Moe Lane

Or you don’t get paid.

“The first step to fixing this problem is to pass a budget that reduces spending. The House has done so, and will again. The Democratic Senate has not passed a budget in almost four years, which is unfair to hardworking taxpayers who expect more from their representatives. That ends this year.

“We must pay our bills and responsibly budget for our future. Next week, we will authorize a three month temporary debt limit increase to give the Senate and House time to pass a budget. Furthermore, if the Senate or House fails to pass a budget in that time, Members of Congress will not be paid by the American people for failing to do their job. No budget, no pay.

There’s a lot of arguments going on right now about the best thing for Republicans right now (I default to agreeing with Ieyasu when it comes to birds that will not sing), but one thing that absolutely must change is that we have to find some way to make Senate Democrats do their damned jobs. If you don’t like this method of getting them to pass a budget, by all means: feel free to suggest a better one.

One that might work.

Moe Lane (more…)

Ignore the rest of his article on the ongoing debt ceiling controversy – Dionne is the kind of person who is comfortable trying to portray House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as being some kind of Machiavellian mastermind running a shadowy conspiracy to control the Republican party behind the scenes, if you know what I mean* – but as Mickey Kaus notes, Dionne’s got a good (if probably unintended) idea here for putting President Obama on the hot seat:

…Cantor takes every domestic spending cut that was discussed as part of the negotiations with Vice President Joe Biden, declares that the administration has blessed them, and packages them together for a vote.

Dionne calls this a worrisome scenario: I call it a good idea that hasn’t really been assessed and discussed yet by us folks over here at the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, which is why I’m highlighting it now.

Thanks, E.J. Dionne!  If this works out, maybe we’ll buy you a fruit basket or something.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*And I think that you do.

Allow me to summarize for my readers this Hill article (“Cantor to Democrats: See, cutting spending’s not that hard”) on some hopeful (repeat: hopeful) signs of deficit reduction on the horizon:

Eric Cantor: …See, cutting spending’s not that hard*. And there’s not going to be any tax hikes.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: …OK, now that you’ve getting spending cuts, we want our Holy Grail, too. Raise taxes!

To which let me add:

Moe Lane: Not a chance on this world, or any other.

(more…)

The AP doesn’t really explain the significance of the fact that the GOP is sending just House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl to the President’s much-ballyhooed deficit reduction panel, so let me do it.

When the President set up this thing in the first place, he told the four party leaders in Congress – Speaker Boehner (R) and Minority Leader Pelosi (D) in the House; Majority Leader Reid (D) and Minority Leader McConnell (R) in the Senate – to each send four Congressmen to it, for a total of sixteen.  That effectively translates to “President Obama’s deficit reduction panel was intended to be ineffectual:” you generally cannot get sixteen people to agree on anything.  While Congressional Democrats theoretically were taking this panel more seriously [by only sending two apiece] – well.  The Senate Democratic picks are Inouye and Baucus, which as the NYT notes are both hostile to the idea of deficit talks.  Pelosi picked Van Hollen and Clyburn, which are described as obedient mouthpieces for the former Speaker (who herself hates the idea of deficit reduction) by that noted right-wing shill The Huffington Post.  So that’s the Democratic side.

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Even the amount is insulting.

As you have undoubtedly heard by now, the FBI has arrested one Norman Leboon for death threats made against Congressman Eric Cantor, in the wake of the Democratic National Committee’s fear-mongering fundraising drive regarding… threats of organized GOP violence. This is not, by the way, the first time that Leboon has fallen for the Democratic’s party cynical agitprop; he was one of the plaintiffs in an anti-FISA lawsuit a few years back. So there’s a history there of him believing whatever nonsense that the Democrats fed him.

Well. Turns out he’s an Obama contributor from 2008, too. See here for the H/T, and see here for a video where he identifies himself as “Norman Leboon Sr.”  Sounds good enough to avoid the question mark I had in the title, so I’d like to ask Brad Woodhouse of the Democratic National Committee something (seeing as he was the guy who so publicly dismissed the need to ratchet down the rhetoric): what are you going to do to get rid of this blood money, Brad?  I mean, personally.

And another question: what were you going to say to Eric Cantor’s wife if the FBI hadn’t caught this guy in time?  Assuming that it wouldn’t have been a moot point anyway.

Brad.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

I’m going to sum this entire thing up, because the sooner we move past this the happier everybody’s going to be.

• Republican Party* (in the person of House Republican Leader John Boehner & House Republican Whip Eric Cantor): Mr. President, you claim that you want bipartisan health care talks.  Do you have the moral courage to commit to junking this existing unpopular, hyper-partisan health care bill and start over from scratch, with a further commitment for transparency and against reconciliation?
• White House** (in the person of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs): No.

And I think that should end it right there: Republican Members of the House of Representatives don’t debate press secretaries, either.

Moe Lane

*H/T: FireDogLake (I know, I know, but there was nothing offensive about this specific post).

**H/T: Hot Air Headlines.

Crossposted to RedState.

So. Last week, Representatives Cantor and Hoyer had a bit of an exchange over where the money we’re giving the International Monetary Fund is going.  Cantor wants to know why we’re going to be giving countries that don’t like us at all the opportunity to take our money, and Hoyer wants to know why Cantor is ignoring the way that Hoyer is brandishing Reagan’s name like an apotropaic talisman:

CANTOR: Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time. I will tell the gentleman, New York Times, May 27, 2009, pointed out Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group involved in Lebanon and its government, had talks with the IMF to discuss the possibility of the extension of credit…We are very, very concerned. There is a real possibility that some of the world’s worst regimes will have access to additional resources that will be provided to the IMF, and is he not concerned about that?

[possible snip: the Congressional Record transcript is down]

HOYER: The reason the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration–and I might say, although I don’t have a quote from the second Bush administration, the second Bush administration, as well, was a supporter of the IMF as the gentleman, perhaps, knows.

The fact of the matter is the United States will play a very significant role in the decisionmaking of the IMF because we’re a very significant contributor. It is a red herring, from my perspective, to raise the fact that money could go somewhere. Of course money could go somewhere.

…which Hoyer then followed up with this inadvertent comment, which the Hill’s Blog Briefing Room mercifully omitted:

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[Update]: Welcome, Instapundit readers: alas, Cantor’s press guy has already fallen on his sword for this one. A pity.

Language warning (which is why it’s not on RedState):

Rep. Cantor’s office sent this around in response to you doing as Obama bid when he didn’t get kowtowed to on his debt bill, and what’s your response? You started crying like a bully who got smacked back in the nose.

Pathetic. If you’re not ready to take a hit, don’t take a swing.