Tag: Pelosi

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ideological culture national politics & policies Popular

They Aren’t Lying Now?

you lie, Obama, Pelosi, Biden, Congress, Speech,

“You lie!”

When U.S. Representative Joe Wilson (R‑SC) shouted this at President Barack Obama during 2009’s State of the Union — scandal!

How dare he?

At issue was whether federal tax dollars would aid illegal immigrants under Obamacare. Democrats denied that any such thing would happen. Indeed, the very idea constituted a calumny, a mere paranoid Tea Party delusion.

This came to a lot of people’s minds after last week’s televised Democratic Party presidential candidates’ debates. 

On Thursday, all ten on-​stage candidates assented, with hands held proudly high, to giving undocumented aliens free health care. And several from the previous night’s debate are also on record for the same thing, none of them more insistent than Senator Elizabeth Warren, who proclaims that health care is a right.

Democratic opinion leaders now eagerly assert what they took offense at a mere ten years ago. 

There are two very basic things we can learn from this.

First, what politicians say about what they want changes over time.

A decade ago, Democrats took offense when called socialist; now they revel in the term. So what are we to make of Democrats’ current s‑word usage? Now they insist they don’t want to nationalize the means of production — but will they tomorrow?

Second, the debate over immigration is not really between restrictionists and open borders supporters. It is between proponents of restricted immigration, on the one hand, and those who demand subsidized immigration, on the other.

A true open borders policy could look very different from what Democrats now push.

Less socialistic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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you lie, Obama, Pelosi, Biden, Congress, Speech,

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Accountability government transparency

Put the Public in Public Policy

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, secrecy, transparency, negotiations

“Negotiations are impossible without trust,” wrote Leon Panetta in a Washington Post op-​ed.

What with all his experience, Mr. Panetta has some reason to be trusted on his chosen subject, government shutdowns. The California Democrat spent 16 years in the Congress before joining the Clinton Administration as Director of the Office of Management and Budget and later serving as White House Chief of Staff. He was Obama’s first CIA Director and then Secretary of Defense.

But not every one of the sage’s pronouncements passes muster. 

“Never,” he advised, “negotiate in public.” 

He is of course referring to the hilarious chat President Trump had with two Democratic leaders . .  . and a bland, bored, and blank Vice President Pence.

“The talks to avert a shutdown got off to a terrible start,” Panetta argues, “when the president, during an Oval Office meeting with likely incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D‑N.Y.), began arguing his position in front of White House reporters.… In all the negotiations on the budget that I took part in as both House Budget Committee chairman and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, not one took place in front of the media. Public shouting matches usually guarantee failure.”

The implication? That these previous negotiations were “successful.”

To those with careers ensconced in Washington power, they worked out just splendidly, I’m sure. But the aftermath of these private, secretive agreements on the rest of us? It can be quantified: $21 trillion.

In federal debt. 

We do not need more of that “success.”

Let’s put the public back in public policy decisions.  “It’s called transparency,” President Trump said. 

Yes. 

More of that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, secrecy, transparency, negotiations

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Categories
general freedom national politics & policies too much government

The Tyranny Waiver

Democrats filled their 2000-​page healthcare bill — rammed into law despite growing and vehement public opposition — with obscure but costly mandates. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confessed, Congress would have to pass the bill before we could learn what they were. After all, who, including congressmen, had time to actually read and assimilate the monstrosity?

Choke down first, chew later. That was the ordained (if unhealthy) order of things. 

Now we suffer the consequences — at least insofar as we can’t wheedle special exemptions, loopholes, workarounds.

One provision of the new law boosts the minimum annual benefit that companies must include in low-​cost medical insurance plans given to low-​wage employees. Many large employers contend that the new costs would force them to drop many employees from their insurance rolls. (So much for the Obama lie that “if you like the insurance coverage you have now,” you’d be able to keep it under Obamacare.)

Federal officials have blinked on this issue. The Department of Health and Human Services and Disservices is now granting waivers to many organizations so that their workers can retain coverage. McDonald’s and a New York teachers union are among the employers receiving the waivers.

This is such a great idea, let’s expand it! Give waivers to everybody for all the tyrannical provisions of the new law. 

What the heck, distribute waivers for every single tyrannical mandate that governments have ever imposed on us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.