First Tuesdays Strategies

by J. Warren Tompkins

If you’re of a certain age, you remember Jim Bunning’s days as an all-star pitcher before he hung up his cleats for the suit and tie of a United States Congressman. I was proud to serve with my former colleague Lee Atwater as a consultant to Bunning’s 1986 congressional campaign. He’s retiring after this session, opening up his seat to another Kentuckian motivated to serve their state and country. But, he’s not going quietly.

During the past week, Bunning objected on a voice vote to appropriate another $10 billion for government projects, which if it wasn’t spent, would end up furloughing about 2,000 Federal employees. True to form, Democrats suffered another bout of temporary insanity.

Sen. Dick Durbin was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, “It is simply unfair for one Senator to attempt to hold the Senate hostage.” Maybe he should check with the rhetoric of his fellow Illinoisan, President Obama. Less than a month ago, Obama said that Congress should pay for what it spends, as in, adhere to a pay-as-you-go philosophy. And here’s something funny – the Obama administration said that Bunning was playing political games. Figures.

What’s truly unfortunate here is that he’s only one of a few conservatives, and one alone who has already said he is not running for reelection, that is standing up to say no to yet another spending spree by Washington liberals. Even worse is the Democrats’ reaction. Seriously, Obama’s mention of pay-as-you-go was good a few weeks ago, but apparently it’s not worth anything now, not even to the man who uttered the words.

Because, here’s the thing – liberals are fine with pay-as-you-go requirements as long as they’re limited to one part of government spending. But, what happens when they want to spend more, as they inevitably will? They’ll just push through an “emergency” appropriations bill, which is exactly what happened here.

As you might expect, their definition of what should be a recipient of emergency Federal spending and what yours is are likely to be very different. While most people would think an emergency outlay of taxpayer dollars would be needed only for very important things, like national defense, Congressional liberals seem to believe that payment for a road worker on a pork project rises to that level.

We need more Bunnings in Washington right now. Luckily we have one who hails right here from South Carolina. In coming to Bunning’s aid, Senator Jim DeMint said “When we borrow the money to do it we threaten the futures of our children and grandchildren, diminish their quality of life and likely cause their unemployment in the future.” I’m just glad we have people calling out the Democrats when their rhetoric doesn’t match their actions.

Whenever anyone takes a close look at a program funded by the so-called stimulus, it seems that more government waste is discovered. One such program that was exposed recently involves a program to weatherize houses, under the idea that the homes need less energy to heat and cool, and jobs would be created because of contractors being hired for the service. Let’s just say, things didn’t go as planned.

A report released by the Government Accountability on Feb. 11 said that through the end of last year, only $9,100 homes were a part of this program, even though 593,000 homes were supposed to be involved, according to the Obama administration. And how much money has been allocated to this boondoggle? A cool $5 million.

It’s not like the warning signs weren’t out there already. Way back in June of last year, an Associated Press story called the weatherization program “one of the most difficult-to-track portions of the $787 billion recovery act signed into law by President Barack Obama in February.” Unsurprisingly, it’s yet another example that Obama’s promises of transparency have been just that. If you can’t see where the money’s going and why, that’s not change – that’s more of the same.

Weatherization is a part of a wider effort by the White House to create “green jobs.” Ostensibly, by programs like weatherization, the administration intends to deal with our energy problems and bring down the unemployment numbers. However, in practice, it’s simply not working.

California, deep in its own fiscal crisis, was supposed to be a major beneficiary of the push toward green jobs. It hasn’t. Firstly, though the Obama administration said that California has seen more than 100,000 jobs created because of the stimulus, very few have been green jobs.

As well, analysis by the Los Angeles Times showed that what green jobs were created were in research. In other words, people are getting paid to come up with good ideas for green jobs. Enjoy the irony here – people are getting paid through stimulus funds to come up with ideas that the stimulus was supposed to be paying for right now, not at some indeterminate part of the future.

Is it any wonder that more and more Americans are turning to Republicans every day? The Obama administration, aided by liberal Democrats in Congress, has plowed through taxpayer dollars like they’re spending Monopoly money. They’re throwing around Park Place cash with a Baltic Avenue income. These days, conservatives are becoming more inventive about taking their message to the public. Liberals seem to be doing a great job themselves at proving that the conservative plan is right.

by J. Warren Tompkins

Over the recent months, we’ve seen widespread repudiation of President Obama’s liberal agenda. Last November, Republicans rolled to victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Last month, Scott Brown won a Senate seat in Massachusetts that had been held by Democrats for more than half a century. If you recall, Massachusetts went for Obama by 28 points in 2008.

Voters in these elections clearly said that what they’ve been getting over the past year is definitely not change they can believe in. When asked about the conservative surge, Obama said he got the message. But what message did he get? It certainly wasn’t from the voters. He proved that by submitting a record $3.8 trillion budget for the coming year.

We’re already drowning in debt, yet this budget will double the national debt in five years. Credit is already a problem for businesses and homebuyers. The more the government has to borrow, the less money is in the pool for everyone else. Business can’t expand, home sales dry up and the economy continues to be weak.

The same goes for the spending binge. How is Obama paying for it? With your tax dollars, of course. If unchecked, the tax increases contained in the budget would reach $2 trillion in the next decade. It’s incredible. Raising taxes in a recession? OK by them. Talk about another burden placed on the American people to pay for his misplaced priorities. Liberals chafe when we call them out for taxing and spending. We should add borrowing to the list, and we’d have the exact description of what’s going on in Washington.

Next is the unprecedented $1.6 trillion deficit. In what universe does this sort of thing fly? Republicans in Congress need to get out in front and make sure the Obama budget never makes it close to passing in the form it’s in. The taxpayers of this country cannot be saddled with the budgetary mistakes of Washington liberals. The numbers are against them right row, but tough fight could make a real difference in making some concrete changes to the legislation.

One thing is for sure – voters will not stand for this rank disregard of their wishes as it comes to responsible government. They must be pulling out all the stops, knowing things are really going to change, and for the better, after this year’s elections.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that liberals put another notch on their belts recently by making jokes about U.S. Sen.-elect Scott Brown’s pickup truck. Being out-of-touch never looked so blatant. In a speech intended to back Mass. Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley, President Obama said, “Forget the ads. Everybody can run slick ads. Forget the truck. Everybody can buy a truck.” That line drew laughter from the crowd.

Brown, to his credit, responded, “Mr. President, unfortunately in this economy, not everybody can buy a truck. My goal is to change that by cutting spending, lowering taxes and letting people keep more of their own money.” And he’s right. People don’t invest in big-dollar purchases like automobiles in times like these. A majority of Massachusetts voters agreed, too, making history by putting a Republican in the seat held by the Democrats for decades.

Maybe it never came across the minds of liberals, in their elitism, attacking Brown that the pickup truck has led auto sales in this country for years. From the smaller models to a decked-out full size version, you’ll see pickups involved in every aspect in American life. They also missed the fact that Brown’s truck is American-made, by GM of all places. Like most of us, Brown hasn’t been going out and getting newer models. He’s put more than 200,000 miles on his vehicle.

This episode is eerily reminiscent of when Obama went to San Francisco in 2008 and tore into small-town America, saying, “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Sounds a little more like the bitterness and antipathy is coming from the left side of the aisle. It’s no wonder the country is in the depths of buyer’s remorse.

Though Massachusetts is a decidedly blue state, the voter registration numbers tilt heavily in favor of independents. Recently, independents have been swinging races across the country, and they’re not happy with the way liberals are acting. From bailouts to health care, cap-and-trade and giveaways to unions, they’re realizing that their voices and opinions and needs aren’t making it to the powers that be.

Liberals are now reaping what they’ve sown. Long-time Congressional Democrats are retiring. U.S. Rep. John Spratt is reportedly considering not running for reelection. Others, up and down the line, are switching parties. Because voters have seen the liberals for who they really are, the tide is switching back to conservatives, who will get this country working again.

The country is up in arms about the ObamaCare plan going through Congress. In the past week, another move is only going to stoke the fires among those of us who’ve figured out the folly going on in Washington. One aspect of bill is that so-called “Cadillac” health care plans will be taxed at 40 percent. That is bad enough, penalizing people for taking out comprehensive health care packages. If you’re a union member, though, you get to skate by – they’re exempted.

Not all that surprising a liberal is willing to sell out everyone else for his paymasters. If the bill is signed into law, unions will get about a $60 billion tax break over eight years. The rest of us will have to cough up $90 billion in taxes. And forget about dental and vision insurance – those will be exempt forever.

Doesn’t hardly seem fair, does it? Democrats like to paint Republicans as discriminatory, but this is another example that it’s the liberals themselves that choose who benefits and who doesn’t. Of course, they’re just “dancing with the girl what brung ‘em,” as the saying goes. The amount of money given by unions to Obama and Democrats in the 2008 cycle is simply staggering. Obama got $526,597, the Democratic National Committee received $661,586, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee brought in $1,086,820, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee socked away $1,057,700. That’s a lot of “change.”

Just how out of touch can these people be? It seems that Washington liberals believe they can go about their business, giving sweetheart deals to their backers while taxing the pants off middle-class families and small businesses to pay for it.

The movement of this health care plan has been bad from the get-go. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made giveaways, with taxpayer dollars, to Sens. Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson to get them to vote for the bill. Then instead of reconciling the House and Senate bills in conference committee, as is the usual process, Democrats chose to negotiate the changes among top leadership behind closed doors. Obama campaigned saying he would have all the health care debates and negotiations televised on C-SPAN. That didn’t even come close to happening.

And now we have another back-room deal, a deal cut between Washington Democrats and Big Labor to save union fat cats a ton of money while giving the shaft to the majority of Americans – non-union workers.

You just can’t take Congressional liberals anywhere. After Sen. Harry Reid cut deals with Sens. Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson – basically a legal bribe – to get the Democrats’ health care bill through the Senate, they want to hammer out differences between the Senate and House versions in what can only be called a back-room deal.

Normally, the bill would go to a conference committee, which would give conservatives another chance to halt the Democrats’ latest attempt to grow government and waste your money. In order to get around this basic part of the legislative process, top Democrats in both chambers are planning to reconcile the bills among themselves. The move is being driven by Reid & Co. in the Senate, which is really not a surprise considering his antics since becoming majority leader.

The House Democrats, fortunately, aren’t sold on the idea yet. Of course, the only reason is that they wouldn’t have as much power as the senators, not that the effort is inherently undemocratic or shutting out the input of the 254 legislators who have voted against the plans. Liberals under the Capitol dome seem willing to do anything to pass a bill that will end up as an unmitigated disaster as policy.

It should have come as to surprise to anyone that liberals’ campaign promises of government transparency were just that – promises. They apparently haven’t turned on a television in the past year, as Americans from coast to coast rose up and voiced their opposition to even more spending and bloating of government.

President Obama said during his campaign that he would broadcast the health care negotiations on C-SPAN. That plan definitely went by the wayside. Maybe he realized the public has no want of a government takeover of our health care system. The Washington Times pointed out in a recent editorial that a Georgia Republican filed a bill in October to make all health care debate held in public. The bill went nowhere. It’s almost like Democrats want to lose their majority, and doing everything they can to reach that point. The problem is, there will be a big mess to clean up when they’re gone.

Conservatives worked hard to defeat these measures, but the numbers worked against us. Sweetheart deals to get yea votes didn’t hurt the liberal cause, either. Fortunately, those numbers are likely to change after the November elections, as people make their opposition to the Democrats’ free-spending ways known at the ballot box. Vladimir Putin would be proud!

Elect liberals, you get tax increases. It’s as reliable as the changing of the seasons. And, well, death. As the debate on ObamaCare takes up most of the newsprint, air time and Congressional debate, another bad idea is coming down the pike, and it’s the so-called “war tax.”

Last week, President Obama went before the American people and announced a 30,000-soldier troop surge in Afghanistan, almost a year into his presidency and a result of his mismanagement of the war. Where is the money fund this coming from? There are all of the costs associated with each individual soldier, and all the auxiliary expenditures that come with supporting a large expeditionary force. We’re already deep in debt, looking down the barrel of even more debt from government-controlled health care.

Did Obama offer a way to pay for his plan? Of course not. He’s leaving that to his liberal allies in the House, many of whom have safe districts. They’re proposing the war tax, another levy on the public at a time in which we have even less of an ability to afford one. Democrats said the plan was to help fund the war and would hit only those with the ability to pay it. Naturally, that isn’t accurate. The tax will include everyone who makes more than $30,000 a year. No one with a straight face can possibly call a person bringing in that amount of money as “wealthy.”

Of course, we need to fully fund our military efforts against those who are looking to destroy our way of life. That’s not the question. The problem lies in that the liberals in control in Washington want both guns and butter at a time that we simply can’t afford it. As pointed out in an editorial in The (Spartanburg)Herald-Journal, the people in the nation’s capital that care most about limiting budget deficits say this tax plan will only make the recession longer.

One good idea to fund the troops and not pass another tax increase is using the stimulus money that has already been budgeted. Over the past months, report after report has been issued showing that the stimulus dollars haven’t created the jobs they were supposed to. It’s just been another boondoggle to throw money at a problem without accurately assessing the best path to go about fixing it. Why not call off the dogs on the stimulus and put it toward something that will actually benefit our country – fighting our enemies overseas?

But, it doesn’t look like the Democrats are even close to seriously considering that option. They appear to be closer to the British politicians in the ‘60s written about so ably by The Beatles, “(If you drive a car), I’ll tax the street/(If you try to sit), I’ll tax your seat/(If you get too cold), I’ll tax the heat/(If you take a walk), I’ll tax your feet.” And speaking of dogs, the next thing you know, Washington liberals will be taxing our hounds to fund their big-government plans. Look out Fido, you’re next.