Forcing Votes that Embarrass Democrats

    Deroy Murdock wrote a great article the other day about forcing the Democrats to vote on spending cuts linked with other issues that give them a choice of angering voters in general or their union base in particular.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/343028/keep-pressure-democrats-deroy-murdock       

I think this is a fabulous idea.  If we want to take back the Senate and keep the House, we have to have a narrative that's better than what comes off our opponent's teleprompter.  That means we have to paint the Democrats as hopelessly under the corrupt influence of their big campaign donors, the unions.  We have to have Democrats vote on the record on a lot of stuff they have to look bad on in order to satisfy their union contributors.  In addition to Mr. Murdock's spending cuts coupled with popular programs, which are really great, immigration, education and federal civilian worker pay would be other good areas to highlight.  

The House should pass a stand alone guest worker program, which should apply to both illegal immigrants already in the US and workers who want to come here.  They should also pass an expanded H1B visa program as a stand alone bill, again open to anybody without regard to current immigrant status.  The Senate Democrats should have to explain to Hispanics and Asians why they won't vote for either one.   (Hint: Unions oppose them.)  In education, cut the Education Department’s bureaucracy enough to block grant a voucher program states can qualify for.  This gives Democrats the choice of upsetting the teachers unions or inner city Blacks suffering from atrocious schools.  

On federal civilian pay, demands for embarrassing information are the way to improve our narrative.  For example, have the congressional budget office find out how much is spent on compensation for the federal civilian workforce as a whole.  Also ask them to compute the full time equivalent number of federal civilian employees.  At this point, a simple calculation of expense per worker yields Democratic embarrassment.  The average voter can tell right away federal bureaucrats are making more than he or she is.  Let the Democrats weasel out of this by explaining how many more credentials federal workers have than the average worker.  It will sound stupid and elitist.  Even better, the information will allow the House to pass a government wide freeze on the total federal civilian personnel budget.  Our current freeze on the pay structure can be beaten by promoting everybody so the total spent rises even though the salary for every pay grade remains frozen.  If we freeze the current personnel budget, pay grade creep no longer works.

Some might say that these tactics will remove any chance of bipartisanship.  With a Chicago Democrat in the White House, how can we expect bipartisanship?  Having lived in Cook County over half of my life, I have to say that Obama "negotiates" just like Democratic Chicago Mayors or Cook County Commissioners negotiate with Republicans.  They do a nice reach-out photo op followed by a closed door meeting where they dictate the terms of what's going to happen. The Republicans can like it or lump it.  There is no bipartisanship involved in Chicago and there is none in the White House either.  It's just never going to happen, no matter what.

Response to Ryan's Budget

Here’s a link to a typical liberal’s response to the Ryan budget, in this case by Dana Milbank. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-paul-ryans-magical-budget/2013/03/12/6c6ad6a6-8b55-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story.html

What's interesting is liberals and math. We're borrowing 35 to 40 cents of every dollar Uncle Sam spends. No matter what the tax rates, since WWII federal revenue has never been greater than about 20 percent of GDP. However, liberals are spending 24 percent of GDP and want to go higher. The percentage of the potential workforce actually working is 63.5 percent. That's down from 65.8 in February of 2009. Harry Reid has been scared to hold budget votes, even in committee because it would embarrass his members. Democrats have had no plan, but they like to complain about Paul Ryan's plans. Liberals are great on emoting and feeling our pain. Fixing problems, not so much. However, since they really care, we're supposed to forget that their caring has no effect.  Liberals don't have to have facts as long as they emotionally care deeply, right?

Here’s the link to Federal Revenue as a percent of GDP, from that hotbed of conservative thought, the Brookings Institute:

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=205

Here’s workforce participation:

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

Liberals seem to have contempt for the laws that don’t serve their purposes, for example budget laws.  Obama has broken the law by not submitting the budget on time for FY2014.  According to Wikipedia, "The President, in accordance with to the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, must submit a budget to Congress each year. In its current form, federal budget legislation law (31 U.S.C. 1105(a)) specifies that the President submit a budget between the first Monday in January and the first Monday in February."  It's not going to be ready until April.  Maybe the president’s dog Bo ate it?  Harry Reid broke the law, the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, by not passing a budget.  By the way, Obama's FY 2011 budget lost in the Senate 97 to 0.  The House has passed a budget every year.  The Senate hasn’t passed one since February, 2009.   The Democratic response to Ryan budgets is best summed up by former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who said in House testimony: “You are right to say we’re not coming before you today to say ‘we have a definitive solution to that long term problem.’  What we do know is we don’t like yours.” 

Here’s link to Geithner’s testimony:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_f20ZDBj5k

Here’s the link to the US Budget process:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_budget_process

Liberals want the tax rates of Clinton. Conservatives would prefer the spending rates of Clinton.  The overall number of jobs under Obama is still below where it was when he took office.  I know it's all Bush's fault according to liberals, but when will the economy become Obama's?  So far, all the  stimulus seems to be mainly stimulating the UAW, AFSCME, SEIU and Obama's Solyndra buddies.  Could it be that political contributions have consequences?

The assertion that we are borrowing 40 cents on the dollar comes from Democratic Senator Kent Conrad on Sunday, January 23rd, 2011 in an interview on "This Week with Christiane Amanpour."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jan/27/kent-conrad/kent-conrad-said-were-borrowing-40-cents-every-dol/

Is Sarbanes Oxley a Waste of Time?

Kevin D. Williamson wrote a really great article recently about the difference in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s treatment of rogue banks like HSBC and state and municipal fraudsters like the state of Illinois and the city of San Bernardino.

http://www.nationalreview.com/exchequer/343046/where-s-warren

The article brought to mind a question that has bothered me for some time.  Why is Jon Corzine not indicted yet?  He was the CEO of MF Global when it went bankrupt.  Commodity broker MF Global used customer account money in its failing attempts to avoid bankruptcy.   Under Sarbanes Oxley as well as Securities laws, this is a crime.  In testimony before Congress, Cozine said he didn't know he was using customer money to meet MF Global's corporate margin calls.  I thought Sarbanes Oxley was specifically designed to make this defense impossible.  Note that Jon Corzine was a really big bundler of campaign contributions for Obama, as well as a former Democratic Senator and Governor of New Jersey.  Now that the campaign is over, can't we indict this guy?  Can't Warren demand some answers here?  If Sarbanes Oxley does not apply in this case, can we repeal it because compliance is both horribly expensive and, given MF Global shenanigans, a complete waste of time? 

Nanny State Result of Government Healthcare

The nanny state is a predictable outcome of Medicaid, Medicare and publicly funded healthcare in general.  Once the government is paying for your healthcare instead of you paying for it, they have a big interest in controlling your behavior as it contributes to your health.  They are paying the piper, so they want to call the tune.  While Mayor Mike Bloomberg is a little extreme, the general attitude is that experts know better than you do, so they want to tell you what’s good for you.  Also, they want to save on paying for your healthcare.  So progressives/liberals think they must be able to control your activities, for your own good.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/03/11/soda-ban-and-the-government-leviathan-michael-bloomberg/