This morning Boehner told ABC that he absolutely trusts Obama, that there is no issue there:
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How in the world could Boehner say something so idiotic. Obama is a pathological liar and has been for as long as we’ve known about him. Boehner himself has gotten burned from Obama lying to the American public over and over to force Boehner’s hand of compromise. Ugh. This is another reason Boehner needs to go.
But on the flip side of this interview, Boehner is getting a bad rap for his comments on the debt crisis. What Boehner said above is that we don’t have a debt crisis over us now, but we’ve got one coming that we must do something about. And he’s right. But he isn’t agreeing with Obama on the debt crisis. As he points out, Obama believes we don’t need to do anything to even avert a looming debt crisis. Boehner says that’s entirely wrong and we do need to reform our entitlements before this looming debt crisis hits us.
So to be fair to Boehner, while he is a terrible Speaker and needs to go, he’s not wrong in what he said on the debt crisis.
John Boehner was re-elected to another two-year term as speaker of the House on Thursday, capping a turbulent period that saw the failure of his “Plan B” to avert the so-called fiscal cliff and open hostility from fellow Republicans over not holding a vote for Hurricane Sandy aid.
The Ohio Republican received 220 votes, losing just a handful of votes from his party. House Democrats nominated Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who received 192 votes.
A visibly emotional Boehner used his post-election remarks to decry the rising national debt and said Congress must be “willing, truly willing, to make this problem right.”
“The American dream is in peril so long as its namesake is weighed down by this anchor of debt,” Boehner said.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) received three Republican votes. Republican Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.), Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Raul Labrador (Idaho) each received one vote. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) received two votes and Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and John Lewis (D-Ga.) each received one.
The Constitution does not require the speaker to be a member of the House, which welcomed two votes for former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) from Reps. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and even one vote for former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the last-minute fiscal cliff deal reached by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama cuts only $15 billion in spending while increasing tax revenues by $620 billion – a 41:1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts.
When Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush increased taxes in return for spending cuts – cuts that never ultimately came – they did so at ratios of 1:3 and 1:2.
“In 1982, President Reagan was promised $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes,” Americans for Tax Reform says of those two incidents. “The tax hikes went through, but the spending cuts did not materialize. President Reagan later said that signing onto this deal was the biggest mistake of his presidency.
“In 1990, President George H.W. Bush agreed to $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes. The tax hikes went through, and we are still paying them today. Not a single penny of the promised spending cuts actually happened.”
American Majority Action spokesman Ron Meyer told Breitbart News late Tuesday that enough House Republicans have banded together in an effort to unseat House Speaker John Boehner from his position – they just need a leader to take up the mantle.
“At least 20 House Republican members have gotten together, discussed this and want to unseat Speaker Boehner – and are willing to do what it takes to do it,” Meyer said. “That’s more than enough to get the job done, but the one problem these guys face is they need a leader to coalesce behind.”
Meyer said the conservatives have considered House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) to take the helm after Boehner is knocked out. His opposition from the right to the Senate fiscal cliff deal that Vice President Joe Biden cut with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is a sign Cantor may try for the job.
AMA is hardly the only conservative entity aware of the rekindled effort afoot to unseat Boehner. Another conservative with inside knowledge of the effort told Breitbart News that the movement has “new focus and juice,” and if enough members go to Boehner telling him they won’t support his re-election, that Americans should “watch for him to resign gracefully.”
The vote for Boehner’s re-election as Speaker happens on Thursday, two days after Boehner’s decision to support the Senate “fiscal cliff” deal Vice President Joe Biden cut with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on New Year’s Eve.
When Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin renounced his citizenship and moved to Singapore to avoid potentially paying tens of millions of dollars in taxes on gains he made from Facebook’s initial public offering last week, some on the right suggested it is time to take a closer look at the country’s system of taxation. And some on the left have suggested it is time to look at a way to impose taxes on people like Saverin.
[Daley Gator note: Brazillian-born Eduardo Saverin has lived in Singapore since 2009 and renounced his U.S. citizenship last year.]
New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey last week unveiled the so-called Ex-PATRIOT ACT (Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy) to prevent this situation from happening again. It would impose a mandatory 30-percent tax on the capital gains of individuals who renounce their citizenship to evade taxes, and would bar them from reentering the country.
On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner seemed to endorse that idea.
“There’s already a law on the books, George,” Boehner said. “But this is outrageous. This is absolutely outrageous – that somebody would renounce their citizenship to avoid paying taxes. And yes, it’s already against the law.”
Boehner said he would support Schumer and Casey’s legislation, if it were deemed necessary.
“I’m not sure it’s necessary,” Boehner said. “But if it is necessary – sure I would support it.”
. Boehner’s remarks on this subject begin just after the 5 minute mark.
[Daley Gator note: Apparently, Speaker Boehner thinks it's better to punish people with taxes who are being driven out of the U.S. - due to punitive tax rates and crippling regulations - instead of simply LOWERING their taxes and REDUCING their regulatory burdens, which would incentivize them to stay here and help grow the economy.
Unfortunately, faux-conservatives like Boehner aren't bright enough to understand that it would be far more beneficial to the U.S. if billionaires actually wanted to stay here and create more wealth instead of moving away. In the long run, they'd pay a lot more in taxes over the course of years than they would with a one-time parting tax imposed by the very people whose policies forced them to leave in the first place.]
I cannot recall exactly when I started NOT liking “The Architect”, maybe it was after hearing him called the architect for the 1,000th time, but, it turns out my instincts were right! He is just another elitist RINO, who thinks that he knows best, and looks down his nose at the Conservative base!
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) offered no apologies for the healthcare law he signed as governor.
Romney made his stance in a highly touted speech on the issue, which is considered the biggest political liability to his 2012 presidential campaign.
Romney said it would be dishonest for him to jettison his support for a plan that critics, including many conservatives, have derided as “RomneyCare.” He explained that he’s “proud” of what he attempted as governor.
In a presentation at the University of Michigan’s Cardiovascular Center, Romney said even though it might be to his political benefit to apologize for the plan, he wouldn’t do so.
“I presume that a lot of folks would think that if I did that, it would be good for me politically,” he said. “But there’s only one problem with that: It wouldn’t be honest.”
“I, in fact, did what I think was right for the people of my state,” he added.
Romney has only announced an exploratory committee but is expected to officially run for the Republican nomination. Observers see his Michigan speech as a way for the former governor to move past the healthcare issue, which his rivals for the nomination have repeatedly criticized him on, before making an official announcement.
By defending the Massachusetts health program, Romney sought to disarm critics on both the left and the right who have sought to portray him as a figure who’s willing to shift positions to fit his political convenience.
The Republican presidential candidate argued his plan was very different from President Obama’s in virtually every manner, even including the individual mandate – the requirement that individuals own health insurance, a linchpin to both Romney and Obama’s plans.
The individual mandate aspect has been a rallying cry for conservatives to tie Romney to Obama.
But Romney said the Massachusetts requirement represented a choice by the state government to force “personal responsibility” in healthcare and prevent individuals from depending on government support for healthcare. In essence, Romney tried to spin his healthcare plan as a conservative proposal compared to the other options available to him as governor.
The speech was Romney’s first major public event since filing paperwork to establish a presidential exploratory committee in mid-April. The University of Michigan provided Romney a relatively safe backdrop for the speech, too; he was raised in the Detroit suburbs and his father, George Romney, served three terms as the state’s Republican governor.
Michael Merlina was fed up, frustrated and seemingly out of options when he walked into Middlesex Superior Court last week and plunked down $275 for court fees. The 29-year-old North Reading glazier is fighting the $2,000 state fine for not having health insurance. We will speak with Mr. Merlina about his quest to get away from enforced health care.
Michael A. Merlina, who is suing Massachusetts over his fine for not having health insurance, is going to court Thursday, January 6th. We checked in with him the night before the big day!
As governor, Mitt Romney accomplished a feat that most Republicans would have thought impossible. With the single stroke of a pen he convinced the liberal population of Massachusetts that they, too, hate government-run health care.
As a health care plan, Romneycare is an unmitigated fiasco. It has caused costs to skyrocket, insurance premiums to soar and nonprofit providers like Blue Cross to suffer hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
But as a political policy, Romneycare is nearly unparalleled in Republican history. It has destroyed one front-runner’s presidential hopes (Romney’s) and helped undermine an entire presidency. For, as Barack Obama’s supporters keep reminding us, Romneycare was the precursor to Obamacare.
And what has Obamacare accomplished? It knocked Nancy Pelosi out of the speaker’s chair and helped drive the president’s approval rating to new lows. Dick Cheney couldn’t have come up with a sneakier scheme to destroy Democrats.
Think about how powerful Romneycare has been. In 2008 – when Obama was running for president and Ted Kennedy was towering over the Senate – nearly 70 percent of Massachusetts voters supported the plan. A mere 22 percent of right-wing holdouts opposed it.
After all, this is Massachusetts, where “uni- versal health care” is a political mantra, like “collective bargaining rights” or “indicted House member.”
But after five years of actually experiencing this new universe, even the Kennedy Democrats have had enough. A new Suffolk University poll showed that nearly half of Massachusetts voters say the law isn’t helping, while just 38 percent say it is. As Michael Cannon at the Cato Institute pointed out, Romneycare is almost as unpopular here as Obama- care is across America.
Mitt laughs uproariously with Massachusetts Democrats as he signs RomneyCare into law in 2006
That’s not supposed to happen.
Romneycare has also blown a hole in Romney’s reputation as a “numbers” guy, a savvy business guru who, like him or not, knows how to handle your money.
Uh, anyone checked these Romneycare numbers lately?
Taxpayers now spend $2.5 billion more on our state’s health care budget. The direct cost of Romneycare has gone from less than $100 million a year to at least $400 million – and even that number is suspect. But we do know we’ve spent more than $35 million in a single year on health services for illegal immigrants, and tens of millions more on illegal, unallowable or outright bogus claims.
If you want to know why Romneycare’s costs keep rising, check out this simple statistic from the Patrick administration: In 2006, 85 percent of the insured in Massachusetts got their coverage through private group coverage at work. Today that’s down to 79 percent.
Meanwhile the percentage on the MassHealth dole has doubled, and more than 150,000 people are now subsidized through Commonwealth Care.
Romneycare supporters like Brandeis University health policy professor Stuart Altman brag that “the basic reason for the reform was to extend coverage, and on this, we have done amazingly well.” But that’s only if you use the phrase “extend coverage” to mean “the government forced you to buy your own insurance.”
Romneycare hasn’t made that insurance more affordable – just the opposite. Many people have seen their premiums double in the past five years. Supporters also never mention that when Romneycare was signed, Massachusetts already had one of the nation’s lowest rates of uninsured.
Billions of dollars spent to accomplish so very little – that’s Romneycare’s legacy, and a glimpse of Obamacare’s future.
darcprynce
Dave C
Gatordoug
