Paul Ryan's 2013 Budget Slammed By Democrats! Path To Prosperity Or Poverty? Gov't Dependency Or Entrepreneurship?

Durbin slams Paul Ryan budget plan

The number two Democrat in the Senate said Wednesday that Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposal is "not a balanced approach" and would unfairly hurt senior citizens with it dramatic changes to Medicare.

"His budget refuses to imposes any new taxes on the wealthiest people in America. In fact, it cuts their taxes even more," Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said in an interview with "CBS This Morning."

"And to achieve it, it makes dramatic cuts in Medicare, in Medicaid and in programs that people count on for the basic safety net in America. It is not a balanced approach. Unfortunately it reflects where his party is today," Durbin said.

Ryan on Tuesday unveiled his his 2013 budget proposal, which includes an overhaul of the tax code that would leave just two individual tax brackets: 10 percent and 25 percent as well as revision of a proposal from a year ago to dramatically overhaul Medicare.

Ryan's plan is unlikely to become law, but is intended to provide a simple message for Republicans in an election year.

"Paul Ryan wants to privatize Medicare. At the end of the day, those seniors who are not healthy and can't buy health insurance today will find it almost impossible to do so under Paul Ryan's plan," Durbin said.





GOP budget sets up competing visions for 2012 candidates

House Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's proposed 2013 budget has essentially no chance of becoming law, but that doesn't mean it doesn't serve a purpose: The proposed budget draws a clear dividing line between Democrats and Republicans ahead of this year's presidential election.

Upon unveiling his budget today, Ryan said he "absolutely" expects the eventual presidential nominee from his party to get behind his budget proposal, despite its potential political landmines, most notable his proposed changes to Medicare.

In addition to adding a private insurance option for seniors using Medicare, Ryan's budget also overhauls the tax code and would create just two income tax brackets, 25 percent and 10 percent. Ryan said today his budget would balance the budget by 2040, putting the nation on the track to prosperity.

"We are sharpening the contrast between the path that we are proposing and the path to debt and decline that the president has placed us upon," Ryan said today. "And, yes, we do believe that our nominee, whoever this person is going to be, is gonna be perfectly consistent with this."

"I've spoken to all these guys," he added. "And they believe that we are heading in the right direction."

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told CBS News he applauds Ryan and his House colleagues "for taking a bold step toward putting our nation back on the track to fiscal sanity and robust economic growth." The plan, he said, will "strengthen Medicare for generations to come" and shares Romney's goals of cutting taxes, reforming the tax code, reducing spending and tackling the debt.

Newt Gingrich called the Ryan budget "a courageous plan that correctly understands the key to returning to a balanced budget is robust economic growth, spending control and bold entitlement reform." He said his plan to grow the economy and balance the budget "differs in details but shares the same core principles."

At least one Republican presidential candidate, however -- libertarian Rep. Ron Paul -- says Ryan's budget doesn't actually go far enough. Paul, whose budget plan would make $1 trillion in cuts in one year, said in a statement that Ryan's plan is "essentially playing the same game the Washington establishment has played for years with our hard-earned money."

While it may seem like politics-as-usual to Paul, Democrats are already casting Ryan's budget as too extreme. The congressman's 2013 plan is sure to face the same fate as his 2012 budget: It was approved by the GOP-led House but was flatly dismissed by the Democratic-led Senate and President Obama. Democrats seized on the proposals in the budget to accuse Republicans ending Medicare. In a presidential election year, the criticism is almost certain to be louder.

The White House today blasted Ryan's plan, in part because they said its tax breaks "would be paid for by undermining Medicare and the very things we need to grow our economy and the middle class - things like education, basic research, and new sources of energy."

But rather than shy away from those fights, Ryan has made clear in the past week that Republicans are ready to embrace them. The budget chairman released two campaign-like videos in the days before releasing his budget, telling Americans they have a choice to make about the nation's future.

"Will it be a future that looks like the America we know?" Ryan says in a video released Monday, over ominous music. "One of greater opportunity, greater prosperity, or more of what we're seeing today: debt, doubt and decline."

While he may not win over the full Congress with his plan, Ryan at least wants to make his case to the voters and perhaps give his party a boost in November. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, was at Ryan's side today to praise his plan and promise similar plans if Republicans win back the Senate this year. He excoriated Senate Democrats for failing to put forward their own budget.
"The Senate's Democratic majority has forfeited their claim to leadership for America," Sessions said. "If the voters give the Republicans in the Senate the honor of having the majority and the leadership, we will work with the House to pass a congressional budget. It will be an honest budget. It will change the debt course of America."

Mr. Obama has similarly put forward proposals this year he aims to make part of his re-election pitch, even though they were dead-on-arrival in Congress. Facing the prospect of more GOP resistance this year, the president's re-election team released their own 17-minute video -- albeit with a lot more theatrics, complete with narration by Tom Hanks -- touting the president's accomplishments.


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Obama May Lose Liberal Base Support Over Tax Cuts Deal

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Obama Faces Liberal Revolt Over Tax Cut Deal


The battle over extending the Bush-era tax cuts has emerged as a defining moment for liberals disenchanted with President Obama, who they increasingly see as unwilling or unable to back up his campaign promises.

Mr. Obama vowed as a candidate to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for incomes below $250,000 for a couple or $200,000 for an individual - but let the cuts, which lapse at the end of the year, expire for incomes above those thresholds.

Republicans want the cuts extended for all income levels, including the wealthiest Americans. Though the American people favor Mr. Obama's position according to the latest CBS News poll, the White House and congressional Democrats appear poised to accept a temporary extension of all of the cuts this week.

The White House's apparent willingness to give in to the GOP on the tax cut issue - despite Democrats' large majorities in both houses of Congress (at least for a few more weeks) - is striking many on the left as emblematic of a president who they say has repeatedly failed to fight for what he believes in.

Liberal New York Times columnist Frank Rich this weekend explained "the baffling Obama presidency" in part by arguing that Mr. Obama "has seemingly surrendered his once-considerable abilities to act, decide or think." The president's attempts to seek out compromise instead of holding fast to a position, he wrote, has rendered him "indistinct" and "weightless."

Over at the liberal Huffington Post, meanwhile, the talk has turned to rallying around a serious primary challenge to Mr. Obama. While such a challenge is unlikely to materialize, the discussion reflects the level of disenchantment with Mr. Obama among the activist left.

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist nor have a PhD in political science and sociology to see clearly that Obama has abandoned much of the base that elected him," wrote Clarence B. Jones Sunday in a column calling on liberals to consider rallying around someone else in 2012. "He has done this because he no longer respects, fears or believes those persons who elected him have any alternative, but to accept what he does, whether they like it or not."

Daniel Roche, a 2008 Deputy Field Organizer in Nevada for Mr. Obama, is quoted in an email from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee saying that if the president "capitulates on this, there really is no point in voting for him in 2012."

"The difference between voting for a Republican and voting for someone whose default negotiation strategy is rolling over and dying whenever the Republican Party says mean things is marginal," he said. "This should be a ridiculously easy fight to win."

For liberals, the first half of Mr. Obama's term has been a long and so-far unfulfilled wait for something to rally around. The so-called "public option" never made it into the health care bill; "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" remains as military policy; immigration reform efforts have barely moved forward; the Guantanamo Bay prison facility remains open. Now comes the fight over the Bush-era tax cuts, which, barring a surprise outcome, marks one more disappointment for those who want to see the president fight for what he believes in.

"Like the public option, which enjoyed similar bipartisan consensus among voters, progressives are pushing President Obama to fight for both a policy winner and a political winner," Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said. "...President Obama has shown a complete refusal to fight Republicans throughout his presidency even when the public is on his side -- and millions of his former supporters are now growing disappointed and infuriated by this refusal to fight. Obama is demobilizing the troops and demoralizing the public right before he seeks re-election."

What liberals want to see is for Mr. Obama to stand firm on the issue, in part by arguing (perhaps in a holiday primetime address) that an America drowning in debt can't afford to give a handout to the richest Americans. As the Times noted Sunday, the $60 billion per year that would be saved by not extending the cuts for high earners would save as much as the elimination of earmarks, a federal pay freeze, a ten percent cut in the federal workforce and a 50 percent cut in foreign aid - combined.

From the White House's perspective, however, drawing the ire of what Robert Gibbs once dismissed as the "professional left" may well be worth it. The Republicans, after all, hold most of the cards: With the help of a handful of Democrats and the filibuster rule, they can (and have) blocked Senate Democrats' efforts to extend the cuts only for those making less than $250,000 (or, in a separate vote, less than $1 million). Lacking the votes to push through their position through the Senate, the White House and Democrats are left to either let the cuts expire for all Americans - which they see as bad for the economy, not to mention potential political suicide - or accept the GOP's terms, at least for a year or two.

And, the White House is stressing to reporters, it's not like they won't get anything for their trouble: The deal being negotiated between the White House and members of Congress will likely include a vote on extending long-term unemployment benefits (which expired last week) as well as some tax cuts important to the White House. The negotiation reflects the compromise necessary to get things done in Washington, they argue (behind closed doors, anyway) - and what's so bad about acknowledging political reality?

According to liberal Times columnist Paul Krugman, what's so bad is that Mr. Obama is essentially giving into GOP blackmail - and "if Democrats give in to the blackmailers now, they'll just face more demands in the future."

"So Mr. Obama should draw a line in the sand, right here, right now," he writes in his column today. "If Republicans hold out, and taxes go up, he should tell the nation the truth, and denounce the blackmail attempt for what it is. Yes, letting taxes go up would be politically risky. But giving in would be risky, too -- especially for a president whom voters are starting to write off as a man too timid to take a stand."

Such a potentially cathartic move would indeed be high risk, however - another promise Mr. Obama made during the campaign was not to raise taxes on the middle class. Republicans have been effective in blaming Democratic policies for the still-struggling economy, and while it's hard to know exactly how it would play politically if Mr. Obama let taxes for everyone rise, it's clear the GOP would aggressively cast the situation as the latest example of financial mismanagement by the party in power. The GOP is the stronger force in American politics at the moment, and it can be particularly difficult to enter a duel when it feels like the other side has all the momentum.

And despite the criticism from the "professional left," the White House knows that the perceptions of pundits like Krugman and Rich don't necessarily translate to the general public. According to the latest NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, 90 percent of blacks still approve of the president, as do 82 percent of Democrats and 79 percent of liberals. That's not exactly the numbers one might expect for a man whom voters - at least in the Democratic base - "are starting to write off."

Still, there is a danger in the opinions of so-called "opinion makers" eventually trickling down to the general public. In his column Sunday, Rich compared Mr. Obama to Republican New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is popular in his state despite its blue tint. (It should be noted that Christie has more executive control than Mr. Obama does, which makes it easier to stick to your guns.)

"...the core of Christie's appeal at home is that he explains passionately held views in concrete, plain-spoken detail," he writes. "Voters know what he stands for and sometimes respect him for his forthrightness even when they reject the stands themselves."

That's a quality sorely lacking in Mr. Obama, Rich and others say - even when he has the public on his side. And, they say, it has fed into the notion that the president is a wishy-washy Washington politician instead of a true champion of the middle class.

Perception is not necessarily reality, of course. The White House can point to financial reform, the health care bill, and the stimulus package as important liberal achievements, and Mr. Obama said even as he made his campaign promises that he was open to compromise in order to move forward. But for a president who has over the course of two years yet to deliver a single clear victory for the Democratic base that got him elected, the debate over tax cuts looks like the latest in a string of missed opportunities.


Sources: CBS News, CNN, Meet The Press, MSNBC, Youtube

Dems Still Lack Votes For Obama's Health Care Take Over

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Health care Bill Heads For Make-or-Break Week


The House's chief Democratic headcounter said Sunday he hadn't rounded up enough votes to pass President Barack Obama's health care overhaul heading into a make-or-break week, even as the White House's top political adviser said he was "absolutely confident" in its prospects.

The administration gave signs of retreating on demands that senators jettison special home-state deals sought by individual lawmakers that have angered the public.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs predicted House passage this week, before Obama travels to Asia, a trip he postponed to push for the bill.

"This is the week where we will have this important vote," Gibbs said. "I do think this is the climactic week for health care reform."

Political strategist David Axelrod said Democrats will persuade enough lawmakers to vote "yes." The House GOP leader, Ohio Rep. John Boehner, took up the challenge, acknowledging Republicans alone can't stop the measure, but pledging to do "everything we can to make it difficult for them, if not impossible, to pass the bill." Republicans believe they may get help from Democrats facing tough re-election campaigns.

Axelrod said it will be a struggle, taking aim at insurance industry lobbyists who "have landed on Capitol Hill like locusts" and Republicans who see being on the losing side of the vote as a political victory.

"I am absolutely confident that we are going to be successful. I believe that there is a sense of urgency on the part of members of Congress," given recent news about insurance plan rate increases, Axelrod said.

‘Working this thing all weekend’

A dose of reality came from Rep. James Clyburn, the third-ranking House Democrat and main vote counter. "No, we don't have them as of this morning, but we've been working this thing all weekend," said Clyburn, D-S.C.

Clyburn said he was confident the measure would pass, echoing comments from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Saturday.

Axelrod also indicated the White House was backing down on an attempt to get senators to rid the legislation of a number of lawmakers' special deals.

Taking a new position, he said the White House only objects to state-specific arrangements, such as an increase in Medicaid funding for Nebraska, ridiculed as the "Cornhusker Kickback." That's being cut, but provisions that could affect more than one state are OK, Axelrod said.

That means that deals sought by senators from Montana and Connecticut would be fine — even though Gibbs last week singled them out as items Obama wanted removed. There was resistance, however, from two powerful committee chairman, Democratic Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and the White House has apparently backed down.

"The principle that we want to apply is that are these — are these applicable to all states? Even if they do not qualify now, would they qualify under certain sets of circumstances," Axelrod said.

That's the argument made by aides to Baucus and Dodd. The measure to give Medicare coverage to asbestos-sickened residents of Libby, Mont., could apply to other places where public health emergencies are declared — even though Libby is the only place where that's happened so far. Dodd's deal would leave it up to the health secretary to decide where to spend $100 million for construction of a hospital, though Dodd has made clear he hopes the University of Connecticut would be the beneficiary.

Trying to increase public pressure on Congress to pass the legislation, Obama planned to travel on Monday to Strongsville, Ohio, the home of cancer patient Natoma Canfield, who wrote the president that she gave up her health insurance premium after it rose to $8,500 a year. Canfield is a self-employed cleaning worker who lives in the Cleveland suburb.

Gibbs said she had to decide between keeping her health insurance or her house, and chose to keep her house.

‘A couple of Republican bread crumbs’

Boehner said Democrats never made a serious attempt to incorporate GOP ideas in the measure, saying they took only "a couple of Republican bread crumbs and put them on top of their 2,700-page bill."

The legislation would provide health insurance to tens of millions who currently have none and would ban insurance companies from denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions. It would require most people to obtain insurance and would subsidize premiums for poor and middle-income Americans.

The health care bill appeared close to passage in January, before Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts special election to fill the seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy, which cost the Democrats a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Since then, the White House and Democrats have tried to rescue the effort. Besides Republican opposition, Democrats still are face resistance in their own party from anti-abortion lawmakers worried about how and whether insurance plans should pay for abortions. The bill needs 216 votes to clear the House.

Axelrod was on ABC's "This Week," NBC's "Meet the Press," and CNN's "State of the Union." Gibbs appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and CBS' "Face the Nation." Clyburn was on NBC and Boehner on CNN.


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Obama's Closing Gitmo Plan Hits A Financial Speed Bump

Plan To Move Guantánamo Detainees Faces New Delay


Rebuffed this month by skeptical lawmakers when it sought finances to buy a prison in rural Illinois, the Obama administration is struggling to come up with the money to replace the Guantánamo Bay prison.

As a result, officials now believe that they are unlikely to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and transfer its population of terrorism suspects until 2011 at the earliest — a far slower timeline for achieving one of President Obama’s signature national security policies than they had previously hinted.

While Mr. Obama has acknowledged that he would miss the Jan. 22 deadline for closing the prison that he set shortly after taking office, the administration appeared to take a major step forward last week when he directed subordinates to move “as expeditiously as possible” to acquire the Thomson Correctional Center, a nearly vacant maximum-security Illinois prison, and to retrofit it to receive Guantánamo detainees.

But in interviews this week, officials estimated that it could take 8 to 10 months to install new fencing, towers, cameras and other security upgrades before any transfers take place. Such construction cannot begin until the federal government buys the prison from the State of Illinois.

The federal Bureau of Prisons does not have enough money to pay Illinois for the center, which would cost about $150 million. Several weeks ago, the White House approached the House Appropriations Committee and floated the idea of adding about $200 million for the project to the military spending bill for the 2010 fiscal year, according to administration and Congressional officials.

But Democratic leaders refused to include the politically charged measure in the legislation. When lawmakers approved the bill on Dec. 19, it contained no financing for Thomson.

The administration will probably not have another opportunity until Congress takes up a supplemental appropriations bill for the Afghanistan war. Lawmakers are not likely to finish that bill until late March or April.

Moreover, the administration now says that the current focus for Thomson financing is the appropriations legislation for the 2011 fiscal year. Congress will not take that measure up until late 2010.

Frustrated by the difficulties in obtaining financing from Congress, administration officials had discussed invoking a little-known statute that would allow the president to declare a national emergency and then use military funds allocated for other construction projects to buy and retrofit the Illinois prison.

That statute, however, has never been used for a project quite like this one. Fearing that lawmakers would be angered by such a move and could respond by erasing the statute, the administration decided not to invoke it.

Matthew Waxman, who was assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs in the Bush administration, said the Obama administration would need lawmakers’ support for its long-term post-Guantánamo plans. Invoking emergency powers to unilaterally buy Thomson, he said, would be “poking Congress in the eye in a way that would be very counterproductive.”

Still, it is not clear that Congress will be willing to approve money enabling the transfer of Guantánamo detainees to domestic soil — especially as the 2010 midterm election campaign heats up, with the likelihood that Republicans will pick up seats.

This year, Congress restricted the ability of the executive branch to transfer detainees into domestic prisons, a ban reiterated in the 2010 military appropriations bill.

The Thomson proposal enjoys strong support from Illinois Democrats, including Gov. Patrick J. Quinn and Senator Richard J. Durbin, who have hailed the idea as a means of creating jobs. More than 300 people turned out Tuesday in Sterling, Ill., for a hearing on the proposal, The Associated Press reported, and emotions ran high among people on each side of the proposal.

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The White House has argued that closing Guantánamo would enhance national security by removing a symbol used by terrorist recruiters. It also said the closing would save taxpayers money because the Defense Department pays $150 million a year to operate the Guantánamo prison on the naval base there, while running the Illinois prison would cost $75 million.

Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Obama remained committed to closing the Guantánamo prison, adding, “We will continue to work with Congress to ensure that we secure the necessary funds to purchase and upgrade the Thomson prison, which will operate at a substantially lower cost to taxpayers, next year.”

But many Republicans oppose closing Guantánamo, arguing that housing the detainees on United States soil would create unnecessary security risks. Some crucial moderate Democrats are also skeptical.

Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is said to have privately expressed doubts to administration officials about the plan. Another member of that committee, Representative Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of California, also raised security and legal questions about the proposal.

“Particularly making something on U.S. soil an attraction for Al Qaeda and terrorists to go after — inciting them to attack something on U.S. soil — that’s a problem, and we need to think it through,” Ms. Sanchez said in an interview Tuesday.

In the Senate, Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, has argued that the problem with Guantánamo has been its lack of due process rights, not its physical location. He said recently that terrorism suspects “do not belong in our country, they do not belong in our courts, and they do not belong in our prisons.”

Mr. LaBolt pointed out that the detainee population was now smaller than it had been at any time since 2002, and that on other fronts in the effort to close Guantánamo, “substantial progress has been made in recent weeks.”

For example, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. recently announced the first sets of civilian and military prosecutions for 10 detainees, and more such announcements are expected soon.

Last week, the United States transferred six detainees to Yemen in a trial program of repatriation to that country. About 91 of the roughly 200 detainees at Guantánamo are Yemeni; many are not considered “high value” suspects, but officials have been reluctant to repatriate them because of security conditions in Yemen.

Still, Congressional resistance to approving money for Thomson represents a steep hurdle toward dealing with the detainees who the administration has decided can neither be prosecuted nor safely transferred to the custody of other countries.

Indeed, Mr. Waxman said, the debate is certain to set off discussions on an issue that could drive away many civil-liberties-minded Democrats who have voiced initial support for Mr. Obama’s Thomson plan: the administration’s intention to imprison some detainees on United States soil without trials. “Some members of Congress may want to support rapid closure of Guantánamo but not to signal support for broad military detention powers,” Mr. Waxman said.



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Sen. Durbin Skeptical About Obama's Afghan Exit Strategy

Dick Durbin Won't Commit To Support Budget For Afghanistan


One of President Barack Obama's closest allies in the Senate would not commit on Sunday to voting in favor of the proposed surge of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, saying he had outstanding questions about how serious the administration was about its withdrawal timeline.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told Fox News Sunday that he was "skeptical as to whether 30,000 more troops will make a difference," noting that there were now "over 200,000" troops in the country, when counting those from NATO, the Afghan army and the United States.

Asked specifically if he would vote in favor of a budget to pay for the additional troops that the president -- his one-time Senate colleague -- has requested, Durbin merely said he would make up his mind after more consultations.

"I will meet with the president...and have conversations about that deadline which appears to be interpreted different ways by different people. But I would like to believe that by July of 2011 that we will be in a position where we are going to see our troops really coming home," said the Illinois Democrat.

"The thing that I find encouraging, you probably find discouraging," Durbin earlier told host Chris Wallace. "And that is the fact that he has said to the leader of Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai; 'There is a limit beyond which we will not leave American troops. We are not going to make Afghanistan a protector of the United States. You have to change your government. You have to show that you are willing to stand up and fight for your own country.' I think that message is long overdue."






Clinton, Gates Walk Back Obama's "Locked In" Afghan Withdrawal

Despite the president's commitment on Tuesday that a surge of US and international troops in Afghanistan would "allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011," that date is not a "drop dead deadline"--at least according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates recorded an interview with David Gregory that's set to air Sunday on NBC's Meet The Press. Both Clinton and Gates contradicted Obama's withdrawal language:

HILLARY CLINTON: We're not talking about an exit strategy or a drop dead deadline. What we're talking about is an assessment that in January 2011, we can begin a transition. A transition to hand off -- responsibility to the Afghan forces.


ROBERT GATES: We're not talking about an abrupt withdrawal. We're talking about something that will take place over a period of time.... Our military thinks we have a real opportunity to do that. And it's not just in the next 18 months. Because we will have a significant -- we will have 100,000 forces -- troops there. And they are not leaving-- in July of 2011. Some handful or some small number or whatever the conditions permit, we'll begin to withdraw at that time.

After the president's speech, CBS News's Chip Reid sought clarification as to whether July 2011 was a "target" or a deadline and asked Obama's Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the date. Reid reported that Gibbs then called him to his office "to relate what the president said. The president told him it IS locked in - there is no flexibility. Troops WILL start coming home in July 2011. Period. It's etched in stone. Gibbs said he even had the chisel."



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