U.S. Senator Mike Lee, R-Utah, walks to the Senate floor during a long series of votes, many on procedural matters or to confirm members of the Obama administration, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington Dec. 13, 2014.Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
UPDATE 10:10 p.m. EST: The U.S. Senate Saturday voted 56-40 to approve a $1.1 trillion “cromnibus” spending bill that funds the federal government through September. The measure now goes to President Obama for his signature. The vote came after Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tried to force a procedural vote on the president’s executive order on immigration… Read the rest of this entry »
Governor Chris Christie this morning nominated two distinguished Rutgers Almuni to serve on the University’s Board of Governors.
Susan McCue, of Alexandria, VA, is the President of Message Global, a public affairs firm she founded in 2008 after serving as Chief of Staff to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from 1999-2007.
“One of the nations’s top political strategists,” according to her website, McCue co-founded and co-chairs Reid’s Senate Majority PAC. She is on the board of American Bridge 21st Century SuperPAC, with whom she shares her Washington, DC office space, according to the NY Times .
American Bridge has a page on it’s website that features videos of Christie.
In every election there are winners and losers. This year was no exception. On the national scene, the obvious losers will be written about by most pundits – Obama and the Clintons. Obviously Harry Reid has probably seen his last days of power in any form. But there are other losers. The entire Democratic platform — the so-called war on women, the freebie mentality, the irresponsible blind eye to international distress, the cowardly acquiescence of the Democratic congress to Obama’s war on Israel, are all losers. Republicans elected young people, African-Americans, women, as diverse a group as anyone would want to see. In many cases these were the first of such to be elected in their state — an accomplishment the Democrats never managed and never would manage. These Democratic campaign platforms were as fake as their claim for the last forty years that Republicans would overturn Roe v. Wade. The electorate is simply not as naive as they were in 2008 and 2012. No more. Obama has accomplished at least that.
Now that we’ve all had the joy of seeing everyone rush to sign up for Obamacare, while having major reductions in the costs of their policies and experiencing everyone in this nation being fully insured (that was the promise, wasn’t it?), let’s not lose track of how we got here. When history writes about this fiasco, it will not focus on the abysmal failure that this very poorly written monstrosity turned out to be. It will not focus on the political bickering or the fact that it was passed solely with Democratic votes while every Republican proposal to amend, modify or correct it was ignored by Harry Reid and the Senate — modifications that may actually have enabled it to survive. No, history will focus, eventually, on the real horror of this bill, the gross violation of law and our Constitution that enabled it to stain our national landscape. Make no mistake. Historians will understand that the means “justified” by the ends in one instance may, in the future, justify some act that will be far less piquant than universal health care.
U. S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid anointed Newark Mayor Cory Booker as New Jersey’s next Senator in a PBS interview last July. That was before the Special Senate Primary Booker was engaged in with Congressmen Frank Pallone, Rush Holt and Assembly Speaker Shelia Oliver.
Asked by interviewer Judy Woodruff about the absence of a black Democratic member of the Senate, Reid responded, “”Well, just hold your breath, Cory Booker’s on his way from New Jersey. That’ll happen in October.”
View the video at the 12:06 mark.
This afternoon a CNN reporter asked Reid, “If you could help one child with cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?” as a follow up to her question about why Reid isn’t letting the Senate vote on the House’s bill to fund the National Institute of Health during the government shutdown.
Reid responded, “Why would we want to do that?” and went on the insult the reporter’s intelligence.
NY Times exposes Menendez using his power to steer millions to donor
In defending his friend, Senator Bob Mendendez, against the salacious charges of sleeping with underage Dominican girls for money, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed the allegations because they originated with the conservative website, The Daily Caller.
Two years ago, Dr. Melgen, despite an apparent lack of experience in border security issues, bought an ownership interest in a company that had a long-dormant contract with the Dominican Republic to provide port security. Mr. Menendez, who is chairman of the Senate subcommittee that holds sway over the Dominican Republic, subsequently urged officials in the State and Commerce Departments to intervene so the contract would be enforced, at an estimated value of $500 million.
We’ve been little more than an annoyance to Menendez. But now that the mainstream media is putting the senator under a microscope, he could be in real trouble. Yesterday I wrote that Menendez would probably survive his recent scandal unless he was indicted or convicted. Now I’m not so sure. At the very least, his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee could be at risk. There is one Democrat, Barbara Boxer of California, with more seniority than Menendez on the committee. Two Democrats, Robert Casey, Jr of Pennsylvania and Ben Cardin of Maryland have the same Senate seniority as Menendez. They must have ambitions and friendships with Harry Reid too
Republicans in Congress have decided to put their own personal finances, and those of their Democratic colleagues in both the House and Senate, at risk, rather than to risk a global economic meltdown if the Democrats don’t get serious about reigning in our government’s runaway spending.
The New York Times is reporting that House Republicans have agreed to raise the debt ceiling for three months, with a requirement that both chambers of Congress pass a budget in that time and engage in deficit reduction negotiations. Rather than drive the nation over a “fiscal cliff” or risk the government defaulting on its debt, the Boehner Brigade’s debt ceiling bill will include a provision that federal lawmakers not get paid if the Senate does not produce a budget.
Senate Majority Leader Harry’s Reid’s office issued a statement that sounded like they might go along. Reid’s Senate has not passed a budget in four years.
Finally! Washington Republicans have stopped drinking stupid juice!
Whoever came up with such a common sense idea of punishing the Congress for not doing its job rather than risking the global economy deserves a Nobel Prize.
By popular demand (from Matt Rooney and a Democratic operative who doesn’t want people to know he/she talks to me) your favorite blogger is shifting his focus away from the Sandy Aftermath and back to politics on this election eve.
Rooney said, “Let’s hear your projection, Gallagher.” My response: “The power will be off at my house for the rest of the week.”
Bob Woodward’s new book, “The Price of Politics” may do more to threaten President Obama’s reelection than the anemic jobs reports.
Obama may be a great orator with a clever campaign, but Woodward’s book depicts his White House as dysfunctional and disorganized. The president himself is depicted as aloof and unable to develop the relationships necessary to lead the nation. Congressional leaders of his own party, Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate, have little regard for Obama’s leadership abilities.
The book focuses on the debt ceiling crisis that the nation face during the summer of 2011. A crisis that was so serious that “they wouldn’t tell the world how bad in was at the time,” according to Woodward in a interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer that will be aired Monday night.
As I was reading several reviews of the book I was reminded of Governor Chris Christie’s frequent criticism of Obama’s lack of leadership and inability to work across the aisle. It’s worse than Chrisite imagined. Harry Reid asked Obama to leave the room, at a meeting Obama called of congressional leaders at the White House, so that the congressional leaders could hammer out a deal to avert our nation defaulting on its debt that Obama would have no choice but to sign. Earlier in the Obama administration, Nancy Pelosi muted a conference call from Obama while she and Reid were together working on details of the stimulus package so that the president wouldn’t know that he did not have their undivided attention for his pontification. Clint Eastwood was right. The chair is empty and even the national Democratic congressional leaders know it.
The mainstream media’s coverage of the book may be more damaging to Obama’s reelection chances than the content of the book itself.
Reviews in the New York Times and Washington Post read like the reviewers compared notes before publication. They are trying to suppress sales by depicting the book as boring and a rehash of previous reporting. Yet they have enough integrity to report Woodward’s conclusion:
“It is a fact that President Obama was handed a miserable, faltering economy and faced a recalcitrant Republican opposition.
“But presidents work their will — or should work their will — on the important matters of national business. There is occasional discussion in this book about Presidents Reagan and Clinton, what they did or would have done. Open as both are to serious criticism, they nonetheless largely worked their will.
“Obama has not. The mission of stabilizing and improving the economy is incomplete.”
But ABC is giving Woodward prime coverage of the book on Monday night in a intervew with Sawyer during “World News Tonight” and “Nightline.” Woodward will sit down with George Stephanopolous live on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, September 11, the day the book is release.
When I was a youngster and things weren’t going well in the economy, the Democrats would always claim, “It’s Hoover’s fault.” Republicans, on the other hand, blamed Democrats for “getting us into war” citing Wilson, Roosevelt (FDR) and Truman.
Today, things have changed. Democrats blame Bush for both the economy and for getting us into war.
But who really should bear the responsibility, if not the blame, for the problems facing our country today? To be sure, there is enough blame to be shared by both political parties for landing us in the deeply troubled economy that haunts us today. Politicians of all stripes and at all levels of government have, through fiscal irresponsibility, over taxed and over spent the public’s money. Truly, the blame can reach beyond politicians to include skillful labor unions who have negotiated benefits beyond the ability of governments and private sector employers to pay for them. Additionally, an apathetic public – perhaps the greatest cause of all our woes – has allowed corrupt politicians, avaricious businesses and organized labor to loot the public coffers.
Since the days of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, our country has been on a Fabian path to statisim. Some are surprised that the Obama Administration has accelerated the pace.
In his most recent book, The Next Decade, geopolitical analyst and founder of Stratfor George Friedman presents a provocative and insightful look into the next decade. It’s a book well worth reading, as he sees a time of massive change and what the US will need to do to survive.
Before we jump headlong into speculation about the next decade, let’s take a look at the recent past to get some idea of whose policies and actions have put us where we find ourselves today.
From 1949 until 1995, the Democratic Party held majority control of the House of Representatives, thereby acting as a restraint on one-party dominance when Republicans sometimes had majorities in the US Senate and/or the White House. The philosophy of bigger and bigger government, embraced to greater and lesser degrees by both political parties, has dominated the country since the 1930s.
It was the relatively short period from 2003 to 2007 that the Republican Party controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. Even during the “conservative” presidency of Ronald Reagan, at least one house of Congress remained in the control of the Democratic Party and government continued to grow.
The current and dramatic shift in political dominance in Washington did not just take place on January 20, 2009 when President Obama was sworn into office. The shift actually began on January 3, 2007 when the Democrats recaptured control of the US Senate. At that time, the Dow closed at over 12,600; unemployment stood at 4.6% and the economy under George W. Bush set a record of 52 consecutive months of job growth.
It was on January 3, 2007 that Barney Frank (D) became Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd (D) took over the Senate Banking Committee. 15 months later a meltdown occurred in the banking and financial services sector of our economy, notwithstanding President Bush’s urging repeatedly that serious reform was needed.
One of the most important responsibilities that a member of Congress has is to enact an annual budget for the federal government. However, the US Senate under the leadership of Harry Reid (D) has failed to pass a budget since 2009. The House, under Republican control since 2011, has twice passed budgets and sent them to the Senate, which for purely partisan reasons has failed to enact a budget bill. Unfortunately, Majority Leader Reid and his Democratic colleagues believe that partisanship is their primary responsibility, rather than fiscal stewardship and sound public policy.
The Federal budget cycle is governed mainly by six laws. Probably the most important of them is The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 that governs the basic practices of federal budgeting and spending. Because of partisan irresponsibility in refusing to enact a budget and to avoid government shutdowns, Congress gets along by enacting continuing resolutions. Doing so fails the test of fiscal responsibility. However, public apathy (cited above) allows negligent politicians to get away with it.
President George W. Bush was no fiscal conservative or effective small government advocate. During his eight years in office, he increased the federal budget by 104% and the national debt grew by $3.3 trillion.
The Obama Administration has accelerated the pace of spending and debt to unsustainable levels. Today, the national debt stands at over $15 trillion. The debt is dismissed by some as just money we owe ourselves, but the interest on that debt has to be paid out of tax revenues, or borrowed and added to the debt. That interest so far in 2012 is nearly $4 trillion. There are those politicians who see increasing taxes as the only answer to any problem. Others contend that the problem is not that government has too little in revenue, but that it is spending far too much.
Whether it is the fault of Republicans, Democrats or both, it is a useless exercise to simply blame. Rather, we must reverse course and get our fiscal house in order if we are to survive as a nation that resembles anything we have known up until now.
There are solutions, but no easy solutions. Our apathetic and dependant population “served” by corrupt and power-grasping politicians may result in our becoming more like Greece than the affluent land of opportunity we once were.
In a 2011 interview conducted by economist Donald Luskin, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan observed that he sees the United States as having crossed the threshold, a point of no return, at which we’ve taken on too great a government debt, and at the same time made too great a commitment to government control of the economy. Luskin wrote, “He told us that we won’t recognize America 20 years from now, and that we won’t like what we see.”
Jim Morford is former Associate Director of Government Relations for the NJ Education Association, former VP and chief lobbyist for the NJ Chamber of Commerce, former President of the NJ Food Council and is Executive Director Emeritus of the NJ Society for Environmental, Economic Development (NJ SEED). He is a partner in the Trenton-based consulting firm of Morford-Drulis Associates, LLC. The opinions expressed in this column are his and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of any clients or associates.
In defending his friend, Senator Bob Mendendez, against the salacious charges of sleeping with underage Dominican girls for money, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed the allegations because they originated with the conservative website, The Daily Caller.