If you’re anything like me, you ducked out of the news a bit over the last few days for Christmas to enjoy time with family and recharge. The good news and the bad news after the holiday is the same: not much has changed. President Obama left town Friday after that afternoon press conference in which his remarks boiled down to “Y’all do the hard work of crafting a deal, Congress, and I’ll be in Hawaii.”
Obama says he is coming back early from vacation to work on a deal.
About half of Americans expect no deal to be struck before the January 1 deadline.
As I’ve written several times now, the Democrats’ incentives to strike a deal are very weak. If no deal is struck, then they get to achieve three of their long-standing goals: Raise taxes, cut defense, and divide Republicans. The last of the three is already well underway. They’ll get to blame Republicans for the first two of their cliff-mas presents.
The fiscal cliff isn’t the only disaster that Congress needs to avert by January 1. If they don’t pass some sort of farm bill, we could still see milk prices spike up past $7 per gallon. Congress could pass a non-larded up bill that just deals with this looming price hike, but so far they’re not.
The massive cut of the defense budget will be probably enough to throw us into the pit of a depression.
So the subversives’ plan to weaken America would finally reach its intended goals.
How about we spend less money on trips back and forth from Hawaii. Obama can tell Boehner “that’s not going to work” over the phone. Have they never heard of “gotomeeting.com?”
The farm supports is to keep the price of milk (and other commodities) artificially high. Originally it was to help family farms, but now, most of the money goes to corporations. If they give us the right to buy and sell locally, and let the market work, the price will set itself.
We don’t need a farm bill. We need debt reduction.
This is at least the third time in my lifetime–1994-5, last year, and now this, that serious governance issues eill arise because *one* man decides he can force a legislature to give him revenues they do not wish too, and is willing to destroy everything to get it. I find this too Imperial for my tastes, too destructive of the idea of a constitutionl republic, too much at war with the entire thrust of Anglo-American history since the ascent of the Stuarts. I can only presume we will continue to have this issue in the future, as one man fights to demand that which he actually could not, electorally, get support for in a recent election. I will also note the House majority of the 1994 Congress continued until 2006, and that of last year’s was retained in the election just past. The people thus did not side with the Chief Executive sufficiently as to throw the objecting party out. Therefore, there is robust support for that legislature’s view, perhaps in simple majority form. And though it is not an absolute perfect system, the fact is that simple majority (or something closely akin to it) is how, at the end of the day, we determine, by and large, who wins in this nation on the “ordinary” issues, and taxes at the Federal level are an “ordinary” issue, not an extraordiary one requiring super-majorities.
The blunt fact is that we heed to decide whether we wish to have taxes determined by legislature, or by Crown. If by Crown, then let us rid ourselves of the legislature. If by legislature, then let us rid ourselves of the Crown, by removing the Presidential veto over revenue bills, especially during the period after an election, and especially after a new House is seated.
Do we wish to be a Republic with the legislature being, at the end of the day, preeminent, or a crypto-monarchy? It is time to finally decide, for we are in fact slowly sliding to the Principate, and we will have more disruptions if we do not resolve the issue. We believe in democracy as the best form of government because we recognize one man can be wrong, and if he holds uncheckable power there is no way to stop the damage. And the President’s power is currently functionally uncheckable, for he has simply decided that he has no intention of ever recognizing the legitimacy of a majority n the House of Reoresentatives if it disagrees with him. Ths, there is no way for non-Democratic Party majority rule to function in the United States under Democratic presidents, as the last two occupants have shown.
It took three hundred and twenty foyr years, but it appears the Stuarts have finally triumphed. I am for a veto on the Legislative branch. I deeply question whether, n this ae of the Imperial Presidency, whether the Executive branch should have that veto.
Bryan, the liberal media will blame the Republicans no matter what transpires.
Shut the place down then.