BUDGET BROUHAHA

Do you live within your budget?  Do you quadruple spending to stay on budget?

Congress is mandated by law to give Americans a budget.  So why are we budget-less after over 1,000 days?  Sunday Jack Lew was on the talk shows and explained the reason we don't have a budget.

Mr. Lew said "We need to be honest.  You can't pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can't get 60 votes without bipartisan support.  So unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed."  Please note Mr. Lew repeated the figure of 60 votes twice.

Here are some good questions:

1.  Did you say we need to be honest, Mr. Lew?  Are we to believe the President's Chief of Staff is unaware of budget reconciliation, the process that does not require 60 votes, but only a simple majority?  The budget reconciliation process was designed ESPECIALLY to streamline the budget process. They gave it a simple majority vote and filibuster-proof design because they knew pettifogging is a sport in Washington.   click here

2.  Who is Jack Lew, anyway?  Maybe he's a novice that is growing into his new position as Chief of Staff.  No.  The President found Jack Lew over at OMB; he was the Director.  Mr. Lew also served as President Clinton's Budget Director.  Ironic?  The Office of Management and Budget's top man... the President's #1 budget number-cruncher...gets the numbers wrong.  Of course the other option would be that Mr. Lew did not tell the truth.  Neither option is particularly savory.   click here 

3.  Do Americans realize that there are FIFTY-THREE Democrats in the Senate?  The Senate actually could pass a reconciliation resolution with a simple majority.  So if the problem is not the GOP, then what IS the problem?  We remember last year's vote on President Obama's proposed budget.  It was 97-0.  Both parties were "agin'-ers" because the proposed budget was ridiculous.

Out of the President's mouth comes a 2009 promise to cut the deficit in half, yet it takes multiple wheelbarrows to carry all the subsequent deficit- spending proposals.  Today's faux budget offered by the President cuts an insignificant amount and adds to the deficit and raises taxes.  His words don't match his actions.

This discussion makes my stomach roll because there is so much posing.  Yet as unsettling as this brouhaha may be, the REAL threatening information in the Jack Lew interview came later in the interview.

You may remember the President tried an end run around the Catholic church, telling them they must provide services contrary to their belief system.  Somehow the President forgot the First Amendment words "Congress shall pass no law impeding the free exercise of religion".  Thwarted, he turned his guns on the insurance industry as a "compromise".

BY WHAT AUTHORITY does the President tell private companies what services that they must offer for free?  Listen to Jack Lew tell us.  click here  In this clip he says that the President's authority comes from the Affordable Care Act mandate (Obamacare).

It shouldn't.  The executive branch does not get to use my money to excoriate my conscience, nor it does it get to demand that private industry give away their product.  The President's unconstitutional power grab must be repealed.