A Message to the Senate: Stop Pointing Fingers and Do Your Job! #duringthelastbudget

Bankrupting America, a project of Public Notice, has released a new video showing the continued dysfunction in Washington.  The video is a call to action for Americans to get involved by calling their Senator urging them to ‘stop pointing fingers and do their job’.

Congress last passed a budget on April 29, 2009, almost three years ago. Since then, Members of Congress from both parties have failed to work together to perform one of the federal government’s most basic functions.

Bankrupting America is starting a campaign to say ‘Enough is Enough’ and get Congress to do their jobs and pass a budget. Call your Senator at 1-888-760-7997 and tell them to pass a budget.

 

The Budget Games

Both sides of the aisle have taken turns blaming each other for our nation’s fiscal situation. After years of talk, will we actually see action?

WE’VE HEARD THE RHETORIC; WHERE’S THE RESPONSIBILITY?

  • The Last Passed Budget Resolution
  • Economic Snapshot
  • What They’re Saying

The Last Passed Budget Resolution

The last time Congress completed the budget process was on April 29, 2009.

  • The House passed the conference report for the budget on April 29, 2009, by a vote of 233 – 193.
  • The Senate passed the conference report for the budget on April 29, 2009, by a vote of 53 – 43.

Economic Snapshot

Today, 5.3 million Americans have spent over 27 weeks looking for work. Additionally, since President Obama took office in 2009, the public debt has increased nearly 45% as of this date, it has increased 47 percent to be exact.  (To be clear, we rounded down to 45 percent in the video.).

What They’re Saying

In both the House and the Senate, key political players have involved themselves in smearing the opposition while the country continues to wait on a long-term plan for fiscal sustainability:

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Sen. Kent Conrad, Chair of the Senate Budget Committee (D-North Dakota)

Brit Hume: We’re now approaching three years since a budget was passed, and you’re about to retire. How do you feel about that?
Conrad: I feel good about retiring; that’s for sure.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin)

They didn’t want their fingerprints on a plan. That’s why they didn’t pass a budget the last two years.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware)

The reality is we’re not going to get a budget resolution out of the Senate.

Sen. Kent Conrad, Chair of the Senate Budget Committee (D-North Dakota)

There’s very little chance we’re going to get the two sides together before the election.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama)

The leadership in this body won’t even bring up a budget. He said it was foolish.

Sen. Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader (D-Nevada)

House Republicans are going to make another excuse, create another diversion, and avoid another tough choice.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio)

The Senate’s done nothing. There’ve been no markups over in the Senate. There ain’t even been any effort in the Senate, three years, three years and they’ve failed to move a budget.

Sen. Kent Conrad, Chair of the Senate Budget Committee (D-North Dakota)

What we don’t have is a longer-term plan.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri)

The reason we didn’t get a budget last year is because Mitch McConnell objected.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona)

Senate Democrats now for the third year in a row will not have passed a budget. That’s their job.

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nevada)

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We’re not doing our jobs, we’re not doing our business, and the American people are suffering because of it.

BANKRUPTING AMERICA LAUNCHES ONLINE ADVOCACY
CAMPAIGN URGING SENATE TO VOTE ON A BUDGET

ARLINGTON, VA – Bankrupting America, a project of Public Notice, today announced a multipronged online educational advocacy campaign leading up to the three-year anniversary since the last time Congress passed a budget. The campaign includes a web video, online advertising, a Twitter hashtag campaign and a grassroots call to action urging the Senate to pass a budget.

Congress last passed a budget on April 29, 2009, almost three years ago. Since then, Members of Congress from both parties have failed to work together to perform one of the federal government’s most basic functions.

Gretchen Hamel, executive director of Public Notice, issued the following statement announcing the campaign:

“It is unfathomable that Congress continues to spend taxpayer dollars without passing a budget.  Families across America have to plan out budgets to make ends meet and they should expect the same from their elected officials.

“Congress needs to stop pointing fingers and do its job. The purpose of this campaign is to raise awareness among taxpayers that their representatives in Washington are failing in their most basic of duties.”

The Twitter hashtag campaign will involve tweets of what was happening in the world when the Senate last passed a budget.  For example: No one had heard of an iPad #duringthelastbudget

Muslim Brotherhood in America, Part 8: Team Obama & the Islamists

This Course draws exclusively upon information in the public domain and that obtained from  first-hand accounts.  There is, assuredly, considerably more information that would be helpful to making to a full threat assessment.  The findings below, based solely on what is currently available, should prompt those with access to classified information, subpoena power and other investigative tools to bring them to bear urgently for that purpose.

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  • Shariah is a totalitarian, brutally repressive and supremacist doctrine.  Its adherents – notably, the Muslim Brotherhood – seek to bring it here.

  • Shariah is principally about power, not faith.  Accordingly, acting to realize its political end of overthrowing the U.S. government is seditious and must be prosecuted, not treated as protected religious practice.

  • The Brotherhood is not a non-violent group.  Rather, in most countries where it operates including the United States, it is in a pre-violent phase.

  • The Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic plan, the group’s mission in America is a “civilization-jihadist process…a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within” by our hands.

  • The Muslim Brotherhood’s civilization jihad is being pursued through stealthy means involving the penetration and subversion of this country’s civil society and governing institutions.  Presidencies of both parties have been compromised in this way.

  • One determinant of the success of such a stealthy, pre-violent jihad is what the military calls “information dominance.”  If the Muslim Brotherhood can exercise it, we can be kept ignorant of the true nature of the threat they pose – and the progress they are making in bringing shariah to America.  That has been substantially the case over the past ten years and increasingly of late.

  • The Muslim Brotherhood was helped in its efforts to achieve information dominance over the George W. Bush administration, thanks to collaboration between a top Muslim Brotherhood operative, Abdurahman Alamoudi, and anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.

  • In addition to al Qaeda financier Alamoudi, Norquist helped mainstream in the Bush campaign and/or administration five other Muslims with extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.  They were: the Islamic Free Market Institute’s Khalid Saffuri, CAIR’s Nihad Awad, Palestinian Jihad’s Sami al-Arian, the Fiqh Council’s Muzzamil Siddiqi and Suhail Khan, a former staffer for Rep. Tom Campbell of California.

  • In his capacity as the de facto Muslim gatekeeper in the Office of Public Liaison under senior Bush advisor Karl Rove, and then as an assistant in the personal office of the Secretary of Transportation, Khan had, at a minimum, an opportunity to facilitate the penetration of other Islamists.

  • Both during and after the Bush administration, Norquist has used various organizations to promote Islamist agendas.  These have included Red-Green coalitions made up of radical and other leftists and Muslim Brotherhood front groups with whom they routinely make common cause, to the detriment of U.S. security, constitutional freedoms and other interests.

  • Norquist has worked for years to “create relations with top political leaders and Muslims.”  Of late, that has included running such Muslims for elective office as Republicans.  Three of his protégés – Kamal Nawash, Faisal Gill and Imad “David” Ramadan – have met with mixed results in their runs for state legislative seats in Virginia thanks to troubling questions about their backgrounds and associations.

  • Norquist continues to support Islamist agenda items and to work to counter initiatives opposed by the Brothers.  In the process, he has collaborated with radical leftists and Islamists in Red-Green Coalitions, the latter include Iranian influence operations.

  • The precedents, personnel and policies promoted by Norquist and his friends during the George W. Bush administration have metastasized dramatically under that of President Obama.

  • Notably, six Islamist-sympathizers have achieved positions within or advisory roles serving Team Obama:  Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation Rashad Hussein; Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Huma Abedein; Presidential advisor Dalia Mogahed; FBI Citizens Academy graduate Kifah Mustafa; Homeland Security Advisory Committee Member Mohamed Elibiary and Homeland Security Countering Violent Extremism Working Group Member Mohamed Magid.

  • The conduct of seven key federal agencies suggests the considerable success of the Muslim Brotherhood in destroying us from within by our own hands – starting with the policies and directives emanating from the Oval Office and elsewhere in the White House complex, and including the priorities and activities of: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Departments of State, Justice, Defense and Homeland Security and even NASA.

  • There are myriad steps Americans can – and must – take to counter this civilization jihad.  Some can be undertaken as individuals; some through organized efforts; and others as a nation.

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In light of these findings, there is an urgent need for rigorous congressional oversight and investigations aimed at exposing the extent of the civilization jihad – and the need for corrective action aimed at countering it, particularly by federal authorities.  Such legislative branch initiatives should be accompanied by corresponding actions initiated by Inspectors General and, as appropriate, law enforcement.

Jobs Groups Blast Ambush Elections

Jobs Groups Say The Obama Administration’s New Ambush Election Rule ‘Will Hit Small Businesses Particularly Hard,’ ‘Stifle Job Growth’

 

NLRB ‘Ignoring The Costs’

 

U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: “… the National Labor Relations Board’s final ‘ambush election rule’ imposes unprecedented and sweeping changes to the procedures for conducting workplace elections… blatantly partisan… purpose of this rule is to ensure that employers have no time to talk to their workers about unionizing, and that the only information workers will get will come from the union.” (“Chamber Lawsuit Challenges NLRB’s Ambush Election Rule,” National Chamber Litigation Center, Accessed 4/23/12)

 

·         CHAMBER: “…increasing legal and compliance costs, particularly on small employers.” (The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, Letter To Lester Heltzer, NLRB, P.3, 8/22/11)

 

·         CHAMBER: “…entirely ignoring the costs that the proposed rule would have on the majority of employers in the United States…” (The U.S. Chamber Of Commerce, Letter To Lester Heltzer, NLRB, P.57, 8/22/11)

 

NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS: “…I am writing in support of S.J.Res. 36, a resolution of disapproval in response to the National Labor Relation Board’s (NLRB) rule related to ‘ambush’ elections… would particularly harm small businesses…” (National Federation Of Independent Business, Letter To Senator Mike Enzi, 2/27/12)

 

·         NFIB: “This shortened time frame will hit small businesses particularly hard…” (National Federation Of Independent Business, Letter To Senator Mike Enzi, 2/27/12)

 

·         NFIB: “…will only create more uncertainty for small business owners at a time when the country needs them to be creating more jobs.” (National Federation Of Independent Business, Letter To Senator Mike Enzi, 2/27/12)

 

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS: “The ambush election rule is a guaranteed pathway to creating a fractured American workplace. Manufacturers strongly oppose this misguided rule…” (National Associated Of Manufacturers, “Manufacturers Speak Out Against Ambush Election Rule,” Press Release, 12/21/11)

 

·         NAM: “…not in the best interest of workers and raise serious questions as for whom the Board is truly advocating.” (National Associated Of Manufacturers, “Manufacturers Speak Out Against Ambush Election Rule,” Press Release, 12/21/11)

 

ASSOCIATED BUILDERS AND CONTRACTORS: “These actions will have negative implications for workers, consumers, businesses and the economy…” (Associated Builders And Contractors, Letter To House Of Representatives, 11/28/11)

 

·         ABC: “What’s most disturbing is that the NLRB continues to move forward with policies and rules that are a political payoff off to Big Labor, yet harm the construction industry and stifle job growth.” (Associated Builders And Contractors, “NLRB Rams Through Changes To Union Elections, Employees Come Out On Losing End,” Press Release, 12/21/11)

 

INDEPENDENT ELECTRICAL CONTRACTORS: “…contentious and unnecessary…” (Independent Electrical Contractors, “NLRB Passes Final Ruling On Ambush Elections,” Press Release, Accessed 4/23/12)

 

·         IEC: “This new rule circumvents a fair and democratic process for everyone, and does nothing but hinder business and job growth.” (Independent Electrical Contractors, “NLRB Passes Final Ruling On Ambush Elections,” Press Release, Accessed 4/23/12)

 

INTERNATIONAL FRANCHISE ASSOCIATION: “The rule would greatly impair the business community, in particular, the 825,000 franchise establishments in America, which collectively support nearly 18 million jobs or 12 percent of the U.S. private sector workforce…” (International Franchise Association, “IFA Applauds Congressional Challenge To NLRB Ambush Election Rules,” Press Release, 2/16/12)

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TUESDAY, APRIL 24: The Muslim Brotherhood in America – Losing the Jihadists’ War on America

COMING TUEDAY, APRIL 24 at http://muslimbrotherhoodinamerica.com

Have you wondered why, for over ten years — despite countless man-years spent waiting in airport security lines, over a trillion dollars spent, the loss of thousands of lives in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and endless efforts to ensure that no offense is given to seemingly permanently aggrieved Islamist activists –we are no closer to victory in the so-called “war on terror” than we were on 9/11?

The missing answer and its online location will be unveiled on Tuesday, April 24 in a new web-based, ten-part video course presented by Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy.

Losing the Jihadists’ War on America

 Center for Security Policy | Apr 23, 2012

By Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Have you ever asked yourself why, despite more than ten years of efforts –involving, among other things, the loss of thousands of lives in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, well-over a trillion dollars spent, countless man-years wasted waiting in airport security lines and endless efforts to ensure that no offense is given to seemingly permanently aggrieved Muslim activists – are we no closer to victory in the so-called “war on terror” than we were on 9/11?

Thankfully, we have been able to kill some dangerous bad guys.  The sad truth of the matter is that, by almost any other measure, the prospect of victory is becoming more remote by the day.  And no one seems able to explain the reason.

In an effort to provide the missing answer, on April 24th, the Center for Security Policy is making available via the Internet a new, free ten-part video course called “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: The Enemy Within.”  (www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com).  This course connects the proverbial dots, drawing on a wealth of publicly available data and first-hand accounts to present a picture that has, for over a decade, been obscured, denied and suppressed:

America faces in addition to the threat of violent jihad another, even more toxic danger – a stealthy and pre-violent form of warfare aimed at destroying our constitutional form of democratic government and free society.  The Muslim Brotherhood is the prime-mover behind this seditious campaign, which it calls “civilization jihad.”

The Muslim Brotherhood?  Yes, that would be the same organization to which President Obama recently transferred $1.5 billion of our tax dollars in a lump sum payment.  To do so, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to waive congressionally imposed restrictions born of fully justified concerns about the nature and direction of the shariah-adherent government the Brotherhood is birthing in Egypt.

Mrs. Clinton’s presidentially-directed waiver came despite: the Brotherhood-dominated government’s hostage-taking of American democracy activists; murderous Islamist rampages against Coptic Christians and other religious minorities; the toleration and abetting of escalating violence against Israel in and from the Sinai; and official threats to jettison the 1979 peace treaty with the Jewish State.  And matters have only gotten worse since the President’s largesse was made available in an unusual up-front, lump-sum payment.

Unfortunately, as the Center’s course makes clear, this episode is just the latest of many that flow from the subversion by Muslim Brotherhood operatives that has been happening within our civil society and governing institutions in every administration since Bill Clinton was in office.  [During his presidency, a top Muslim Brother, Abdurahman Alamoudi, was actually put in charge of recruiting, training andcredentialing Muslim chaplains for the U.S. military and prison system.  Incredibly, some of them are believed to still be in place today, even though Alamoudi turns out to have been a top al Qaeda financier and is himself doing hard time at Supermax on terrorism charges.]

The George W. Bush administration was similarly subjected to Muslim Brotherhood penetration and influence operations.  As the course documents, the Brothers’ access to and influence with senior officials in the years after 9/11 helped shape policies that, among other things, induced the federal government to: use euphemisms like “terror” to describe our jihadist enemy; reach out to the Muslim community in this country using virtually exclusively Brotherhood front organizations as liaisons; and provide support to and participation in shariah-compliant finance – an industry engaged in what one of its leaders, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, calls “jihad with money.”

Unfortunately, those look like the good old days compared to what is happening under the Obama administration.  Not only has Mr. Obama facilitated, and now underwritten, the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover in Egypt and an increasing number of states elsewhere in the Middle East.  At his direction, explicit or implicit, the U.S. government is systematically purging its training materials of any information that Islamists might find offensive – including, factual information about shariah, its impelling of jihad (preferably violent and, where necessary, pre-violent), the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission of destroying us from within, etc.

Worse yet, under Team Obama, Brotherhood operatives doing business as Muslim “community leaders” are being allowed to have a say in what sort of training and outreach is done from here on, and by whom.  Could we have won the Cold War if we gave a similar role to the KGB or the American Communist Party it ran?  Or World War II if that role had been assigned to the German-American Bund?

In short, we are losing what is more accurately described as the “Jihadist’s War on America” because we are being subjected to a systematic, disciplined and highly successful campaign of what the military would call “information dominance.”  It leaves us, as a nation, witless about the true nature of the enemy and his motivations and therefore incapable of countering them effectively.

On April 25, Glenn Beck will release an important new hour-long documentary that addresses many of these same points entitled “Rumors of War III.”  It concludes, as does our course, with a powerful reminder of what is stake if we persist in such behavior and continue to lose the Jihadists’ War on America – a quote from a speech Ronald Reagan gave 50 years ago that rings as true today as ever:

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Haritage: The Bloated Government of America

Originally posted at The Foundry by Mike Brownfield

The General Services Administration blew through $820,000 in taxpayers’ money in a lavish ”team building” trip to Las Vegas, and President Barack Obama is “apoplectic” at the news, according to the president’s campaign advisor, David Axelrod. Obama, he says, has devoted his efforts to saving “tens of billions of dollars” in cutting waste, fraud and inefficiency in government. Yet under President Obama’s leadership, government spending keeps growing irresponsibly, and neither he nor his allies in Congress are doing anything about it.

The latest example came last week when Democratic leadership in the Senate again passed the buck on enacting a budget — on April 29, it will have been three years since the Senate last passed a budget resolution. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND),whose job it is to shepherd a budget through the Senate, said of his decision: “This is the wrong time to vote in committee. This is the wrong time to vote on the floor. I don’t think we will be prepared to vote before the election.” Conrad also said that offering a budget would be futile and “would do little to move us closer to a bipartisan agreement that can actually be adopted.”

In other words, budgeting is hard work that he’d rather not do, especially in an election year. Of course, 2011 was not an election year, and yet the Senate failed to pass a budget then, too.

The money that isn’t being budgeted belongs to the American people, and their representatives in the Senate have decided once again that it’s easier to keep on spending without restraint than it is to be responsible to their constituents back home. It’s that very attitude that has led to a government so big and so out of control that scandals like the one in the GSA are able to occur.

The hundreds of thousands of dollars blown in the GSA’s Vegas trip, though, is chump change compared to the hundreds of millions wasted in President Obama’s green jobs stimulus efforts. We all know the story of the bankrupt solar energy company Solyndra and the $520 million taxpayer-funded loan guarantee that went down the drain. But the latest example of wanton waste is Ecotality — a company that manufactures charging stations for the president’s much-favored electric vehicles. Ecotality received more than $115 million to install those charging stations, yet as Heritage’s Lachlan Markay reports, the company is far behind schedule. Now it’s under investigation for insider trading and is facing serious financial difficulties. Even so, the DOE decided to grant the company $26 million in additional funding.

But it’s not just about waste in one government agency. Taxpayer dollars are wasted day in and day out in Washington, as Heritage’s Emily Goff explains:

Washington also misuses taxpayer dollars in less blatant ways. Take the 47 federal job training programs the federal government runs, for example. Or the 15 agencies involved in food safety and inspection. Congress ought to identify areas of program duplication and fragmentation and then consolidate or eliminate unnecessary ones.

Want another example of big government run wild? Take a look at Washington’s spending on welfare programs. It’s the fastest growing part of government spending, and it’s creating a culture of entitlement and dependency in which the American people are expecting to receive support from the state. In fiscal year 2011, total welfare costs equaled $927 billion ($717 billion from the federal government and $210 billion from states). Heritage’s Rachel Sheffield writes that “since the War on Poverty began in the 1960s, the government has spent $19.8 trillion (inflation-adjusted) to fund a growing list of welfare programs.” President Obama wants that spending to grow, and under his plan taxpayers will pay roughly $12.7 trillion on welfare in the next decade.

Welfare spending and unending waste aren’t the only drivers of Washington’s trillion-dollar deficits. The three major entitlement programs–Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security–make up the vast majority of federal spending and will consume all tax revenues by 2049. Yet even though that threat looms large on the horizon, the Senate continues to refuse to pass a budget, President Obama stands by, and the spending continues unchecked. Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, commentator Bill Kristol correctly said, “If you want big government, this is big government.” And if anyone should be “apoplectic,” it’s the American people.

Senator Dean Heller Speaks about GSA Misconduct and Nevada Tourism #NVSen

Today U.S. Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) spoke on the Senate floor about GSA’s recent misconducts and Nevada Tourism.

“Las Vegas and the Great State of Nevada should not be political targets because of GSA’s misconduct. Las Vegas is an excellent destination for conferences and I am proud of my State’s ability to entertain and accommodate businesses, organizations and individuals from all over the world.”

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) Delivers Weekly GOP Address On Energy & Jobs

U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) delivers the Weekly Republican Address, calling for the Administration and Senate Democrats to quit blocking bipartisan solutions to the high unemployment numbers and increasing gas prices. Senator Blunt says “jobs, jobs, and jobs should be the number one, two and three domestic priorities of the federal government and that the shortest path to more American jobs is more American energy.”

“Hi, I’m Roy Blunt; I represent Missouri in the United States Senate.

“With Election Day less than seven months away, we’ve heard a lot from President Obama lately about so-called ‘economic fairness.’

“If we’re going to talk about economic fairness, or about fairness, one of the most pressing economic issues facing families, seniors, and job creators in Missouri and across America is the strain of skyrocketing gas prices.

“Fuel costs are on track to hit an average of $4 a gallon by summertime—that’s more than double what they cost when President Obama took office, and it marks a record high for the last two months.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. As a candidate, the President said, that energy costs, his quote, he said, ‘would necessarily skyrocket’ under his plan.  Well that’s probably one promise the American people wish he hadn’t kept.

“Unfortunately, instead of working together to pass bipartisan solutions that would relieve pain at the pump and pressure on jobs, this administration is focused on the wrong things.

“The latest example was the Senate’s vote this week on the so-called Buffett Tax—a gimmick that would do nothing to jumpstart jobs or lower fuel prices for average Americans who are really struggling to make ends meet and has a lot of negative consequences.

“My colleagues across the aisle readily admit that this bill would not help our struggling economy. In fact, the lead sponsor of the Buffett Tax admitted on the Senate floor this week, that according to him, ‘the aim of this bill is not to lower the unemployment rate or the price of gasoline.’

“Now the real question that Americans should be asking is ‘why not?’ Why would the Senate be talking about things that wouldn’t have impact on energy prices or our economy? Why would we have wasted the week on something like that? There’s really no excuse for not doing things that would lower gas prices and encourage private sector job creation.

“Four out of five people hit by the new tax are business owners. With nearly 13 million Americans unemployed, the last thing we need is to raise taxes and create greater uncertainty for our nation’s job creators.

“According to a recent survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, uncertainty and gas prices are the top concerns for small businesses.

“More than half of all small businesses said they weren’t hiring because they said they ‘weren’t confident in the recovery,’ and a third said they weren’t hiring due to the ‘uncertainty driven by Washington.’ Well we didn’t do anything this week about either of those problems and some of them can only be solved by government doing its job.

“Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of small businesses reported that gas prices were their top concern.

“Unfortunately, for years this administration and Democrats in the Senate continue to dismiss bipartisan solutions that would help put people back to work and encourage more economic energy development.

“Ten years ago, when gas prices averaged $1.45 a gallon, Senate Democrats blocked legislation that would have produced more domestic energy here in the United States and lowered the price today. They said their reason was well we wouldn’t have that energy for 10 years—10 years later that’s a pretty hallow excuse.

“In addition, the Administration continues to block the Keystone XL Pipeline—that’s the nation’s largest shovel-ready project, no taxpayer money involved, it would create thousands of American jobs and deliver more than 800,000 barrels of oil a day to our refineries from our best trading partner and our closest neighbor, Canada—all without costing taxpayers.

“The Keystone Pipeline is one common-sense step in the right direction to help put more people back to work, reduce prices at the pump, and position our nation for greater energy security now and in the future.

“Jobs, jobs, and jobs should be the number one, two and three domestic priorities of the federal government. The shortest path to more American jobs is more American energy.

“We should do the right the thing for American jobs and American families and by the way, we should do it now!”

Video: Cronyism in the Tax Code

How is our tax code influenced by special interests?

Randall Holcombe, Professor of Economics explains how cronyism in the tax code can benefit special interest groups, and he discusses how we can address this cronyism by reducing the spending power of the government.

“If you really want to understand the nature of our tax code, don’t ask yourself, ‘Why aren’t these provisions in the public interest?’ That’s not how taxes are passed. Ask yourself, ‘Who benefits from these taxes, and how much political power do they have?’” — Professor Randall Holcombe

Check out http://www.economicfreedom.org/videos to see the rest of our videos!

What a Difference Three Years of Failed, Big Government Economic Policies and Democratic Leadership Makes…

NOW:

National Journal: Manchin on the Fence About Obama Vote. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has done more than any other Democrat up for reelection this year to distance himself from President Obama, said he does not know if he will vote for Obama or presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney in November.  “I’ll look at the options,” Manchin said this week. The last three years “have made it pretty rough” for his state, he said.

 

VERSUS….

 

THEN:

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“‘After This Election, Congress Will Be In The Democratic Column. The U.S. Senate Will Be In The Democratic Column. Give Us Barack Obama And Joe Biden At The Top,’ Manchin Said.” (Paul J. Nyden, “‘Tour For Change,’” The Charleston [WV] Gazette, 10/19/08)

Manchin: “We Are All Totally Committed To Senator Barack Obama Being The Next President Of The United States. I Can Assure You That.” (Governor Joe Manchin, Remarks At DNC Press Conference, 6/10/08)

“‘It’s About The Economy,’ The Governor Continued. ‘West Virginia Has Done Very Well, But We Can Come Down With This National Economy As It’s Sinking Right Now. I Think [Obama] Would Be A Tremendous Partner. I’ve Never Seen A Presidential Candidate Or Heard Of One Reaching Out To The Governors State-By-State To See How They Can Work And Make Things Better.’” (Jake Stump, “Obama Says W.Va. Still In Play,” The Charleston [WV] Daily Mail, 10/30/08)

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And don’t miss this piece in the New York Times reporting that President Obama finds himself increasingly boxed in on the Keystone Pipeline.  With the House vote, Mr. Obama finds himself, for the first time in his presidency, threatening a veto on a significant piece of legislation that enjoys the support of an increasing number of Democrats, as well as the vast majority of Republicans in Congress.  With gas prices sticking near $4 a gallon, unemployment high in many states and demonstrable support for the project in numerous polls, many Democrats — especially those from states where pipelines are commonplace — are beginning to sound almost indistinguishable from Speaker John A. Boehner, who called Mr. Obama “increasingly isolated” in his opposition to expanding the project.