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    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Exploiting the miserable - Harry Reid, for all his huffing and puffing

    Exploiting the miserable

    By Washington Times (DC) January 20, 2014 12:23 pm

    Congress left town Friday for a week's recess, leaving the emergency extension of unemployment benefits as unfinished business. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, for all his huffing and puffing about how important the extension is, leaves for Las Vegas betting that exploiting the misery of the unemployed will pay bigger dividends next November than lending them a helping hand now.
    In an email Wednesday for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Mr. Reid urged supporters to sign a petition to "demand that Republicans ... extend unemployment insurance with no strings attached." The "strings" are the eminently sensible requirements that the $6.5 billion cost of a three-month extension be paid for with cuts elsewhere in a federal budget the size of the Goodyear blimp. To suggest, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi did in September, that "the cupboard is bare" and there are "no more cuts to make," is beyond preposterous. Just this week, the House passed a 1,582-page, $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill (Congress had to pass it to find out what's in it), in which $6.5 billion is little more than a rounding error.
    The jobless-benefits measure failed, unnecessarily, in the Senate on Tuesday in two party-line votes that Republicans turned into a debate over Mr. Reid's arrogant control of the chamber, leaving Democrats with what the political journal Politico characterizes as their "first big defeat of 2014."
    The week's recess makes Jan. 27 the earliest under the rules that Congress could consider legislation again to provide federal assistance to the unemployed who have exhausted their original 26 weeks of assistance. Those benefits expired Dec. 28.
    Democrats naturally blame Republicans. Mrs. Pelosi characterized Republican insistence on paying for the extension by cutting in other places as "cruel, shortsighted and immoral." What's immoral is adding more billions to the federal debt of $17 trillion, and leaving future generations to pay it back.
    Embracing Rahm Emanuel's reminder that "you never let a serious crisis go to waste," the Democratic campaign committee included an Internet link in its email to enable supporters to donate campaign cash. The long-term unemployed in President Obama's jobless "recovery" are thus pawns in a "crisis" that could have been easily avoided.
    Sen. Tom Coburn's annual "Wastebook," issued in December, outlined "100 examples of wasteful and low-priority spending," nearly $30 billion in prospective cuts that would be more than enough to pay for a full year's extension of federal jobless benefits.
    Alternatively, Rep. Charles W. Dent, Pennsylvania Republican, has proposals that he says will create jobs and pay for the added benefits for the unemployed. His plan would authorize construction of the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline, which he says would create 42,000 jobs over the next two years. The Dent legislation would also repeal the Obamacare medical-devices tax, which would save 43,000 jobs in the medical-devices industry. Fancy that: creating and preserving jobs, not just paying people not to work.
    He proposes two "offsets" to pay for the $6.5 billion the expanded jobless benefits would cost. One would bar anyone from collecting unemployment and disability benefits at the same time; the other would change the rules on the child tax credit in such a way as to bar illegal aliens from collecting it. This change has been attempted before, and quashed by the Democrats.
    Mr. Reid vows that the unemployment-compensation extension will be among the first orders of business when the Senate reconvenes on Jan. 27. Until then - and this won't be much consolation to those who can't find jobs - Mr. Reid thinks he has a winning campaign issue.
    ----
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    http://www.gopusa.com/freshink/2014/.../?subscriber=1

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    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Warfare, Welfare, and Wonder Woman — How Congress Spends Your Money

    http://www.infowars.com/warfare-welfare-and-wonder-woman-how-congress-spends-your-money/


    Ron Paul | Wonder Woman fans can cheer that buried in the bill was a $10,000 grant for a theater program to explore the comic book heroine.
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    Senior Member AirborneSapper7's Avatar
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    Warfare, Welfare, and Wonder Woman — How Congress Spends Your Money

    Ron Paul
    Infowars.com
    January 20, 2014


    Supporters of warfare, welfare, and Wonder Woman cheered last week as Congress passed a one trillion dollar “omnibus” appropriation bill. This legislation funds the operations of government for the remainder of the fiscal year. Wonder Woman fans can cheer that buried in the bill was a $10,000 grant for a theater program to explore the comic book heroine.



    That is just one of the many outrageous projects buried in this 1,582 page bill. The legislation gives the Department of Education more money to continue nationalizing education via “common core.” Also, despite new evidence of Obamacare’s failure emerging on an almost daily basis, the Omnibus bill does nothing to roll back this disastrous law.
    Even though the Omnibus bill dramatically increases government spending, it passed with the support of many self-described “fiscal conservatives.” Those wondering why anyone who opposes increasing spending on programs like common core and Obamacare would vote for the bill, may find an answer in the fact that the legislation increases funding for the “Overseas Continuing Operations” — which is the official name for the war budget — for the first time since 2010. This $85 billion war budget contains $6 billion earmarked for projects benefiting Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and other big defense contractors.
    Ever since “sequestration” went into effect at the beginning of last year, the military-industrial complex’s congressional cheering session has complained that sequestration imposed “draconian cuts” on the Pentagon that will “decimate” our military — even though most of the “cuts” were actually reductions in the “projected rate of growth.” In fact, under sequestration, defense spending was to increase by 18 percent over ten years, as opposed to growing by 20 percent without sequestration.
    Many of the defenders of increased war spending are opponents of welfare, but they are willing to set aside their opposition to increased welfare spending in order to increase warfare spending. They are supported in this position by the lobbyists for the military-industrial complex and the neoconservatives, whose continued influence on foreign policy is mystifying. After all, the neocons were the major promoters of the disastrous military intervention in Iraq.
    While many neocons give lip service to limiting domestic spending, their main priority remains protecting high levels of military spending to maintain an interventionist foreign policy. The influence of the neocons provides intellectual justification for politicians to vote for ever-larger military budgets — and break the campaign promises to vote against increases in spending and debt.
    Fortunately, in recent years more Americans have recognized that a constant defense of liberty requires opposing both war and welfare. Many of these Americans, especially the younger ones, have joined the intellectual and political movement in favor of limiting government in all areas. This movement presents the most serious challenge the bipartisan welfare-warfare consensus has faced in generations. Hopefully, the influence of this movement will lead to bipartisan deals cutting both welfare and warfare spending.
    The question facing Americans is not whether Congress will ever cut spending. The question is will the spending be reduced in an orderly manner that avoids inflecting massive harm on those depending on government programs, or will spending be slashed in response to an economic crisis caused by ever-increasing levels of deficit spending. Because politicians are followers rather than leaders, it is ultimately up to the people what course we will take. This is why it is vital that those of us who understand the dangerous path we are currently on do all we can to expand the movement for liberty, peace, and prosperity.
    Former Congressman Paul’s article first appeared at the-free-foundation.org, the temporary home for his weekly column until his personal web page is up and running.

    This article was posted: Monday, January 20, 2014 at 9:43 am

    http://www.infowars.com/warfare-welf...ds-your-money/
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