Maybe Chuck Norris should run for President. If we ever needed honesty in Washington, we need it now.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=323045


Monday, July 18, 2011

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Showdown at Washington's OK Corral
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: July 18, 2011
1:00 am Eastern

© 2011

The OK Corral in Tombstone, Ariz., was where Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Virgil and Morgan Earp fought the Clantons and McLaurys on Oct. 26, 1881. At the end of that 30-second showdown, Virgil and Morgan Earp were wounded, and three cowboys were dead.

President Obama and House Republicans' showdown over the debt and deficit debates is quickly turning into Washington's OK Corral. And politicians on each side are trying to convince you which are Tombstone law enforcement (the good guys) and who are the rogue cowboys (the bad guys).

We know where they all stand in the corral. Congressional Republicans and conservatives are seeking to radically cut spending and not raise anyone's taxes. The Obama administration and congressional Democrats are seeking both to raise the debt limit and to raise taxes on households earning more than $250,000 a year.


Subscribe Here To Receive Chuck Norris' Weekly Column In Your Email


The real problem is, while they all accuse each other of being relentlessly uncompromising, partisan preference and self-preservation is too often each camp's greatest agenda. Compromise was once an honorable concession in yesteryear, where two sides respectfully came together for the common good. Now, it is a weapon used to pit your opponents against the American people. Compromise has become a dirty word and action in Washington – arsenal in an opponent's character assassination.

If I were in the Washington corral right now, this is what I would shout to those political yahoos: The issue and question isn't what compromise can you make to acquire your partisan preferences, but what catalyst can you create to build up our American economy?

There is no better example of extreme partisan politics and corrupt underhanded compromises than President Obama.

For example, two weeks ago in the heart of the Washington debt debates, President Obama proposed a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare. Sounds so compromising, doesn't it? But it is conditionally connected to the Republican's support for a tax hike on households who earn $250,000 annually.

The devilish aspect and politically devious subterfuge in that offer was that it had a twofold demise for Republicans, if they rejected it: First, they would appear to be rejecting the heart of their political quest and plan – to cut spending. Second, they would be perceived by the public to be obstinate and uncompromising, unlike President Obama.

In essence, Obama offered the one deal to the Republicans that would simultaneously make them look like political thugs and also be an offer they could never accept – not merely because raising taxes is against the Republican platform but because raising taxes would further penalize the American people during a recession and further cripple an already ailing American economy.




Mark Mardell, North America editor of the BBC News, hit the nail on the head concerning Obama's modus operandi: "His latest offer of cuts is designed to make a specific argument – that he is willing to go the extra mile, to stick his neck out, but that his opponents are so entrenched in their narrow political foxhole that they would rather cause another economic crisis than make a single compromise."

Mardell describes the elephant in the room this way: "If the Republicans quit, refuse to do a deal in the face of what looks like the president being so willing to compromise that he is damaging his reputation with his own party, they will look like ideological hotheads."

But the fact is, it is Mr. Obama who, in the name of "compromise," is inciting further partisan (and hence national) divide and warfare as well as instability in the economy by all his fiscal polemic language and scare tactics about Aug. 2. Again, Mardell concludes, "Indeed since [Obama] took office the gap between Republicans and Democrats has widened.

Last Tuesday, President Obama deepened that partisan chasm by again pitting Republicans against Social Security recipients. Ironically, after proposing the week before to cut their benefits, he then appeared to coddle them. In an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS News, the president spoke to older Americans like a passionate caregiver and said they may not receive their Social Security, veterans and disability checks after Aug. 3, because "there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it."

What makes Obama's whole "compromise" charade even more malevolent is that he lied to the American public by saying the federal government couldn't pay for those entitlements. Karl Rove, in his commentary this past week noted how Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think-tank, projects that the government will receive $172 billion in revenues between Aug. 3 and Aug. 31. Those revenues "can pay the $29 billion interest charges on the national debt, Social Security benefits ($49 billion), Medicaid and Medicare ($50 billion), active duty military pay ($2.9 billion), Department of Defense vendors ($31.7 billion), IRS refunds ($3.9 billion), and about a quarter of the $12.8 billion in unemployment checks due that month."

No wonder tea-party freshman Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., lambasted President Obama in a video posted on his website, "President Obama, quit lying. You know darn well that if Aug. 2, comes and goes there is plenty of money to pay off our debt and cover all Social Security obligations."

Is that the conduct you want and expect of the supreme leader of America and the free world?

So much for transparency!

Obama's lie and misleading compromise prompts me to recall the wisdom of Founding Father Elias Boudinot, who once said: "If the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow." Our current president is truly a first-rate demagogue: a political leader who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people. What's so tragic is Obama's "debt compromise" is just one of hundreds of similar disingenuous and devious political plans and actions devised by the administration over the last few years.

I'll say it again: If we now are to have any chance of averting a financial crisis that could ripple across every fiscal stratum of America, Washington politicians, from the president on down, need to quit their demagoguery and strictly enact only what would build up America's economy and people.

So as to divert any possible economic fallout and bring stability in the national and global markets from the hysteria created by Washington over the Aug. 2 deadline date, the White House should lead Congress in a true compromise that stimulates the American economy. Cut 10 percent of the federal government's spending across the board – no exceptions, everyone sacrifices. (It's the only equitable way to lead forward.) And immediately cease all corporate tax exemptions and loopholes, and cut the corporate tax rate from its present 35 percent to 24 percent (just under the European 25 percent average), bringing offshore monies and productivity back to America. (If Washington immediately made those two fiscal moves alone, it would not only send a strong signal of credibility to the world market about the American economy but there would also be no need to raise the federal debt limit or to raise further taxes on any American.)


Unless Washington politicians put aside their own political posturing and partisan preferences and start espousing and legislating only what is best for the American economy and people, Aug. 2 will be a day when we all watch the haze from their political smoking guns clear and reveal the wasteland in Washington's OK Corral. Like with you, my hope and prayer is that the casualties of their showdown shootout will not again be our economy and posterity.