Archive for category Congress
Macro Election Comments….Stateside
OK, Republicans with Tea Party spine stiffness won an historic midterm election with around 60 House seats gained and enough Senate to preclude filibuster bust by Democrats who still have a majority, albeit a smaller one. This is the ideal 2012 set up for the Republicans if they are disciplined and conservative. Why? While there is legislative gridlock, the Republicans control the chamber that originates financial policy. They can propose important legislation that will be rejected by the Senate, or if agreed to by the Senate, vetoed by the President. The blame for no voter demanded change will fall to the President and the perhaps the Democratic Senate. Bingo, 2012 looks good for the Republicans.
But, that’s the national side with the newly elected legislature set to be in place. The real long term story is stateside. Sean Trende has an excellent post in RCP today, Biggest GOP Gains In Statehouses. In it he analyses the Republican pick up in state legislatures. They have flipped 13 to 19 chambers when all counts are in, from blue to red! They now have unified control of at least 25! This is critical because in many cases these legislatures will be responsible for redistricting legislative and congressional districts, both affecting the 2012 elections.
Sean illustrates with a little history as shown in this chart:
Basically he walks us through the chart to show that for the most part the Democratic state legislatures have historically controlled a substantial number of redistricting events and have taken full partisan advantage of this fact. He concludes:
“Finally, the GOP will control or have a say in almost all of the states that are gaining or losing seats. Democrats will control Massachusetts, where a Democrat must be eliminated regardless, and perhaps Illinois, which may or may not lose a seat. Meanwhile, Republicans will control over a dozen newly-drawn seats, and chose almost a dozen more seats to be eliminated districts.” This is a very powerful position. This is a long term position, ten years at least!
So never has Tip O’Neill’s adopted truism been truer, “all politics is local.” Damn right it is, and in spades!
Didn’t We Just Have Financial Reform?
Posted by Tom in Congress, Democrats, Financial Crisis, Fiscal Policy, Politics, Real Estate, Stimulus/Bailout on October 14, 2010
Barney Frank now admits he was wrong on Fannie and Freddie in attesting to their financial strength and arguing in the case of trouble that the “federal government doesn’t bail them out.” Of course, he was benefiting from their lobbying largess, $65,000 from 2002 to 2008. And in 2008 despite knowledge to the contrary he assured the public of their financial strength. The Boston Globe treats the political consequences in today’s post. His famous quote though was in 2003: Rep. Frank: I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.
Well now we have another mortgage mess, the “robo-signer” brouhaha has brought the foreclosure market to a screeching halt with thousands of would be buyers unable to get title or possession of homes in the foreclosure process. And in this economy, the foreclosure market is a big percentage of overall sales. NRO rightly asked in today’s editorial, Another Mortgage Mess, “didn’t we just have financial reform?”
Yes, we did. The Dodd-Frank bill was passed this year by the Reid-Pelosi Congress and signed by Obama. It was supposed to reform the financial system. It did not touch Fannie and Freddie who are now involved in the mortgage mess. By the way, the taxpayer subsidy projected for Fannie and Freddie for the next ten years is $370 Billion!
Note despite Obama’s lies about an inherited deficit, the Democrats including Obama controlled Congress and were creating the so-called “Bush deficits” since 2006. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were in charge of their respective financial committees and watching Fannie and Freddie go down the drain. They ignored warnings, ignored the facts and failed to take any action reforming the dynamic government duo.
This year’s Dodd-Frank lack of reform was too much for CNBC’s recently Rick Santelli: Democrats still don’t get it, and they refuse to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government mortgage companies that sparked the meltdown by giving high-risk loans to people who couldn’t afford it. Standing up for American taxpayers, CNBC’s on-air editor, Rick Santelli teed off on Rep. Paul Kanjorski’s (D-PA) claim that Democrats’ couldn’t reform Fannie & Freddie in their financial regulation bill because it was “too complicated,” asking: “It’s too complicated? You think taxpayers that go to work to pay the money you are subsidizing, it will end up a half a trillion, do you think they think complicated is an excuse?”
The real chutzpah here is that the Democrats that created the mortgage mess are using the foreclosure red herring to bash the evil bank lenders and pander to the ignorant voters! In so doing they further delay or perhaps stop the current weak recovery!
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. Course, no one ever accused them of being smart!
Freedom vs. Statism
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, Constitution, Democrats, Government Regulation, Individual Freedom, National Character, Statism on October 1, 2010
Congressman Tom Price (R-GA) and the Republican Study Committee present this stark contrast between thinking independent Americans and the leftist progressives, the Democrats, who control our government and are leading us down the Road to Serfdom, step by step.
November 2010 and November 2012 can’t come soon enough!
I Want Your Money
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, Deficit, Democrats, National Character, National Debt, Politics, Presidency, Taxation on September 29, 2010
Check out this trailer for an upcoming must-see movie. It states the November choices pretty clearly.
Constitution? He Don’t Need No Stinking Constitution!
Posted by Tom in Business, Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, Constitution, Financial Policy, Government Regulation, Presidency, Statism on September 19, 2010
Our little dictator Hussein Obama really doesn’t want any “checks and balances” not even when his own party has complete control of them. Yep, Obama has appointed that darling of the left, Elizabeth Warren, “assistant to him and special advisor” to the Treasury Secretary with respect to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She will oversee all aspects of consumer protection including personnel and planning. The bureau has independent rule making authority and can grant itself an annual budget of up to $646 million from the operations of the Fed. No need of Congressional appropriations.
Instead of appointing her Director of the bureau which would have required the “advice and consent” of the Senate, he makes her a tzar answering to no one. She offices in the Treasury Department which has no authority over her. She will have “direct access” to the supreme dictator himself.
A WSJ editorial, Elizabeth III, pretty well sums up her power–and inferentially Comrade Obama’s power. No constitutionally required “advice and consent,” and no Congressional appropriations! Absolute rule making that can only be overturned by a 2/3 vote of the new Financial Stability Oversight Council.
The Constitutional requirements are pretty clear. Obama knows them. “On July 21, Mr. Obama signed a bill passed by both Houses stating that the “Director shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.” Yet he ignores them in the face of opposition from his own party. Democratic Senator Chris Dodd warned the president that she was not confirmable. Obama’s answer–take your Constitution and shove it!
This is so outrageous that even the liberal Washington Post editorial leads with “President Obama picks Elizabeth Warren…and thumbs his nose at the Senate.” It concludes, “for all intents and purposes, the president has created, and filled, a de facto directorship. This might have been in keeping with the letter of the laws, but not with their spirit.”
Now think for a minute the power this de facto dictator will have over fiance laws and regulations. It will cover not only banks but merchants extending credit. Think of the conflicts with banking regulations that are sure to occur. And finally, think of the business uncertainty compounded by the prospect of new regulations and new conflicts.
With the voracious trial lawyers waiting in the wings to sue banks and merchants for a misplaced comma or unbolded printing, expect a slow down in the extension of credit and a consequent slow down in credit dependent sales. Force these slow downs back through the chain of production and you have a general economic deterioration. All coming at a time that our recovery is very weak.
I can’t help but recall Tom Cargill’s chess match analogy: when the referee announced an impending rule change in the middle of the match, the players had little incentive to continue playing, so the match stopped! This is exactly what Team Obama is doing to our economy!
Mitch Daniels For President
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, Democrats, Fiscal Policy, National Debt, Stimulus/Bailout on September 8, 2010
There’s nothing like experience when choosing a leader, a president. We now are stuck with a “community organizer” as president. For the uninformed, a “community organizer” is one who ferments dissent, promotes dissension, and organizes one community against: “the man,” other communities, and perceived injustice otherwise undefined. Perhaps that’s why Hussein Obama has us in the mess we are in. He is and was simply unqualified for the job. But that’s water under the dam.
Mitch Daniels in the governor of a state, Indiana. It’s a well run midwestern state. Has a AAA credit rating, as contrasted to say the bankrupt state of California. Mitch offeres the Community Organizer in Chief some advice in today’s WSJ, “Time for Emergency Economic Reform.”
Like any good leader he assesses the situation: dire. “Funneling borrowed billions to government workers hasn’t stimulated anything where it counts in the private sector.” Yep, that’s right Obama still thinks the government creates prosperity! He goes on to state that the impending and yet uncertain regulatory and tax regiemes are holding back investment and jobs. This is like the announcement of an impending rule change in the midst of a chess match. Damn if the match doesn’t stop until certainty of rules is restored!
He emphasizes the lack of growth necessary to get us even to break-even, to avoid national bankruptcy. We are currently at half the growth necessary to achieve disaster “with debt rising to 90% of GNP.”
Mitch offers a few specifics to counter the impending catastrophe:
- Payroll Tax Holiday of one year offset easily by a combination of the following:
- Impoundment Power: the president spends less than Congress has authorized on any number of programs which the taxpayers would never miss.
- Recall federal funds. Rescind unspent TARP funds, now in the hundreds of billions.
- Federal hiring and pay freeze. Cut the fat cats by 10% and freeze going forward. This may get the bloated bureaucracy more in line with the private sector that really produces wealth!
- Initiate a “freedom window” of regulatory forbearance in which job killing regulation is stopped.
- And, encourage business investment with accelerated write offs.
All, save for the frist and last, could be permanent reforms which get us back on track. Suffice to say we are in deep trouble and emergency solutions are in order and way overdue.
Barney Frank Admits the Truth
Posted by kyle in Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, Democrats, Economics, Financial Crisis, Financial Policy, Statism on August 21, 2010
This is beyond amazing.
Barney Frank, co-author of the housing bubble and the subsequent financial crisis, calls for the elimination of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac!
“August 21, 2010
Barney Frank Comes Home to the Facts
By Larry Kudlow
Can you teach an old dog new tricks? In politics, the answer is usually no. Most elected officials cling to their ideological biases, despite the real-world facts that disprove their theories time and again. Most have no common sense, and most never acknowledge that they were wrong.
But one huge exception to this rule is Democrat Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
For years, Frank was a staunch supporter of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government housing agencies that played such an enormous role in the financial meltdown that thrust the economy into the Great Recession. But in a recent CNBC interview, Frank told me that he was ready to say goodbye to Fannie and Freddie.
“I hope by next year we’ll have abolished Fannie and Freddie,” he said. Remarkable. And he went on to say that “it was a great mistake to push lower-income people into housing they couldn’t afford and couldn’t really handle once they had it.” He then added, “I had been too sanguine about Fannie and Freddie.”
When I asked Frank about a long-term phase-out plan that would shrink Fannie and Freddie portfolios and mortgage-purchase limits, and merge the agencies into the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) for a separate low-income program that would get government out of middle-income housing subsidies, he replied, “Larry, that, I think, is exactly what we should be doing.”
Frank also said that any federal housing guarantees should be transparently priced and put on budget. But he added that the private sector must be encouraged to re-enter housing finance just as the government gradually withdraws from it.
Some would say Frank’s mea culpa is politically motivated in advance of an election where bailout nation and big government are public enemies No. 1 and 2. Of course, poll after poll shows that the $150 billion Fan-Fred bailout, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates could rise to $400 billion, is detested by voters and taxpayers everywhere.
In fact, these failed government agencies are in such bad shape that they can’t even pay Uncle Sam the dividends owed under the conservatorship deal reached two years ago. That’s right. In order to pay a $1.8 billion dividend on Treasury department stock, Fan and Fred had to borrow $1.5 billion from — you guessed it — the Treasury.
Then there’s this head-scratching detail: In an absolutely outrageous move last Christmas Eve, President Obama signed off on $42 million in bonuses for the top 12 Fannie and Freddie executives, including $6 million apiece for the two CEOs. (Hat tip to attorney Stephen B. Meister.)
Voters are on to all this. So politics may indeed be motivating Barney Frank’s turnaround. But I’m going to credit him with more than that.
I think Chairman Frank watched these government behemoths descend into hell and then witnessed the financial catastrophe that ensued. And I think he has come to realize that the whole system of federal affordable-housing mandates that was central to the real-estate collapse — including the mandates on Fannie and Freddie and the myriad bad decisions made by private banks and other lenders in response to the government’s overreach — simply needs to be abolished.
Noteworthy is the fact that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has come to a similar conclusion. Geithner told a recent Washington conference on the future of housing finance that the system needs fundamental change. He said, “We will not support a return to the system where private gains are subsidized by taxpayer losses.”
Of course, the withdrawal of housing markets from government programs, and the onset of a reinvigorated private sector for providing mortgages, must be done gradually over a period of years. But it is possible that the federal mortgage madness is coming to an end.
We will have to see if Congress really does say goodbye to Fan and Fred, as Republicans like Jeb Hensarling are advocating. Equally important, we will have to see if the federal affordable-housing mandates created by Congress and implemented by HUD and banking regulators are similarly repealed.
And then we will have to see if reformed federally guaranteed housing insurance includes larger down payments, stricter underwriting standards and greater reliance on private capital markets, lenders and insurers. In other words, we need to see if housing will be restored to a market-based system and removed from the government-backed system that has proved so disastrous.
The broader lesson here is that government planning doesn’t work. And if left to their own devices, market processes will work. I don’t know if President Obama gets this. But my hat goes off to a man who does, Chairman Barney Frank.”
Steve Wynn on the Leftist Democrats Killing the Economy
Posted by Tom in Business, Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, Democrats, Economics, Government Regulation, National Debt, Statism on July 21, 2010
This CNBC interview with Steve Wynn is well worth your time:
Nevada-Just Fell Off the Turnip Truck
Nevada is the sucker state, the dummy state that gets conned by every one else. But it’s the Democrats and Harry Reid’s one of the worst, who promote the con artist and take advantage of the poor constituents in Nevada. Here are a few examples:
- Nevada is ranked at or near the botton of all states in federal spending in the state. For every one dollar in federal taxes sent to Washington, Nevada gets only 65 cents in federal spending. Thanks Harry, you’re doing a bang up job.
- Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the nation at 13.7%, higher than Michigan the home of Government Motors! I guess Nevada taxpayers should be happy that Obama and Reid purchased a car company for them in Michigan.
- Of course, old Harry does his best to kill jobs in Nevada. Besides supporting the Community Organizer in Chief while the latter slams gaming in Las Vegas, Harry has done his best to kill Yucca Mountain along with all the storage, reprocessing, electrical production and research jobs that could bring new industry to this state. Way to go Reid.
- And this, as if the Nevada world isn’t upside down enough, Nevada Tops the List on Federal Lobbyist Spending, Near the Bottom On Returns, a Sean Whaley post showing how really stupid our politicians are. Seems that state agencies spent $1.7 million in taxpayer money last year and got virtually nothing for it. Nevada ranked number 7 of the 900 government entities lobbying in DC. Given the fact that your senior senator is doing nothing for you but killing jobs, an argument can be made for such gross extravagance.
The worst thing about Harry though is that he is stealing from my children and grandchildren, stealing their future by crushing them in unsustainable debt, Obamacare and Multi-Stimulus bills being prime examples. This is the height of inter-generational immorality.
Ya know, Harry has done more for Nebraska with the “Cornhusker Kickback” than he has for Nevada!
The sooner we rid ourselves of this pond scum, the better off we will be.
Law is Meaningless for Liberals in Carson City and Washington
Posted by Tom in Centrally Managed Economy, Congress, Constitution, Democrats, Nationalized Health Care, Nevada, Statism on April 7, 2010
I just finished a Nevada News Bureau blogger’s news conference with the attorney representing Nevada pro bono contesting the constitutionality of Obamacare, since our Democratic AG, Cortez-Masto refuses to represent Nevadans. Mark Hutchinson is special counsel for the state by virtue of Governor Gibbons’ executive order appointing him. The AG has committed a statutory misdemeanor by refusing to act. The AG doesn’t seem to be concerned with law, at least a law that binds her. She will do or not do as she pleases.
This is emblematic of the liberal or progressive–as they want to be euphemistically called–mindset. This country, indeed, this state came into being as a government of laws as contrasted with a government of people. The left from Wilson’s time on has bridled at this restraint.
For Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the Democrats, the U.S. Constitution has no meaning. The 10th Amendment reserves to the states or the people all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government. There is no constitutional delegation of healthcare, so they argue authority from the commerce clause which gives congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. The courts have allowed a very broad interpretation of that power, but never have they treated a law that forces action on citizens by virtue of their citizenship. That is the individual mandate of Obamacare.
If the individual mandate of Obamacare is upheld, then the constitution is meaningless. Think of that the basic, fundamental supreme law, the foundation of our republic is meaningless. Substituted for law is the whim of the president or the majority party. A citizen can be forced to act, forced to spend money, on any manner of thing. Tree hugging liberals can force PV panel installation on your roof. Doctors can be forced to perform abortions. Adult children can be forced to euthanize their aged parents. There are literally no limits. Inactivity can be made illegal–as it is in Obamacare.
Now that is why these lawsuits contesting Obama’s power grab are so damn important. That is why 14 states are litigating and why 7 others are about to join them. The constitutional issue is paramount here. If Obama can assume the role of dictator, like his “mi amigo” Chavez, then this country is lost, our children will have no future.
My thanks to Elizabeth Crum for arranging these blogger conference calls and to the three other attorneys participating: Josh Hicks, former general counsel to the governor, Joel Hansen, the IAP candidate for AG, and Jacob Hafer, the GOP candidate for AG.
Constitutions are messy things for dictators. Obama and his liberal ilk know what’s best for the rest of us in the unwashed masses. They will do what they please as long as they are in power.