Focus on Re-employing Americans Instead of Immigration Reform: Letter to the Editor

With Speaker Boehner now done with his temper tantrum and stomping his feet over conservative groups slamming his latest failure - passing the Murray /Ryan Budget -- he is now expected to angle for the passage of a weak immigration reform. 

With Obamacare causing many people to lose their jobs or have their work hours drastically reduced and with many Americans stuck in low-paying jobs, the allowing of 20 million illegal immigrants to flood our country and the work force will even further depress wages and take jobs from Americans.

Regardless of party affiliation, the first job of the elected elite in D.C. is to represent U.S. Citizens and the well being of our country, not open the borders or offer back door amnesty and reward law breakers to the detriment of the country & citizens they were elected to represent....

From the Plain Dealer --

With over 90 million Americans out of work, Congress should be more concerned with helping these out-of-work Americans get back to work and not on an immigration reform that will drive down wages and take jobs from the same hard-working Americans they were elected to represent.

In Ohio alone the illegal immigrant population costs our state an estimated $870 million per year. This works out to an average annual amount of $200 per Ohio household headed by a U.S. citizen. Nationally, the costs are a whopping $106 billion per year!

Opening the illegal immigrant flood gates will only increase these costs to the already financially burdened citizens of this state. Not to mention the increased costs and burdens this will cause to the social services network already struggling to meet the current needs of the low income and less than fortunate residents of our state.

Furthermore, it is also a travesty that union leaders and elected officials that claim to be "friends of labor" are so willing to use the dues of hard working union members to fight so illegal immigrants can come and take the jobs of these same union members they are to represent.

They say charity starts at home - let's put unemployed and under-employed U.S. citizens and hard-working Americans first.

Ralph King,

Bedford

What Will It Take?

Where are we headed? A prognosis in an article by Canadian columnist David Solway, posted at PJ Media, should be Required Reading (read the whole thing here), but I wonder if the people who need to read it will do so.

Let me begin with a categorical statement that, given current events and recent political history, can be easily defended: Barack Hussein Obama is a willful, indoctrinated child of the Left with strong Islamic sympathies who is not fit to govern. Indeed, he would not be fit to govern Lower Slobovia, let alone the United States of America. Obama is a historic disaster of the first magnitude and, if not restrained, he will see to the irrevocable decline of the country which foolishly elected him, leaving the world on the brink of a conflict — or in the midst of one — whose repercussions cannot be underestimated.

. . .

What will it take to convince the ersatz aristocracy of frivolous intellectuals and brainless celebrities, partisan journalists, editors and academics, and an indifferent or deluded laity that they are heading for a crisis that will change our lives immeasurably for the worse? The evidence is beyond dispute.

. . .

One must hope that America will come to its collective senses before it is too late. But I am afraid that it will take nothing less than a major catastrophe, a fiscal implosion that takes the “food” out of food stamps, coupled with more high-casualty terrorist attacks both abroad and on its own soil, leading to the eruption of civil unrest and the possible impeachment of the most destructive president in the entire pageant of American history — a sorcerer’s apprentice in a house on fire or a Machiavellian schemer following a carefully contrived plan — before America emerges from its devastating slumber. Assuming, of course, that it ever does, or that a path to recovery will still be possible. For nothing is guaranteed in a nation so divided as America is today.

One wonders if Speaker John Boehner, Rep. Paul Ryan, or Sen. Rob Portman bother with articles at PJ Media? Maybe we should all be forwarding links, or cutting-and-pasting the text to their offices.

Obama Tells Lie of the Year: "If You LIke Your Health Plan - You Can Keep It"

At a recent fundraiser in Beverly Hills, President Obama touted himself as one of the most accomplished Presidents ever. 

Below Politifact confirms this to be true. In doing Pinocchio proud, President Obama is the most accomplished President ever -- at telling the biggest lie!

From PolitiFact --

It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America’s health insurance system.

"If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," President Barack Obama said -- many times -- of his landmark new law.

But the promise was impossible to keep.

So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong.

Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief. Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.

For all of these reasons, PolitiFact has named "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice. (PolitiFact first announced its selection on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper.)

For four of the past five years, PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year has revolved around the health care law, which has been subject to more erroneous attacks than any other piece of legislation PolitiFact has fact-checked.

Obama’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best.

Instead, he fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became clear his promise was too sweeping.

The debate about the health care law rages on, but friends and foes of Obamacare have found one slice of common ground: The president’s "you can keep it" claim has been a real hit to his credibility.

Why the cancellations happened

How did we get to this point?

The Affordable Care Act tried to allow existing health plans to continue under a complicated process called "grandfathering," which basically said insurance companies could keep selling plans if they followed certain rules.

The problem for insurers was that the Obamacare rules were strict. If the plans deviated even a little, they would lose their grandfathered status. In practice, that meant insurers canceled plans that didn’t meet new standards.

Obama’s team seemed to understand that likelihood. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the grandfathering rules in June 2010 and acknowledged that some plans would go away. Yet Obama repeated "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" when seeking re-election last year.

In 2009 and again in 2012, PolitiFact rated Obama’s statement Half True, which means the statement is partially correct and partially wrong. We noted that while the law took pains to leave some parts of the insurance market alone, people were not guaranteed to keep insurance through thick and thin. It was likely that some private insurers would continue to force people to switch plans, and that trend might even accelerate.

In the final months of 2013, several critical elements of the health care law were being enacted, and media attention was at its height. Healthcare.gov made its debut on Oct. 1. It didn’t take long for the media, the public and Obama’s own team to realize the website was a technological mess, freezing out customers and generally not working.

Also on Oct. 1, insurers started sending out cancellation letters for 2014.

No one knows exactly how many people got notices, because the health insurance market is largely private and highly fragmented. Analysts estimated the number at about 4 million (and potentially higher), out of a total insured population of about 262 million.

That was less than 2 percent, but there was no shortage of powerful anecdotes about canceled coverage.

One example: PBS Newshour interviewed a woman from Washington, D.C., who was a supporter of the health care law and found her policy canceled. New policies had significantly higher rates. She told Newshour that the only thing the new policy covered that her old one didn’t was maternity care and pediatric services. And she was 58.

"The chance of me having a child at this age is zero. So, you know, I ask the president, why do I have to pay an additional $5,000 a year for maternity coverage that I will never, ever need?" asked Deborah Persico.

The administration’s botched response

Initially, Obama and his team didn’t budge.

First, they tried to shift blame to insurers. "FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans," said Valerie Jarrett, a top adviser to Obama, on Oct. 28. 

PolitiFact rated her statement False. The restrictions on grandfathering were part of the law, and they were driving cancellations.

Then, they tried to change the subject. "It’s important to remember both before the ACA was ever even a gleam in anybody’s eye, let alone passed into law, that insurance companies were doing this all the time, especially in the individual market because it was lightly regulated and the incentives were so skewed," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

But what really set everyone off was when Obama tried to rewrite his slogan, telling political supporters on Nov. 4, "Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law, and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed."

Pants on Fire! PolitiFact counted 37 times when he’d included no caveats, such as a high-profilespeech to the American Medical Association in 2009: "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."

Even Obama’s staunchest allies cried foul.

On Nov. 6, columnist Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune wrote that the public "was entitled to hear the unvarnished truth, not spin, from their president about what they were about to face. I don't feel good about calling out Obama's whopper, because I support most of his policies and programs. But in this instance, he would have to be delusional to think he was telling the truth."

The next day, Obama apologized during a lengthy interview with NBC News’ Chuck Todd.

"We weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place, and I want to do everything we can to make sure that people are finding themselves in a good position, a better position than they were before this law happened. And I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he said.

Political fist-fight

The reaction from conservative talk shows was withering. On Nov. 11, Sean Hannity put Obama’s statements up there with President Richard Nixon’s "I am not a crook," and President Bill Clinton’s "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

On the liberal network MSNBC, Joy-Ann Reid said the Obama administration’s intention was to fight off attacks like the ones that scuttled Clinton’s health proposals in the early 1990s.

"That’s why the administration boiled it down to that, if you like your health care, you can keep it. Big mistake, but it was a mistake that I think came a little bit out of the lesson" of the Clinton years, she said Nov. 12.

Two days later, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi defended Obama’s statement as accurate and blamed insurance companies. "Did I ever tell my constituents that, if they like their plan, they could keep it? I would have, if I'd ever met anybody who liked his or her plan, but that was not my experience," she said.

Obama offered an administrative fix that same day, allowing state insurance commissioners to extend current plans. But only some have chosen to do so.

In announcing the fix, Obama again conceded he had exaggerated. "There is no doubt that the way I put that forward unequivocally ended up not being accurate," he said. "It was not because of my intention not to deliver on that commitment and that promise. We put a grandfather clause into the law, but it was insufficient."

It is too soon to say what the lasting impact of "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" will be.

The president’s favorability ratings have tumbled in recent weeks.

A Pew Research/USA Today poll conducted Dec. 3-8 found the percentage of people viewing Obama as "not trustworthy" has risen 15 points over the course of the year, from 30 percent to 45 percent.

Much depends on the law’s continuing implementation and other events during Obama’s final three years in office, said Larry Sabato, a political scientist who runs the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Still, Obama has work to do to win back public trust, Sabato said.

"A whole series of presidents developed credibility gaps, because people didn’t trust what they were saying anymore. And that’s Obama’s real problem," he said. "Once you lose the trust of a substantial part of the American public, how do you get it back?"

It is Time to Take Boehner's Gavel!

Once again we see the Spineless Speaker, John Boehner, instead of standing on the integrity of his word and standing strong for the future of our country -- has turned to attacking the Tea Party & Liberty movement that enabled him to become Speaker.

This would be the same Tea Party & Liberty movement that Boehner has abandoned too many times to count. Most recently in the CR fights when we tried to stop the predicted Obamacare train wreck.

It is time to take Boehner's gavel! #takeboehnersgavel 

From Tea Party Patriots --

Statement by Jenny Beth Martin, Co-Founder of Tea Party Patriots, on comments made by Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner:

“Speaker Boehner thinks ‘outside groups’ are the problem? Does he really think the American voters who are involved in the tea party, who got him elected, should not demand accountability of their elected representatives?

“The Speaker’s anger and ire is misdirected towards the wrong people. President Obama is choosing whether to enforce laws in the country or not by whim. He changes policy through press conferences and tweets. He rewrites law by fiat. Members of Congress renege on their pledges not to spend more or increases taxes on hardworking Americans.

“Frankly, Mr. Speaker, continuously making promises and then breaking them is how you lose credibility with the American people. Pitting your colleagues against their constituents is how you lose credibility with your conference. Not upholding conservative principles is how you lose credibility with the voters who will find someone else if you are not willing to do your job. “

It should also be noted that from Ohio, the only GOP Congressmen that can stand with their head held high and sleep knowing they voted against this fiscal fraud perpetrated on the American public would be Rep. Jim Jordan, Rep. Brad Wenstrup and Rep. Steve Chabot.

Washington's Budget Deal: The not-so-perfect gift for Christmas?

From Ernest Istook --

THE NORTH POLE, December 12, 2013 - Santa Claus has just made an emergency order of extra coal for this Christmas. It’s to fill the stockings of those supporting Washington D.C.’s latest budget deal.

But there’s a unique holiday spirit in Washington, so those receiving the coal will re-gift it to those who oppose the budget plan, with cheerful gift tags attached and addressed to “Ebenezer Scrooge.”

Since the whopper budget deal of August 2011, we have added over three trillion dollars to the national debt. Each new agreement teaches us the gift of giving, because our government knows it is more blessed to spend more than you receive. Politicians put a happy face on deficits, just like gift-wrapping the garbage before putting it under the Christmas tree.

Few were surprised at the latest announcement from House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Budget Chair Patty Murray (D-WA). These proclamations have become predictable, almost like prophecy. For unto us a deal is born. And the government shall be upon its shoulders and shall not be shut down. And the deal shall be called wonderful.

The choir of angels was missing, but President Obama sang praises. It was like the sound of herald trumpets to hear the pronouncements that spending will be reduced under the agreement. Yet it’s like silent night if you ask when that would happen.

In place of gold, frankincense and myrrh, this budget deal delivers $63 billion in additional spending during the next two years. Reductions in spending are sometime in the eight years thereafter. You can settle down for a long winter’s nap while you wait.

But, hey, it’s Christmas season. Everybody buys now and pays later, right? That’s what makes for a wonderful life!

If you have read the details of the new budget deal, you have seen the list they have made and perhaps you have checked it twice. It can get pretty confusing. For example, here’s part of the report from Politico:

“The bipartisan package includes $63 billion of ‘sequester relief,’ $85 billion of total savings, and $23 billion in net deficit reduction. The agreement would set the discretionary spending level for fiscal year 2014 at $1.012 trillion, and $1.014 trillion in FY 2015.”

This is what drives Santa to insist on more than milk and cookies. The new plan spends more than the old plan, but offsets the new spending by raising fees. So even though spending goes up, the deficit doesn’t go up and neither do taxes. Clear?

Sure, it raises airline ticket fees, but look at the bright side. It doesn’t raise fees on Santa’s reindeer. Possible new fees on Christmas trees are supposed to be in different legislation, not the budget bill.

When they bragged this week about “lowering the deficit,” that is not the same as lowering our debt. Even balancing the budget is less likely than a white Christmas in San Diego, much less reducing debt. The national debt remains up on the housetop, at over $17.2 trillion and headed even higher under this budget deal. Having ANY deficit means your sleigh is headed in the wrong direction; the amount of deficit only tells you how fast.

No, our national debt won’t drop under this proposal, but only The Grinch would expect that. (And perhaps his relatives, like Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks, Heritage Action, Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots, American Conservative Union, Club for Growth. The ones who are getting nuttin’ for Christmas from the Washington insiders).

But this is the most wonderful time of the year. Even Washington and the American people learn they share something in common. At this time every year, millions of us decide we’re going on a diet—after the holidays. Meantime, we will enjoy ourselves. That’s what we did last year and the year before and the year before that. Too many of us still carry extra pounds from not keeping previous diets, just like Uncle Sam carries extra bloat from not keeping past promises to control spending.

Why should anyone believe this year’s promises that politicians will behave responsibly with future spending when past promises were not kept? That is the biggest single problem with the latest budget proposal. None of the numbers matter; only that principle matters.

So just remember the song:

He’s spending while you’re sleeping

He spends when you’re awake

He spends on things both bad and good

So slow down for goodness’ sake

You better watch out

You better not cry

You better not pout

I’m telling you why

Uncle Sam is not Santa Claus.

America loses again

Newt Gingrich is frequently on the money. From his email "Washington Wins, America Loses" today [emphasis added]:

Two things happened yesterday and both represented victories for Washington and defeats for America.

The smaller defeat was closing the federal government on account of an insignificant dusting of snow. The weather was so mild no one in Denver or Minneapolis would have noticed it.

Federal employees--who we had been told throughout the shutdown were eager to go to work--suddenly had another paid day off.

I went to an 8:00 am breakfast next to the White House. The roads were clear (and empty as everyone stayed home). We had 15 people on time at 8:00 am. There was no snow accumulating at the White House.

Then I drove out to Dulles Airport with no problems. There were 200 people at that meeting.

Everyone made it to our business meeting at work later in the day and one person even flew in that morning.

So the private sector kept moving through the light snow earning the tax money to pay the federal workers who couldn't manage to make their way through the flurries.

Washington had won and the country would pay for it.

The larger defeat came when the budget deal was announced.

You could tell how bad a deal it was when no one could describe it honestly.

The budget deal has tax increases but they can't be called tax increases or no Republican could vote for them, so they are simply described in misleading language. But if you fly you will pay a higher tax no matter what the politicians call it.

The sequester is broken and spending will go up.

Since no Republican can vote for spending increases there had to be offsetting out-year cuts.

Of course the immediate spending increases will be real and the out-year cuts will never happen.

It is sad that no one can tell the truth in plain language.

The real disappointment isn't just that the budget deal is so bad it cant be honestly described.

The real disappointment is the lack of imagination and lack of new thinking and creativity.

. . . There are many new developments which could be used to shrink spending, cut out waste, improve services, increase competition, grow the economy and get back to a balanced federal budget.

Sadly the opportunities to break out are ignored while the opportunities to tax more and spend more dominate.

And Speaker Boehner continues to demonstrate just how out of touch he is with the conservative base. The Hill has the ugly report, Boehner lashes at conservative groups: “They've lost all credibility” here.

WHO has lost all credibility???

Obama Exchange

This one is making the rounds. Heh.