mike pence

So the party of “financial responsibility” is going to spend about $1.1 million just on reading the Constitution on the House floor:

The amount I get is nearly $1.1 million. $1,071,872.87, to be exact, though of course this is more back-of-the-envelope than exact.

When one chamber of Congress is in session but not working, we the people still have to pay for members’ salaries and expenses, and for their police protection, and for keeping their lights and phones and coffee machines on. Even Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Mike Pence (R-IN) combined don’t blow enough hot air to heat the Capitol in January.

To get this estimate, I took the total FY 2011 costs for House salaries and expenses and House office buildings, then added half the costs of joint House-Senate expenses, the CBO, the Capitol Police and the Capitol power plant. Then I divided that sum by 205, the number of days the House was in session last year, then divided again by 24 (the number of hours in a day) and multiplied by 3 (the estimated length in hours of members reading the Constitution). It might not take three hours to read the document, but on the other hand, Congress is usually in session for considerably less than 205 days a year. Also, I didn’t include staff costs, since most aides will probably be working through the reading. But not all will be, so overall I think this is a conservative estimate.

Of course the wingnuts are already in full defense of this, just the same way they defended Bush and the GOP’s runaway spending during the last decade.

Yesterday during the President’s Q&A session with House Republicans Mike Pence asked President Obama why he won’t support across the board tax cuts like Reagan wanted. This has been a key issue for Republicans for decades and I am wondering why they never did it when they had total control of the government.

Think about it for a minute. During the Bush years, when Republicans controlled the House and Senate, Republicans never enacted such a widespread tax cut. Instead they only focused on the wealthy. They even went as far as securing these tax cuts through reconciliation, so they didn’t have to face a filibuster.

As matter of fact, under Obama we had had more widespread tax cuts than we ever did under Bush. 95% of working families saw tax cuts last year.

I think it’s just really interesting that Republicans only seem to want these tax cuts when Democrats are in control. Sounds like they are afraid that the cuts could lead to big fiscal problems and the Republicans don’t want to be the ones steering the ship when they occur.

As Republicans take to the airwaves to lay all the blame on President Obama for the Christmas day attempted terrorist attack, Ben Smith points out that Republicans also can take some of the blame:

As Republicans seek to put the blame for the widespread perception of ineptness at the Transportation Security Administration on the Obama administration, Democrats are arguing that Republican legislators bear part of the blame, and that they're politically vulnerable on the subject.

Perhaps the largest impediment to change at the agency: South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint has a hold on the appointment of a TSA chief, over his concern that the new administration could allow security screeners to unionize.

DeMint is showing the exact behavior I have been saying about Republicans – politics trump safety in this time of terrorism.

But this doesn’t stop with DeMint. The Republican caucus as a whole deserves some of the blame:

Republicans have cast votes against the key TSA funding measure, the 2010 appropriation bill for the Department of Homeland Security contained, which included funding for the TSA, including for explosives detection systems and other aviation security measures. In the June 24 vote in the House, leading Republicans including John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan voted against the bill, amid a procedural dispute over the appropriations process, a Democrat points out. A full 108 Republicans voted against the conference version, including Boehner, Boehner, Hoekstra, Pence, Michelle Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Darrell Issa, and Joe Wilson.

The House Republicans rolled out their big budget plans today. Instead of telling you about it, its probably best to just watch:

They have no plan! Well except to give tax cuts to the wealthy.

To see just how badly unorganized the House Republican leadership is, check out one of their leaders on MSNBC:

Later Norah O’Donnell still was going on by this lack of a plan:

O'DONNELL: I had Congressman Mike Pence on just a short time ago, and I said, "You criticized the deficit numbers of the President's [budget proposal], what would be the deficit under your budget proposal," and he said we haven't come up with the numbers yet. Is this a serious proposal?

Josh found this article:

The latest massacre of Iraqi children came as 21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.

So was Mike Pence saying that the same thing happens in Indiana with his cute little analogy on Sunday? It really sounds like Indiana has some problems and it is time to change their representatives.

Here is the Sunday morning line up for the news junkies in all of us:

FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG), 9 a.m.: Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.); Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Mike Pence (R-Ind.); and Placido Domingo , general director of the Washington National Opera.

THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA), 9 a.m.: Sens. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA), 10:30 a.m.: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.).

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC), 10:30 a.m.: Sens. George Allen (R-Va.) and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.); Michael R. Gordon , author; retired Marine Lt. Gen. Bernard Trainor , author.

LATE EDITION (CNN), 11 a.m.: Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.); Zalmay Khalilzad , U.S. ambassador to Iraq; Howard Dean , chairman of the Democratic National Committee; John Edwards , former Democratic vice presidential candidate; Jack Kemp , former Republican vice presidential candidate.

This Week looks promising. Late Edition doesn't look that bad either.

Raw Story has gotten their hands on one of the first proposals for budget
cuts the GOP has authored. Seems like they are not as much up on public opinion
as we would hope. They aren't targeting the actual pork items, instead they got
their sites set on something else. Mostly they are calling for cuts in Medicare
and Medicaid, reduce funding for AIDS programs, cancel the NASA moon mission,
and scrap funding to arts programs.

The plan was authored by Representative Mike Pence and is available online

here. Essentially the Republicans are doing everything they can to protect
their precious tax cuts. This means cutting out programs that benefit the middle
and lower class people of this country.