---
Nothing embarrasses the Obama Administration because they are so haughty but even Atty. Gen. Holder has his second thought moments.
The biggest proliferation of guns happens to be the work of this administration but then who cares about facts anymore. (See 2 below.)
---
Arrogance seems to be a common characteristic of President Obama and Democrat Senate Leadership.
Harry Reid is an embarrassment of the first order. He has the pallor and demeanor of Digger Odell, the friendly undertaker. His management of the Senate contradicts his sworn responsibility. He runs it as a fiefdom to protect his fellow Senators from public exposure and thus, harm.
As for 'Schmuck' Chuck Schumer he is another weasel type. He is as slimy and whiny as they make them.
These comprise our nation's leadership. No wonder we are in the soup. (See 3, 3a, 3b and 3c below.)
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Meanwhile, Republicans are so under water they would actually benefit changing horses in midstream (See 4 below)
---
The push and shove for Hillary is on. She will be our next and first female president if the press and media have anything to do with it.
After eight years of Obama and perhaps 4 to 8 of Hillary, Republicans should just let Democrats continue to run the nation into the ground. (See 5 below.)
---
Nothing embarrasses the Obama Administration because they are so haughty but even Atty. Gen. Holder has his second thought moments.
The biggest proliferation of guns happens to be the work of this administration but then who cares about facts anymore. (See 2 below.)
---
Arrogance seems to be a common characteristic of President Obama and Democrat Senate Leadership.
Harry Reid is an embarrassment of the first order. He has the pallor and demeanor of Digger Odell, the friendly undertaker. His management of the Senate contradicts his sworn responsibility. He runs it as a fiefdom to protect his fellow Senators from public exposure and thus, harm.
As for 'Schmuck' Chuck Schumer he is another weasel type. He is as slimy and whiny as they make them.
These comprise our nation's leadership. No wonder we are in the soup. (See 3, 3a, 3b and 3c below.)
---
Meanwhile, Republicans are so under water they would actually benefit changing horses in midstream (See 4 below)
---
The push and shove for Hillary is on. She will be our next and first female president if the press and media have anything to do with it.
After eight years of Obama and perhaps 4 to 8 of Hillary, Republicans should just let Democrats continue to run the nation into the ground. (See 5 below.)
---
Dick
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1) ObamaCare's Health-Insurance Sticker Shock
Thanks to mandates that take effect in 2014, premiums in individual markets will shoot up. Some may double.
Health-insurance premiums have been rising—and consumers will experience another series of price shocks later this year when some see their premiums skyrocket thanks to the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare.
The reason: The congressional Democrats who crafted the legislation ignored virtually every actuarial principle governing rational insurance pricing. Premiums will soon reflect that disregard—indeed, premiums are already reflecting it.
Central to ObamaCare are requirements that health insurers (1) accept everyone who applies (guaranteed issue), (2) cannot charge more based on serious medical conditions (modified community rating), and (3) include numerous coverage mandates that force insurance to pay for many often uncovered medical conditions.
Guaranteed issue incentivizes people to forgo buying a policy until they get sick and need coverage (and then drop the policy after they get well). While ObamaCare imposes a financial penalty—or is it a tax?—to discourage people from gaming the system, it is too low to be a real disincentive. The result will be insurance pools that are smaller and sicker, and therefore more expensive.
How do we know these requirements will have such a negative impact on premiums? Eight states—New Jersey, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Washington, Kentucky, Vermont and Massachusetts—enacted guaranteed issue and community rating in the mid-1990s and wrecked their individual (i.e., non-group) health-insurance markets. Premiums increased so much that Kentucky largely repealed its law in 2000 and some of the other states eventually modified their community-rating provisions.
States won't experience equal increases in their premiums under ObamaCare. Ironically, citizens in states that have acted responsibly over the years by adhering to standard actuarial principles and limiting the (often politically motivated) mandates will see the biggest increases, because their premiums have typically been the lowest.
Many actuaries, such as those in the international consulting firm Oliver Wyman, are now predicting an average increase of roughly 50% in premiums for some in the individual market for the same coverage. But that is an average. Large employer groups will be less affected, at least initially, because the law grandfathers in employers that self-insure. Small employers will likely see a significant increase, though not as large as the individual market, which will be the hardest hit.
We compared the average premiums in states that already have ObamaCare-like provisions in their laws and found that consumers in New Jersey, New York and Vermont already pay well over twice what citizens in many other states pay. Consumers in Maine and Massachusetts aren't far behind. Those states will likely see a small increase.
By contrast, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming and Virginia will likely see the largest increases—somewhere between 65% and 100%. Another 18 states, including Texas and Michigan, could see their rates rise between 35% and 65%.
While ObamaCare won't take full effect until 2014, health-insurance premiums in the individual market are already rising, and not just because of routine increases in medical costs. Insurers are adjusting premiums now in anticipation of the guaranteed-issue and community-rating mandates starting next year. There are newly imposed mandates, such as the coverage for children up to age 26, and what qualifies as coverage is much more comprehensive and expensive. Consolidation in the hospital system has been accelerated by ObamaCare and its push for Accountable Care Organizations. This means insurers must negotiate in a less competitive hospital market.
Although President Obama repeatedly claimed that health-insurance premiums for a family would be $2,500 lower by the end of his first term, they are actually about $3,000 higher—a spread of about $5,500 per family.
Health insurers have been understandably reluctant to discuss the coming price hikes that are driven by the Affordable Care Act. Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, the country's third-largest health insurer, broke the silence on Dec. 12. "We're going to see some markets go up by as much as 100%," he told the company's annual investor conference in New York City.
Insurers know that the Obama administration will denounce the premium increases as the result of greedy health insurers, greedy doctors, greedy somebody. The Department of Health and Human Services will likely begin to threaten, arm-twist or investigate health insurers in an effort to force them into keeping their premiums more in line with Democratic promises—just as HHS bureaucrats have already started doing when insurers want premium increases larger than 10%.
And that may work for a while. It certainly has in Massachusetts, where politicians, including then-Gov.Mitt Romney, made all the same cost-lowering promises about the state's 2006 prequel to ObamaCare that have yet to come true.
But unlike the federal government, health insurers can't run perpetual deficits. Something will have to give, which will likely open the door to making health insurance a public utility completely regulated by the government, or the left's real goal: a single-payer system.
Mr. Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Mr. Litow is a retired actuary and past chairman of the Social Insurance Public Finance Section of the Society of Actuaries.
Guaranteed issue incentivizes people to forgo buying a policy until they get sick and need coverage (and then drop the policy after they get well). While ObamaCare imposes a financial penalty—or is it a tax?—to discourage people from gaming the system, it is too low to be a real disincentive. The result will be insurance pools that are smaller and sicker, and therefore more expensive.
How do we know these requirements will have such a negative impact on premiums? Eight states—New Jersey, New York, Maine, New Hampshire, Washington, Kentucky, Vermont and Massachusetts—enacted guaranteed issue and community rating in the mid-1990s and wrecked their individual (i.e., non-group) health-insurance markets. Premiums increased so much that Kentucky largely repealed its law in 2000 and some of the other states eventually modified their community-rating provisions.
States won't experience equal increases in their premiums under ObamaCare. Ironically, citizens in states that have acted responsibly over the years by adhering to standard actuarial principles and limiting the (often politically motivated) mandates will see the biggest increases, because their premiums have typically been the lowest.
Many actuaries, such as those in the international consulting firm Oliver Wyman, are now predicting an average increase of roughly 50% in premiums for some in the individual market for the same coverage. But that is an average. Large employer groups will be less affected, at least initially, because the law grandfathers in employers that self-insure. Small employers will likely see a significant increase, though not as large as the individual market, which will be the hardest hit.
We compared the average premiums in states that already have ObamaCare-like provisions in their laws and found that consumers in New Jersey, New York and Vermont already pay well over twice what citizens in many other states pay. Consumers in Maine and Massachusetts aren't far behind. Those states will likely see a small increase.
By contrast, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming and Virginia will likely see the largest increases—somewhere between 65% and 100%. Another 18 states, including Texas and Michigan, could see their rates rise between 35% and 65%.
While ObamaCare won't take full effect until 2014, health-insurance premiums in the individual market are already rising, and not just because of routine increases in medical costs. Insurers are adjusting premiums now in anticipation of the guaranteed-issue and community-rating mandates starting next year. There are newly imposed mandates, such as the coverage for children up to age 26, and what qualifies as coverage is much more comprehensive and expensive. Consolidation in the hospital system has been accelerated by ObamaCare and its push for Accountable Care Organizations. This means insurers must negotiate in a less competitive hospital market.
Although President Obama repeatedly claimed that health-insurance premiums for a family would be $2,500 lower by the end of his first term, they are actually about $3,000 higher—a spread of about $5,500 per family.
Health insurers have been understandably reluctant to discuss the coming price hikes that are driven by the Affordable Care Act. Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, the country's third-largest health insurer, broke the silence on Dec. 12. "We're going to see some markets go up by as much as 100%," he told the company's annual investor conference in New York City.
Insurers know that the Obama administration will denounce the premium increases as the result of greedy health insurers, greedy doctors, greedy somebody. The Department of Health and Human Services will likely begin to threaten, arm-twist or investigate health insurers in an effort to force them into keeping their premiums more in line with Democratic promises—just as HHS bureaucrats have already started doing when insurers want premium increases larger than 10%.
And that may work for a while. It certainly has in Massachusetts, where politicians, including then-Gov.Mitt Romney, made all the same cost-lowering promises about the state's 2006 prequel to ObamaCare that have yet to come true.
But unlike the federal government, health insurers can't run perpetual deficits. Something will have to give, which will likely open the door to making health insurance a public utility completely regulated by the government, or the left's real goal: a single-payer system.
Mr. Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Mr. Litow is a retired actuary and past chairman of the Social Insurance Public Finance Section of the Society of Actuaries.
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2)HOLDER BEGS COURT TO STOP DOCUMENT RELEASE ON FAST AND FURIOUS
By MATTHEW BOYLE
2)HOLDER BEGS COURT TO STOP DOCUMENT RELEASE ON FAST AND FURIOUS
By MATTHEW BOYLE
Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice haveasked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.
Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and “specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012.”
The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch’s FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder’s denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama’s administration filed what’s called a “motion to stay” the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said that Holder’s and Obama’s desire to continually hide these Fast and Furious documents is “ironic” now that they’re so gung-ho on gun control. “It is beyond ironic that the Obama administration has initiated an anti-gun violence push as it seeking to keep secret key documents about its very own Fast and Furious gun walking scandal,” Fitton said in a statement. “Getting beyond the Obama administration’s smokescreen, this lawsuit is about a very simple principle: the public’s right to know the full truth about an egregious political scandal that led to the death of at least one American and countless others in Mexico. The American people are sick and tired of the Obama administration trying to rewrite FOIA law to protect this president and his appointees. Americans want answers about Fast and Furious killings and lies.”
The only justification Holder uses to ask the court to indefinitely delay Judicial Watch’s suit is that there’s another lawsuit ongoing for the same documents – one filed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Judicial Watch has filed a brief opposing the DOJ’s motion to stay.
As the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was voting Holder into contempt of Congress for his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators by failing to turn over tens of thousands of pages of Fast and Furious documents, Obama asserted the executive privilege over them. The full House of Representatives soon after voted on a bipartisan basis to hold Holder in contempt.
There were two parts of the contempt resolution. Holder was, and still is, in both civil and criminal contempt of Congress. The criminal resolution was forwarded to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen–who works for Holder–for prosecution. Despite being technically required by law to bring forth criminal charges against Holder, under orders from Holder’s Department of Justice Machen chose to ignorethe resolution.
The second part of the contempt resolution–civil contempt of Congress–allowed House Republicans to hire legal staff to challenge President Obama’s assertion of the executive privilege. That lawsuit remains ongoing despite Holder’s and the DOJ’s attempt to dismiss it and settle it.
It’s unclear what’s in the documents Obama asserted privilege over, but the president’s use of the extraordinary power appears weak. There are two types of presidential executive privilege: the presidential communications privilege and the deliberative process privilege. Use of the presidential communications privilege would require that the president himself or his senior-most advisers were involved in the discussions.
Since the president and his cabinet-level officials continually claim they had no knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious until early 2011 when the information became public–and Holder claims he didn’t read the briefing documents he was sent that outlined the scandal and how guns were walking while the operation was ongoing–Obama says he’s using theless powerful deliberative process privilege.
The reason why Obama’s assertion of that deliberative process privilege over these documents is weak at best is because the Supreme Court has held that such a privilege assertion is invalidated by even the suspicion of government wrongdoing. Obama, Holder, the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and virtually everyone else involved in this scandal have admitted that government wrongdoing actually took place in Operation Fast and Furious.
In Fast and Furious, the ATF “walked” about 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. That means through straw purchasers they allowed sales to happen and didn’t stop the guns from being trafficked even though they had the legal authority to do so and were fully capable of doing so.
Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens–estimates put it around at least 300–were killed with these firearms.
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3)Cruz: Obama 'High on His Own Power'
Republican senator Ted Cruz of Texas said Thursday that Barack Obama is "high on his own power" with regard to the president's announced efforts on gun control. Speaking on Laura Ingraham's radio talk show, Cruz, who was just elected to the Senate last November, said "this is a president who has drunk the Kool-Aid."
"He is feeling right now high on his own power, and he is pushing on every front, on guns," Cruz said. "And I think it's really sad to see the president of the United States exploiting the murder of children and using it to push his own extreme, anti-gun agenda. I think what the president is proposing and the gun control proposals that are coming from Democrats in the Senate are, number one, unconstitutional, and number two, they don't work. They're bad policy."
Cruz told Ingraham that he does not believe Obama will be successful in passing gun control legislation and that the political ramifications of pursuing such laws could be bad for Democrats.
"I think he's going to pay a serious political price, and I think the price that's going to be paid on this is going to manifest in Senate races in 2014, in some red states," Cruz said. "And there have got to be some Democrats who are up for reelection in 2014 who are very, very nervous right now that PresidentObama is picking this fight."
3a)Noonan: His Terms Are Always Hostile Ones
No one has good faith but Obama. Doesn't this get boring, even to him?
Presidential inaugurations are rare and notable events, coming only once every four years since April 30, 1789, when George Washington raised his right hand and took the oath on the second-floor balcony of New York's Federal Hall.
It's a big day with all its pomp and ceremony, and among its purposes is this: to encourage all who watch to let go, for a moment, of the ups and downs of the political day-to-day and think, for a moment, about the longer arc of our history. A president's inaugural address is a chance to go big and be big—to be thematic and not programmatic, to declare the meaning, as he sees it, of his leadership, to speak of where America is and ought to be. The whole day, from breakfasts to balls, is meant to be, insofar as possible within the confines of human nature, one of democratic fellowship and good feeling.
A president approaching that day will necessarily be, in his spirit, benign, embracing—unifying.
So here is what is utterly remarkable: President Obama has been using the days and weeks leading up to his inauguration to show the depth of his disdain for the leaders of the other major party and, by inference, that party's voters, which is to say more or less half the country. He has been spending his time alienating instead of summoning. It has left the political air more sour and estranged.
As a presidential style this is something strange and new. That has to be said again: It is new, and does not augur well.
What was remarkable about the president's news conference Monday is that he didn't seem to think he had to mask his partisan rancor or be large-spirited. He bristled with unashamed hostility for Republicans on the Hill. They are holding the economy "ransom," they are using the threat of "crashing the American economy" as "leverage," some are "absolutist" while others are "consumed with partisan brinksmanship." They are holding "a gun at the head of the American people." And what is "motivating and propelling" them is not a desire for debt reduction, as they claim. They are "suspicious about government's commitment . . . to make sure that seniors have decent health care as they get older. They have suspicions about Social Security. They have suspicions about whether government should make sure that kids in poverty are getting enough to eat, or whether we should be spending money on medical research."
And yet, "when I'm over here at the congressional picnic and folks are coming up and taking pictures with their family, I promise you, Michelle and I are very nice to them."
You're nice to them? To people who'd take food from the mouths of babes?
Then, grimly: "But it doesn't prevent them from going onto the floor of the House and blasting me for being a big-spending socialist." Conservative media outlets "demonize" the president, he complained, and so Republican legislators fear standing near him.
If Richard Nixon talked like that, they'd have called him paranoid and self-pitying. Oh wait . . .
Throughout the press conference the president demanded—they'd "better choose quickly"—that Republicans extend the debt ceiling. Pressed by reporters on whether he would negotiate with them to win this outcome he made it clear he would not. He would have "a conversation." Bloomberg's Julianna Goldman asked: "So you technically will negotiate?"
"No, Julianna," he answered. "Either Congress pays its bills or it doesn't."
There was a logical inconsistency to his argument. A government shutdown would be so disastrous to the economy that he won't negotiate with Republicans if that's what it takes to avert it.
This, he said, is what will happen if the debt ceiling is not extended: "Social Security checks and veteran's benefits will be delayed. We might not be able to pay our troops, or honor our contracts with small businesses. Food inspectors, air traffic controllers, specialists who track down loose nuclear material wouldn't get their paychecks."
Why talk to Republicans when the stakes are so high? They must be the kind of people who like to see planes crash and bombs go off.
Two days later, unveiling his gun-control plan at a White House event, it wasn't only Republicans in Congress who lie: "There will be pundits and politicians and special-interest lobbyists publicly warning of a tyrannical all-out assault on liberty, not because that's true but because they want to gin up fear or higher ratings or revenue for themselves. And behind the scenes, they'll do everything they can to block any common-sense reform and make sure nothing changes whatsoever."
No one has good faith but him. No one is sincere but him. Doesn't this get boring, even to him?
The president was criticized for surrounding himself with children during the event, but politicians use props and the props are usually people. Was it out of bounds that he used kids? No. Was it classy? No. But classiness doesn't seem to be much on his mind. Perhaps his staffers were thinking less about gun control than warming up his image—"Julia, I will try very hard"—and trying to get people to think of him, after four years, and with his graying hair, as Papa Obama, instead of Irritating Older Brother Who Got 750 On His SATs And Thinks He's Einstein Obama. Which is sort of how half the country sees him.
His gun-control recommendations themselves seemed, on balance, reasonable and moderate. I don't remember that the Second Amendment died when Bill Clinton banned assault rifles; it seemed to thrive, and good, too. That ban shouldn't have been allowed to expire in 2004.
What was offensive about the president's recommendations is what they excluded. He had nothing to say about America's culture of violence—its movies, TV shows and video games. Excuse me, there will be a study of video games; they are going to do "research" on whether seeing 10,000 heads explode on video screens every day might lead unstable young men to think about making heads explode. You'll need a real genius to figure that out.
The president at one point asked congressmen in traditionally gun-supporting districts to take a chance, do the right thing and support some limits. But when it comes to challenging Hollywood—where he traditionally gets support, and from which he has taken great amounts of money for past campaigns and no doubt will for future libraries—he doesn't seem to think he has to do the right thing. He doesn't even have to talk about it. It wouldn't be good to have Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino running around shouting "First amendment, slippery slope!" or have various powerful and admired actors worrying their brows, to the extent their brows can be worried.
On cultural issues, this Democratic president could have done a Nixon to China—the bold move that only he could make without inspiring fierce dissent, the move that could break through.
Instead he did a Nixon to the Orange County GOP.
Maybe the president doesn't operate with as much good faith as he thinks, and maybe the other side isn't as bad as he pretends. As I watched his news conference and his gun-control remarks I thought, for the first time in a while, that the Republicans are finally getting a break.
He is overplaying his hand.
He does that. He's doing it again.
3b)Harry Reid's Great Disappearing Act
He hides divisions among Democrats by turning the Senate into the world's least deliberative body.
By Kim Strassel
The simplest statements sometimes are the most insightful. For an example, consider this one on Wednesday from Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, in reaction to President Obama's gun-control proposals: "I would welcome the opportunity to debate these issues on the floor of the Senate, and would encourage Majority Leader [Harry] Reid to schedule a full and open debate."
In these seemingly innocuous words are a key to GOP revival. What may be the most overlooked story of the past two years is how Harry Reid has subverted the democratic process, successfully allowing him to both protect his party and keep the focus on Republicans. If the GOP wants to start winning a few battles, this dynamic has to change.
The Founders created a legislative process that was deliberately different from the parliamentary systems of Europe. In the "regular order" of things, the House works its will. The Senate works its will. Those two bodies meet in conference. The president may then sign or veto the resulting legislation.
In Mr. Reid's Washington, the House works its will, the Senate does crossword puzzles. Its committees do not produce bills, its senators do not debate or amend, the body does not vote. The House, to accomplish anything, is forced to engage in backroom wrangling with the White House, the results of which are presented to the nation as a fait accompli. The Senate claims total deniability.
Mr. Reid's Senate has not produced a budget in three years. The majority leader rarely moves on a bill, and when he does, he uses tricks to block senators from amending legislation, or he shuts down debate in such a way as to kill legislation. Regular order and conference reports are nearly nonexistent.
Mr. Reid's primary motive is to shield his vulnerable members from tough votes and to hide the huge divisions in his party.
He does not want a debate on gun control, as it would force Democratic senators to choose between President Obama and their own pro-Second Amendment constituents. The majority leader would not offer a bill during the fiscal-cliff negotiations because many Democrats disagreed with their president's proposed tax hikes. He has not produced a budget because to do so would expose the party's real spending ambitions, which would create political problems back home for his members.
Mr. Reid knows there is a brilliant added bonus to making sure the Senate is inactive: It keeps all the attention on Republicans. The press is by now so used to Senate nothingness that reporters automatically turn every spotlight on the House. This allows the White House and Democrats to avoid ownership of problems that they have created by casting Republicans as the cause of every legislative crisis and as the barrier to solutions. It also keeps the focus on divisions within the GOP.
An example of how this works: Tax bills must originate in the House, so the GOP in August dutifully passed legislation to avert the fiscal cliff by extending rates for one year. With regular order, the Senate would have taken this up, amended it and gone to conference. No crisis.
But Mr. Reid didn't want his members to have to vote on a bill that either undercut the president or undercut their own re-election prospects—so he did nothing. As the clock ticked down to the expiration of the Bush tax rates, the White House (and the press) then claimed it was incumbent on the GOP to either cut a deal directly with the administration or be held responsible for tax hikes on everyone. Mr. Obama sat back to enjoy a public GOP brawl over its tax strategy, followed by his tax victory. Nowhere was it noted that the entire breakdown of the process—the entire reason for the crisis—rested on Mr. Reid's refusal to act.
Republicans are getting very wise to all this, as hinted by Mr. Coburn's polite request that the Senate debate gun control. In GOP circles, the talk is increasingly on ways to force Mr. Reid to re-engage with democracy. House Speaker John Boehner's recent declaration that any further debt deals will be done through "regular order" was in part an acknowledgment that dealing directly with Mr. Obama is folly. But it was just as much a declaration that Mr. Boehner intends to pressure Mr. Reid to do his job.
The constitutional system of checks and balances limits the House's ability to force the Senate majority leader to act. Republicans nonetheless have the means to elevate this issue in ways that could prove highly embarrassing to Mr. Reid and his party.
Mr. Reid may sense this is coming, which could explain his recent complaints about the filibuster. His intention is to suggest that it is Republicans—not the man in charge—who are to blame for Senate gridlock. The GOP has fought back vigorously against that canard, which is all to the good.
They'll have to do more. The Democrats' great victory in recent months has been in making the public forget that they own the majority of power in Washington, and laying everything on the GOP. Republicans need to remind the country of who, in fact, is at the wheel.
3c)Schumer's Blessing
The Senator says Chuck Hagel no longer believes what he said.
Chuck Schumer, the senior Senator from New York and Harry Reid wannabe, is not currently a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Nor has he ever served on it in his 14 years in the Senate, or on its House counterpart during his 18 years as a Congressman from New York City.
So of course he's uniquely qualified to pronounce on the subject of Chuck Hagel's fitness to serve as Secretary of Defense.
That is what some of our media friends are saying now that Mr. Schumer has announced his support for the nominee following a 90-minute meeting on Monday. Mr. Schumer—who calls himself the Senate's "Shomer Israel," or "guardian of Israel"—had previously played coy about his views of Mr. Hagel, noting in a statement that he had "genuine concerns over certain aspects of his record on Israel and Iran."
But all that was put to rest during their meeting. Mr. Schumer reports that Mr. Hagel disavowed his former opposition to unilateral U.S. sanctions or military strikes on Iran. He reversed his former support for opening direct talks with the leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group.
He promised to implement a provision in the 2013 defense bill giving servicewomen greater access to abortion, something he had repeatedly opposed as a Senator. He walked back his former opposition to the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay soldiers. And he said he regretted using the term "Jewish lobby" in reference to pro-Israel groups.
So there you have it. The man whose chief recommendation to be Defense Secretary is supposed to be his courageous willingness to say what's on his mind no matter the political consequences has now shown he'll say whatever Chuck Schumer wants him to say to be confirmed by the Senate.
And the Senator who was supposed to be the personification of the vaunted "Jewish lobby" has now endorsed the nomination of the man who so conspicuously denounced that lobby and its supposed ability to "intimidate" American politicians. Let's see what the caucus claiming Mr. Hagel is the victim of a vast Jewish conspiracy makes of that one.
Meantime, Mr. Hagel will still have to endure Senate hearings before his nomination can be put to a vote. Judging by his performance with Mr. Schumer, Mr. Hagel will make anodyne remarks and distance himself from his previous positions by saying the world has changed.
But Senators should insist on an accounting of his past support for "engagement" with Hamas, Iran and the Assad regime in Syria. They should want to know what lessons he draws from warning that the surge in Iraq would be one of the greatest foreign policy blunders of all time. They should have a clear sense of what he thinks the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan in the wake of U.S. withdrawal would mean for regional and American security. And they should ask precisely where he finds "bloat" in a Navy now reduced to 287 ships and an Air Force flying 50-year-old planes.
We don't know whether any of this will prevent Mr. Hagel's confirmation, though it should be educational about his world view and the Administration's defense priorities. What we do know is that, whatever his own conceits on the matter, Mr. Schumer's absolution of Mr. Hagel settles nothing except his own vote, and maybe his conscience.
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4)A new strategy for the GOP
By
It has become conventional wisdom that Republicans are suffering an internal split that President Obama is successfully exploiting to neuter the Republican House. It is not true, however, that the Republican split is philosophical and fundamental. And that a hopelessly divided GOP is therefore headed for decline, perhaps irrelevance.
In fact, the split is tactical, not philosophical; short-term, not fundamental. And therefore quite solvable.
How do we know? Simple thought experiment: Imagine that we had a Republican president. Would the party be deeply divided over policy, at war with itself in Congress? Not at all. It would be rallying around something like the Paul Ryan budget that twice passed the House with near 100 percent GOP unanimity.
In reality, Republicans have a broad consensus on what they believe, where they want to go and the program to get them there. But they don’t have the power. What divides Republicans today is a straightforward tactical question: Can you govern from one house of Congress? Should you even try?
Can you shrink government, restrain spending, bring a modicum of fiscal sanity to the country when the president and a blocking Senate have no intention of doing so?
One faction feels committed to try. It wishes to carry out its small-government electoral promises and will cast no vote inconsistent with that philosophy. These are the House Republicans who voted no on the “fiscal cliff” deal because it raised taxes without touching spending. Indeed, it increasedspending with its crazy-quilt crony-capitalist tax ”credits” — for wind power and other indulgences.
They were willing to risk the fiscal cliff. Today they are willing to risk a breach of the debt ceiling and even a government shutdown rather than collaborate with Obama’s tax-and-spend second-term agenda.
The other view is that you cannot govern from the House. The reason Ryan and John Boehner finally voted yes on the lousy fiscal-cliff deal is that by then there was nowhere else to go. Republicans could not afford to bear the blame (however unfair) for a $4.5 trillion across-the-board tax hike and a Pentagon hollowed out by sequester.
The party establishment is coming around to the view that if you try to govern from one house — e.g., force spending cuts with cliffhanging brinkmanship — you lose. You not only don’t get the cuts. You get the blame for rattled markets and economic uncertainty. You get humiliated by having to cave in the end. And you get opinion polls ranking you below head lice and colonoscopies in popularity.
There is history here. The Gingrich Revolution ran aground when it tried to govern from Congress, losing badly to President Clinton over government shutdowns. Nor did the modern insurgents do any better in the 2011 debt-ceiling and 2012 fiscal-cliff showdowns with Obama.
Obama’s postelection arrogance and intransigence can put you in a fighting mood. I sympathize. But I’m tending toward the realist view: Don’t force the issue when you don’t have the power.
The debt-ceiling deadline is coming up. You can demand commensurate spending cuts, the usual, reasonable Republican offer. But you won’t get them. Obama will hold out. And, at the eleventh hour, you will have to give in as you get universally blamed for market gyrations and threatened credit downgrades.
The more prudent course would be to find some offer that cannot be refused, a short-term trade-off utterly unassailable and straightforward. For example, offer to extend the debt ceiling through, say, May 1, in exchange for the Senate delivering a budget by that date — after four years of lawlessly refusing to produce one.
Not much. But it would (a) highlight the Democrats’ fiscal recklessness, (b) force Senate Democrats to make public their fiscal choices and (c) keep the debt ceiling alive as an ongoing pressure point for future incremental demands.
Republicans should develop a list of such conditions — some symbolic, some substantive — in return for sequential, short-term raising of the debt ceiling. But the key is: Go small and simple. Forget about forcing tax reform or entitlement cuts or anything major. If Obama wants to recklessly expand government, well, as he says, he won the election.
Republicans should simply block what they can. Further tax hikes, for example. The general rule is: From a single house of Congress you can resist but you cannot impose.
Aren’t you failing the country, say the insurgents? Answer: The country chose Obama. He gets four years.
Want to save the Republic? Win the next election. Don’t immolate yourself trying to save liberalism from itself. If your conservative philosophy is indeed right, winning will come. As Margaret Thatcher said serenely of the Labor Party socialists she later overthrew: “They always run out of other people’s money.”
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5)Hillary Clinton 2016? Women Look Ahead To ‘History In the Making’
After Hillary Clinton left 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, supporters anticipate that she can smash through it in 2016. Paul Alexander reports. Women see in Clinton a female candidate who could not only run for but win the presidency.
By Paul Alexander
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