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Saturday, September 25, 2010

Senate candidate forum ends with scuffle in crowd

Canidate Forum Scuffle Is this what our Discussions have come to

Image
Sam Morris / Las Vegas Sun
Attendees listen to remarks from Sharron Angle during a Senate candidate forum with Sen. Harry Reid on Thursday at Faith Lutheran High School.


Thursday, Sept. 23, 2010 | 10:17 p.m.

If Sharron Angle thought a forum hosted by Christian groups would provide her with a friendly audience, she was wrong.
The Republican U.S. Senate candidate got booed, heckled, mocked and interrupted during an hour-long question-and-answer session at Faith Lutheran Jr./Sr. High School in Las Vegas.
So did Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. But he wasn’t there to hear it.
Reid was in Washington, D.C., because Congress is in session. He taped answers to questions asked by moderator Mitch Fox weeks ago and appeared in video on two jumbo screens hanging above the stage.
A fight among audience members broke out toward the end of the forum as Reid supporters tried to leave while Angle was still speaking.
Kelly Tanaka said an unidentified man pushed her over and punched her friend Thursday after the forum. The man was detained by school officials.
The 27-year-old Tanaka said the fight occurred because she walked past the man, not because she supports Reid and he backs Angle.
On the issues, neither Reid nor Angle’s answers to the six questions about the economy and small business were surprising.
Reid touted his record of saving jobs and promised to create more. He highlighted his efforts to make Nevada a renewable energy leader and stressed the importance of tourism. Angle vowed to cut taxes, blasted what she called a government blinded by “the fog of taxation and regulation” and promised to “reclaim education for Nevada.”
Both candidates easily controlled their individual conversations with Fox in what was not a true debate format. Each relied heavily on campaign talking points and told personal stories of the hardships they’ve witnessed and the people they’ve helped.
What was far more surprising was the passion Reid and Angle stirred in the crowd of about 800 gathered to listen.
The audience, seemingly split in their loyalties, drowned out both candidates with competing jeers and applause. Pleas for decorum by organizers were ignored.
The video-version of Reid remained unfazed as audience members hissed at him and mocked his claim that “in three years, everyone will have health insurance like I do.”
But Angle looked nervous and flustered by the rowdy crowd. She stumbled on her words and looked down at the stage. Still, she smiled through the awkwardness.
Among the comments that garnered Angle the biggest response — mostly negative — were advocating building two coal-fired plants in Ely, encouraging more lithium mining in Nevada and promoting the state’s potential for nuclear energy.
Angle earned the biggest cheers when she said there’s nothing wrong with the health care system.
“We have the finest health care system in the world,” Angle said, noting that the problem is the cost, which “Obamacare” doesn’t address.
Security at the school was high. Guards checked women’s purses and turned people with campaign signs away.
Posters on nearly every door stated that cameras and video equipment were not permitted. Giant screens warned, “NO questions from the audience or the media allowed.”
“Wow, it’s a debate. That’s a lot of security,” said former Republican Gov. Robert List, who attended the event.
As the forum ended and Angle turned to leave the stage, a woman approached her to ask why she wants to limit help for people with autism. The Reid campaign this week released video of Angle in which she appears to criticize a Nevada mandate that requires insurance companies to cover treatment for autism.
Angle ignored the question. Her handlers had warned that she would not be speaking with anyone after the event. They had to whisk her away to catch a flight to Reno for a morning fundraiser.
Angle looked past the woman, waved to the crowd one last time and walked away.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

House GOP's 'governing agenda': a 2010 Contract With America?

The Christian Science Monitor -

the vote blog

House Republicans are set to release a 'governing agenda' Thursday, outlining their priorities should they take control after the 2010 election.
    House minority leader John Boehner of Ohio holds a news conference Sept. 15 on Capitol Hill. From left are House minority whip Eric Cantor, Indiana Rep. Mike Pence (R), Boehner, and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R) of Washington. (Evan Vucci/AP)

By Amanda Paulson, Staff writer
posted September 20, 2010 at 7:01 pm EDT
For months, pundits have been comparing this election with 1994, when Republicans took back control of Congress and gained 54 seats in the House of Representatives. Can they do the same this November, with the public mood seemingly turned against Democrats and incumbents?
Now, here’s another similarity: On Thursday, House Republicans are set to release a “governing agenda,” outlining their priorities should they take back control.
Comparisons with Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract With America” are inevitable; that document was also released six weeks before the election (on Sept. 20) and set forth eight reforms the GOP backed and 10 bills lawmakers promised to bring to the floor should they be elected.
The Republicans' victory – and the resurgence of the conservative movement – became closely linked to the contract.
No details are available about this year’s document, which will be announced at a hardware store in Sterling, Va. – a contrast with the Capitol-steps signing ceremony that accompanied the Contract With America release – but it is supposed to contain about 20 points. It’s likely to include a repeal of President Obama’s health-care-reform and economic priorities, including reining in spending and emphasizing job creation.
At least in part, the agenda is fueled by public input, via “America Speaking Out,” an Internet project that solicited ideas earlier this year.
So will this election be 1994 redux?
The polls have not been in Democrats’ favor. Two weeks ago, Gallup polls showed the biggest “generic” lead for Republicans – 51 percent to 41 – in 60 years of polling. And most pundits – including Charlie Cook’s political report – are predicting House Republicans will gain the 39 seats they need to take control, though few are predicting anything like the 1994 rout.
But not everything is bad news for Democrats. That Gallup poll may have been an aberration. This week, the poll shows a virtual tie in the generic ballot: 46 percent favoring Democrats versus 45 percent for Republicans.
And a Senate takeover, which once seemed likely, probably become more of an uphill battle for the GOP in the wake of Christine O’Donnell’s primary win in Delaware.
While Thursday’s agenda may be Republican lawmakers’ attempt at creating a new Contract With America, it’s unclear just who in the fractured party is taking up the leadership role that Newt Gingrich held in 1994. John Boehner, the Ohio congressman and minority leader who will be the likely speaker in a Republican House, is the one option. But Representative Boehner seems an uncomfortable spokesman for the direction the party is headed, and has already caused a stir within with his statement that he’d be open to a compromise on tax cuts.
On Monday, President Obama gave his view of the election, when asked whether he would debate Boehner before the election, as President Bill Clinton did with Gingrich 16 years ago.
“I think that it’s premature to say that John Boehner’s going to be speaker of the House,” Mr. Obama said at a CNBC town hall meeting.

GOP 'Pledge' makes closing argument to voters

House Republican leader John Boehner appears at the Tart Lumber Company in Sterling, Virginia with House Republican Conference Vice Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers and House Republican Chief Deputy Whip Kevin McCarthy.

'Our government has failed us,' says one House Republican leader

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
updated 9/23/2010 2:15:25 PM ET


Pushing toward big gains on Nov. 2, House Republicans promised to end a slew of Democratic policies and restore Americans' trust in government as they rolled out a campaign manifesto designed to show they're listening to an angry public and are focused on creating jobs.
"The land of opportunity has become the land of shrinking prosperity ... Our government has failed us," Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California declared. "We will take back our country. We will restore for a better future. This is our pledge to you."

At a hardware store in suburban Washington, senior House Republicans in shirt sleeves showed off the 21-page document they say would guide them should they gain a majority of seats in the midterm balloting five weeks away.
The "Pledge to America" was filled with familiar proposals to slash taxes and spending and cut down on government regulation, as well as repeal President Barack Obama's health care law and end his stimulus program. In a show of unity, Senate Republicans and Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, issued strong statements of support.
Video: Brokaw: GOP wants to capture magic of ’94 (on this page)
The unveiling capped a private debate among Republicans that had pitted those who favored making an agenda public against others who argued it would merely open the party's candidates to criticism in a campaign that has been tilting their way.

Republicans have sought to turn the midterm elections into a referendum on the policies of President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress. Democrats, in turn, want it to become a choice between two alternatives — what they describe as their own efforts to fix the economy, as opposed to what they criticize as Bush-era policies that led to a severe recession.
For their part, Democrats dismissed the GOP plan as recycled ideas that would further exacerbate the nation's problems.
"Republicans want to return to the same failed economic policies that hurt millions of Americans and threatened our economy," said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.


With polls showing voters disenchanted with Obama, worried about the economy and mad at elected officials, the agenda also vows to change the way Congress works — requiring every bill to cite its constitutional authority, for example, and to be made public for three days before a vote.
"Putting spending, putting the policy of economic growth in place and cleaning up the way Congress works is not only a stark contrast to this president and this Congress," said Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. "It's a contrast to the way we conducted ourselves a decade ago. We spent too much money. We lost our way."
The plan steers clear of specifics on important issues, such as how it will "put government on a path to a balanced budget." It omits altogether the question of how to address looming shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare, which account for a huge portion of the nation's soaring deficit, instead including a vague promise: "We will make the decisions that are necessary to protect our entitlement programs."
Republicans are favored to add substantially to their ranks on Nov. 2, perhaps enough to seize control of the House.
Their new agenda is rife with the kind of grass-roots rhetoric that could appeal both to tea party activists and to independent voters the GOP is courting in its quest for control.
"Regarding the policies of the current government, the governed do not consent," the pledge says. "An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many."
Polls show large majorities are fed up with Congress and both parties and show Republicans have a chance to earn the public's trust on key issues.
The latest Associated Press-GfK poll found nearly three-quarters disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job, with 68 percent disapproving of Republicans compared with 60 percent disapproving of Democrats.
Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, the head of Republicans' House campaign committee, said the agenda was drafted to answer the public's skepticism about government and give them a "deliverable."
"A number of people are very cynical about the reliability and the sincerity of either party," Sessions said. "We've put things on a sheet of paper."
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Three Good Reasons to Let the High-End Bush Tax Cuts Disappear This Year

  today's cartoon
 

The Bush Tax Cut Club

Michael Linden and Michael Ettlinger offer three good reasons why we should let the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2 percent expire this year.
 Issues Economy Tax Reform

Three Good Reasons to Let the High-End Bush Tax Cuts Disappear This Year

SOURCE: AP/Ron Edmunds
Maintaining the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans will directly reduce revenues by about $690 billion over the next 10 years.
President Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress passed a series of massive tax cuts from 2001 to 2006. Their cuts lowered everyone’s taxes, but they were skewed heavily to the wealthy. More than half of the total benefit from the Bush tax cuts this year alone will accrue solely to the richest 5 percent of Americans while the middle 20 percent of Americans will reap only 7 percent of the benefit.
All of these tax cuts were passed with a “sunset” provision that will cause them to expire at the end of 2010. Virtually everyone in Congress agrees with the Obama administration that we should make permanent all of the reduced taxes for those who make less than $250,000—that’s 98 percent of Americans. The disagreement is limited to those cuts that affect the richest 2 percent of Americans—with conservatives demanding that the wealthiest Americans continue to benefit from the Bush administration’s largess.
There are lots of good reasons to let the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire. Here are just three.

Billions of dollars in tax breaks for the wealthy is just about the least efficient use of that money

The country was facing the distinct risk of the Great Recession turning into a second Great Depression two years ago, which was fortunately averted through a massive and unprecedented government effort. A recent report from Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder confirms the importance, indeed the centrality, of the government’s efforts to stave off such a calamity. But we still have a long way to go to get the economy back onto strong footing and clean up the mess that was left in the wake of the economic hurricane.
The Congressional Budget Office evaluated a variety policies earlier this year based on their ability to boost overall economic growth and employment. The number one thing Congress can do, according to the report, is to increase aid to the unemployed. Other efficient ways to give the economy a jolt include additional investments in infrastructure and more aid to states. The least efficient? Extending the tax cuts.
Congress has been trying over the past several months to implement many of the better policies, but conservatives have been standing firmly in the way. Their concern, they say, is the deficit. They claim these policies are all well and good, but that they should be paid for. Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) recently wrote, “I know people are out of work, and I don't know a single Senator in Washington who didn't want to see these benefits extended. But unless we get serious about reining in our spending, our short-term unemployment problem will be just a fraction of a long-term financial nightmare.” Sen. Johanns voted against extending those jobless benefits, but supports extending all of the Bush tax cuts.
That long-term financial nightmare the senator is talking about is, in large part, a product of the Bush tax cuts themselves. Maintaining the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans will only add to that problem. We estimate, using Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Tax projections, that maintaining the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans will directly reduce revenues by about $690 billion over the next 10 years.* But the true cost of those tax cuts is actually a bit bigger than that.
The cost of those tax cuts is going to go straight onto our national credit card unless we raise taxes from everyone else to pay for the $690 billion in tax breaks for the rich or we find $690 billion in spending cuts. And that means increased interest payments on the debt. When we add in the costs of additional debt service, the true price of maintaining the tax cuts for the wealthy jumps by almost $140 billion.** In total, keeping those cuts for the rich will cost almost $830 billion over the next 10 years.
To put that figure in perspective, $830 billion is enough to pay for all veterans’ hospitals, doctors, and the rest of the Veteran’s Affairs health system, plus the United States Coast Guard, plus the Food and Drug Administration, plus the operation and maintenance of every single national park for the entire 10-year period—with more than $100 billion left over.
Extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will cost about $80 billion over just the next two years, and frankly, that $80 billion could be put to much better use than simply giving it to the richest 2 percent of Americans. We could extend additional tax relief to middle-income Americans. We could make sure that teachers, firefighters, and police officers aren’t laid off. We could prevent unemployment benefits from lapsing again. We could rebuild some crumbling roads and bridges. We could invest in more science and technology research. Even just paying down the debt would be a better use of $80 billion than giving it to people who don’t need it. Simply put, tax cuts for the rich should be at the bottom of our priority list, not at the top.

The Bush tax cuts didn’t deliver what they promised

“Tax relief will create new jobs, tax relief will generate new wealth, and tax relief will open new opportunities.” So said President George W. Bush on April 16, 2001 as he was pushing for the passage of the first of his many tax cuts. President Bush was pushing the same line on his second package two years later: “These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans…By speeding up the income tax cuts, we will speed up economic recovery and the pace of job creation.”
They didn’t deliver. The economy boasted 132 million jobs in June of 2001, the month that the first of the Bush tax cuts was signed into law. Three years later, in June of 2004, there were just 131.4 million jobs. The economy did not add a single new job during three years under the Bush tax cuts. The next three years were better than the first three as the private sector struggled back to its feet following the first Bush recession. By June of 2007, before the start of the Great Recession, total jobs had grown to 137.7 million. Overall, the six years following the Bush tax cuts saw a 4.8 percent increase in jobs.
Percentage increase in jobs after President Clinton's tax increases and President Bush's tax cutsThat’s not nothing, but it’s pretty anemic compared to job growth under President Bill Clinton. President Clinton, after raising taxes in 1993, oversaw an economy that went from 111 million jobs in August of that year (the month Clinton’s budget plan passed, including the increase in taxes) to 129 million jobs six years later—an increase of 16.2 percent, and more than three times better than under the Bush tax cuts.
And the Bush tax cuts didn’t just fail to stack up on jobs. Overall economic growth was much slower under the Bush administration’s tax policies than under the Clinton administration’s tax policies. Real gross domestic product grew by 26 percent in the six years after Clinton’s tax increases. But real GDP grew by just 16 percent in the six years after the Bush tax cuts began. In fact, that six-year growth rate was low even by general historical standards. The average real GDP growth in any given six year period (from any quarter to the same quarter six years later) since World War II was 22 percent.
Real GDP growth after President Clinton's tax increases and President Bush's tax cutsAnd don’t forget that President Bush promised his tax cuts would deliver, “real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans.” The cuts were a spectacular failure on this score, too. Real income for the median American household went from $51,356 in 2001 to $52,163 six years later—an increase of just 1.6 percent. Under President Clinton’s tax rates, real median household income went from $45,839 in 1993 to $52,587 in 1999—an increase of 14.7 percent.
This is just a cursory glance at the evidence, but more comprehensive approaches have come to the same conclusion: on jobs, on growth, on middle-class income, on investment, and on the Bush tax cuts that simply did not work.
Real median household growth after President Clinton's tax increases and President Bush's tax cutsBut there is yet another area where the Bush tax cuts fail even more spectacularly. President Bush—having inherited a record surplus from President Clinton—promised in 2001 that his tax cuts would not harm the overall federal budget picture. Bush argued in selling his huge tax cuts that, “I know a lot of folks around America are worried about national debt, as am I. We [will] pay down $2 trillion of debt over the next 10 years.” Not only that, said Bush, but, “We’ve got a trillion dollars of contingency set aside over the next 10 years. And there’s still money left over. There’s still money left over.”
Needless to say, that’s not how things turned out. Total publicly held debt stood at $3.3 trillion at the beginning of fiscal year 2002, four months after President Bush signed the first package of tax cuts into law. Six years later publicly held debt passed $5 trillion. Not only did the Bush tax cuts not produce a $2 trillion debt reduction; they had precisely the opposite effect. In fact, the Bush tax cuts have directly added $2.5 trillion to the national debt in the full 10 years that they have been law.
It is odd, given the fantastically poor record of the Bush tax cuts on all of these measures, that conservatives are making exactly the same case for why they should be extended. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), for example, came out strongly against allowing the cuts for the wealthy to expire, saying, “If we want to spur economic growth and reduce the deficit, then let's stop these massive job-killing tax hikes.” Why does he think that if the tax cuts didn’t work the first time, that this time will be any different?
Albert Einstein once quipped that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We’d be downright mad by that definition to extend the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans.

The tax cuts for nearly all Americans and American small businesses would stay in place

Letting the Bush tax cuts expire on those making more than $250,000 will impact only about 2 percent of all American taxpayers, according to the Tax Policy Center. The rest, the other 98 percent, would remain unaffected—their tax rates will not change.
Of course, conservatives often argue that we will harm small businesses if we let the tax rates for these richest 2 percent go back to what they were under President Clinton. The data belie that claim. A recent report from the Joint Committee on Taxation points out that less than 3 percent of all taxpayers with any positive business income at all—big or small—would be affected by the increase in rates. In addition, the JCT reminds us that even the few businesses that are potentially subject to these tax hikes are not actually all that small: “These figures for net positive business income do not imply that all of the income is from entities that might be considered ‘small.’ For example, in 2005, 12,862 S Corporations and 6,658 partnerships had receipts of more than $50 million.” In other words, not only will just 3 percent of taxpayers with any business income be affected, but many of these taxpayers aren’t even small business owners at all. This conclusion is entirely consistent with other, similar reports.
The reality is that the vast majority of small business owners don’t make anywhere near a net $250,000 a year, so they won’t be affected by the expiration at all. The argument that letting the top marginal income rates go back to where they were in 1990’s would hurt small businesses is just a smokescreen. This is a tried-and-true method used by conservatives to confuse and obfuscate, and pretend that tax cuts for the very wealthy help anyone else besides just the very wealthy.

Conclusion

Because the entirety of the Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire—a provision President Bush added at the time of enactment to hide the true, long-term costs of his cuts—everyone’s taxes will go up if Congress fails to act before the end of the year. President Obama and progressives in Congress are trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. Yet conservatives are blocking any progress in the service of protecting hundreds of billions of dollars for the rich. They are effectively holding everyone else hostage to the concerns of the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. And, really, it’s not even those with incomes just a hair over the $250,000 whom they are protecting—the taxpayers at those levels will see very modest increases—it is the very wealthy who are being protected. Making the situation all the more despicable is the fact that the case against tax cuts for the rich is so incredibly strong.
Lower taxes for the rich don’t help the economy, they cost too much, the money could be put to much better use, and nearly everyone in the country would be completely unaffected if we simply let the rates go back to where they were under President Clinton. If conservatives really want tax relief, let them join with progressives to pass permanent tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans. If they want to continue protecting tax breaks for the rich in spite of all the evidence against them, they are free to do so, but they shouldn’t hold everyone else’s tax returns hostage in the meantime.
* In its January report, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020,” the CBO projects that a full extension of the Bush tax cuts, plus a permanent fix to the Alternative minimum tax, will cost $3.7 trillion over 10 years, not including debt service costs. The Joint Committee on Tax estimated in a March 2010 report, “Present Law And The President’s Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Proposals Related To Selected Individual Income Tax Provisions Scheduled To Expire Under The Sunset Provisions Of The Economic Growth And Tax Relief Reconciliation Act Of 2001,” that the cost of extending just those cuts that affect people making less than $250,000 and permanently fixing the alternative minimum tax will cost $3 trillion. The difference—a bit less than $700 billion—is the cost of extending just those cuts for the wealthy.
**To calculate the additional debt service cost, we used the interest rates implied in the Congressional Budget Office’s most recent baseline budget projection, found in their March report entitled, “An Analysis of the President’s Budgetary Proposals for Fiscal Year 2011.”
Michael Linden is the Associate Director for Tax and Budget Policy and Michael Ettlinger is the Vice President for Economic Policy at American Progress.
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Restoring Honor Rally

 August 28 2010
Special Operations Warrior Foundation
Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and others spoke at the Restoring Honor Rally, held at the Lincoln Memorial. Speakers focused on the conservative agenda, religious values, civil rights issues, the economy, and reducing the size and influence of government.



Healthy Debate

Newsweek


Will the Supreme Court strike down controversial provisions of the new health-care law?

Kent Gilbert
Photos: Health Care on the Cheap
Health Care on the Cheap
Two conservative federal judges have now voiced cautiously sympathetic views on legal challenges to the 2,400-page health-care law that President Obama signed into law in March. But such preliminary skirmishes shed little light on whether the Supreme Court will in the end strike down the law, a law that raises a completely novel legal issue: can Congress require millions of individuals to buy a commercial product (in this case health insurance) in the name of regulating interstate commerce.

Judge Roger Vinson of the federal district court in Pensacola, Fla., suggested during a two-hour hearing on Sept. 14 that he was unlikely to dismiss a major challenge to the law by officials of 20 states, almost all of them Republican, plus three other plaintiffs. The plaintiffs object to provisions including the new law's "individual mandate," an unprecedented requirement that people not covered by employer-based plans must buy comprehensive health insurance or face monetary penalties. It is to take effect in 2014.
The lawsuits—more than 15 so far—argue that Congress has no such power. Last month, federal district Judge Henry Hudson, of Richmond, Va., rejected a Justice Department motion to dismiss a similar suit by Virginia's attorney general. But some leading legal experts, especially defenders of the new law, confidently predict that if any federal appeals court strikes it down, the Supreme Court will step in to uphold it, with some predicting a margin as lopsided as 8 to 1.
Critics of the law's constitutionality scoff at such predictions. They're confident that they'll get at least the four conservative justices' votes and that they have a good shot at swing-voting Justice Anthony Kennedy. Nobody seems to doubt that the four more liberal justices will support the new law. They appear to see Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce as virtually unlimited, except by the Bill of Rights and other specific constitutional amendments.
However the case turns out, any ruling by the justices on the constitutionality of the health-care law would be the most important pronouncement on the relative powers of the federal and state governments in many decades.
The most fundamental question is whether Congress's undoubtedly broad power to regulate activities affecting interstate commerce is so sweeping as to empower the government to require people who are engaged in no relevant activity at all other than living in the United States to buy health insurance. (When the Justice Department lawyer defending the new law sought to characterize a decision not to buy health insurance as commercial "activity," Judge Vinson interjected, "You're trying to turn the word upside down and say activity is really equivalent to inactivity.")
The lawsuits also challenge as an invasion of state sovereignty the new law's provisions requiring states, already strapped for cash, to spend billions of dollars expanding their Medicaid programs unless they withdraw entirely, a step widely seen as unthinkable.
Defenders of the law predict that no more than one or two of the most conservative justices would strike down the challenged provisions, which the government says are critical to effective federal regulation of a health care system that has a massive impact on interstate commerce. Walter Dellinger, a leading scholar and the acting solicitor general under President Clinton, foresees an 8-1 vote, with only arch-conservative Justice Clarence Thomas voting to strike down the new law. Tom Goldstein, another leading Supreme Court litigator, foresees a vote of at least 7-2.
"They're just parroting the party line," retorts David Rivkin, a Washington lawyer who argued the case last week on behalf of the 20 states challenging the law. He says that upholding it would obliterate all limits on the commerce power, a step that Justice Kennedy and his four more conservative colleagues have repeatedly eschewed. Such a step would cross an important line and make America less free, Rivkin and his allies stress, by empowering Congress to require even the purchase of health-club memberships or, say, cars to stimulate the economy.
At the same time, leading centrist-to-conservative legal experts, including UCLA Law School's Eugene Volokh, doubt that the justices would or should strike down such a hugely important enactment with so vast an impact on interstate commerce. Others stress that Congress's sweeping authority to tax and spend for the general welfare—on which the somewhat analogous Social Security and Medicare taxes are based—provides ample authority for the penalty tax imposed by the new law on people who refuse to buy health insurance.
The justices have not struck down a major piece of legislation, let alone a president's signature initiative, as beyond Congress's power to regulate commerce in some 75 years.
Still, much may depend on where things stand when the issue reaches the justices. How popular or unpopular will the president's new law be then? How costly? How effective? What if the voters have by then elected a more conservative Congress that wants to repeal the law? Such factors are not supposed to influence constitutional interpretation, but sometimes they do.

GOP 'Pledge to America' Looks Unlikely to Inspire

Newsweek


Tim Sloan / AFP-Getty Image
GOP House Minority Leader John Boehner.
Legend has it that the 1994 Republican "Contract With America" was the centerpiece of the GOP's historic congressional takeover. The reality is a little more complicated. A generational shift of the Democrats' Solid South toward Republicans culminated in 1994 for a number of reasons, among them the usual antipathy toward the president's party in a midterm election. Republicans were well on their way to a rout by the time the contract had been written. And, of course, much of what the contract promised never came to pass. Such is the nature of our separation of powers when there is a president in the opposition party and a virtual supermajority requirement to pass anything in the Senate. But in the world of political analysis, actually accomplishing policy goals is an entirely separate question from whether something is viewed as politically successful. By that measure the contract is considered, perhaps excessively so, as a smashing success.

So, with that in mind, what should voters make of the GOP "Pledge to America" that will be unveiled Thursday? Whereas the contract was mostly procedural, promising such changes as requiring a three-fifths majority to raise taxes, the pledge offers more policy specifics. Some of them, such as an intention to keep the Guantánamo Bay detention facility open, are a bit overly specific and odd. Guantánamo is regarded by experts across the political spectrum as an imperfect solution to the vexing problem of where to keep suspected foreign terrorists. One would hope that keeping people who have been never been convicted of a crime in permanent legal limbo is not something that Republicans, much less swing voters, are actually enthusiastic about.
Other proposals follow the contract playbook by calling for changes to the legislative process so as to rein in government. For instance, Politico notes, "In one standout procedural promise that could prove difficult to keep, Republicans say they will let any lawmaker offer an amendment to a bill that would cut spending." This is just harmless theatrics. Not so harmless, however, is the promise to require every bill to be certified as constitutional before it is voted on. We have a mechanism for assessing the constitutionality of legislation, which is the independent judiciary. An extraconstitutional attempt to limit the powers of Congress is dangerous even as a mere suggestion, and it constitutes an encroachment on the judiciary.

The biggest question is how Republicans will attempt to square the circle of calling for $4 trillion to be removed from the federal treasury in the next decade by making the Bush tax cuts permanent, adding a tax cut for small businesses on top of that, and simultaneously reducing the budget deficit while increasing funding for national missile defense. They will need to get a lot more specific—and drastic—in their budget cutting than the pledge's cap on discretionary spending. They say that will save "$100 billion in the first year alone," but that's not nearly enough to compensate for their other budget-busting plans. Conveniently, the pledge calculates how much spending cuts will save the government and how much tax cuts will save the taxpayer, but not how much their tax cuts or spending proposals will cost the government. As George W. Bush might say, that's "fuzzy Washington math."

The messiest proposal legislatively is repealing health-care reform and replacing it with the predictable grab bag of Republican health-care solutions: tort reform, health savings accounts, and buying insurance across state lines. Curiously, there is one major provision of health-care reform—prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions—in their list of proposals. Such a prohibition is economically infeasible without the individual mandate that health-care reform included. If you force insurers to accommodate those with prior conditions and not the young and healthy, premiums will go up. The pledge contains no answer to this conundrum other than a vague promise to "expand state high-risk pools, reinsurance programs and reduce the cost of coverage."

Congressional Republicans are unpopular and they are widely viewed as very much a part of the "arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites" that the pledge lambastes. That's probably why Sarah Palin's political-action committee cut a video touting the Tea Party but making no mention of the party that nominated her for vice president two years ago. While the majority of Republican congressional candidates signed on to the contract in 1994, Thursday's event will feature only a dozen Republicans, all incumbents. And some Republicans are already criticizing the pledge for not going far enough to address long-term fiscal challenges because it does not propose reductions in entitlement spending.

The bottom line is that any Republican attempt to adopt a coherent, forward-looking, and plausible platform is bound to be fraught with challenges and contradictions. Luckily for the GOP, it looks like it can win big this year without one.



It is September 23, 2010



I have tried to stay out of politics, because I have gotten too involved, to the point that I am yelling at the TV and my daughter tells me to stop that I am raising my blood pressure and not doing myself any favors.
I have heard enough. I am a Democrat and at this point I am scared to death, that if the republicans take over the Congress, that we will loose our health care bill, medicare and social security. And I am one of those that would be affected by this. I listen to the Tea Party candidates and they are talking about abolishing abortion, I do not agree with the idea that all females no matter what their age if they are pregnant, whether it is a mistake, a rape, incest must be required to carry this child, to add that child to the enormous number of children there is in this world that are abused, forgotten, shunned, orphaned and left behind. That would be a colossal mistake, and the so called Tea Party patriots want to take away a woman's right. My right whether I am pro or con to have control over my body, that is my right and my privilege not the Governments.
The Republicans say they are not changing, they want to go back to the "good ole days" cut the budget, take away the rights of people to work, take away welfare that alot of Americans depend on right now because of the economics of the country. Do away with health care and put forth what they want for the American people. Do away with social security, and medicare they are socialist programs.  They want to put that in the hands of the wall street and the bankers, holy cow just make them richer and keep us from owning our own homes, starting our own business', being under their thumbs for anything financial. MAKE THE RICH RICHER, make the poor poorer, make the middle class disappear.
The banks as it is do not lend that would be Un-American, they just want their cauphers filled up and keep it in their family. Keep the Bush Tax Cuts for the top 2%, and add 750 billion dollars to our deficit. They want to do away with the Department of Education, where does that put the education of our children. Because the states are penniless to help with education. I lived in Volusia County in Florida and at the beginning of the 2009 school year they had closed a number of schools letting off hundreds of teachers because they did not have the budget to keep these schools open.
Immigration is another big problem, what did you honestly think when Congress filibustered the Military Budget bill, because it contained two amendments that the Republicans did not want to hear, one being the question of Don't Ask Don't Tell, which is a joke, these men and woman want to serve love serving their country and they have to lie which right off the bat causes harm to their pledge to serve. The other amendment has to do with immigrant children of age to serve our country in the military, giving them the right to seek citizenship after serving six years. And the whole Republican Caucus decided to not vote on the amendment because it dealt with immigration, which the republicans do not want to tackle now. They want to wait until they are in office and then kick all illegals out.
Talking about immigration, I find it somewhat worry some that Republicans seems so stressed out about what to do with all the "illegals" we have in this country, we are a country founded on immigrants who were just as "illegal" as the ones we are now discussing.  In the early 1900's immigrants are what diversified, and united us. They have made us stronger, more universal in our thinking, in our government, in the meaning of families and sticking together. Yes there were problems but we over came them and grew stronger as a nation, yes we need to nationalize our immigration rules, so that those "illegals" can become citizens, help our nation, reinvest in our ecomony(it will be theirs as citizens), reinvest in America, make us stronger, not weaker, make us more united not fighting amongst ourselves which we are doing right this minute.
There was a committee meeting with witnesses for the farm workers of this country and
illegals that work our farms because Americans would never be caught do this back breaking menial  work. Well if Americans will not do it and immigrants are willing, but the conditions that they are provided with are deplorable, we would not make our own citizens work in those conditions, would we?

Witnesses spoke about the American agricultural sector's reliance on foreign, and often undocumented, workers to pick fruit and vegetables on America's farms. Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert appeared in character to testify. Mr. Colbert was part of a United Farm Workers campaign calling on unemployed Americans to take jobs in the agriculture sector. As part of the program he spent a day laboring at a vegetable farm in New York in August 2010.

There is so much more that the Republicans want to put forth in action if they get a hold of Congress. I cannot comment on all of them, I have on the ones that mean something to me. Take a good look at the so called Contract with America I have it on one of my blogs it is 48 pages of going back to the time when Republicans were in charge and where that took us. THE SAME OLD SAME OLD.

House Republican leaders unveiled their policy agenda for the midterm elections, titled "A Pledge to America." The pledge covered a variety of subjects including government reform, repeal of health care reforms, tougher immigration laws, government spending restrictions, and tax policy. The event was held at a suburban hardware store in Sterling, Virginia.
Is that where we really want our country to go. I am worried, and scared because I am a senior citizen, and all of my rights as a citizen of this country could be gone come January 2011.; I have worked most of my life and earned those privileges, without social security, medicare and yes disability How would I live, on the streets, eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in alley ways. That is not how I planned to live the latter part of my life. And I know that that is not what all my fellow seniors had planned either.

Democrats and Republicans together can make a change together, because WE ARE THE PEOPLE. But to put the Tea Party and conservative right Republicans in office, gay rights, women rights, religious rights, education rights, seniors, immigrants, our very core of the Constitution will be changed or gone. The middle class will disappear, and wall street will dominate main street. I get the chills just thinking about it.

And that's all I have to say