Democrats shrug off Republicans’ ‘fiscal cliff’ counter

House Republican leaders delivered a $2.2 trillion “fiscal cliff” counteroffer to President Obama on Monday that included $800 billion in tax increases, but the White House and congressional Democrats said that still isn’t enough revenue to begin negotiating.
The GOP outline, which came in a letter from House Speaker John A. Boehner and his top lieutenants to Mr. Obama, called for $900 billion in cuts to projected entitlement spending and would also use a lower inflation measure to calculate future Social Security benefits.
Mr. Boehner told reporters he was trying to craft a middle-ground starting point after the White House last week proposed what he called a “la-la-land offer” that asked for $1.6 trillion in new taxes and up to $400 billion in potential spending cuts.
“That couldn’t pass the House, couldn’t pass the Senate and it was basically the president’s budget from last February,” the Ohio Republican said, referring to legislation that was defeated on unanimous votes in both chambers earlier this year.
The Republicans said they could raise taxes $800 billion by ending loopholes for the wealthy rather than raising their income tax rates, but the White House has insisted most of the new money must come from higher rates.
“The Republican letter released today does not meet the test of balance,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said. “Their plan includes nothing new and provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve.”
He said Mr. Obama “is willing to compromise” but that won’t happen until Republicans “get serious about asking the wealthiest to pay slightly higher tax rates.”
Both sides are rushing ahead of a year-end deadline to avoid across-the-board tax increases and $110 billion in automatic spending cuts, which have been dubbed the fiscal cliff. Together, they would plunge the country into a short, sharp recession, but would leave it in better fiscal and economic shape over the long run, the Congressional Budget Office said.
Lawmakers, though, want to minimize the pain. All sides want to extend the lower tax rates for most Americans, leaving the chief dispute over what happens to the tax cuts for couples making $250,000 or more a year.
The GOP made a major concession Monday when Mr. Boehner and his top House Republican allies said they would be willing to accept $800 billion in new taxes from those high-income taxpayers.
Republican leaders had said they would be willing to consider revenue but had left it vague whether that money would come from real tax increases or from the economic benefits of expanded growth. On Monday, top congressional aides said it would be real revenue under the definitions of the Congressional Budget Office, which is the official scorekeeper for these matters.
The new stance surprised some key Republicans.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, head of the Republican Study Committee caucus, said he did not know that House leaders planned to roll out their framework for averting the fiscal cliff.
“My general reaction is the good news is that it is obviously better than the bullet points the president gave, which was ridiculous,” Mr. Jordan said. “The bad news is that it is a tax increase and I am not going to vote for a tax increase because it hurts economic growth.
“If you are going to lower rates and close loopholes and do genuine tax reform, that is one thing because that contributes to economic growth,” he said. “But if you are going to raise taxes through closing loopholes, deductions, that is not economic growth. That is just a different way to raise taxes.”
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and the man who runs the influential no-new-taxes pledge, had urged the Republicans to hold firm in rejecting any tax increase. An ATR spokesman said the group didn’t have enough details Monday to evaluate the plan.
Much of the debate comes down to whether it’s possible to squeeze $800 billion in revenue out of the wealthy through loopholes alone. Mr. Boehner says it is possible, while Mr. Obama and his allies say it isn’t.
Democrats said until Mr. Boehner agrees to rate increases, nothing can be negotiated.
“Republicans are simply digging in their heels by refusing to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share and actually calling for lower tax rates,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said.
The Republican offer comes five days after Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner met with congressional leaders and laid out broad targets that included $1.6 trillion in new tax increases, and hundreds of billions in new stimulus spending and extended benefits for the unemployed.
Mr. Boehner said the last time he talked personally with Mr. Obama was Wednesday, though the two sides hinted they could talk on the sidelines of the White House holiday ball Monday night.
The GOP plan doesn’t lay out specific tax increases or spending cuts but instead gives broad goals to achieve the $2.2 trillion in lower deficits over the next decade: $800 billion in revenue, $600 billion in lower projected health spending, $300 billion from other entitlements, $200 billion by lowering automatic increases in spending and benefits, and another $300 billion from annual discretionary spending.
The Republicans’ offer says nothing about Mr. Obama’s call for more stimulus spending or about his demand that Congress give up its power to control the federal debt ceiling, which Republicans hope to use to keep an upper limit on spending.
• Susan Crabtree contributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/3/gop-fiscal-cliff-offer-800b-real-tax-increases-22t/#ixzz2E7TcwF00
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS.

At age 76 when you most need it, you are not eligible for cancer
treatment

see page 272



What Nancy Pelosi didn't want us to know until after the healthcare
bill was passed. Remember she said, "pass it and then read
it!!." Here it is!

______________________________

Obama Care Highlighted by Page Number

THE CARE BILL HB 3200


JUDGE KITHIL IS THE 2ND OFFICIAL WHO HAS OUTLINED THESE PARTS OF THE CARE BILL.

Judge Kithil of Marble Falls, TX - highlighted the
most egregious pages
of HB3200

Please read this........ especially
the reference to pages 58 & 59


JUDGE KITHIL wrote:

**
Page 50/section 152: The bill will provide insurance to
all non-U.S. residents, even if they are here illegally.

**
Page 58 and 59: The government will have real-time access to an
individual's bank account and will have the authority to make
electronic fund transfers from those accounts.

**
Page 65/section 164: The plan will be subsidized (by the
government) for all union members, union retirees and for
community organizations (such as the Association
of Community Organizations for Reform Now -
ACORN).

**
Page 203/line 14-15: The tax imposed under this section
will not be treated as a tax. (How could anybody in their
right mind come up with that?)

**
Page 241 and 253: Doctors will all be paid the same
regardless of specialty, and the government will set all
doctors' fees.

**
Page 272. section 1145: Cancer hospital will ration care
according to the patient's age.

**
Page 317 and 321: The government will impose a prohibition on
hospital expansion; however, communities may petition for an
exception.

**
Page 425, line 4-12: The government mandates advance-care
planning consultations. Those on Social Security will be
required to attend an "end-of-life planning" seminar every five
years. (Death counseling..)

**
Page 429, line 13-25: The government will specify
which doctors can write an end-of-life order.


HAD ENOUGH???? Judge Kithil then goes on to identify:

"Finally, it is specifically stated that this bill will not apply to
members of Congress. Members of Congress are already
exempt from the Social Security system, and have a well-funded
private plan that covers their retirement needs. If they were on
our Social Security plan, I believe they would find a very quick
'fix' to make the plan financially sound for their future."

- Honorable
David Kithil of Marble Falls, Texas

UNBELIEVABLE THIEVERY

Obama Daughters are Michelle's 'Senior Staffers'

Michelle was caught cheating on her expense report. What
a show of arrogance!

I guess the Boston Globe and The NY Times forgot to print this.

This information was obtained by Judicial Watch March,
2012. The administration had to be sued to get this through
the FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT.

Michelle Obama listed daughters as 'Senior Staffers' to
justify her expensive African vacation and safari.

October 5, 2011, Judicial Watch said the U.S. Air Force
provided a C-32 ( a Boeing 757 ), modified by the military
for the purpose of flying big-wigs around the world, to fly
the First Lady and her entourage to and from Africa , at a
cost of $424,142. Another $928.44 was listed as ' bulk food'
costs per meal for the 192 on board meals for the 21 people
who made the trip. Lobster ain't cheap when you fly it
around the world.

The Obama daughters were listed on the manifest as
senior staff. 'This trip was as much an opportunity for the
Obama family to go on a safari as it was a trip to conduct
government business,' said Judicial Watch President Tom
Fitton. 'This junket wasted tax dollars and the resources of
our over extended military. No wonder we had to sue to
pry loose this information .' The nation is suffering with the
economy sputtering, the national debt soaring and Obama's
economic rescue policies not only failing, but actively
making things worse.

Meanwhile, the First Lady justifies an expensive trip to
Africa to take a vacation and safari with her daughters by
saying it's 'official business' and even going so far as to list
her children as staffers. The level of arrogance and
dishonesty on display here is nothing short of shocking.
But, er, 'hope for change' and yes we can.

It's a true story. Check out this link and read it yourself:

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-obtains-documents-detailing-the-cost-to-taxpayers-for-michelle-obama-s-family-trip-to-africa/

Former Constitutional Law Lecturer and U.S. President Makes Up Constitutional Quotes During State Of The Union (SOTU) Address.

Consider this:

1. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a "lawyer". He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application. A "Voluntary Surrender" is not something where you decide "Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?" and forget to renew your license. No, a "Voluntary Surrender" is something you do when you've been accused of something, and you 'voluntarily surrender" your license five seconds before the state suspends you.

2 Michelle Obama "voluntarily surrendered" her law license in 1993. after a Federal Judge gave her the choice between surrendering her license or standing trial for Insurance fraud!

3. So, we have the first black President and First Lady - who don't actually have licenses to practice law. Facts.
Source: http://jdlong.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/pres-barack-obama-editor-of-the-Harvard-law-review-has-no-law-license/

4. A senior lecturer is one thing, a fully ranked law professor is another. Barack Obama was NOT a Constitutional Law Professor at the University of Chicago.

5. The University of Chicago released a statement in March 2008 saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) "served as a professor" in the law school-but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed in 2008.

6. "He did not hold the title of Professor of Law," said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law.

Source: http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/03/sweet_obama_did_hold_the_title.html ;

7. The former Constitutional Senior Lecturer (Obama) cited the U.S. Constitution the other night during his State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from the Declaration of Independence ... not the Constitution.

8. The B-Cast posted the video: http://www.breitbart.tv/did-obama-confuse-the-constitution-with-the-declaration-of-independence/

9. Free Republic: In the State of the Union Address, President Obama said: "We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal.

10. Um, wrong citing, wrong founding document there Champ, I mean Mr. President. By the way, the promises are not a notion, our founders named them unalienable rights. The document is our Declaration of Independence and it reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

11. And this is the same guy who lectured the Supreme Court moments later in the same speech?

When you are a phony it's hard to keep facts straight.

SIMPLY AMAZING WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT!

Isn't it amazing that, within only one week of Tiger Woods crashing his Escalade,

The press found every woman with whom Tiger has had an affair during the last few years?

And, they even uncovered photos, text messages, recorded phone calls, etc.!

Furthermore, they not only know the cause of the family fight, but they even know it was a

9 iron from his golf bag that his wife used to break out the windows in the Escalade.

Not only that, they know which wedge!

And, each & every day, they were able to continue to provide America with updates

On Tiger's sex rehab stay, his wife's divorce settlement figures, as well as the dates &

Tournaments in which he will play.

Now, Barack Hussein Obama has been in office for almost three years, yet this very same press:

Cannot find any of his childhood friends or neighbors;

Or find any of Obama's high school or college classmates;

Or locate any of his college papers or grades

Or determine how he paid for both a Columbia & a Harvard education;

Or discover which country issued his visa to travel to Pakistan in the 1980's;

Or even find Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis on racism.

They just can't seem to uncover any of this.

Yet, the public still trusts that same press to give them the whole truth!

Don't you find that totally amazing ?

NOW TELL ME THERE IS NO CORRUPTION IN THE AMERICAN PRESS. . .. . .

You cannot get the water to clear up until you get the pigs out of the creek

Trump Explains Dumbo Care

No one can sum it up better than Trump

Let me get this straight . . .
We're going to be "gifted" with a health care
plan we are forced to purchase and
fined if we don't,
Which purportedly covers at least
ten million more people,
without adding a single new doctor,
but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents,
written by a committee whose chairman
says he doesn't understand it,
passed by a Congress that didn't read it but
exempted themselves from it,
and signed by a Dumbo President who smokes,
with funding administered by a treasury chief who
didn't pay his taxes,
for which we'll be taxed for four years before any
benefits take effect,
by a government which has
already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare,
all to be overseen by a surgeon general
who is obese,
and financed by a country that's broke!!!!!
'What could possibly go wrong?'

Parker: Obama's Fairness Obsession

Parker: Obama's Fairness Obsession
By Star Parker April 16, 2012 6:55 am


Give credit where credit is due. President Obama has laid out the core message of his reelection campaign. It is a message whose claims are blatantly false and whose point is irrelevant to what is of greatest challenges we face. Yet it appears to be working.

In his speech at Florida Atlantic University last Tuesday, the president discussed what he called "the defining issue of our time" -- namely, that America is not fair.

We suffer today, he says, from "a shrinking number of people who are doing really, really well, but a growing number who are struggling to get by." We are not a nation (the president never tells us if we ever were) where "everybody gets a fair shot and everybody does a fair share, and everybody plays by the same set of rules."

Excuse me for pointing out the irony of hearing from our nation's first black president the suggestion that America may no longer be a nation where dreams can be realized or where someone can come out of nowhere and make it.

Obama probably would explain his unlikely success in this unfair nation as the result of his being an exceptional and extraordinary individual. Which is why, by his thinking, we ordinary folk should turn our lives over to him to determine who should have what.

But if America is unfair today, it is because politicians and government have the power to do exactly what it is that Mr. Obama wants to do -- seize control of the wealth of some and redistribute it to whomever they choose. The Bible that I read every day calls this theft.

The president seeks to gain political support for this redistribution of wealth by tapping into the widespread dissatisfaction with our most disappointing economy. But is our economy under-performing because some have more than others, or because some succeed more than others?

At a time when Americans are looking for answers to restart our sputtering economy, our president chooses to use his time complaining about the wealthiest not paying sufficient taxes.

But according to the National Taxpayers Union, in 2009 the top 5 percent of income earners paid almost 60 percent of the funds raised by the federal income tax and the bottom 50 percent paid about 2 percent.

In the president's remarks in Florida, he defined fairness as everybody playing by "the same set of rules." Not only are the tax rules not fair by the president's definition, but in the name of alleged fairness he wants to make them even more unfair.

Of course, the president's real problem is that his policies have failed so he has to change the subject. He told us that the almost $900 billion in stimulus spending passed in 2009 would revive our economy and reduce unemployment to 6 percent. Three years later, unemployment stands at 8.2 percent.

There is no evidence that Obama has a clue about what why we are not on the path to recovery. But, unfortunately, he does have a clue about how to tap into the worst instincts of people in order to garner political support. Sadly, he hopes to reap the political dividends of inspiring blame and envy.

The fairness the president obsesses about has nothing to do with fairness, nor does it have anything to do with fixing our economy. If he really wants guidance on a fair and moral tax system, he might turn away from his campaign spin machine and look to his Bible. He can learn there that the 10 percent tithe on income applies to everyone.