congress

If anything great should be remembered from this past election it should be the fact that Grover Norquist has become much less significant. The number of Republicans breaking with the Norquist pledge to not raise taxes keeps rising, with the latest one coming out today:

Open criticism of Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform group's anti-tax pledge continued to make its way to the forefront of debate on Monday, with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) saying that his only real obligation was to serve his constituents by finding a long-term solution to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff."

“I’m not obligated on the pledge,” Corker told Charlie Rose of CBS News, responding to a question about growing disenchantment among Republicans who had previously stood in agreement with Norquist's strict "no new taxes" pledge. “I was just elected. The only thing I’m honoring is the oath I take when I serve when I’m sworn in this January.”

Corker joins other big names, such as John McCain, Saxby Chambliss, Tom Coburn, Lindsey Graham and Peter King. These influential Republicans can really put pressure on the rest of their party to disavow the thinking of Norquist and finally work to move our country forward.

But any man in the midst of defeat, old Grover is resilient as ever:

Prominent American anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist on Monday insisted that his movement was as strong as ever and that Congress would withstand pressure to raise taxes even if more Republican lawmakers are spurning his anti-tax pledge.

Bob Cesca points to this line from Newt Gingrich:

GINGRICH: “When I was speaker, we had four consecutive balanced budgets.”

As Bob points out, we only had two, not four balanced budgets.

But there is something else here that has been eating away at me. More and more the right is trying to make it out that Newt was the sole man responsible for the balanced budget. They won't mention President Clinton and that it involved negotiations. Somehow the Speaker of the House has become the budget writer for the United States under these people.

So why haven't we had one since? In the 14 years since the time Newt refers to ten of those years we had a Republican Speaker. Neither Dennis Hastert nor John Boehner have produced a balanced budget. During most of Hastert's term we also had a Republican controlled Senate and White House. Why no balanced budget?

I'm not going to get on Newt for lying. We know this is a man that has a hard time ever telling the truth. What does get me is how many people on the right buy into this line of bullshit. To those people they need to ask themselves this; if the Speaker is the man who balances the budget and that is what we need right now, then why isn't Newt running for Congress? I think we all know the answer to that....

Some very good news on the SOPA front:

Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will not support the Stop Online Piracy Act, according to a statement released by his office Monday.

In the statement, Ryan calls the Internet “one of the most magnificent expressions of freedom and free enterprise in history” and says “it should stay that way.”

According to Ryan, SOPA is an attempted solution to the “legitimate problem” of digital piracy, but the bill “creates the precedent and possibility for undue regulation, censorship and legal abuse.”

Congressman Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, became a target of the Reddit community last month. Reddit users considered Ryan’s previous stance on SOPA too vague — and took issue with the $288,600 that the Congressman had accepted from pro-SOPA groups.

I've got to give kudos to the Reddit community. They have really been out front on making sure our freedoms don't get hindered by some draconian piece of legislation being bought in Congress by big money. I just wish the blogosphere would push a little more on this issue, as it has serious implications for what we do.

Yes the headline is harsh, but so are the actions of the GOP. Tonight President Obama is to ask for an extension of the payroll tax cuts and even increase them. Hasn’t the right been telling us that tax cuts are what keeps the economy rolling? Well apparently not now:

Congressional Republicans over the past year have threatened to both shut down the government and default on U.S. debt in order to prevent tax hikes. But in January, without congressional action, payroll taxes are set to increase by 50 percent on millions of American workers. The GOP response? A resounding meh.

When President Obama travels to Congress on Thursday to deliver a major jobs speech, he'll be encountering a species previously considered mythical on Capitol Hill: Republicans who don't support tax cuts.

The one-year payroll tax cut was passed as part of the deal that extended Bush-era tax rates through 2012, and Republicans routinely described the potential expiration of that cut as a "tax hike." While the payroll tax cut applies to no more than the first $106,000 in income, the Bush tax cuts disproportionately benefit the wealthy. But the key difference between the two is the author: The payroll tax is Obama's and his alone.

And if you continue reading the article you’ll find quotes from tons of Republicans in Congress, like this one:

"My personal view is that the debt is already impacting the economy," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) "If your debt is this large, I think you've gotta be very careful about adding debt." HuffPost asked whether that view put the GOP in the unusual position of advocating that taxes go up on millions of people in January, when the one-year cut expires.

When the S&P downgraded our credit rating last Friday one of the reasons they gave was the inability of Congress to raise revenues, IE tax increases. That's rather interesting given the Republican front-runner's handling of credit ratings in the past:

Gov. Mitt Romney lobbied the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s in 2004 to raise his state’s credit rating in part because Massachusetts had raised taxes during an economic downturn two years earlier.

The claim was part of a presentation to the ratings agency obtained by POLITICO under a state freedom of information law from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Administration and Finance. The Nov. 4 presentation, stamped “confidential,” helped persuade S&P to raise the state’s grade and handed Romney the perfect talking point for last week’s humiliating national downgrade by the same agency.

Romney used tax hikes as a reason to improve his state's credit rating. That's interesting coming from the man who wants to lead the party that dismissed that idea from the onset of the debt ceiling debate.

All major news organizations are reporting that Anthony Weiner has advised his associates that he is resigning from Congress. ABC reports the following:

Weiner, 46, has begun sharing his decision with close friends, the sources said, but has not yet sent a formal letter to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo indicating his intentions.

A Democratic source said Weiner called House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Wednesday night while they were at a White House picnic to inform them he would resign today.

If any good comes from this, maybe the media will move beyond this story soon. This has become such a major story and distraction.

It looks like we’ll have a new system of alerting us in case of disasters or terrorist attacks:

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said Monday that the Commercial Mobile Alert System will direct emergency messages to cell phones in case of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other serious emergencies.

The alert plan was approved by Congress in 2006 under the Warning Alert and Response Network Act.

You just better hope that the tornado they are trying to alert you about didn’t just knock your cell tower.

Republicans went on a rampage last year claiming that scientists the world over engaged in the historically largest act of collusion ever to coax the world into believe the climate was in trouble. Now we are finding out (yet again) that these people on the right were trying to dope the world into believing their vast conspiracy theories:

A Republican-led federal probe of climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found no evidence that they manipulated data, after leaked e-mails in 2009 sparked the "climategate" controversy.

The investigation was conducted by the inspector general of the Commerce Department. It reviewed the 1,073 leaked messages, particularly the 289 that were exchanged with NOAA scientists, and interviewed NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco and her staff about them.

"We did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data," the inspector general concluded in a recent report. It also cleared Lucbhenco for testifying before Congress that the e-mails did not weaken the science of climate change.

The probe was requested by Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the environment committee, who has called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

I wonder how much all these probes are costing our country?