Another Presidential promise about to fall by the wayside…Democrats are preparing to raise your taxes! Democrats are looking at the possibility of raising taxes on families below the $250,000-a-year threshold promised by President Barack Obama during the election. |
The majority party on Capitol Hill does not feel bound by that pledge, saying the threshold for tax hikes will depend on several factors, such as the revenue differences between setting the threshold at $200,000 and setting it at $250,000.
Read more at thehill.com |
Congressional Democrats have decided it’s impossible to pass a budget this year, and instead will impose one-year spending limits while trying to lay the groundwork for long-term budget restraint. |
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Tuesday a budget, which sets out binding one-year targets and a multiyear plan, is useless this year because Congress has shunted key questions about deficits to the independent debt commission created by President Obama, which is due to report back at the end of this year. |
The House and Senate don’t always agree on a final budget compromise, but the House itself has never failed to pass its own version of the spending blueprint. |
The decision leaves much of the rest of Democrats’ agenda in doubt and drew ridicule from Republicans, who pointed out Mr. Hoyer himself has deemed passing a budget a basic test of the ability to govern. Read more at www.washingtontimes.com |
Obama’s six-month moratorium on new deepwater oil and gas drilling went kaput today, at the hands of a lowly trial judge no less. |
New Orleans federal judge Martin L.C. Feldman today ruled that the administration had trivialized the economic impact of the moratorium. He added that the plaintiffs “have established a likelihood of successfully showing that the Administration acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the moratorium.” |
Here’s a WSJ article on the ruling and here’s a copy of the court’s order. |
In his ruling, Judge Feldman said the moratorium “does not seem to be fact-specific” and did not account for the safety records of many companies that operate in the Gulf. |
“Are all airplanes a danger because one was?” the judge wrote. “All oil tankers like Exxon Valdez? All trains? All mines? That sort of thinking seems heavy-handed.” Read more at blogs.wsj.com |
The chairman of the Business Roundtable, an association of top corporate executives that has been President Obama’s closest ally in the business community, accused the president and Democratic lawmakers Tuesday of creating an “increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation.” |
Ivan G. Seidenberg, chief executive of Verizon Communications, said that Democrats in Washington are pursuing tax increases, policy changes and regulatory actions that together threaten to dampen economic growth and “harm our ability . . . to grow private-sector jobs in the U.S.” |
“In our judgment, we have reached a point where the negative effects of these policies are simply too significant to ignore,” Seidenberg said in a lunchtime speech to the Economic Club of Washington. “By reaching into virtually every sector of economic life, government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace and making it harder to raise capital and create new businesses.” Read more at www.washingtonpost.com |
House Republicans who condemned Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) and threatened to yank his position atop the Energy and Commerce Committee have backed off and will let Barton remain the party’s top lawmaker on the panel. |
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who rebuked Barton for his BP apology last week, told the House Republican Conference Wednesday morning in a closed door meeting that it’s time to move on. |
“Joe has done the right thing by apologizing – it’s time to move on,” Boehner told his Republican colleagues, according to multiple sources in the room. |
Boehner, speaking in the lobby of the Republican National Committee’s Washington headquarters, said that Barton apologized to his colleagues and Democrats are trying to make his apology a distraction. The issue is closed, Boehner said. |
“We should not, though, allow this distraction to get in the way of the real problem: the administration has no plan that will stop the leak in the Gulf and help clean up this mess,” Boehner said. “And frankly, they want to use this distraction in order to push their national energy plan, their cap and trade bill.” Read more at www.politico.com |
President’s speech was heavy on rhetoric and promises…light on details. We are going to “mobilize.” We are going to have a “battle plan.” We are going to set up a “fund.” And we are going to get the tourists “to come back.” |
We are going to have a “long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan.” We have established “a National Commission.” And we are going to build “a new organization.” |
We are in a crisis because of “a lack of political courage and candor.” But “the time to embrace a clean energy future is now.” |
“There are costs associated with this transition,” but the one thing the president “will not accept is inaction.” |
“Even if we don’t yet know precisely how to get there,” said the president, “we know we’ll get there.” |
How? Why? Because we won World War II. And we landed “a man safely on the surface of the moon.” |
All we need now is “courage.” And a “hand” to guide us “towards a brighter day.” |
And that was pretty much President Obama’s entire speech to the nation Tuesday. |
The president is trying to pull off a tough trick: He is trying to do what Lyndon Johnson did when Johnson used a stunning tragedy — the assassination of John F. Kennedy — to bludgeon Congress into passing Johnson’s Great Society. And Johnson succeeded. He got the Civil Rights Act, the War on Poverty, Medicare and Medicaid. |
But that was then. And this is now, and the nation is not stunned the way it was when Kennedy was killed. Today, the nation is nervous, twitchy, angry. Read more at www.politico.com |
WASHINGTON — In assuring Americans that BP won’t control the compensation fund for Gulf oil spill recovery, President Barack Obama failed to mention that the government won’t control it, either. |
That means it’s anyone’s guess whether the government can, in fact, make BP pay all costs related to the spill. |
Obama aimed high in his prime-time Oval Office address Tuesday night — perhaps higher than the facts support and history teaches — as he vowed to restore livelihoods and nature from the still-unfolding calamity in the Gulf of Mexico. |
A look at some of his statements and how they compare with those facts: |
OBAMA: “We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused and we will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy. … Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party.” |
THE FACTS: An independent arbiter is no more bound to the government’s wishes than an oil company’s. In that sense, there is no certainty BP will be forced to make the Gulf economy whole again or that taxpayers are off the hook for the myriad costs associated with the spill or cleanup. The government can certainly press for that, using legislative and legal tools. But there are no guarantees and the past is not reassuring. |
It took 20 years to sort through liability after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and in the end, punitive damages were slashed by the courts to about $500 million from $2.5 billion. Many people who had lost their livelihoods in the spill died without ever seeing a check. Read more at www.google.com |
House Republicans successfully exposed lingering divisions within the Democratic Caucus over a health insurance mandate by forcing a vote Tuesday on a proposal to repeal that part of the new health care law. |
Twenty-one Democrats voted in favor of the repeal proposal, which Ways and Means ranking member Dave Camp (R-Mich.) offered as an amendment to legislation that would provide tax breaks to small businesses. But the proposal was roundly defeated, 187-230, and the House went on to pass the small-business bill, 247-170. |
Despite the defections, Democratic aides insisted that the vote signified growing support for the health care bill, which was opposed by 34 Democrats in March. |
One Republican, Anh “Joseph” Cao (La.), voted against Camp’s proposal to repeal the insurance mandate on individuals. Cao also was the lone GOP lawmaker to vote for the health care bill. |
Camp opposed the small-business bill and said his proposal would provide “real help to Americans by repealing one of the most onerous provisions of the new health care law.” Read more at www.rollcall.com |
We can’t keep kicking this can down the road…we need to find a real fix for doctors’ pay, but it needs to be one that doesn’t overburden taxpayers. For more than two decades, internist Lee Antles has treated Medicare patients at his practice in Olympia, Wash. Last month, he started turning them away. |
What pushed him over the edge was Congress’s failure to end the looming threat—which no one expects to be carried through—of a 21% payment cut for doctors who participate in the seniors’ insurance program. Last year, he and his wife, Margie, who manages the office, took home $55,000 before taxes, he said. |
Dr. Antles is considering quitting medicine and moving to Chicago, so his wife can return to a sales job that pays at least twice that much. “It just causes me such angst,” he said, who would become a stay-at-home father to the couple’s six-year-old daughter. “It leaves 1,000 Medicare patients. Where do they go?” |
The Senate could vote as soon as Wednesday to end debate on a bill to delay the cuts. But lawmakers are considering postponing them just through the year’s end. A House bill that passed last month would delay the cuts through the end of 2011. |
Repeated short-term fixes of the problem in recent years have left doctors frustrated and some, like Dr. Antles, are refusing to take new Medicare patients. Since the latest “doc fix” expired May 31, doctors have been holding off on submitting claims until Congress approves another patch. On Saturday, President Barack Obama used his weekly radio address to urge Congress to fix the problem. |
The battle comes amid a broader struggle in the Senate over a more than $120 billion bill extending long-term unemployment benefits, which lapsed earlier this month, and renewing several popular business tax breaks. The measure is running into headwinds, as many centrist Democrats, joined by Republicans, say the bill is only partially funded and will add $80 billion to the federal budget deficit. Read more at www.wallstreetjournal.com |
| DALLAS — Rep. Joe Barton and other Texans in Congress asked President Barack Obama on Saturday to call off a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling to avoid hurting the drilling industry more than it has already been damaged. |
Republican House members led by Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, say they’ll file a bill Tuesday calling for an end to the moratorium, which they say is creating financial hardships for businesses and workers in the deepwater drilling business. |
“We should not kill the patient in order to save the patient,” said Barton, R-Arlington, who led a news conference on the issue at this weekend’s Texas Republican Party convention. “This moratorium … is the wrong medicine.” |
Last month in the wake of the BP oil spill, which continues dumping millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Obama put in place a temporary moratorium on permits for drilling new deepwater wells as an independent committee investigates the oil spill and works to find solutions on how to drill safely in deep water. Read more at www.star-telegram.com |
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