late.
You may not care about any of the targets progressives are pursuing now or in the near future, but they will run out of things you don’t care about before they run out of will to control. Sooner or later they will come after something you like or do. If you sit by do nothing as the individual liberty of others is continually limited, you’d better hope there are enough people left able and willing to speak up when they get around to you.
http://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2013/03/17/sooner-or-later-progressives-will-get-around-to-you-n1536192/page/full/
Employers, Unions Outraged by $63-Per-Worker Obamacare Fee
A provision buried inside Obamacare will force many employers to pay an extra $63 per employee next year. Analysts say most of the cost will likely be passed on to workers."It's caught most employers, if not all employers, by surprise," said National Business Group on Health Vice President of Public Policy Steve Wojcik. "They're very upset about it."
Over the next three years, the Obamacare fee will fund a $25 billion account for insurance companies designed to cover higher costs associated with insuring people with pre-existing conditions. The government claims the fee will go down in 2015 and 2016.
The Obama Administration says the fee “is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance, reduce unreimbursed usage of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all.”
But the United Auto Workers Retiree Medical Trust, which covers 806,000 autoworkers, has joined others in asking federal regulators for an exemption. Boeing, which has 405,000 employees and dependents subject to the fee, has also requested an exemption. Boeing says the Obamacare fee will add $25 million in costs on top of the already $2.5 billion the company spends each year on health benefits.
Health and Human Services (HHS) denied the request by Boeing and others but said the $63 levy would not affect the thousands of retired autoworkers whose primary coverage is Medicare. Still, says HHS, it will not categorically exempt employees in court-structured benefit plans.
“At a time when we are facing economic uncertainty,” said Chantel Sheaks of Buck Consultants, a subsidiary of Xerox, “[companies will] be hit with a multimillion-dollar assessment without getting anything back for it.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/15/Employers-And-Unions-Outraged-By-63-Per-Worker-Obamacare-Fee
Dr. Ben Carson at CPAC 2013: How to destroy America in four easy steps
Dr. Benjamin Carson was a famed neurosurgeon long before he exploded onto the national political stage with a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast last month. Now he’s hinting that his medical career might just be followed by a career in politics. He scattered a few teasing hints of such plans through his address to the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference, and also looked back at the negative reactions to his National Prayer Breakfast appearance with a mixture of humor and horror.He noted that some of his critics have asked why a medical doctor would have any business weighing in on economic policy. ”It’s not brain surgery,” he responded with a chuckle, and indeed much of his economic advice is a mixture of common sense (which Carson frequently praises) and the same brand of dispassionate analysis that informs surgical decisions. For example, he observed there’s an awful lot of money floating around beyond America’s borders, and our government could bring it home by “treating businesses as friends, not as enemies” and recognizing they are private enterprises lawfully seeking profit, not welfare agencies. He repeated his comments about truly fair taxation from the National Prayer Breakfast, advocating a low and flat tax system that punishes no one and exempts no one.
What horrifies Carson is the assertion that he had no right to voice his opinions at that February prayer breakfast because he has black skin, and stood in the august presence of King Barack I. He explained that a brain surgeon is well-qualified to give testimony about how people are all the same inside, no matter the color of the skin stretched over their skulls.
As for the propriety of a doctor offering moral and political advice, Carson said this fell under the finest traditions of self-government. ”This is a country that’s for, of, and by the people – not for, of, and by the government. And if we turn it over to them, we cannot complain about what they’re doing… because this is the natural course of men, and we have to hold their feet to the fire.”
Angry criticism from the Left has not caused Carson to water down his critique of liberal policies. If anything, he was even feistier at CPAC. He explained that if he were an enemy of the United States, he would set about destroying the nation in four simple steps: create division among the people, encourage a culture of ridicule for basic morality, undermine the nation’s financial stability through excessive government debt, and weaken the military. ”It appears, coincidentally, that those are the very things that are happening right now,” he observed. ”And the question is, how do we stop it? Can we stop it, or must we inexorably follow the same kind of path that other pinnacle nations have followed before their destruction?”
A major component of Carson’s plan to avoid doom lies in educational reform, which he and his wife have invested heavily in through their scholarship program. Beaming with pride, Carson announced that one of his grantees had been accepted into the neurosurgery program at Johns Hopkins, where he has long been the director of pediatric neurosurgery.
“Education is a fundamental principle of what made America a success,” he declared, reviewing the importance of education (and a determined mother) in his own life, and pointing out that well-educated people are better equipped to pursue opportunity and provide for themselves, rather than lapsing into social safety-net dependency. ”We can’t afford to throw any young people away,” he warned.
Carson sees the modern welfare super-state as an outgrowth of America’s innate generosity, but says it was a mistake to entrust that generosity to inefficient, self-interested bureaucracy over efficient, compassionate private charities. He has a dim view of the ulterior motives held by some champions of the welfare state. ”What you’re saying is that ‘I, the superior elite, will take care of you.’ Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can’t be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.”
As he did at the National Prayer Breakfast, Carson warned of the dangers of allowing government to control health care, which represents one-sixth of the economy. ”If the government can control that, they can control everything,” he said. Instead, he proposes that 80 percent of the interactions between doctors and patients could be easily handled through health savings accounts, a proposal discussed in more detail in his book, America the Beautiful.
Carson also entreated his CPAC audience to “resist this war on God,” the forced cleansing of religious and moral principles from public life. He views this as an “absolutely absurd” assault on freedom of speech and religion. ”Let’s let everybody believe what they want to believe,” he countered. ”And that means, P.C. police, don’t you be coming down on people who believe in God and who believe in Jesus.”
This would interfere with the manufacture of division and paranoia among the people, which he cited as step 1 in his four-step plan to destroy America. ”We need to understand that we are not each others’ enemies in this country. And it is only the political class that derives its power by creating friction. It is only the media that derives its importance by creating friction… that uses every little thing to create this chasm between people. This is not who we are. We have much more in common with other people than we have apart. And we have to be smart enough to understand that, and we have to live by Godly principles of loving your fellow man, of caring about your neighbor… of developing your God-given talents to the utmost, so you become valuable to the people around you… of having values and principles to guide your life. And if we do that, not only will we remain a pinnacle nation, but we will truly have one nation – under God – indivisible – with liberty and justice for all.”
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/03/17/dr-ben-carson-at-cpac-2013-how-to-destroy-america-in-four-easy-steps/
The Obama Quagmire
Column: How Chuck Hagel and the sequester stalled the president’s agenda
“What we don’t want to do is repeat the mistake I think I believe in 2008 we made,” he told a rather paltry crowd of inaugural donors to his “social welfare” group Organizing for Action during dinner at the St. Regis hotel Wednesday. “Where some of that energy just kind of dissipated and we were only playing an inside game.”
And to correct this mistake, which left the president “sitting in a room with a bunch of folks negotiating all the time,” Obama and Organizing for Action pledge—with help from your generous $500,000 contribution—to “give space here in Washington” for bipartisan legislation, by making sure “the American people are speaking out, organized, activated.” Only then will Congress act on the president’s ambitious agenda of comprehensive immigration reform, gun control, tax increases, a hike in the minimum wage, government investments in infrastructure, education, and energy, and—well, you know the rest.
I should note that Organizing for Action is happy to accept contributions of less than $500,000. Indeed, it is happy to accept donations of any amount, and plans only to disclose contributions of $250 or more. And though Organizing for Action says it won’t accept funds from lobbyists, corporations, or political action committees, it will happily gobble up funds from labor unions. And it might as well. Obama needs all the help he can get right now.
The president is stuck in a congressional quagmire and no amount of “outside pressure” will get him out. Spring is about to begin. The first 100 days of his second term will end in a little more than a month. Before long baseball will resume, and then the NFL season will begin, and Congress will turn its compound eye to 2014. The president will be a lame duck.
And what will he have to show for it? Guns, immigration, budgets, climate change, and the minimum wage are all tied up on Capitol Hill. No one knows when, or if, they will emerge. Or what they might end up looking like.
Meanwhile, Obama’s approval rating is falling. He has been relegated to visiting the hill, and “reaching out” to select Republican mealtime companions, in an effort to stay relevant. But his activities seem curiously out of place. They demonstrate that the real action at the moment is not in the Oval Office. Even in the drama over the budget, where Obama could play a major role, he seems desultory and content to let Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) have the stage. Otherwise his administration wouldn’t be waiting until April to release its proposal.
What happened? Last week, I suggested Obama and his team had fallen for the “mandate myth,” or the false idea that winning reelection guarantees policy success. But there may be more to Obama’s current stall.
Clearly the Obama team, in the aftermath of the president’s reelection, had a strategy. And the strategy was simple: Press the Republicans on all fronts at once. Use the momentum of the campaign and the fiscal cliff deal to win the controversial nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, and pass gun controls, immigration reform, and additional tax increases on the wealthy. If the problem was Republican intransigence, then follow Donald Rumsfeld’s (and Dwight Eisenhower’s) advice: “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.” Break the Republicans by revealing their stubbornness baldly and unequivocally and globally.
There was no way of knowing whether or not this strategy would succeed. And maybe, in some parallel universe, it did succeed. After all, the Republicans are demoralized. They have their own problems. A swell of presidential and media pressure might have forced them into hasty acquiescence.
Such was the president’s bet, anyway. A bet he clearly lost.
Looking back, we can identify two things that seriously eroded the president’s position. The first was Hagel. In the weeks prior to Hagel’s nomination, few could imagine that 41 Republican senators would end up opposing a former Republican senator for secretary of defense. But the battle over Hagel—the vetting of his positions on the Middle East, Iran, and the U.S. nuclear deterrent; the revelation of anti-Israel remarks he had made in the past; his horrible performance during his confirmation hearing, which revealed him to be completely unqualified—rallied Republicans against the president at a critical juncture. It also had the effect, in a body that seems incapable of dealing with more than one controversy at a time, of slowing down the rest of the president’s agenda.
Robert Reich, the left-wing economist, predicted as much. “There is a puzzle here,” he said during a Jan. 6 discussion of Hagel on ”This Week.” “With all the fights that the president has coming up, why is he doing this? I mean, there are a lot of other people he could be putting up, but why is he expending political capital in this way? I don’t understand.” Credit Reich for prescience and good judgment—if only in this particular case.
Actually, also credit him for predicting that Obama’s sequester strategy would fail. “The White House apparently believes the best way to strengthen its hand in the upcoming ‘sequester’ showdown with Republicans is to tell Americans how awful the spending cuts will be, and blame Republicans for them,” Reich wrote on Feb. 25. “It won’t work.” And it didn’t work. The White House’s hyperbolic sequester approach backfired. Many of the claims made by administration officials were exposed as false. And some of the actions those officials took—such as releasing illegal immigrants in detention and closing the White House to tours—were clumsy and harmful.
The situation is beginning to resemble the start of the most recent second term. I remember a dinner I had with a columnist friend before the August 2005 recess. My gloomy friend noted that Bush had lost his momentum and probably could not get it back. Don’t worry, I told him. Bush is going to regain the initiative after winning passage of the Central America Free Trade Agreement and the bankruptcy reform bill. Then he’ll stabilize Iraq. All will be well.
Shows you what I know. Bush’s second term went horribly. It gave us Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama. His mistake, in retrospect, was in not surging troops to Iraq and adopting a counterinsurgency strategy after winning reelection. He, too, fell for the mandate myth. He fell for a flawed political strategy of deemphasizing the war and turning to Social Security and immigration reform.
I no longer predict the future (see above). But it seems to me quite possible that, four years from now, as Obama addresses high-dollar donors to whatever Organizing for Action becomes after he leaves office, the president will look back on the first months of 2013 and say: Mistakes were made.
http://freebeacon.com/the-obama-quagmire/
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