|
nChrist
|
 |
« on: February 09, 2018, 05:30:58 PM » |
|
________________________________________
The Patriot Post Digest 2-9-2018
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
________________________________________
The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest
Feb. 9, 2018 · https://patriotpost.us/digests/54053-mid-day-digest
IN TODAY’S EDITION
Budget bipartisanship in Congress means giving Democrats everything they want.
Bush(43) just gave the elitist position on illegal immigrants.
The new Gerber baby has Down syndrome, highlighting these kids’ plight in many ways.
The latest “settled science” confirms USDA diet recommendations are wrong.
It wasn’t long ago that the guy calling for a military parade was … Chuck Schumer.
What on earth is an “education desert”? A leftist think tank fills us in.
Plus our Daily Features: Top Headlines, Memes, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.
THE FOUNDATION
“The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.” —Thomas Jefferson (1808.)
FEATURED ANALYSIS
Fiscal Hawks Go on Leave1
By Michael Swartz
Our federal budget process is supposed to go like this: The House comes up with a budget resolution and a dozen appropriation bills to fill it out, then passes them and sends them to the Senate, which does its job followed by any necessary reconciling between the bills. Then the budget moves along to the president, who signs it before the next fiscal year begins on the first of October. That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway.
In practice, though, this annual exercise stumbles along between continuing resolutions as partisans from both parties hold the budget hostage to get what they want out of the deal. Recently, we were treated to the latest in a predictable series of government “shutdowns” that essentially amount to paid vacations for federal employees. Early this morning, after a brief midnight shutdown forced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who objected to the proposed budget’s spending increase, the House and Senate cobbled together the necessary votes and sent it to President Donald Trump for his signature. Both houses actually agreed to a two-year deal presented by Senate leadership, but they face another deadline of March 23 to hammer out the details.
“When the Democrats are in power, Republicans appear to be the conservative party,” Paul tweeted. “But when Republicans are in power, it seems there is no conservative party.”
Naturally, that long-term security comes with a big price tag2 — an additional $320 billion in deficit spending during that time period — but we finally get an increase in military spending after years of sequester-mandated cuts. In addition, the Senate deal eliminates some lingering ObamaCare gems like the “death panels.”3
Yet for all those guns, the Democrats have larded us up with a lot of butter. And the Republicans have gone right along. As The Wall Street Journal put it4, “Democrats backed up the truck for funding on everything from community health centers to billions on child-care grants to $20 billion for infrastructure.” One example is the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which leftists blasted the GOP for not immediately reauthorizing after it expired late last year. A recent six-year extension is now a decade-long boondoggle. Democrat demands for dollar-for-dollar parity with increased defense spending also netted them more money for infrastructure, and a relief from running up against our artificial debt limit5 until sometime next year.
“What happened to the Democrats’ ‘Better Deal6?’” asks The Washington Post7. “Check the spending bill.” Chuck Schumer crowed, “This budget agreement shows that the Better Deal agenda is more than a set of ideas; now, it’s going to be real policies. It delivers on exactly what we laid out last year: rural broadband, child care and assistance with college tuition.”
Good thing the GOP controls both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue!
That additional money spent on non-essential items in return for simply undoing cuts that arguably should never have been made to the (constitutionally mandated) defense of our nation is the part of the bargain that rankles some House Republicans — the ones who were elected by the Tea Party to fight against these types of deals.
“I am baffled why the Republican Party has turned into such a big spending party. It is one thing to spend money; it is another thing to spend money you don’t have,” lamented8 Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who was elected in the initial 2010 Tea Party wave. Brooks vowed to be a “hell no” vote on the deal and was joined by several other fiscally conscious Republican stalwarts.
But Brooks and company seem to have missed the memo that deficit spending is back in style9. And while it may goose the GDP rate slightly and makes individual members look better when they have some pork to share, the issue is that increasing interest rates will make this deficit spending even worse than it appears now. For their part, Democrats complained loudly about raising the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years (a spurious number anyway) with the recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but they’re now dead silent about similar amounts of deficit spending10.
So this grand bargain, as well as the omnibus spending bill that will follow it in a few weeks once all the appropriations are ironed out, will be the product of centrist House Republicans joining with middle-of-the-road Democrats. Conservatives oppose this bill for its deficit spending, while far-left Democrats are enraged that it doesn’t include a resolution to the DACA issue. Those who may directly benefit from this largesse will be the big winners, but since all this was accomplished without a scintilla of meaningful entitlement reform — President Trump long ago promised not to touch Social Security or Medicare — our children and grandchildren will once again be big losers. Sad!
IN BRIEF
Bush(43) on Immigrant Cotton Pickers11
By Mark Alexander
Former President George W. Bush, a man whose tenure as president included some things to be admired, stepped into the immigration debate this week in support of the Democrats’ DACA duplicity and deceit12.
Speaking in Abu Dhabi, of all places — the capital of the Kingdom of the United Arab Emirates isn’t exactly famous for its advocacy of human rights — Bush offered this tired and out-of-touch rationale for giving illegal aliens citizenship: “Americans don’t want to pick cotton at 105 degrees, but there are people who want to put food on their family’s tables and are willing to do that. We ought to say thank you and welcome them.”
Seriously, he said that. There may be a grain of truth in that remark, but he should have said “broccoli” instead of “cotton,” because cotton harvesting has been mechanized for more than 80 years.
Tucker Carlson’s assessment of Bush’s remarks hits center mass: “This is the magical world of our elites — people who have never had to worry about how illegal immigrants might affect their kids’ schools, or the crime rates in their gated neighborhoods, or the social cohesion of their communities, because they’re insulated from all of that. Instead, they repeat ‘diversity is our strength’ three times, like a spell, and assume the best will happen. The rest of us, as the former president noted, can say ‘thank you.’”
As respected historian Victor Davis Hanson13 observed regarding Bush’s assertion, “That was an argument of the 19th century slave owner. It’s not a good argument. It’s not ethically on the right side of history.”
And that’s precisely the argument Democrats are making to ensure their most promising future voting constituency. Recall that most slaveholders in the 19th century were Democrats — so this must still be hidden in their platform somewhere!
The issue of whether illegal immigrants are in violation of our nation’s laws14 is settled — they are. The issue of what to do with those who have been here for generations is complex, as noted by President Donald Trump15 in recent weeks. But as the current president endeavors to resolve this issue, which a long list of previous presidents have not, perhaps “W” should keep his cotton-picking opinions to himself. Thank you!
Gerber Underscores the Plight of Down Syndrome Sufferers16
By Jordan Candler
In 2016, Hillary Clinton demeaned her political adversaries — the tens of millions of Americans who would refuse to vote for her — by famously declaring them “deplorables.” Sadly, there’s another group of people the Left not only belittles but considers inhuman and unneeded. In cultural parlance, they’re deemed “abortables.” That term encapsulates many different groups of children — blacks and other minorities, for example, upon whom Planned Parenthood preys, just as its founder intended — but especially babies who will be born with Down syndrome, assuming they’re even afforded the chance of escaping the womb alive. |
