Archives for May 2015

Congress is being urged to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade plan even though most have not read it and a leading gun rights activist says the plan could give President Obama the power to limit the importation of ammunition and implement his political agenda in many different ways.

“Fast track authority in the context of this treaty means a blank check,” said Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt.

“By a majority vote, the Congress is preparing to give the president authorization to negotiate a treaty.  When he brings it back, it would take two thirds of the Senate to vote it down because of the way they set up the parliamentary system,” said Pratt.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, debate is made even more bizarre by the intense secrecy surrounding the proposed treaty.  A Politico article described the hoops lawmakers must jump through just to see the bill.

“If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door,” stated the article by Edward-Isaac Dovere.

“If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving,” Dovere continued.  “And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.”

Pratt is appalled that the public is getting no chance to weigh in on TPP.

“This is incredible.  This is the administration that advertised itself as the most transparent that there ever would be.  Give me a break.  This is really going to the other extreme.  Where is the objection just on procedure, let alone any of the details,” said Pratt.

If the terms of TPP are under lock and key, how does Pratt know that Obama is poised to restrict ammunition imports?

“I don’t know that it’s there.  I’m just assuming that a guy that’s done everything he can heretofore with his pen, as he said he would do, will do it again when he’s given a blank check,” said Pratt, who says second amendment defenders aren’t the only ones who should be worried.

“It’s not just guns.  We could be talking about any number of other subjects where the president could just go hog wild,” he said.  “For people who say, ‘Just because you haven’t seen the treaty, why are you objecting?’  Wait a minute, the only time anybody will be able to see the treaty is when it’s too late to do anything.”

For Pratt, this comes down to Congress placing faith in a president who has proven he’s unworthy of it.

“This is a president who can’t be trusted to do anything.  We know that.  He’s not a truthful man.  The idea that they would give him a blank check that he could write all kinds of firearms import and export restrictions into a treaty with Pacific nations, what are they thinking?” asked Pratt.

Pratt says he’s generally supportive of free trade.  He says there is a simple solution to this problem but lawmakers don’t seem interested in it.

“Amend it now, while it’s in a regular bill fashion and send him his authority minus gun-grabbing opportunity.  So far all we get back is crickets,” said Pratt.

“It’s a little upsetting to me that we have such a compliant, supine Congress that the president, apparently rightly, figures he can just wrap around his finger and do what he wants,” he said.

The gun lobby has been very effective at beating back previous Obama administration attempts at gun control.  A Democratically-controlled Senate failed to approve expanded background checks in 2013.  A few months ago, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, sought to ban certain types of ammunition, particularly those commonly used in AR-15s.  An avalanche of public opposition forced the ATF to back off.

But Pratt isn’t so sure about the outcome of this battle.  Do gun rights supporters have the votes to stop or change TPP?

“I don’t think we do in the Senate and I’m not sure about the House,” he said, urging Americans to get involved in lobbying their members of Congress.

“This horse is standing right by the door, ready to bolt.  Hopefully people are going to be stepping up their contacts with members of Congress.  I’m fairly confident predicting that if we give the president an opportunity to stick it to the second amendment, he will do it,” said Pratt.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review celebrate the surprisingly strong Conservative Party win in Britain.  They also shake their heads as Hillary Clinton schmoozes with the top one percent while proclaiming herself as the champion of everyday Americans.  And they react to a week of news reporters and pundits blaming Pamela Geller for the terrorist attack on her Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas.

Terrorism expert Harvey Kushner believes threats of Islamic State terror cells operating in the United States ought to be taken seriously, and he says American law enforcement has “no game plan” for stopping the sort of lone wolf or small group attack like we saw in Texas last weekend.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, claimed responsibility for the terrorism aimed at the American Freedom Defense Initiative event featuring a Muhammad cartoon contest.  Nadir Soofi and Elton Simpson were killed by security as they tried to attack.  An ISIS statement referred to the men as “two soldiers of the caliphate,” but also indicated many more attacks are on the way.

“The attack by the Islamic State in America is only the beginning of our efforts to establish a [province] in the heart of our enemy,” the ISIS statement read.  It also claimed there are 71 radicals in 15 states ready to attack.  Virginia, Maryland, Illinois, Michigan and California were specifically listed.  The other ten states remain a mystery.

Should this ISIS threat be taken seriously?

“Yes and no,” said Kushner, a highly respected speaker, author and consultant on terrorism-related issues.  He is also director of the Homeland Security and Terrorism Institute of Long Island University.

“We’re plagued with these freelancers, these lone wolves, these self-radicalized individuals who use the internet and other modern types of communication and social media to communicate with each other and would step up to the plate in the name of ISIS or even Al Qaeda or any other jihadi group.  That’s the reality of 2015 and the future to come,” said Kushner.

However, he is quick to add that doesn’t mean ISIS has a highly trained strategy ready to go in the U.S.

“Are these trained individuals who visited with ISIS, who were on their short list of people to do damage here?  That we don’t know,” he said.

Kushner says discovering whether Simpson and Soofi were sympathizers or following orders would help authorities get a handle on the larger threat.

“What would be chilling about this is if in fact this was a direct communication from an ISIS group in the the Middle East.  As of this point in time, there’s not necessarily an indication that was the case,” said Kushner, who says it is distinctly possible ISIS is just using the Texas story for its own propaganda purposes.

“ISIS has used media to pile on.  This was an event that fits into their MO.  Naturally, you’re going to take advantage.  The good news is it might show a sign of weakness that they had to wait for these two freelancers to act and then they would say this is something they have in the pipeline,” said Kushner.

The big advantage for ISIS is that it’s recruits can remain in the shadows for a long time.

“We’re not facing this structure of Al Qaeda that we had 15 years ago or so.  We pretty much dismantled that,” said Kushner.  “[ISIS] means to radicalize individuals by their incendiary rhetoric and by their extreme view of Islam and have these people strike out against western targets,” said Kushner.

Law enforcement and intelligence officials are facing multiple challenges in identifying these groups and individuals.  First of all, Kushner says finding just one or two radicals is very difficult.

“When you have something that goes out in social media or on the internet or just by word of mouth, how are you going to enter the mindset of 300 million people.  Any one of us is a potential adherent to one of the jihadi groups,” he said.

“The threat is caricatured as ISIS but it comes from individuals who people would just mistake as being some neighbor who has some pointed views about the United States and what we stand for,” said Kushner.

 

Second, the U.S. is struggling mightily against the new nature of this threat.

“We haven’t really adjusted.  We don’t really have a game plan,” he said.  “How do you infiltrate the mindset of this one or two or three radical individuals who are plotting something from the comforts of their living room couch.”

Whether the latest ISIS threat is legitimate, the clock is ticking.

“We’re being infiltrated on a daily basis.  If it’s not by individuals, it’s certainly by incendiary rhetoric,” said Kushner.  “We live in a new world and a very dangerous neighborhood.  The neighborhood is not separated by two oceans.  Unfortunately, the neighborhood has moved here.”

The good news, says Kushner, is that there are some proven ways to infiltrate radical plots.

“Education and networking.  We are a country of separate law enforcement agencies, 50,000-plus.  We need to get real-time information to those law enforcement agencies through training and profiling and just being up on what the threat is,” said Kushner.

As for the five states specifically mentioned as on the ISIS target list, Kushner says he is surprised New York was not at the top of the list.  However, he says Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, Illinois and California do have something important in common.

“At the risk of sounding like a profiler, those states have large populations that might support that type of behavior.  But I think almost all of the states over the past decade has been infiltrated by radical groups,” said Kushner

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for ruling it is illegal for the NSA to collect our cell phone data.  They’re also astonished that the Obama administration in demanding immense amounts of secrecy and absolutely no public discussion of the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership.  And we have fun at Tom Brady’s expense as the NFL concludes Brady probably knew about the under-inflated footballs in January’s AFC title game.

“Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer says there is an unmistakable pattern of Clinton Foundation donations greasing the skids for political favors throughout Hillary Clinton’s congressional and diplomatic career and no one has been able to discredit the facts in the book.

The thrust of the book is that the Clinton Foundation raked in millions and even billions of dollars from foreign donors who subsequently saw their most important issues addressed favorably by the State Department.

The book has rocked the Clinton campaign for weeks, as the Clinton Foundation was forced to admit that it took foreign donations while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, refiled years worth of tax returns to set the record straight and revealed some 1,100 donors that it hadn’t previously disclosed.

Schweizer says there are a lot of different threads to follow in the various episodes, but he says the basic plot is as old as politics itself.

“This is the oldest story in politics.  Follow the money.  If you follow the money in this case, you’re talking about a scale of money that is unprecedented,” said Schweizer.  “It’s a classic case of money in politics.  When you give money, you want access and you want a favorable opportunity to get things done for your benefit.”

This week, Bill Clinton has spoken out in defense of the foundation’s activities and stated it did nothing that was “knowingly inappropriate.”  At another event, when asked what the money went for, Clinton joked, ‘I just work here.  I don’t know.’

Schweizer is a bit stunned by the response.

“I really think it’s been odd, frankly.  On the one hand, they’ve said that there’s nothing here, but on the other hand they can’t stop talking about the book,” he said

From Paul Begala hammering the book on Twitter to a new website and email alerts focused on the book, Schweizer says the Clintons are in major damage control mode.

“If they think there’s nothing there or the book is a dud as they’ve called it, they seem to be taking a lot of actions that show them to be scrambling,” said Schweizer.

He believes the real reason for the concern among Clinton allies is an crystal clear pattern of Hillary Clinton’s State Department rewarding Clinton Foundation donors.

“This is not a book with anonymous sources.  There’s not hyperbole here.  It’s just laying out the facts.  It’s laying out the template of the flow of funds to the Clintons over the template of her official actions as secretary of state.  When you do that, you find this very troubling pattern between the two,” said Schweizer.

Schweizer says the actions of the Clintons are especially galling given the laws firmly in place to prohibit foreign donations to political campaigns and political action committees and clear limits on foreign lobbying of the U.S. government.

“Yet the Clintons have set up this apparatus through the Clinton Foundation and through these so-called speaking fees that I think are more influence payments to Bill Clinton.  These mechanisms are a way around foreign entities being able to influence our politics.  You see the money pouring in and you see the decisions and the actions being taken for the benefit of those who are paying the Clintons,” said Schweizer.

All of this allegedly took place during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state despite explicit demands from President Obama and the Senate Foreign Relations for the foundation to accept no foreign donations and for its records to be available for review.

“If I was Barack Obama, I would be absolutely furious.  This was a condition upon Hillary taking the job as secretary of state.  We now know that almost immediately overnight, they violated that agreement,” said Schweizer, who says Obama now needs to decide whether Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions will trump the search for the truth in this case.

“Are they going to let that supersede the fact that the Clintons flat-out lied to them.  In this memorandum of understanding, it was very explicit that they were going to reveal all donors.  We now know that they didn’t do that, that there were millions of dollars from some very, very sensitive deals involving very, very sensitive people that was flowing to the Clinton Foundation,” he said.

“Clinton Cash” also asserts that some of the money coming into the foundation was given by some very questionable characters, including African warlords and other disreputable figures.  Schweizer believes the company the Clintons were keeping is worth noting.

“I think it’s another red flag flag.  You’ve got a guy, for example, like Gilbert Chagoury in Nigeria, who has been convicted in Geneva, Switzerland, for money laundering and aid and abetting a criminal enterprise.  What he was basically doing was helping the Nigerian dictator (Sani) Abacha take billions of dollars out of the country and put them into Swiss bank accounts,” said Schweizer.

He says people like Chagoury don’t give huge amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation or anyone else just out of generosity.

“That’s the kind of person they are spending a lot of time with and taking money from.  A guy like Gilbert Chagoury operates in a political culture like Nigeria that is rife with paying bribes.  The idea that he’s going to give a large sum of money for the Clintons and not expect something in return is just patently ridiculous,” said Schweizer.

The book further contends that the quid pro quo for Clinton Foundation donors are not unique to the years Mrs. Clinton was running the State Department.  Schweizer says it was evident during her years in the U.S. Senate as well.  One chapter in the book focuses on a nuclear issue involving India.

“The Indian government wanted access to U.S. civilian nuclear technology.  In 2006, legislation was introduced to that effect.  Hillary Clinton was not particularly supportive of that.  She in fact supported three killer amendments that were designed to undermine that bill,” said Schweizer.

“Well, millions of dollars flowed to the Clinton Foundation.  Bill Clinton got eight speeches from Indian interests.  By 2008, she had completely reversed course and come out in favor of unrestricted access to U.S. nuclear technology by the Indian government,” he said.

Schweizer believes any doubts about whether donations to the Clinton Foundation played a role in the policy shift were answered by one of India’s key players on the issue.  Sant Chatwal was a friend and financier for Sen. Clinton who won a prestigious award from the Indian government for convincing her to change his mind.

“When he described in interviews what he did, he talked about the fact that getting this bill through cost him millions upon millions of dollars,” said Schweizer.

The policy flip-flops did not stop there, especially after Sen. Clinton became Secretary Clinton.

“There are a number of examples in the book where she publicly espoused one position or supported a piece of legislation.  But then when she became secretary of state, she reversed course.  The question becomes are these just all coincidences or in these dozens of instances is something more afoot,” said Schweizer.

The key to finding iron-clad proof may be gone since Clinton had her personal email server wiped clean of more than 30,000 “personal” emails from her time at the State Department.  Schweizer is convinced that controversy is directly related to the Clinton Foundation scrutiny.

“I believe the deletions occurred in large part precisely because of these kinds of transactions and communications we’re talking about.  But they’re certainly not necessary to convene a grand ury and investigate these subjects,” said Schweizer.

And that is where Schweizer hopes all of his evidence eventually leads: to a serious legal investigation of the Clintons’ actions.

“My hope is that somebody with subpoena power either on Capitol Hill or a prosecutor is going to convene a grand jury or investigate these matters further,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad to see evidence that Elizabeth Warren may still be thinking about a 2016 White House bid that could set up a bruising Democratic primary.  They also wonder why Hillary Clinton’s numbers are on the rise after three months of relentless bad news.  And they react to Bill Clinton’s shameless defense of the Clinton Foundation.

A prominent black conservative is slamming Maryland State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby for charging six police officers with the death of Freddie Gray without bothering to collect all the evidence and he says that haste could trigger more riots if the officers are acquitted and leave law-abiding citizens in some neighborhoods at the mercy of troublemakers.

Last Friday, Mosby announced charges ranging from second-degree murder depraved heart to manslaughter to office misconduct.  However, attorney and Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper says the prosecutor is putting the cart before the horse.

“We’re all concerned about whether or not Freddie Gray died under legal or illegal circumstances,” said Cooper.  Our legal system is not supposed to be that a trial is a fact-finding opportunity.  A trial is supposed to occur only after a level has been reached to believe that a crime has been committed by the individuals who have been charged.”

“In America, you’re not supposed to have any person have charges brought unless the burden of proof has been met,” he said.

Cooper says Mosby is also going to have to get much more specific than simply accusing all six officers of playing a role on Gray’s death.

“If you are going to charge someone with depraved heart murder and someone else with negligence that’s criminal, you are going to have to say who it was that actually took the actions, when did they take those actions and how did Mr. Freddie Gray die?” said Cooper, who believes Mosby charged the officers under the wrong motivation.

“In this case, there was a very clear decision, it appears, by the state’s attorney to bring what she perceives to be the most serious charges that could be sustained, without necessarily seeing where there’s evidence.  If this can happen to those officers, this could happen to any American,” said Cooper.

He also rips Mosby for failing to convene a grand jury before filing formal charges.

“She has bypassed, at least temporarily, the grand jury process, which is a protection to make sure that you actually can support the charges that are brought against any individual,” said Cooper.

One area where Cooper seems to agree with Mosby and other Baltimore leaders is that it is possible for the officers to receive a fair trial in such a charged atmosphere.  Opponents of a venue change assert that special arrangements were not needed for Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev or Colorado theater shooting suspect James Holmes.  Cooper says that is a fair point, but he says any arguments to move the trial will be bolstered by Mosby’s conduct.

“In neither (the Boston nor the Colorado) circumstance did the prosecuting attorneys make statements about the accused that were provocative, that were inflammatory and that it appeared to be that the charges were brought to appease,” said Cooper.

By filing such hefty charges so soon, Cooper says Mosby could be setting the stage for another disaster in Baltimore if the evidence is not there to convict the officers.

“What happens if there is an acquittal?  The very crowd that demanded the charges in exchange for no longer burning down buildings, what are they going to do when an acquittal may occur?” asked Cooper.

Beyond the Freddie Gray crisis lies the work of trying to put a divided city back together.  Cooper says there are a number of things that must be agreed upon for healing to begin.  First, he says there must be a separation of fact from fiction when it comes to how police interact with black neighborhoods.

“There has been a false narrative presented that in America black men are somehow at some elevated risk at crisis levels in encounters.  The individual charged with the highest, most serious charge in this death happens to be a black officer,” said Cooper.

Cooper contends that the prosecutor’s approach to this case will make police less likely to engage in minority neighborhoods and that will leave law-abiding people in those communities at great risk.

“We’re going to see, just by necessity, law enforcement remove itself from many of these communities.  We saw the rioting and the mayhem.  It was because the police were operating under a stand down order.  Those individuals are going to feel freer to engage in the rioting and the mayhem but there won’t be cameras watching.  It will people in those communities who will suffer as a result,” said Cooper.

As for the long-term approach, Cooper says it’s time for everyone to admit that big government policies have badly failed Baltimore and many other big cities.

“You have elevated levels of spending, the number three highest level of spending per capita on education, billions of dollars being spent over the decade on job training, social welfare transfers of all kinds and they do not work,” said Cooper.

According to Cooper, the hopelessness of many parts of Baltimore is magnified by the rapid decrease in population there.  In 1968, Baltimore was one of the ten most populous cities in the U.S.  Now, it’s not even in the top twenty.

He says it’s high time to make failed leaders take responsibility.

“[We need to] start addressing how we can encourage family formation, how we can encourage a new commitment to education, encourage job opportunities in these communities.  That’s things that are not about government programs but about cultural attitude changes and holding those elected leaders responsible,” said Cooper.

Recent polls suggest that blacks and whites view the events in Baltimore much differently, with whites roundly condemning the riots but a majority of blacks saying the actions were understandable in the pursuit of justice for Freddie Gray.  But Cooper says there is a sizable minority of blacks who were disgusted by the violence and are fed up with the status quo in Baltimore and other big cities.

“Twenty-seven percent is a significant bloc of black Americans.  That’s the group of people that we ought to start having conversations with, both politically and in the community.  If 27 percent of black America switched their political affiliation and their voting practices, it would revolutionize America,” said Cooper.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review welcome Mike Huckabee to the 2016 presidential race.  They also groan as President Obama pontificates on the problems in Baltimore.  And they cringe as Fox News reports a police shooting in Baltimore only to admit it got the story wrong.

Congressional Republicans are on the verge of passing a budget that would balance within ten years, repeal Obama and reform major entitlements all without raising taxes, but a confrontation soon looms between the GOP and a president who wants nothing to do with that agenda.

The Senate is expected to approve the House-Senate compromise on the budget this week.  It passed the House largely along party lines last week.

“It was a remarkable challenge.  The challenges get greater each year because the administration refuses to deal with the reforms that need to be put in place,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga.  “This is a big moment.  It’s been 14 years since the House and the Senate agreed to a budget that balanced within a period of ten years and this budget does just that.”

Price says the American people gave explicit marching orders at the ballot box and Republicans are finally in position to press the issue now that they control both the House and Senate.  He says lawmakers and the public both know that doing more of the same is simply not an option.

“You can’t continue to be in debt at eighteen-plus trillion dollars and not do anything about it.  Every dollar that’s spent on interest and every dollar that’s borrowed is a dollar that can’t be used for paying the rent, for buying a house, for buying a car, for sending a kid to college, for starting or expanding a business.  All the things the American people say they want to do are harmed by our current fiscal and economic path,” said Price.

He says the GOP plan is ambitious but clear.

“Our budget would get to balance within a ten-year period of time without raising taxes.  It would make certain that we lay out a path to save, strengthen and secure Medicare and Medicaid.  We protect Social Security.  These are the programs that are going broke under their current path.  We would repeal Obamacare in its entirety, all of it’s rules and regulations and taxes and make certain also we’re providing for a strong national defense,” said Price.

Repealing Obamacare is not just a major political and policy goal for Price.  He says it would save taxpayers a lot of money too.

“That literally saves us nearly two trillion dollars over the next ten years.  We would put in place patient-centered programs, patient-centered health care where patients, families and doctors are making medical decisions and not Washington, D.C.,” he said.

Price sees entitlement reform, particularly with respect to Medicaid, as another key ingredient in bringing government spending in line.  He says that’s another trillion that could be trimmed.

“All you have to do is simply provide the states the opportunity and the flexibility to fashion a program that takes better care of their Medicaid population and is much more responsive to them and is much more flexible for the states and for the patients in those programs,” said Price.

Another major priority in the GOP budget is attaching conditions to government benefits for able-bodied adults.

“In all the welfare programs that exist out there, the vast majority of them have no requirement whatsoever that the individual receiving the benefit.” said Price.  “What we’ve put in place is simply an opportunity for the states to require either work or searching for work or some type of education path for the individuals receiving those welfare benefits.  When you do that, you save nearly a trillion dollars a year.”

The budget is divided between mandatory and discretionary spending.  Price says entitlements are the biggest drivers in mandatory spending and must be addressed.

“Unless we reform our mandatory spending programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security), we will continue to squeeze the discretionary side of our budget, including defense and everything else…in a way that is not sustainable if we’re to accomplish the mission that we have to keep the nation safe,” said Price.

But some political critics see things much differently.  Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., was a member of the conference committee hammering out a budget compromise between the House and Senate.

“This conference report sends a strong message to students, seniors, and the underprivileged that their dignity and dreams are simply not of concern for the Republican Party,” Moore told Politico.

Price says the facts speak for themselves.

“Students are more in debt and much less likely to be able to pay for their education than they would under our program.  Senior are suffering right now under a Medicaid program and a Social Security program that are going broke.  They’re going insolvent and the Democrats do nothing whatsoever to save those programs,” said Price.

“For those who are indigent and down on their luck, this is an economy that is the worst economic recovery in the history of our nation,” he said.

The toughest intraparty fight came over Pentagon spending.  Many in the party believe the military has taken far too big of a hit in sequestration while others say it’s vital to honor the few spending restraints that still exist in the budget.

Price believes Republicans found a way to make both sides happy.

“What we utilized was the global war on terror funding stream to be able to provide the resources to get above the president’s level of spending on the Pentagon budget and hopefully put in place a process that will allow us to address this in the future where we don’t have to use that outside funding,” said Price.

However, the road to a balanced budget in the next decade is obstructed by some simple facts.  The biggest hurdle is President Obama, who has no interest in advancing the core goals of the budget, especially when it comes to Obamacare.

“I’m not living under any illusion or delusion that he would actually sign that, but it’s important for the American people to know who’s standing in the way of progress and who’s standing up for progress and positive solutions,” said Price.

The House should have no problem voting to repeal Obamacare.  Price strongly encourages the Senate to pass it through reconciliation, the same tactic used to pass Obamacare in the first place which requires just a simple majority for approval.

He says Congress could still end up enacting major changes to the health care laws this year.  That would happen if the Supreme Court issues a ruling on King v. Burwell that determines the law only allows health care subsidies to be obtained through state exchanges.  Nearly three-quarters of the states refused to create their own exchanges.  Their residents would then be responsible for massive health care costs and Congress would be compelled to save the federal exchange or blow up the system.

Now that the budget committees have largely wrapped up their work, the next challenge is to convince lawmakers to abide by it.  Price says there are two priorities in that effort.  The first is to go through appropriations bills one at a time and see what can be cut.

“The Appropriations Committee deals with the discretionary side of the funding which is about at a trillion dollars for Fiscal Year 2016, which begins October 1.  There are 12 subcommittees on the Appropriations Committee.  We’ve already done two pieces of legislation through the committee and they’ll work through the remaining ten to send to the Senate,” said Price.

He says the House Education and Workforce, Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees are all poring over federal spending in an effort to find savings and give the Senate stronger footing to pursue reconciliation.

 

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer the entry of Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina into the 2016 presidential race.  We also shake out heads as Bill Clinton offers a tortured defense of Clinton Foundation donations.  And we discuss the lessons from the terrorist attack at a Mohammad cartoon contest and the media’s predictable response.