Government Shutdown

Speaker John Boehner’s Constitutional Responsibility Comes Before Partisanship!

Ronald 3 Comments

Speaker of the House John Boehner needs to be a profile in courage, a man with “cajones”, as the crisis over the budget reaches its peak, and default on the debt is possible by mid October.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives is, first and foremost, a constitutional officer, and under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, he is second in line, two heartbeats away, from the Presidency.

That is his most important role, more than being a partisan leader of his party, and it is essential, accepted, and mandated that he do NOTHING to cause the “good faith and credit” of the United States government to be harmed, or for the creation of an economic collapse that could harm all of the American people!

So it is time to stop playing games, and for Speaker Boehner to refuse to allow the Tea Party whackos, who are basically domestic terrorists taking America hostage, from stopping the necessary actions to avoid a government shutdown and, later, a reneging on the raising of the debt limit!

He must work with those responsible Republicans, and with Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader and her party, to gain the majority vote to resolve both of these crises, and to hell with the right wing lunatics who do not care about anything but their sick, demented ideology!

And if that leads to his party in the House of Representatives to depose him as Speaker, so be it, as he will look great in history for having taken the responsible, sane stand on his duty as top ranking federal official after the President and Vice President!

This situation would never have occurred under Sam Rayburn during the Eisenhower Administration; under John McCormack or Carl Albert during the Nixon and Ford Administrations; and Thomas “Tip” O’Neill during the Reagan Administration, and it MUST NOT be allowed to hold America in a reckless grab for power by an anarchistic group which is controlled by powerful special interests, including the Koch Brothers!

Mr. Speaker, do what you need to do, and you will leave office with your head held high!

Lunatic Ted Cruz Declares War On The Federal Government And His Own Republican Colleagues On ObamaCare!

Ronald 36 Comments

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the Joseph McCarthy rabble rouser of his time, with a weird resemblance in appearance to the Wisconsin Senator who terrorized the nation and his party 60 years ago, has declared war on the federal government and his own Republican colleagues over ObamaCare!

He and the head of the Heritage Foundation, former Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, have made it clear that the extreme right wing will not “blink” at shutting down the federal government at the budget deadline on September 30, preventing any government payments unless ObamaCare, which is federal law, is defunded. The rhetoric is as if this is the Cuban Missile Crisis, and there is no concern at the effect such a shutdown would have on the US economically, and the image of America in the world, if it is shown as paralyzed and unable to pay debts already incurred.

Cruz, a very dangerous man, is showing himself to be a lunatic, a crazy man, in many ways a domestic “terrorist”, ready to cause total chaos and anarchy if he and Jim DeMint and the Tea Party Movement crowd do not get their way on ObamaCare, which will NOT be defunded, as the Senate and President Barack Obama will never agree to end what is federal law by a majority of both houses of Congress, and endorsed as constitutional by the US Supreme Court!

But meanwhile, Cruz and DeMint are threatening all Republican Senators and Congressmen who dare to have a rational mind, and who will be unwilling to join the right wing extremist chorus for defunding ObamaCare, as they know it will do permanent harm to the Republican brand, and kill any chance of winning the Senate in 2014 and 2016, and the Presidency in 2016.

DeMint has made it clear that every GOP member of Congress, who is not on board, will face a primary challenge, and funding to kick him or her out of their seats in Congress. This is holy war on anyone unwilling to join the whacko Tea Party crowd, setting out to destroy the federal government’s ability to operate!

The time has come for GOP leadership in both houses of Congress to declare they will not be threatened, not be made hostage, not allow DeMint, Cruz, and their ilk to destroy the heritage of the Republican Party!

We will soon see, whether the GOP has guts and courage to work against these demagogues, DeMint and Cruz, but even if they do, the Republican Party is doomed long run, until it purges the cancer of the extremists, and puts Ted Cruz in his place, total repudiation by his colleagues, and censure in the same fashion by the Senate as occurred to his “look alike”, the villainous Joseph Raymond McCarthy in 1954!

The Next Doomsday: May 16! Debt Ceiling Extension Crisis!

Ronald 1 Comment

Now that the government shutdown was averted at the last minute this past Friday, April 8, a much more dangerous deadline is looming: May 16.

Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner has declared that by that date it is essential that the Congress extend the borrowing limit, the federal debt ceiling, beyond the present $14.25 trillion limit, or face the inability of the government to pay its bonds and debts on time, an action which could trigger world wide economic repercussions, and make it impossible for the US government to borrow money, because of a technical state of bankruptcy!

Geithner has informed Congress that if federal accounts were moved around, the doomsday scenario could be delayed to July 8 at the latest!

For the government to fall into default would be extremely damaging, both short term and long term, and yet there are the Tea Party radicals in the House of Representatives, and lunatics in the Senate such as Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida who are, seemingly, willing to risk the nation’s future in their ideological struggle against the federal government!

With the ability of the Republicans to filibuster in the Senate, and the Tea Party members of the House unwilling to bend, the battle over extension of the debt limit will center around the Obama Health Care plan, the environment, abortion rights, and other GOP demands that the Democrats have been able to avert in the most recent battle over shutting down the government.

So the likelihood of the economic revival going on smoothly seems less likely over the rest of this year, and then the 2012 budget plan presents the next crisis, if we ever resolve the debt limit crisis now facing us in the next month to three months!