Greg Corombos of Radio America and Daniel Foster of National Review Online are glad to hear Sen. Rand Paul point out that the sequester ‘cuts’ are mostly smaller spending increases. They also shake their heads as some of the fiercest GOP opponents of Obamacare now embrace Medicaid expansion in their states. And they note how the cast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was mournful over Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s guity plea and hope he can make a comeback.
Republicans should let the sequester proceed if President Obama won’t let the defense cuts be eased and Obama is simply out of touch with reality on fiscal matters, according to former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint.
DeMint resigned his seat in January as he prepares to become the new president of the Heritage Foundation. In a wide-ranging interview, DeMint addressed looming debates on guns and immigration but he’s also passionate about how the current sequestration fight plays out. DeMint says House GOP members have responsibly approved changes in sequestration so the cuts won’t land so hard on national security spending and the ball is now in President’s Obama’s court.
“If we can’t get the president to come off the military cuts, we need to leave these cuts in place,” said DeMint. “In most cases, it’s not really cuts. It’s just a slowing of the growth of spending which has been out of control for years. I would encourage Republicans, if the president’s not going to be reasonable about restoring military funding and allowing these other programs to actually be reduced, then they’re just going to have to swallow it. It’s a small percent of our total budget and, frankly, we’re going to have to do a lot more of these cuts if we’re going to balance the budget within ten years.”
Obama has repeatedly demanded a “balanced” approach that consists of spending cuts and higher taxes for the wealthy. The president also says that he and Congress have already made painful cuts of $2.5 trillion. DeMint says the president is simply not living in the real world.
“The president has a difficult time with the truth. We have not cut any spending in Washington. We’ve doubled spending in the last 10 years. He keeps talking about ‘revenues’, which is their new code word for more tax increases,” said DeMint, citing the fiscal cliff deal and the Obama health laws as major tax increases that have already been implemented.
“We don’t have a revenue problem. If we would cut spending, you would see the private sector grow and even more revenues to the federal government. The president talks about a fir and balanced approach. American businesses and individuals now have some of the highest rates in the world. It’s hard to compete internationally. He’s still talking about more tax increases. The president is really going to hurt our country in a long-term way if we don’t push back on this,” he said.
The mounting debt makes fiscal responsibility essential, and DeMint says we don’t have much time to change course.
“If we’re going to save our country and keep us from looking like Greece in a few years, we’re going to have to find things we can cut,” said DeMint, noting that duplicative programs and services that should be done by the states are a good place to start.
“I think the president has lost contact with reality. he doesn’t see the spending and the debt as a problem. We are approaching a real meltdown if we don’ get control of it,” said DeMint.
The ex-senator also made news this week for his public defense of freshman Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Democrats and some media outlets slammed Cruz for his pointed criticism of Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel and demanding that Hagel reveal which groups hired him to speak and how much he was paid for those appearances. Demint says the partisan double-standard should be condemned and Cruz should be commended for doing his job.
“What Ted Cruz is doing makes me so proud I could pop, because the pressure against doing what he’s doing is really great,” said Demint, who notes that liberals and the media demanded tax records from Mitt Romney going back a decade.
“The questions that Ted Cruz asked were very reasonable and very thorough. He’s tried cases before the Supreme Court. He knows how to get answers out of people. I think he was doing just the right thing,” he said.
While DeMint has left the Senate, he says he will remain active in recruiting solid conservative candidates to Senate races, a move he says will bring heartburn to the establishment for both parties. DeMint rejects the assertion from Karl Rove and others that the GOP has suffered from unelectable conservatives winning primaries in winnable states.
“We haven’t been too conservative. Certainly, we have to have our candidates better prepared for the shark pool that they’re going to get into because the media’s always trying to ask questions that we don’t need to be answering because they are not federal issues,” said DeMint, who says making a campaign issue out of federalism and moving more and more responsibilities out of Washington and back to the state level.
“We need to prove to these Washington establishment folks that the best way to win races is to get a good conservative candidate. We saw it in (Marco) Rubio, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Jeff Flake. They’re out there. They can win and we just need to identify them and support them,” said DeMint.
Other pending debates also have DeMint’s attention. On guns, he says exhaustive Heritage Foundation studies show that gun control measures do not work. He says this is another issue best handled at the local level.
“We can’t eliminate evil in this world but the schools are going to have to do things at the local and at the state level to protect themselves and have the ability within to stop something like this once it happens,” said DeMint. “Gun control laws don’t help. If they did, Chicago wouldn’t be the murder capital of the world. We need to look at real solutions and not just this political talk that makes people feel better but doesn’t make our children safer.”
Finally, on immigration, DeMint says this is another issue where the Obama rhetoric sounds appealing to many but the real motivation for the current push is far less noble.
“It’s very apparent to me what’s going on here. The president and the Democrats want two things. They want voters. They want union members. So everything they talk about is about citizenship,” said DeMint, who says we have an illegal immigration problem and not a citizenship problem.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Dan Foster of National Review Online are encouraged by poll numbers in New Jersey that show voters turning strongly against Sen. Bob Menendez over his ongoing ethical woes and they also reject the possible Senate candidacy of Geraldo Rivera. They wince a bit as very early numbers from Democratic pollsters show Hillary Clinton beating the likes of Marco Rubio, Chris Christie and Rand Paul in red states. And they weigh in as MSNBC’s Chuck Todd suggests a “mythological” media bias against conservatives is why Republicans are very reluctant to come on any network other than Fox.
President Obama and Congressional Republicans are blaming one another for the $85 billion in sequester-mandated spending cuts set to take effect March 1, but South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney says the cuts should take effect and the huge fight over them will tell us whether lawmakers and the president are serious about real deficit reduction.
This countdown to cuts in defense and domestic programs are the result of the super committee failing in the wake of the 2011 Budget Control Act that was passed to avert a debt ceiling crisis.
The sequester idea came from the Obama administration and was approved by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Neither side is eager to embrace it now, but Mulvaney says the sequester needs to go forward.
“That is the promise that we made to folks back in August (of 2011). If we raise the debt ceiling a dollar, we’ll cut spending a dollar and if we can’t figure out how to do it, then the sequester will force us to do it,” said Mulvaney, who voted against the Budget Control Act. “I happen to think that agreement is worth keeping. We have to have, at least, some consistency. I didn’t agree with the bill at the time for various different reasons, but we have to stick with the principles and I don’t understand why the president now wants to break the agreement. It’s imperative that we prove to people that we can reduce spending. Right now, the only way to do that is through the sequester.”
Mulvaney also urges Americans to get past the political hand wringing and observe that the sequester will make “hardly any” dent in the annual budget deficit.
“The debt this year will be $1300 billion and this would cut it by $85, so you’re cutting $85 out of $1300. Think about that for a second,” said Mulvaney. “That’s why I think a lot of this doom and gloom and ‘sky is falling’ hyperbole we’re hearing from the Democrats is just designed to make people afraid. I think this is a good time to ride it out and show folks that the world doesn’t end when you cut two percent from certain items in the federal government.
“I don’t want to minimize the impact on defense . That’s 11 percent, which is different, but the sun is going to rise on March 1st. The federal government will still be there and we’ll save $85 billion. All things being considered, it’s something we need to do,” said Mulvaney.
As Mulvaney indicated, he is uneasy about the size of spending cuts impacting national defense. He says a “hollowing out” of the military could result from the much greater cuts that are about to impact national security.
“As interested as I have been in looking critically at the Defense Department for savings, an 11 percent across-the-board cut is not the right way to manage the Defense Department. I am concerned about it. I’m concerned about our ability to pursue our interests overseas, especially militarily, and that is a real concern,” said Mulvaney. “That being said, the House has already offered its alternative to prevent that and the Senate has refused to take it up. The president has refused to engage on the topic. I don’t know what else we can do in the House. We can’t govern by ourselves. So it is a difficulty and we need to face it, but getting rid of the sequester is not the answer.”
The U.S. is currently facing annual deficits of more than a trillion dollars and a national debt racing toward $17 trillion. Mulvaney says this debate over a relatively tiny amount of spending will demonstrate whether the nation is ready for a larger debate to tackle the big drivers of our debt.
“This is a gut check. This is a test as to whether or not not we can make even small steps toward balancing the budget,” said Mulvaney. “I have members of my own party that are concerned about job losses and impacts and so forth. I understand where they’re coming from, but this is a two percent reduction in some circumstances. If we cannot do that, do we really have a chance ever to balance the budget? That’s exactly what this comes down to. This is a test case. If we do not have the political will to do this, then we might as well give up and go home because I would think that’s it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get real reductions in our spending.
President Obama took to the airwaves on Tuesday to place blame for the sequester at the feet of Republicans. Mulvaney says the sequester was absolutely Obama’s idea, and while the congressman may not have liked the debt ceiling deal from two years ago, he’s proud of how the GOP members have handled this fight.
“I don’t care whose idea it was. I care who’s giving us good ideas on how to fix it. Right now, the House has done that. The Republicans have done that. They have given an alternative,” said Mulvaney. “The Senate Democrats have thrown a couple ideas out there but don’t have the nerve to take a vote. The president hasn’t even thrown any specific ideas out there. He’s still talking about a fair and balanced approach and making rich people pay more. That’s not a plan. That’s a platform. It’s a plank in a campaign effort.
So the Republicans in the effort have a PR effort. Do we have a solid message? Yes, we’re being adults. We are serious about the spending problem. We are going to keep the promises made during the debt ceiling discussion,” he said. “I’m proud that the House Republicans have done this time around. At the end of the day, you have to believe that good policy makes good politics, and right now we’re on the right side of this policy.”
The intense fiscal debates will not ease anytime soon. Mulvaney notes that the next debt ceiling deadline is May 19 and fights over the House Republican budget and a possible government shutdown will arise before then.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review like that the GOP co-chair of the 2012 presidential debates admits having Candy Crowley as a moderator was a mistake. They also rant over gas prices soaring in winter. And they cheer U.S. tire executive Morry Taylor for explaining to the French why he would never do business in their country.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli led the fight against the Obama health laws in federal court and he says he is bringing the same fidelity to the Constitution in his bid to become the next governor of the commonwealth.
Cuccinelli is also author of the new book “The Last Line of Defense: The New Fight for American Liberty. He says a presidential administration striving for more power is typical in both parties, but he believes the Obama team has a special thirst for control.
“What makes this unique, frankly, is the brazenness and frequency of this administration’s willingness to break the law and to trample the Constitution,” said Cuccinelli. “Just last month they lost the constitutional case that came straight from the president about his supposed recess appointments. He claimed the right to essentially declare when the Senate was in recess, which is an egregious violation of the separation of powers, and the court found so unanimously and they threw out his appointment.”
Cuccinelli says his own state is also the victim of federal overreach, a claim he says was also validated in a recent federal court ruling involving the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“We beat the EPA in Virginia, which I refer to as the Employment Prevention Agency because they’re so good at that, with Fairfax County as our co-plaintiff,” said Cuiccinelli. “It is a very partisan, Democrat board of supervisors and yet they joined me as the co-plaintiff in that suit because they knew that the federal government had broken the law in how it was attempting to regulate water just like it would regulate a pollutant. It sounds crazy and it is, which is probably part of why we won so convincingly. That was worth over $300 million to the people of Virginia.”
The Virginia Department of Transportation was the lead plaintiff in the successful lawsuit against the EPA, but Cuccinelli says that would not have been possible without Gov. Bob McDonnell giving his approval for the challenge. Cuccinelli says that is a prime example of why a staunch defender of the Constitution needs to be elected governor in Virginia this year.
“The governor is very important to carrying on this balancing act and it’s worth people remembering the Founding Fathers intended those of us in the states to push back on the federal government when it became a threat to liberty,” said Cuccinelli.
Opponents of the Obama health laws won on three of four constitutional arguments before the Supreme Court but the law stood once Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s four liberal justices kept the individual mandate alive as a tax. Despite a verdict on the mandate with which he strongly disagrees, Cuccinelli says another part of the court’s ruling is a big win for states.
“Because we got the first-ever limits on the spending power of the federal government, that allowed us to even have the debate we’re now having over whether or not to do the Medicaid expansion. That is the biggest, most out of control part of our state budget,” said Cuccinelli. “It really wasn’t a realistic option about whether or not we expanded Medicaid before we won on the spending argument because they’d take all our money away.”
“Now we get to decide it, and it’s going to be a centerpiece of the arguments of this race. My opponent (former Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe) is for the Medicaid expansion. I am against it. Even with all the federal bribery involved and how much of it they say they’re willing to pay, we still are going to have to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars in the out years and there’s no turning back. Once you’re in, they have to give you permission to get out. That’s an example of how one of these cases has actually opened up alternatives for us. We couldn’t have even had a serious debate over this in the absence of making some headway in the health care case against the federal health care law,” said Cuccinelli.
McDonnell, Cuccinelli and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling were all resoundingly swept into office in 2009, but those results were sandwiched by Obama victories in 2008 and 2012. Cuccinelli says different people show up for different elections and he vows to continue explaining to Virginia voters why they should choose candidates who will protect their freedoms.
There’s been a great deal of soul-searching within the GOP and plenty of Republicans have suggested a shift to the political center is the best path to political success. Cuccinelli is having none of that.
“I have heard that mantra for each of my four elections,” said Cuccinelli. “I was elected in Fairfax County to the state senate three times without changing what I believe or my principles. Then I was elected statewide in the same way with all the same mantra going on. People were saying the same thing in 2009 about me and I got more votes for attorney general than anyone in the history of the commonwealth of Virginia.”
“The key for someone like me is to offer a constructive vision for how to move Virginia forward, consistent with the principles I believe in and to explain to people why that’s going to make Virginia the best place it can be to live and grow up and run a business in and why we’re going to be more competitive that way and we’re going to have more freedom here than they will in other states,” he said.
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy watching President Obama trying to demonize the sequester that he demanded. They also excoriate a state lawmaker in Colorado for suggesting that women can’t be trusted to use guns against would-be rapists. And they get a kick out of Massachusetts Democrats announcing they’ll run for Rep. Ed Markey’s House seat if Markey wins the Senate race.
The official national debt is currently racing toward $17 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office is projecting another $10 trillion over the next decade, but monetary and currency expert Andrew Gause says the real amount of red ink will probably be much worse.
Gause is the author of “The Secret World of Money” and “Uncle Sam Cooks the Books”. He says the Congressional Budget Office is often conservative in its debt projections and that could a whole lot more than $10 trillion over the next decade.
“They’ve been way low and, unfortunately, it’s the CBO that tell us that by 2023 the national debt will be around $26 trillion,” said Gause. “If that is one of their historically conservative projections, that number can be off by as much as 50 percent.We could really be up in the mid-thirties to $40 trillion in debt by 2023.”
In addition to the mounting debt, Gause is very worried about the impact of inflation caused by the Federal Reserve’s frequent injection of new money into our economy. He says there are three factors that trigger high inflation and we’re seeing all of them in effect right now.
First is an increase in the money supply and Gause notes that the Federal Reserve has quadruped the money supply over the past four years. He says there also has to be an uptick in demand, with factories getting back to full capacity and employment picking up again.
The final factor is what he calls “monetary velocity”, when people start spending money again.
“Those three (factors) could combine to provide the biggest bout of inflation we’ve ever seen in this nation, let alone comparing it to that last run from ’77-’80,” said Gause.
Gause says finds himself “somewhere in between” liberals who insist they’ve cut spending as much as possible and deficit hawks who say our debt plus unfunded liabilities has us so far in debt that any recovery is hopeless. He says two budgeting tactics give him the most heartburn.
“The only bills that they have to reveal to us are those that are due in the next couple years. Anything that’s due in outlying years doesn’t exist, according to the government’s budget,” said Gause, who also finds it appalling that revenues received from Social Security taxes are thrown into the general budget and spent on anything and everything.
So what is his solution? Gause believes a lot of progress could be made simply by following through on Ron Paul’s persistent goal of auditing the Federal Reserve, if the data revealed in conjunction with the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP) is any guide.
“The data dump that the Fed revealed as a condition of this bailout revealed quite a bit in terms of insider dealing. The loans to the Bank of Libya. We were told they were a state enemy. We were not supposed to be trading with them but yet we have our Federal Reserve Bank making them loans,” said Gause. “Then the insider loans to the members and their wives, the owners of the banks and their wives. All of this was revealed in that data dump that the Fed made in response to the TARP bailout law. I think an audit of the Fed would reveal the inconsistencies and the self-dealing that goes on, and the bankers are making billions of dollars in profits from their ownership of the Federal Reserve system.”
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Dan Foster of National Review Online are pleasantly surprised to hear Bob Woodward report that Senate Democrats are asking the Obama administration of Chuck Hagel will withdraw as the nominee for defense secretary. They also slam the White House leak of President Obama’s immigration plan – which just happens to be far more liberal than the bipartisan Senate plan. And they applaud Virginia Sen. Mark Warner for working to get rid of Presidents’ Day and restore Washington’s Birthday as the proper holiday at this time of year.
Pro-life activists are pointing to the death of Jennifer Morbelli as a clear example of how abortions can harm mothers as well as kill unborn children. They also accuse the mainstream media of burying the story because it doesn’t fit into their pro-choice worldviews.
Morbelli was a 29-year-old New York woman expecting her first child. After learning her unborn daughter would suffer from seizures based on a test conducted when she was 31 weeks pregnant, Morbelli sought a late-term abortion from Dr. Leroy Carhart, one of the most well-known practitioners of the procedure.
Nearly two weeks ago, Carhart terminated the pregnancy but the procedure also killed Morbelli.
Jill Stanek is a longtime nurse, who gained prominence for her work in defending babies who survived attempted abortions. She is now a prominent pro-life blogger. Stanek describes how the abortion was conducted.
“Sunday, February 3rd, is when this process began and it’s not quick. It’ a two-to-three-to-four-day process. Sunday afternoon is when Carhart usually kills the babies,” said Stanek. “He injects the baby’s heart with a medication that causes immediate cardiac arrest. He visualizes the baby’s heart through ultrasound and injects a needle into the mom’s abdomen and kills the baby.
“Typically, on Monday morning he begins the labor induction process. It would be called an induced-labor abortion. They insert medication that would dilate the cervix to open, which is the opening at the bottom of the uterus. It’s supposed to stay closed until a mom goes into natural labor. This medication, or seaweed sticks called Laminaria,” she said. “Over the course of the next two days, they would expand the cervix far enough so that the baby could be delivered. So she went back on Monday, she went back on Tuesday and she went back on Wednesday and stayed for nine hours and that would have been when she delivered her little girl.
“Sidewalk counselors at the clinic, who maintain a constant vigil during office hours noted in real time that they thought that she was growing more and more pale,” said Stanek.
“Every night she would stay at a local hospital with her family. So Wednesday night she spent the night (in the hospital) and apparently tried to call Carhart, or her family did during the night several times, and couldn’t reach him. So at 5 a.m. on Thursday, February 7, they presented at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, Maryland, which is nine miles from Carhart’s abortion clinic. By 9:00, she began coding, meaning her heart stopped. She coded six times over the course of the next hour and about 10:00 they just called the code. They quit trying to resuscitate her and pronounced her,” said Stanek.
To date, the story has received very little attention outside the conservative and pro-life blogosphere. Stanek says she’s not surprised that the mainstream media is staying away from it.
“I think there may be a hesitancy, because this is abortion, to name the victim and say she had an abortion. If this was any other high-profile doctor who killed a patient, the patient’s name would be out there,” said Stanek. “I think there’s been a reticence on the part of the media because it is that topic and also because the media is bent in favor of abortion and so they would not want to push a story that would bode poorly for abortion. I think that’s also coming into play.”
Morbelli was intending to have her baby, whom she already named Madison Leigh, until she received the results of the test that showed the baby having abnormalities. Stanek says women get a lot of pressure to seek abortions in those situations.
“I know there is a lot of pressure these days, when moms such as Jennifer, who are carrying wanted babies, are given a diagnosis like that, from the medical industry to abort. Social workers are by-and-large pro-abortion. Insurance companies, I think, are skewed in favor of abortion with an adverse diagnosis because it’s cheaper for them in the long run than providing long-term care for a baby,” said Stanek, who says late-term diagnoses also put a time pressure on distraught mothers.
Stanek says her experience with moms who have made both decisions proves that keeping the child is the right choice.
“If you’ve been given the diagnosis that your baby will not live you should consider consider your baby in hospice. Your baby inside of you is warm and comfortable and as well as that baby’s ever going to feel. You are providing comfort for that baby. When you deliver the baby you treat the baby like you would any other hospice patient. Have family there to meet the baby and take pictures with the baby,” said Stanek.
“I’ve never heard or met a mom who went this course who regretted it,” she said. “It’s the right thing to do.”
But she says the same principle applies to children who will survive their first hours but face very difficult challenges.
“If you’ve been diagnosed with a baby who’s going to have Down’s Syndrome or spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, there’s a lot of pressure, again, for you to abort,” said Stanek. “I would still maintain that no matter what is wrong with any child in the world’s eyes, that doesn’t make the child any less worth living. You just have to view it as if you’d be killing your handicapped baby. What does that say about you and what does that say about society?
“I’ve never met a mom who regretted doing the right thing and delivering her baby to term, even if she could only hold her baby for a minute or two until that baby died,” said Stanek. “I have met plenty of moms who regretted going the abortion course. Their baby is now dead and that’s something they’re going to have to live with for the rest of their lives. They often don’t do very well in the aftermath.”
