The Buck Doesn’t Stop Here
President Obama is applying ‘a scalpel to the discretionary budget, rather than a machete.’

By STEPHEN MOORE

We hear that the White House was caught off guard by the near-universal panning of President Obama’s budget proposal. So yesterday morning Mr. Obama was rushed in front of the TV cameras for a press conference to rebut the wave of negative reaction to his status quo spending plan released on Monday.

The press was unusually harsh in its questioning, and Mr. Obama was clearly on the defensive. At one point he even said that the media is too “impatient” for budget cuts. Asked why he isn’t willing to cut more spending to bring the deficit down faster, he said he’s applying “a scalpel to the discretionary budget, rather than a machete.”

What has the White House worried is not the negative reaction from Republicans but criticism from fellow Democrats and friends in the media. MSNBC, for example, called the budget “the big punt.” The Los Angeles Times said that it “landed with a thud.” Even the New York Times groused that “the budget is most definitely not a blueprint for dealing with the real long-term problems that feed the budget deficit.” During a Senate Budget Committee hearing yesterday, North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad said that the president’s budget “cannot be the answer for this country’s fiscal future.”

The overarching problem for Team Obama is that the budget contains trivial cost savings. In the first two years the deficit is actually worsened. Democratic deficit hawks are upset about the total absence of savings in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Mr. Obama explained his whiff on entitlement reform by saying it should “be a negotiation process” and that Republicans and Democrats need to get “in that boat at the same time so we don’t tip over.” It was hardly Harry Truman saying “the buck stops here.”

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper has to make a choice: cash for Quebec or an election, says Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe.

“I am now challenging Stephen Harper to respond to Quebec’s expectations,” a pumped Mr. Duceppe said Sunday in a speech closing a party general council meeting. “We are asking for simple fairness, elementary justice.

“Mr. Harper has a choice. He can respond to Quebec’s expectations or he can spark elections. For our part, we will not fold. We are going to stand up for Quebec. We are not going to give up, we are not going to be quiet.”

Apart from being pathetic losers, the Quebec nationalist movement — led by Gilles Duceppe’s Bloc Quebecois — is forgetting one important fact: You need to have something the Conservative Party needs before you can start giving ultimatums. The Bloc is in a similar boat to the New Democratic Party: They will always be ready for an election because the outcome of said election doesn’t matter to them. As perpetual opposition parties, they don’t need to play the numbers to figure out when the time is right for an election, they’re ready to go whenever. As such, those two parties have very little bearing on votes in the House of Commons given that they’re diametrically opposed to any Conservative bill.

That being said, it’s not unlikely that they will attempt (yet again) to form a coalition government with the Liberal Party of Canada after the next election comes. For them, that’s their only hope of being anywhere close to governance, so sooner is rather than later. Duceppe can threaten the government all he wants, but the decision lies with Ignatieff. Scary, huh?

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Follow @AriMFine, @AndrewLawton and @RyanWRuppert on Twitter to stay up-to-date on any and all important news.

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Washington Post: Hubris heading for a fall
By: George F. Will

It takes a worried man to sing a worried song, and in a recent speech that seemed like Larry Summers’s swan song, the president’s now-departed economic adviser warned that America is “at risk of a profound demoralization with respect to government.” He fears a future in which “an inadequately resourced government performs badly, leading to further demands that it be cut back, exacerbating performance problems, deepening the backlash, and creating a vicious cycle.”

The idea that America’s problem of governance is one of inadequate resources misses this lesson of the last half-century: No amount of resources can prevent government from performing poorly when it tries to perform too many tasks, or particular tasks for which it is inherently unsuited.

Actually, government is not sufficiently demoralized. The hubris that is the occupational hazard and defining trait of the political class continues to cause government to overpromise and underperform. This class blithely considers itself exempt from the tyranny of the bell-shaped curve – the fact that in most occupations a few people are excellent, a few are awful, and most are average.

In fact, the bell curve is particularly pertinent to government. Surgeons achieve eminence by what they do “in office” – in operating rooms, performing surgery. Politicians achieve eminence simply by securing office – by winning elections, a skill often related loosely, if at all, to their performance in office.

James Q. Wilson, America’s preeminent social scientist, has noted that until relatively recently, “politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything.” Until the 1930s, or perhaps the 1960s, there was a “legitimacy barrier” to federal government activism: When new policies were proposed, the first debate was about whether the federal government could properly act at all on the subject. Today, there is no barrier to the promiscuous multiplication of programs, because no program is really new. Rather, it is an extension, modification or enlargement of something government is already doing.

The vicious cycle that should worry Summers is the reverse of the one he imagines. It is not government being “cut back” because of disappointments that reinforce themselves. Rather, it is government squandering its limited resources, including the resource of competence, in reckless expansions of its scope.

“There has been,” Wilson writes, “a transformation of public expectations about the scope of federal action, one that has put virtually everything on Washington’s agenda and left nothing off.” Try, Wilson suggests, to think “of a human want or difficulty that is not now defined as a ‘public policy problem.’”

Summers leaves a federal government funded by a continuing resolution. Congress has been so busy passing gargantuan legislation to expand government’s responsibilities that it has not had enough time, energy or sense of responsibility to pass a budget. And the pathologies of expanding government are becoming worse because of two concepts Summers mentioned in his valedictory – Baumol’s Disease, and Moynihan’s Corollary to it.

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The New Criterion: Dependence Day
By: Mark Steyn

If I am pessimistic about the future of liberty, it is because I am pessimistic about the strength of the English-speaking nations, which have, in profound ways, surrendered to forces at odds with their inheritance. “Declinism” is in the air, but some of us apocalyptic types are way beyond that. The United States is facing nothing so amiable and genteel as Continental-style “decline,” but something more like sliding off a cliff.

In the days when I used to write for Fleet Street, a lot of readers and several of my editors accused me of being anti-British. I’m not. I’m extremely pro-British and, for that very reason, the present state of the United Kingdom is bound to cause distress. So, before I get to the bad stuff, let me just lay out the good. Insofar as the world functions at all, it’s due to the Britannic inheritance. Three-sevenths of the G7 economies are nations of British descent. Two-fifths of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are—and, by the way, it should be three-fifths: The rap against the Security Council is that it’s the Second World War victory parade preserved in aspic, but, if it were, Canada would have a greater claim to be there than either France or China. The reason Canada isn’t is because a third Anglosphere nation and a second realm of King George VI would have made too obvious a truth usually left unstated—that the Anglosphere was the all but lone defender of civilization and of liberty. In broader geopolitical terms, the key regional powers in almost every corner of the globe are British-derived—from Australia to South Africa to India—and, even among the lesser players, as a general rule you’re better off for having been exposed to British rule than not: Why is Haiti Haiti and Barbados Barbados?

And of course the pre-eminent power of the age derives its political character from eighteenth-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go. In his
sequel to Churchill’s great work, The History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Andrew Roberts writes:

Just as we do not today differentiate between the Roman Republic and the imperial period of the Julio-Claudians when we think of the Roman Empire, so in the future no-one will bother to make a distinction between the British Empire–led and the American Republic–led periods of English-speaking dominance between the late-eighteenth and the twenty-first centuries. It will be recognized that in the majestic sweep of history they had so much in common—and enough that separated them from everyone else—that they ought to be regarded as a single historical entity, which only scholars and pedants will try to describe separately.

If you step back for a moment, this seems obvious. There is a distinction between the “English-speaking peoples” and the rest of “the West,” and at key moments in human history that distinction has proved critical.

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Budget Crisis Rhetoric
By: Thomas Sowell

Government budget crises can be painful, but the political rhetoric accompanying these crises can also be fascinating and revealing. Perhaps the most famous American budget crisis was New York City’s, back during the 1970s. When President Gerald Ford was unwilling to bail them out, the famous headline in the New York Daily News read, “Ford to City: Drop Dead.”

President Ford caved and bailed them out, after all.

The rhetoric worked. That is why so many other cities and states– not to mention the federal government– have continued on with irresponsible spending, and are now facing new budget crises, with no end in sight.

What would have happened if President Ford had stuck to his guns and not set the dangerous precedent of bailing out local irresponsibility with the taxpayers’ money?

New York would have gone bankrupt. But millions of individuals and organizations go bankrupt without dropping dead.

Bankruptcy conveys the plain facts that political rhetoric tries to conceal. It tells people who depended on the bankrupt government that they can no longer depend on that bankrupt government. It tells the voters who elected that bankrupt government, with its big spending promises, that they made a bad mistake that they would be wise to avoid making again in the future.

Legally, bankruptcy wipes out commitments made to public sector unions, whose extravagant pay and pension contracts are bleeding municipal and state governments dry.

Is putting an end to political irresponsibility and legalized union racketeering dropping dead?

Politics being what it is, we are sure to hear all sorts of doomsday rhetoric at the thought of cutbacks in government spending. The poor will be starving in the streets, to hear the politicians and the media tell it.

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Reason.com: Gun Control Wouldn’t Have Stopped Loughner

By: Brian Doherty

A very public shooting spree, with victims including a congresswoman, a judge, and a little girl, committed by a known lunatic, using equipment that had previously been banned: Jared Loughner’s crime seems an unparalleled opportunity for gun control advocates to gin up support for new legislation to restrict the weapons legally available to Americans and to restrict which Americans have access to those weapons.

Loughner reportedly used a Glock 19 pistol with 33-round magazines. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) therefore wants to restore a provision of the Clinton-era “assault weapon” ban that prohibited the manufacture or importation of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. McCarthy’s proposal would toughen the expired law’s requirements by prohibiting the sale or transfer of ownership of existing high-capacity magazines as well. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) intends to sponsor similar legislation in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) has called for a ban on possessing weapons within 1,000 feet of a member of Congress and certain other high government officials. Taking another tack entirely, a bipartisan pair of congressmen, Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) vow to start packing heat themselves, and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) wants to allow congresspeople to carry weapons in D.C., something normal citizens still can’t do.

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Charles Krauthammer Attacks Media’s ‘Bogus’ Call for Civility

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Human Events: Mud Libel
By: Ann Coulter

The same people who had blamed Sarah Palin for the massacre at the Tucson Safeway and then taunted her for her “silence” were enraged when she responded.

Last Tuesday, the night before Palin responded, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann mocked Palin’s silence throughout his show:

– “And why is the ever self-promoting Miss Palin so quiet?”

– “And it’s quiet, isn’t it?”

– “It’s too quiet.”

– “The silence is deafening from the great Northwest.”

It was deemed an admission of guilt that she hadn’t spoken about the Tucson shooting or denied the accusations that she had inspired the shooter.

The next day, Palin posted a video response, and Keith immediately attacked her for “the worst timed political statement ever.” It’s almost as if liberals would attack Palin whatever she did.

Olbermann sneered about Palin’s use of the phrase “blood libel,” scoffing, “This, to Sarah Palin, is analogous to what is happening to her.” No, not only happening to her, but to all right-wingers, tea partiers, Republican politicians, and conservative radio and TV hosts — all of whom have been accused of complicity in murder.

On the day of the Arizona massacre, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva blamed the “Palin express.” The father of Gabrielle Giffords, one of the victims, blamed “the whole Tea Party.” The sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik, who had failed to lock Loughner up despite repeated arrests and other contacts, blamed “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.” (Dumbnik also said: “We’re not convinced that he acted alone.”)

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NY Post: Chinese Tiger ate US Dove for lunch
By:Charles Hurt

WASHINGTON — Who did you think would come out on top if you put a tiger and a dove in the same room together to work out their differences?

Yes, those were white bird feathers sticking out of the tiger’s mouth at the lavish state dinner hosted by President Obama at the White House this week.

President Hu Jintao is a Tiger Leader. That’s kind of like a Tiger Mother, only less nurturing and more demanding.

President Obama is a Dove Leader. He speaks endlessly and carries no stick. And he likes to do a lot of bowing and scraping. Kind of like the way Hu Jintao likes to do a lot of not smiling.

If you see all that together in one room, bet on the Tiger.

But even a Dove like Obama will manage to emerge with something. In this case, he escaped with his vocal chords unscathed.

And he is still talking.

He is talking all about what a great deal he got us while doing his little humble shtick.

He is crowing about $45 billion in US exports he got China to agree to. That doesn’t exactly close the more than $250 billion in trade deficits we rack up against the communist state each year.

Nearly half of the total value of those trade deals — $19 billion — is for aircraft from Boeing that China had already agreed to purchase as part of a larger deal going back to 2007. That was more than a year before the Dove Leader had even landed in our midst.

And Obama said he really busted Hu’s chops over his country’s unfettered piracy of everything from designer handbags to software to drugs to sophisticated electronic gadgetry that American companies have plowed billions upon billion of dollars of research and development into — only to have rogue companies in places like China rip them off and flood the market with cheap goods.

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Washington Post:America’s political disharmony
By: George F. Will

America is a creedal nation and the creed is, as Robert Penn Warren wrote, the “burr under the metaphysical saddle of America.” It is a recurring source of national introspection, discontent, self-indictment and passionate politics. We are in the midst of a recurrence.

The tone of today’s politics was anticipated and is vindicated by a book published 30 years ago. The late Samuel Huntington’s “American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony” (1981) clarifies why it is a mistake to be alarmed by today’s political excitements and extravagances, a mistake refuted by America’s past.

The “predominant characteristics” of the Revolutionary era, according to Gordon Wood, today’s preeminent historian of that period, were “fear and frenzy, the exaggerations and the enthusiasm, the general sense of social corruption and disorder.” In the 1820s, Daniel Webster said “society is full of excitement.” Of the 1830s, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The country is full of rebellion; the country is full of kings. Hands off! Let there be no control and no interference in the administration of this kingdom of me.” As the 20th century dawned, Theodore Roosevelt found a “condition of excitement and irritation in the popular mind.” In 1920, George Santayana wrote, “America is all one prairie, swept by a universal tornado.” Unusual turmoil is not so unusual that it has no pattern.

By the time Huntington’s book appeared, American had had four of what he called “periods of creedal passion” – the Revolutionary era (1770s), the Jacksonian era (the 1830s), the Progressive era (1900-20) and the 1960s. We are now in the fifth.

The American Creed’s values are liberal, as that term was understood until liberalism succumbed to 20th-century statism. The values, expressing the 18th century’s preoccupation with defending liberty against government, are, Huntington said, “individualistic, democratic, egalitarian, and hence basically anti-government and anti-authority.” The various values “unite in imposing limits on power and on the institutions of government. The essence of constitutionalism is the restraint of governmental power through fundamental law.”

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Donald Trump ‘China Is Our Enemy’

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Washington Times: Corporate excess bad, union robbery of kids just dandy
By: Dennis Lennox

Under the administration of President Obama and the former Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, it was fashionable to engage in class warfare and attack anything viewed as corporate excess.

But those on the political left have once again proved their hypocrisy by ignoring the irony in the United Auto Workers (UAW) owning a lavish $33 million resort in Michigan’s Cheboygan County.

This resort, which includes a championship golf course, is situated on 1,000 acres at Black Lake in the heart of cottage country.

Yet despite a pristine location and first-class amenities, the UAW’s resort has lost more than $23 million in recent years.

Instead of selling the resort or even opening it up to non-union members, union leaders have kept it for themselves while at the same time claiming that forced unionization of auto workers in other states is necessary to keep their club alive.

To offset the massive financial losses, the UAW has launched appeals of the resort’s property tax assessments nearly every year. This has forced local government to spend thousands of dollars it doesn’t have on defending tax assessments, which largely fund the education of local children.

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FOXNews.com: Most Americans Don’t Want the Health Care Law That Was Passed and Efforts to Repeal It Must Continue
By: John Lott

Americans are unhappy with ObamaCare. The House’s 245-189 vote to repeal ObamaCare on Wednesday was never really in doubt. In fact, The latest Rasmussen survey shows that 55 percent of Americans want ObamaCare repealed, the same number that showed up in polls when people voted in early November. Seventy five percent of Americans want the law changed.

The repeal measure now goes to the Senate. But despite holding a majority in the Senate, Democrats are refusing to hold a vote and publicly support the law. The public opposition shouldn’t come as a surprise as the health care law signed by President Obama bears little resemblance to the one he promised during the 2008 campaign. The law broke multiple different promises on taxes and costs twice as much as what Obama said that it would cost during the campaign. ObamaCare was sold to Americans as an essential law to reduce health care costs.

“Then there’s the problem of rising costs. . . . Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing,” President Obama warned when he addressed a joint session of Congress on health care on September 9, 2009. “Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result.”

Few now believe that the law will help control costs. A new Rasmussen survey shows 58 percent of voters believe ObamaCare will increase the costs of health care and 60 percent believe it will increase the deficit.

After ObamaCare passed, company after company alerted their shareholders, as they are mandated, that the law increased their cost of providing employees with health care. Just a few of the companies announcing higher costs were: AT&T, $1 billion; Verizon, $970 million; Deere & Co., $150 million; Boeing, $150 million; Caterpillar, $100 million; Prudential Financial Inc., $100 million; and Lockheed Martin, $96 million.

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National Review: America’s Economy: The Ninth-Freest
By: Deroy Merdock

We’re No. 9!

America has slipped one spot since last year — from earth’s eighth-freest economy in 2010, according to the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom. This 17th annual report, jointly published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, sifts through the wreckage caused by government’s turbocharged acceleration during the Bush-Obama years. America’s slump in the rankings (we’re down from No. 5 in 2008) confirms the urgent need for Washington to revitalize free markets and restrain government intervention.

Among the 179 countries examined in the Index, Hong Kong is ranked first, followed by Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Ireland, and Denmark. These nations all outscored the U.S. across ten categories, including taxes, free trade, regulation, monetary policy, and corruption.

America barely made the top ten. Bahrain was tenth, with 77.7 points, one decimal point behind America’s 77.8 score. Chile reached No. 11 with 77.4, just 0.4 points behind the United States.

Even worse, with a score below 80, the U.S. is spending its second year as a “mostly free” economy. As it departed the family of “free” nations in 2010, it led the “mostly free” category. Even within this less-than-illustrious group, America now lags behind Ireland and Denmark.

How did our once-unassailable country wind up so winded?

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Congressman Doesn’t Want to Sit and Be ‘Kissy-Kissy’ with Dems at SOTU

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Town Hall: Judge John Roll Was a Hero: Why Didn’t We Know This?
By: Sandy Rios

Federal Judge John Roll was killed in Tucson trying to save another man’s life. As soon as madman Jared Lee Loughner finished his attempt to murder Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, he turned his gun on the people to his left, then the people to his right. Recently released video shows his first target to the right was Ron Barber, Gifford’s district director, who was standing next to Justice John Roll.

Barber was shot in the arm. Judge Roll then pushed him down and, shielding Barber with his own body, steered him to shelter under a nearby table. While under the table, Loughner aimed for Roll’s exposed back and pulled the trigger. The video continues as Judge Roll looks up over his right shoulder, lies back down and dies at the scene.

Why don’t we know that? We know that an intern to Gifford, Daniel Hernandez, held Congresswoman Gifford’s head in his lap, putting pressure on the wound to save her life. We know that retired Army National Guard Colonel Bill Badger, though injured, tackled Loughner. We know Joe Zamudio, a young bystander carrying a gun, ran to the scene initially to stop the shooter by his own deadly force, but aided Badger instead in the restraint. While both held Loughner, Patricia Maisch removed another loaded magazine from Loughner’s pocket.

We know the stories of these people well as recounted by the press and by President Obama at the memorial service. We are collectively proud of them and each deserve recognition and praise. But what about Judge Roll?

One could argue that reports of the video were just released. Even so, should this news not be shouted from the rooftops? Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit…gives his life for another! Instead, the headline in the Washington Post read, “In videos, details of shooting emerge.” And the dramatic details of the judge’s heroism are not reported until two thirds of the way through the article. The heroism of the judge was THE most remarkable information in the story, but the Post didn’t bother to headline it.

Did no one know about Judge Roll’s actions until this week? Did the man whose life he saved, Ron Barber, know nothing of the judge’s selflessness as he left the hospital and headed directly, respectfully to the funeral? Did no one at the scene relay the story? Did investigators not get Barber’s account of his own shooting? More than 250 federal agents and 130 local detectives have conducted more than 300 interviews to determine the facts.

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Town Hall: The Philadelphia Horror: How Mass Murder Gets a Pass
By: Michelle Malkin

Let’s give the “climate of hate” rhetoric a rest for a moment. It’s time to talk about the climate of death, in which the abortion industry thrives unchecked. Dehumanizing rhetoric, rationalizing language and a callous disregard for life have numbed America to its monstrous consequences. Consider the Philadelphia Horror.

In the City of Brotherly Love, hundreds of babies were murdered by a scissors-wielding monster over four decades. Whistleblowers informed public officials at all levels of the wanton killings of innocent life. But a parade of government health bureaucrats and advocates protecting the abortion racket looked the other way — until, that is, a Philadelphia grand jury finally exposed the infanticide factory run by abortionist Kermit B. Gosnell, M.D., and a crew of unlicensed, untrained butchers masquerading as noble providers of women’s “choice.” Prosecutors charged Gosnell and his death squad with multiple counts of murder, infanticide, conspiracy, abuse of corpse, theft and other offenses.

The 281-page grand jury report released Wednesday provides a bone-chilling account of how Gosnell’s “Women’s Medical Society” systematically preyed on poor, minority pregnant women and their live, viable babies. The report’s introduction lays out the criminal enterprise that claimed the lives of untold numbers of babies — and mothers:

“This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy — and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels — and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.”

Echoing the same kind of dark euphemisms plied by Planned Parenthood propagandists who refer to unborn life as “fetal and uterine material,” Gosnell referred to his deadly trade as “ensuring fetal demise.” Reminiscent of the word wizards who refer to the skull-crushing partial-birth abortion procedure as “intact dilation and evacuation” and “intrauterine cranial decompression,” Gosnell described his destruction of babies’ spinal cords as “snipping.” He rationalized his macabre habit of cutting off dead babies’ feet and saving them in rows and rows of specimen jars as “research.” His guilt-ridden employees then took photos of some of the victims before dumping them in shoeboxes, paper bags, one-gallon spring-water bottles and glass jars.

They weren’t the only ones who adopted a see-no-evil stance:

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Washington Examiner: House GOP begins long drive to dismantle Obamacare
By: Byron York

Everyone knows House Republicans (along with three Democrats) voted Wednesday to repeal Obamacare. But fewer people know what those same House Republicans — this time, with 14 Democrats — did Thursday.

By a vote of 253 to 175, the GOP directed key House committees to report on ways to lower health care premiums, allow patients to keep their current health plans, increase access to coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, and decrease the price of medical liability lawsuits. In other words, the committees are beginning work on replacing the House-repealed Obamacare with Republican health policies.

Repeal got a lot of press coverage. Replacement got far less. If they needed any reminding, GOP lawmakers are learning that controlling the levers of power in the House doesn’t mean controlling the media narrative on health care. “Democrats wanted to characterize repeal as draconian, ignoring the fact that we do have very, very positive alternatives,” says Rep. David Dreier, chairman of the House Rules Committee. “It’s been difficult for us to get that [message] out there. We said repeal and replace, and we’re in the process of replacing.”

House Republicans are pursuing a three-part strategy. Part One was repeal; they promised to do it, and they did it. Part Two is replace, which in coming months will involve House votes on a series of GOP health care measures. And Part Three — since full repeal can’t win in the Senate — is another series of votes on measures to repeal individual parts of Obamacare. The net result will be that Republicans gradually push more and more House Democrats — and perhaps some in the Senate — away from an all-or-nothing defense of Obamacare.

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A Final Tribute to Keith Olbermann: The Final Countdown

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For the first time in years, House lawmakers will soon have the chance to vote on a standalone measure to increase the federal debt limit next year under the new Republican majority — a vote that’s shaping up as the first early test of the GOP’s commitment to spending restraint.

The House Republican leader, Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, will give lawmakers a chance for a direct vote on raising the debt limit, spokesman Michael Steel told the Washington Times.

That would be a break with the recent tactic of burying the debt limit increase in parliamentary maneuvers — a way to shield vulnerable lawmakers from having to take the unpopular vote — and would instantly give leverage to those in Congress hoping to impose immediate spending cuts.

Speaker-elect Boehner is promising that there will be a standalone vote on raising the debt ceiling, which is currently $14.3 Trillion. If the measure fails, the Treasury Department will not be permitted to issue any more debt (borrow any more money). Not raising the debt limit would force Congress to live within its means. Without additional debt, Congress would be forced to adopt serious spending cuts. Essentially, Washington would be forced to acknowledge that they are out of money.

The last time a war over the debt limit was waged was in the wake of the 1994 Republican Revolution. 15 years ago, Republicans tried to force President Clinton to make serious cuts in entitlement spending, by far the most costly, and politically radioactive, segment of the federal budget.

If President Obama, like President Clinton, refuses to pass a GOP budget, we could be looking at another government shutdown. Only, this time the GOP will be in a much better position to defend their position. The 2010 election was abut stopping Obama, and stopping out of control spending. A fight over raising the debt ceiling is a perfect opportunity for the GOP to contrast themselves with reckless Democrats.

A vote to raise the debt limit with no strings attached, as has been the practice in Washington, is a vote to continue spending the nation off a cliff. By making this vote a standalone vote, as opposed to slipping it in with another bill, Speaker Boehner will force members of Congress to go on the record with this issue. The transparency and apparent willingness to fight are both extremely promising sign from the new Congressional majority.

Strictly Right Radio’s 8th episode has hit the web! You can listen online here or subscribe to the Podcast in iTunes to stay up to date.

It’s easy to criticize Obama — a known socialist over his ridiculous, irresponsible policies. When you’re criticizing a man like Prime Minister Harper who was elected to govern as a conservative it’s tough. Has the Right completely lost hope in responsible budgets? This budget was presented as a manifesto of fiscal conservatism, but leaves me as confused as an Amish electrician.

Now, I know what you’re thinking — if this was a fiscally conservative budget there would be cuts to spending. You’re absolutely correct, the government has cut a whopping $17.6 billion from the budget! Oh yeah, that’s over five years though. The government has succeeded in cutting $3.5 billion per year in spending, from a $280.5 billion budget. Despite this, they are still running a $56 billion deficit in the first year, and $165 billion over the next five years.

Just for fun, let’s apply the government’s fiscal formula to your household:

Assume you are $90,000 in debt with annual expenses of $50,000, if the government were managing your finances, they would have trimmed a whopping $620 per year from your expenditures. However, despite that $62o reduction, they would be adding approximately $10,000 to your debt. Furthermore, they would plan for you to run a deficit for the next 5 years, adding to your debt load, and thus increasing the amount you’re paying in interest, each year.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise in a country where healthcare is paid for by the government and where the military is still using World War II sleeping bags in combat, but people labeling this sorry excuse for a budget as  being “conservative” would be similar to labeling Che Guevera as a peace-maker…not even close! Every time a child is born in Canada, they have a $15,000 debt that they’ve inherited from the government, with no politicians stepping up to the plate to pay any of it off. I say it again — time for a Canadian tea party!