U.S. Senators Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK), John McCain (R-AZ), George LeMieux (R-FL) and Michael Enzi (R-WY) Friday filed an amendment (#3303) to the proposed debt limit increase (H.J. Res 45) that would prevent a $1.9 trillion increase in the debt limit and cut spending by $120 billion.

“This amendment will give senators a chance to do what the American people want us to do: end borrow and spend politics.  It’s time for us to make the same tough budget choices American families make each day.  

"The future of our economy, and even our republic, depends on Congress finding the courage and common sense to say no to wasteful and duplicative spending.  This amendment would be an important first step on the road to fiscal sanity and spending-addiction recovery,” Dr. Coburn said.   

“While the national budget is complex, it isn’t rocket science to figure out how to balance it –stop spending more than you have.  The federal government needs to cut spending.  Period,” said Enzi. “There is a lot of anger throughout the country and overspending is one of the reasons. Americans are fed up with the out of control spending and lack of responsibility.  This amendment is an opportunity for Congress to take that responsibility.”   

“Raising the debt ceiling is irresponsible and threatens the prosperity of our children’s future,” said LeMieux. “Our nation has already borrowed more than $12 trillion dollars meaning every American family owes more than $100,000 dollars.  We can’t afford to dig the country deeper into debt.  The longer we wait to make the difficult choices, the bigger the burden will be on future generations.”

The Coburn/McCain/LeMieux/Enzi amendment #3303 does the following:

•    Renders the debt limit increase ($1.9 trillion) in the underlying bill null and void
•    Rescinds $120 billion in spending (5% from each agency other than DoD and VA)
•    Directs the agencies to consolidate more than 640 duplicative government programs
•    Rescinds unobligated discretionary funds available for more than two consecutive fiscal years
•    Directs GAO to identify duplicative government programs and report the findings to Congress

Don’t let anyone convince you that Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts isn’t anything but monumental.

This is a body blow to Obamelosimanuel agenda and a repudiation of the course on which the President has put our nation.

At the same time, beware those Republicans who claim this victory as theirs. Until a few weeks ago the RNC wasn’t even really dialed into what was happening in Massachusetts. It wasn’t so long ago when certain GOP elites were quietly turning their noses up at the raw raucous energy of the tea parties.

Make no mistake about it–were it not for talk radio and the tea party/townhall events of last summer, healthcare would have passed long ago and you probably would have never heard of Scott Brown. He saw an opportunity, respected the will of the people and ran a great campaign–a classic American success story.

 Now it’s time to roll up our sleeves and take back our power from the other political frauds who are destroying what we love about America. Congressmen Barney Frank, John Murtha, Luis Gutierrez, Jim McDermott, Sheila Jackson Lee (just to name a few) should all be forced to find new work in this glorious Obama economy.

 Congrats to Sen. Scott and to all of you across the country who helped him. 

When Scott Brown gallops to victory tomorrow, capturing the Massachusetts senate seat made absent by Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death, it will signal a definitive referendum against all things Obama – his onerous and discriminatory “healthcare” bill (which an overwhelming majority of Americans fear and loathe), his failing economy, his escalating unemployment rate, his out-of-control spending, his accumulating federal debt, and, in far broader terms, his socialist-cum-communist regime, including those self-described Marxists and Maoists czars who are trying to whiplash our country into Castro territory.

 How did this happen?  It happened because America is a good and great country. Our electorate – approximately 43 percent of the over-300-million people who bask every day in America’s largesse – saw a nice young black man campaign for the presidency in 2008 and gave him a chance in spite of serious doubts about his lifelong radical associations with anti-American, anti-white, and anti-Semitic friends, colleagues, political associates and his church, not to mention his embarrassing lack of experience and also the grave questions about his Constitutional eligibility to become president. For liberals it expiated the white guilt of slavery; for conservatives it was yet another example of America’s historical exceptionalism.

But it didn’t take long for the cold harsh reality of this nice young man’s radical agenda to set in and for Americans of every political stripe to recoil at:

• His irresistible compulsion to bow and scrape to foreign despots

• His serial apologies on foreign soil for big bad America’s sins

• His reflexively siding with racists like Harvard professor Skip Gates and the ACORN thugs

• His egregious flouting of the U.S. Constitution vis-à-vis the nearly-40 czars he has appointed to run our country, many of them admitted Communists and Maoists with extreme and frightening viewpoints. In fact, Laura Hollis writes quite persuasively, they are all Communists.

• His intrusive and damaging meddling in our banking, automotive, energy, and healthcare industries

• His doling out billions of dollars to foreign nations without Congressional approval

• His destructive manipulation of free markets

• His attempts to control the media and curb free speech, take away gun rights, and give our hard-earned tax dollars to terrorist nations

• His bizarre preference for significantly increasing visas for Islamic terror-sponsoring nations, as reported by Pamela Geller’s site, AtlasShrugs.

And this is the short list!

Then there is Obama’s schoolmarm finger-wagging to tell the rest of us not to jump to conclusions about the American-born Muslim terrorist who murdered 13 of our soldiers at Fort Hood; and his waiting three full days to speak out – with chilling iciness – about the Muslim terrorist who plotted nearly 300 mid-air deaths on Christmas, and then calling this savage an “alleged” extremist.

This kind of behavior does not sit well with Americans, who have increasingly doubted if Obama is an American at all or if he has even a micrometer of sensibility about what it means to be an American.

By now it seems clear that Obama is a surrogate for powers much smarter and more politically experienced than he. His almost pathological reliance on a teleprompter and his by-now predictable lapses in decision making – even months when it came to increasing troop levels in Afghanistan – appear to be a function of his simply waiting it out until his bosses – Soros, Ayers, the Saudis, et al? – make up their minds.

Publisher and writer JR Dieckmann thinks he knows exactly who is calling the shots for Obama.”We have to look at who supported and funded the Obama campaign,” he says.

It is foreign investors.  It’s the World Bank. It’s the IMF (International Monetary Fund). It’s the Federal Reserve Bank. It’s Ban Ki-moon and the UN. It is the European Union. It is the Skull & Bones Society and the Bilderberg group. It is even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians to some extent.

But the ideology that Obama subscribes to is global socialism and communism. He takes his cues from many different special interests that all share his Marxist ideology and desire for global socialism.

His objective is the same as the U.N,’s objective – global socialism and the destruction of capitalism and the American value system…I should also include the domestic components such as: SEIU, ACLU, the Soros funded Apollo Foundation, the UAW and AFL-CIO, ACORN, AIG, Bear Sterns, etc. They are all part of the global socialist cabal and led by liberal Democrats.

TO WHAT END?

The goal of Leftists like Obama is to deconstruct America, the better to reconstruct it into their utopian fantasy of a perfect world in which no one ever has hurt feelings, loses a ballgame, is unfavorably compared to anyone else, experiences the green-eyed monster of envy, is restrained by society’s mores, is burdened by adult decision-making, or encounters a conflict that cannot be resolved by “talk.”

And they believe that only Big Government – orchestrated by them, of course – can actualize the fantasy of running people’s lives from cradle to grave. To that end, they have tried for decades to improve society by doing the only thing they know how to do, which is to throw other peoples’ money at every problem. They are like those irritating children who never stop whining and complaining and demanding and clinging and throwing tantrums until exasperated adults finally give in and let them have their way.

As journalist and author Erik Rush elaborates upon, in speaking about the terrorist William Ayers and his pal Barack Obama, it is amazing that…

…that ilk are not laughed out of lecture halls for the profoundly juvenile temperament of their political philosophy. Indeed, though couched in intellectual trappings and mock sagacity, [their message] is little more than the expression of deep spitefulness and envy. The more I am exposed to the insipid, toxic mouthings of far-left icons, the more they come off like spoiled children who believe they have a right to what another other child has simply because they desire it.” To them, Rush continues, it is all about “…attaining power that they never could have attained in a reward-based system. Their rhetoric – preaching parity and equality while fomenting class envy – was just a device by which they obtained your cooperation; a selfish, schoolyard ruse employed to best another kid and take his stuff.

Indeed, the Leftist’s worldview is essentially that life is not fair because some people have more than others, and so it is incumbent upon the haves to treat the have-nots like, well, children! Don’t expect them to meet adult standards, to work, to sacrifice, to do well in school, to obey the law, to pay their mortgages and fair share of taxes, to weather disappointments, to fail and then try again. That hard stuff is for grown-ups, not for the perpetual victims the Left counts upon to keep them in office.

A SHABBY TRACK RECORD

Just look at what liberals have done over the past many decades.  

• They’ve thrown money at the welfare system, which ended up destroying mostly black families and exacerbating inequality.

• They’ve thrown money at education and dumbed-down curricula, but academic failure persisted and got worse.

• They’ve thrown money at housing until Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac imploded, but they’re still propping up this failed fiasco with billions of taxpayer dollars.

• They’ve enacted “fairness” laws to “level the playing field” in academia and the workplace, but women still earn less than men and men still win more Nobel Prizes in the sciences.

• They’ve even tried self-esteem-boosting schemes, exhorting people to praise themselves for being instead of doing.

After decades of abject failure, after every one of their schemes and plans and philosophies and policies failed, it was clear to all but the starry-eyed, hate-American liberals that they had no clue about improving society. Of course admitting to their history of colossal failure is unthinkable to them, actually psychologically impossible.  To acknowledge that everything they’ve stood for and spent their lives believing in was just plain wrong – and dumb – has never been a part of their limited repertoire. To have done so would have been to admit that in spite of their bleeding-heart good intentions and touchy-feely embrace of multiculturalism and diversity, (1) life is inherently not fair and (2) some people and some cultures are simply more motivated, creative, productive, generous, and – gasp – superior to others!

PLUS ÇA CHANGE…

In every election the Left wins – think of LBJ, Carter, Bill and Hill, and now Obama – these grown-ups who act like children prove to be incapable of managing economies and waging wars. Of course, they invariably attribute their failures to scapegoats and they cling ever more tenaciously to their core belief, which is that Communism (cloaked as the “compassionate” redistribution of wealth) is the only solution to the unfair vicissitudes of life and to a human condition that is inherently, genetically, endemically unequal.

Stealing whole chapters from Marx, Engels, Mao, Castro, and their ignominious ilk, they believe that freedom and success are for the elite few because the masses they claim to represent are too stupid to make decisions on their own.

But whaddaya know?!  When Obama was in office only three months, “the sleeping giant” of America’s awareness (as one Tea Party participant phrased it) woke up to the monstrous intention of the Obama regime to destroy the middle class through draconian tax hikes vis-à-vis its cap-and-tax and healthcare schemes. As the Tea Party movement gained huge momentum – attracting multi-millions of Republicans, Democrats and Independents – the best that the liberal children in office and the media could do was call names, denigrate and insult. The net result: the Tea Parties gained in strength and numbers.

In the last “special” elections, two Republicans won governor races in Virginia and New Jersey. The net result: leftist politicians sped up their bribe-and-threat machine to try to ram and cram the healthcare bill down the throats of millions of unwilling Americans.

While the Tea Party movement and the stunning upsets in VA and NJ didn’t stop the runaway train of Obama’s destroy-America agenda, the Scott victory will. Goodbye socialized medicine with its death panels and citizen-subsidized abortions. Goodbye to the Obama regime’s routine violations of the U.S. Constitution. Goodbye to the Fifth Column traitors who are sabotaging our country by coddling terrorists and prosecuting our heroic SEALS. Goodbye to the rigged elections in the upcoming midterms that the Democrats and their Acorn partners-in-crime count on to win.

And hello to real change we can believe in – the return of conservatism and, at least for me, insistence that all future candidates vow to REPEAL each and every piece of misguided legislation, presidential signing order, policy, et al, inflicted on our country by Barack Hussein Obama.

As writer Carol Platt Liebau has written: “Certainly, 2009 was a dark and disheartening year for lovers of economic and individual liberty. But if next year shapes up in accordance with current trends, the tide is about to change. With a growing recognition of the preciousness (and fragility) of liberty and a renewed appreciation of our founding principles, America is poised for a rebirth of freedom. Hail 2010: The Year of the Citizen.” 

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About the author:
Joan Swirsky  is a New York-based journalist, author and frequent contributor to Tulsa Today.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In appearances around the nation’s capital this week, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster has argued against the constitutionality of a provision in the proposed federal health care bill that would provide unique Medicaid funding benefits to Nebraska.
 
McMaster, leader of the group of 13 Republican state attorneys general who launched the effort just before Christmas, got a boost when Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, a Democrat, joined critics of the provision, which was apparently designed to gain the support of Nebraska Democrat U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson for the controversial federal bill.
 
McMaster spent Wednesday in the nation’s capital. He had a session at the weekly American Spectactor media luncheon, then a briefing at the National Press Club for other reporters. In an interview with CapitolBeatOK and in response to questions from other reporters, McMaster detailed the whirlwind of attention he has received since beginning the challenge to the so-called “Cornhusker Kickback.”
 
McMaster said, “This effort has received a lot of support and a lot of attention. What amazes me about the situation is that it illustrates so well the culture of corruption in Washington, D.C. There is virtually no pretense from anyone involved that the money for Nebraska was given for any reason other than to secure Sen. Nelson’s vote.
 
“There are aspects to this that are historically different than other situations and that would present a challenge to the Supreme Court in deciding the case. This was different than a decision over the location of a base or an expenditure on a general public purpose, or something like that. It was extension of a benefit exclusively to the people in one state and to no one else.
 
“The courts are deferential toward Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court is deferential toward Congress, and that makes this a difficult case, but that’s not a reason to avoid bringing the case. We would focus on the fact that the powers of Congress are not limitless. Although I don’t want to limit our ability to argue and discover every aspect of this to challenge, I believe one reason this is unconstitutional is that it does flow from the customary power of Congress to promote the general welfare.”
 
McMaster made it clear the joint letter of the attorneys general signed by Edmondson is limited to the Nebraska Medicaid provisions. However, speaking for himself, he adds, “Other potential constitutional problems include the mandate on individuals to buy insurance. The coercion in that could be problematic. Yes, Congress has the powers of taxing, spending, of regulating interstate commerce and so forth. But where does it derive the authority to do something like this bill? It’s just not there.“
 
McMaster said language benefitting solely the states of Florida and Louisiana might also be constitutionally suspect, but noted some have argued those provision pass constitutional muster, whether or not they are good public policy.”
 
McMaster reported, “On Dec. 31, thanks to Sen. Lindsey Graham [also a South Carolina Republican], Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and I talked. It lasted for less than 10 minutes. He said he had not asked for the provision. He said he hopes that at the end of the day every state gets the same kind of provision. I said then, and repeat now, that would be the end of the constitutional question but, my goodness, it raises other questions of costs and practicality. The CBO estimates that would cost at least $23 billion.
 
“The letter at this point deals only with the Cornhusker Kickback, and that is the focus of the effort to increase the number of signatories through the joint memo with Attorney General Edmondson. We did that letter and set a deadline for response of Jan. 8. We don’t have answers from anyone new except the AG of American Samoa.“
 
McMaster continues, “It seems to me that Congress is shredding the Constitution in this process. If the offending provision is not removed and the law is ultimately passed, we would seek an injunction to block its enforcement. The case will present challenges, as no law has ever been struck down under the general welfare clause. This would be a case of ‘first impression’ for the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
Asked if any other attorneys general have responded, favorably or otherwise, to the memo he and Edmondson sent through the National Association of Attorneys General, McMaster replied, “We have several who have wished us luck but don’t at this time want to be on the letter. I must say I believe this provision is an enormous political liability to the Democrats.
 
“Every one of these Attorneys General has the obligation to serve as the chief legal officer of the people in their state. Besides the Cornhusker Kickback and the individual mandate, some of us believe the government exchanges in the health care proposal could be an example of the federal government commandeering a state function.
 
“Because of the Supreme Court’s proper deference to Congress, this is a hard and uphill battle. But that’s not a reason to avoiding fighting it. The court has taken 138 cases of disputes like this. The last one was a water rights dispute between South Carolina and North Carolina.
 
“In terms of how we challenge it, we have lots of options to consider. It could be brought in a lower court, perhaps a court that feeds into the fourth circuit, or it could be brought directly to the US Supreme Court.
 
In the original Dec. 30 letter, the attorneys general assailed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, HR 3590, in its Senate version. Excerpts from the letter follow:
 
* “As chief legal officers of our states we are contemplating a legal challenge to this provision and we ask you to take action to render this challenge unnecessary by striking that provision.”
 
* “In addition to violating the most basic and universally held notions of what is fair and just, we also believe this provision of H.R. 3590 is inconsistent with protections afforded by the United States Constitution against arbitrary legislation.”
 
* Analyzing the 1937 Supreme Court precedent in the case of Helvering v. Davis, the state AGs argue “The spending power of Congress includes authority to accomplish policy objectives by conditioning receipt of federal funds on compliance with statutory directives, as in the Medicaid program. However, the power is not unlimited and ‘must be in pursuit of the “general welfare.” ‘ “
 
* “It seems axiomatic that the federal interest in H.R. 3590 is not simply requiring universal health care, but also ensuring that the states share with the federal government the cost of providing such care to their citizens. This federal interest is evident from the fact that this legislation would require every state, except Nebraska, to shoulder its fair share of the increased Medicaid costs the bill will generate. The provision of the bill that relieves a single state from this cost-sharing program appears to be not only unrelated, but also antithetical to the legislative federal interests in the bill.”
 
* “Since the only basis for the Nebraska preference is arbitrary and unrelated to the substance of the legislation, it is unlikely that the difference would survive even minimal scrutiny.”
 
“By singling out the particular provision relating to the special treatment of Nebraska, we do not suggest there are no other legal or constitutional issues in the proposed health care legislation.”
 
About the author: Pat McGuigan, editor of CapitolBeatOK in Oklahoma City, also serves as Capitol Editor for Tulsa Today. 

Washington, D.C. — Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson last week became the first Democrat to call for removal of the controversial “Cornhusker Kickback.” Working with South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster, leader of the group of 13 Republican state attorneys general who launched the crusade just before Christmas, Edmondson was co-author of a memo from the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) which went to all state chief legal officers last week.
 
Members of the U.S. House returned to work this week, while Senators get back to the nation’s capitol next week. Conference committee work on the controversial provision could begin soon. The language inserted in the bill by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, promised that only Nebraska would escape increased costs for Medicaid.  The provision is widely believed to have been designed to assure the support of Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson for the bill.
 
In an interview with CapitolBeatOK on Wednesday, McMaster said, “The communication with Drew began when someone in my office called him. He returned the call and eventually we talked. He said he would sign on” to a Dec. 30 letter assailing the Nebraska language. McMaster said, “Drew wanted the words ‘constitutionally flawed’ in the original letter changed to ‘constitutionally suspect.’" McMaster immediately agreed.
 
McMaster said that such word changes were not unusual in the project. “Nearly everyone had something to offer. Edmondson’s change was a change in tone not in substance. He made it clear he was very supportive of this. Once we had Drew with us we could approach other members of the National Association of Attorneys Generals, because to put out a communication from NAAG you must have one member of each party.”
 
McMaster said, “The letter at this point deals only with the Cornhusker Kickback, and that is the focus of the effort to increase the number of signatories through the joint memo I wrote with Attorney General Edmondson. We did that and set a deadline for response of Jan. 8. We don’t yet have answers from anyone new except the Attorney General of American Samoa." Despite the lapsed deadline, McMaster said the effort would continue and that the group of attorneys general were open to new signatories.
 
These states are now represented in the call to remove Nebraska’s special provision: South Carolina, Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Utha, Washington, Oklahoma and American Samoa.
 

The full text of the joint letter circulating for additional signatures (albeit with the earlier “flawed” wording retained) is available at the Attorney General McMaster’s state website

About the author: Pat McGuigan is capitol editor for Tulsa Today. He runs CapitolBeatOK from the state Capitol in Oklahoma City, OK.