It Really Is About Priorities

I have spent some time in the past week ranting about the cuts to the military pensions included in the budget deal. Every day the news about the deal seems to get a little worse. Today is no exception.

John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line yesterday about another aspect of the budget compromise the Senate will be voting on in the next day or so.

The article explains one aspect of the budget negotiations in the Senate:

Harry Reid runs the Senate with an autocratic hand. One of his favorite tricks is called “filling the tree.” Reid will offer a series of amendments to legislation that “fill the tree,” making it impossible for any Republican amendments to be offered. In this way, Reid prevents Republicans from having any input into legislation and spares Democrats from having to vote against popular Republican initiatives.

Today, Reid filled the amendment tree on the Ryan-Murray budget to foreclose further amendments. Sessions wanted to propose an amendment to the spending bill that would delete the veterans’ benefit cuts and replace them by closing a loophole that allows illegal immigrants to suck billions of dollars out of the treasury.

So what is this loophole and how much does it cost? There is something called the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC). I have written about the ACTC before–rightwinggranny.com and rightwinggranny.com.  A person does not need to have a social security number or pay income taxes in order to receive money under this program. This program is known to be a source of income for people who are in America illegally.

The article reports:

According to a 2011 report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, millions of people without valid Social Security numbers received a total of $4.2 billion in ACTC in 2010 – up from $924 million in 2005. The IRS is expected to issue some $7.4 billion in ACTC payouts this year.

The article concludes:

In order to allow his amendment to be heard, Sessions offered a tabling amendment to get rid of the filled amendment tree. That would have cleared the way for his amendment to be voted on, but the Democrats closed ranks on behalf of illegal immigrants and defeated Sessions’ motion on a nearly straight party line vote. The only Democrat to vote for the motion was Kay Hagan, who is up for re-election next year and evidently didn’t want to have to explain a “no” vote to her constituents.

Prioritizing illegal aliens over military veterans: that tells you all you need to know about the Democratic Party.

It is time to replace every current Congressmen who voted to defeat Jeff Sessions‘ motion. It is a disgrace that Congress would give money to people who are in America illegally before they would honor the promise America made to its soldiers when those soldiers enlisted.

 

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What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

The Weekly Standard reported today on a recent quote by Harry Reid.

The article reports:

Senate majority leader Harry Reid says that “Everybody” is “willing to pay more” taxes. He said so in an interview with a Nevada Public Radio host.

“The only people who feel there shouldn’t be more coming in to the federal government from the rich people are the Republicans in the Congress,” Reid told the radio host, according to Roll Call. “Everybody else, including the rich people, are willing to pay more. They want to pay more.”

Wow. I am not a rich person, but I am part of everybody else, and I have no desire to pay any more taxes than I already pay. Nor do I think anyone, rich or poor should have to pay more taxes until the government learns to spend money more carefully.

Traditionally in America government spending has been about 18 percent of the GDP in taxes. The Obama Administration has increased the amount of spending drastically.

Heritage.org posted the following chart:

The reason for the drop in spending in 2012 is the budget control act. Even if you don’t like sequestration, it is becoming obvious that it does cut government spending.

 

 

 

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The Internal Revenue Service Scandal Raises More Questions Than It Answers

Yesterday’s Daily Caller posted a story that asked the following question:

…could someone at the IRS have leaked Romney’s tax information to Reid? At the time, Reid claimed he learned of Romney’s tax background from someone who had once been an investor in Romney’s firm, though he wouldn’t say who.

The question arises because it has come to light that for the last two years, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been targeting conservative groups and leaking confidential information to liberal groups.

Harry Reid used his position as Senate Majority Leader to level charges at Mitt Romney that would have been impossible to disprove without totally compromising any bit of privacy Governor Romney might have had. In essence, he demanded that Mitt Romney prove a negative. The narrative went something like this:

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Reid claimed he had been called by someone who had invested in Romney’s former firm, Bain Capital. That person said Romney didn’t pay taxes for 10 years.

“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” Reid told the liberal news outlet. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?”

Romney’s campaign denied Reid’s accusations, eventually releasing a summary of the former Massachusetts governor’s taxes that — according to Romney staffers — showed he paid taxes over the last 20 years.

But Reid continued to argue that Romney’s tax returns included something that the Republican didn’t want everyone to see.

“He’s hiding something,” Reid said on a conference call. “He’s hiding something! It is so evident he’s hiding something!”

First of all, I seriously doubt the charges were true. However, since when did investors get to see the tax returns of board members of the companies in which they were investing? If in fact Harry Reid actually knew anything about Mitt Romney’s tax returns, where did he get that information?

Just a note–last year was the first year my husband and I have ever been audited. I am on the membership list of a number of conservative groups that probably have applied for tax exempt status. Hopefully, that is just a coincidence.

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An Interesting Twist In The Budget Saga

Today’s Washington Examiner is reporting that Harry Reid has blocked a vote in the Senate on President Obama’s budget proposal.

The article quotes Senator Reid:

“There is no Geithner proposal,” Reid said. “This is all made up.” Reid’s comment might come as a surprise to Geithner and the reporters who interviewed him over the weekend.

“We laid out a very detailed, carefully designed set of spending, savings and tax changes that help put us on a path offiscal responsibility,” Geithner told Fox NewsChris Wallace on Sunday.

The article concludes:

Tweaking the Democrats from the Senate floor, the Republican leader (Mitch McConnell) said wasn’t surprised they refused to vote on the president’s proposal.

“As I just indicated, it includes a $2 trillion tax increase over 10 years — the biggest real dollar tax increase in U.S. history,” he said. It increases taxes on nearly one million small businesses — in the middle of a jobs crisis.  According to Ernst and Young, this type of rate hike would cause more than 700,000 Americans to lose their jobs. It raises taxes on investment income, harming economic growth even more. It includes tens of billions of dollars in more Washington spending — in a deal to cut the deficit.”

If it was a serious offer, why won’t the Democrats vote on it?

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I Obviously Have Pursued The Wrong Career

National Review Online posted a story today about Harry Reid‘s wealth and some of his investment history. Harry Reid was a law student who worked part time to put himself through law school. He has been a public servant for all be two years of his work history. His current salary is $193,400, basically higher than it has been during his working life. Harry Reid’s current net worth is between 3 and 10 million dollars. Obviously, this man is an investment genius–he should be on Wall Street.

When Harry Reid began his career in the Nevada legislature in 1982, he was worth between 1 and 1 1/2 million dollars.

The article at National Review details some of Senator Reid’s strategies for acquiring wealth. They involve such things as questionable land deals and insider stock trading. The land deals are clearly at the edge of legality; the insider trading, although legal at the time for Congress, is now illegal.

The Democrats have attacked Mitt Romney for being rich. He has been accused of everything from soup to nuts. However, no one is disputing the fact that he made his money honestly through hard work and intelligence. It is also to his credit that he started from scratch–he did not inherit his father’s wealth. It is amazing to me that an honest, successful businessman would be so strongly attacked while the source of the Senate Majority Leader’s wealth is overlooked.

One of the things I would like to see happen in November is to have the voters elect a Congress that is interested in the prosperity of American citizens–not using the office to line Congressional pockets.

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Why Does Anyone Still Listen To This Man ?

Yesterday’s Washington Examiner posted an article about a recent statement by Senator Harry Reid.

Senator Reid stated:

“His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son,” Reid said, in reference to George Romney’s standard-setting decision to turn over 12 years of tax returns when he ran for president in the late 1960s. Saying he had “no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy,” Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.

“Harry, he didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years,” Reid recounted the person as saying.

“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” said Reid. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?

“You guys have said his wealth is $250 million,” Reid went on. “Not a chance in the world. It’s a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don’t pay taxes for 10 years when you’re making millions and millions of dollars.”

There are a number of obvious problems with this statement. First of all, the article asks, “How would an investor in Bain Capital have access to Governor Romney’s tax returns?” Secondly, do you honestly believe that a public figure (as Governor Romney was after the Olympics) who earned the kind of money that Governor Romney earned would not have had his tax returns examined very carefully by the IRS.

The article also reminds us:

And in what Romney has released of his tax returns, he paid $6.2 million in taxes over two years.

This is the lowest form of sleaze so far in the campaign.

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