Harry Reid’s Democratic majority Senate dodges, punts, hides and fails on a budget. Fear? Wimpiness? Deer caught in the headlights?
Senate Democrats’ budget inertia is the equivalent of that guy at the office who hangs his suit jacket on the back of his desk chair so the boss and co-workers think he’s there working, but in fact snuck out and escaped to a matinee.
{mosads}But the bosses are onto him. It has been more than 1,000 days since the Senate passed a budget, with President Obama’s budget failing to secure even a single vote in the Senate, going down in harsh defeat by a 0-99 vote. Similarly, in March the Obama budget tanked in the House, 0-414. Zero in the House. Zero in the Senate. The entire Congress is unanimously opposed to the Obama budget — in an election year. Tax hikes and $6.4 trillion in deficits over the next decade will be greeted like arsenic by voters and Democrats are reluctant to face their constituents back home, forced to defend the disastrous Obama budget.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is now placed in the awkward position of having to press President Obama on a plan to deal with the wolf at the door — spending cuts and tax hikes at the end of the year.
Democrats in Washington — namely Obama and Reid — seem to have learned nothing from the thumping their party took in the 2010 midterm elections, when voters put the GOP in the majority in the House. When Democrats held the trifecta of the White House, Senate and House, they failed miserably. They still control the White House and Senate, leading one to assume they’d be anxious to show some leadership. Strangely, the opposite appears to be true, as members of Congress continue to collect a paycheck while fake-working. But the fake-out is failing, apparently. A new Gallup/USA Today poll shows Americans favoring Republicans in Congress over Democrats by a 50 percent to 43 percent margin on a generic ballot. Yet Democrats forge ahead with draconian, divisive fiscal policies.
Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship in favor of Singapore because that country has no capital gains tax, whereas the United States punishes the successful by taxing investment earnings that have already been taxed once. But rather than taking the big hint that the tax burden is already too weighty and that a hike would be devastating, some Senate Democrats are actually proposing taxing Americans who wish to renounce their citizenship because of the out-of-control government spending that is prompting President Obama and liberals in Washington to put the squeeze on us even more. Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) are proposing a 30 percent capital gains tax to leave the country, specifically in response to Saverin, with the Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy Act. Not since the days of slavery has the nation codified forcing someone to stay in the country against his or her will — or else! Schumer and Casey might not be chaining Saverin to the United States, but they want to force him to pay an astronomical price for his freedom, rather than adopt policies to attract and incentivize the Eduardo Saverins in our midst to remain in the country and continue creating jobs, investing and spending their vast wealth, not to mention giving charitably.
America is the greatest country in the history of the planet — or at least she used to be. Shouldn’t there be an entrance fee, rather than an exit fee? Shouldn’t voters be asking why Washington is failing so miserably on the fiscal front and wondering why our elected officials are not meeting even the minimum job requirements?
Reps. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) and Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), along with a bipartisan group of Washington lawmakers, are pushing for legislation to suspend paying members of Congress if they don’t pass a budget by the deadline. But Reid and Obama seem oblivious to the fact that the presidency, Senate and House are “at will” employment, where the voters have an opportunity to fire them, should they fail to perform even the most basic duties in their job description, as outlined by our Constitution.
With a huge tax hike looming for millions of Americans, the focus will become sharper as the November elections near. The looming disaster will seem more real and right around the corner. President Obama and Harry Reid will rightfully be blamed, along with congressional Democrats.
Jacobus, president of Capitol Strategies PR, has managed congressional campaigns, worked on Capitol Hill and is an adjunct professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. She appears on CNN, MSNBC and FOX News as a GOP strategist.