Senator Blasts 'Secret' Fiscal Cliff Negotiations

[Valin]

The Weekly Standard:

DANIEL HALPER

11/29/12

 

In remarks on the Senate floor today, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions blasted President Barack Obama and congressional leadership for holding "secret" fiscal cliff negotiations.

 

"I rise today to express my reservations about the fiscal cliff negotiations that are currently underway," said Sessions. "Over the last two years, Congress and the President have held an endless series of secret negotiations. There have been gangs of six and eight, a supercommittee of 12, talks at the Blair House and the White House. But the only thing these secret talks have produced is a government that skips from one crisis to the next. Everything has been tried but the open production of a 10-year budget plan as required by law and open discussions of the difficult choices."

 

Sessions, the highest Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, saved most of his criticism for the president. "President Obama campaigned on a tax increase of ‘only’ $800 billion," said Sessions. "But now the White House is demanding $1.6 trillion in new taxes. Don’t the American people have a right to see these taxes and where they will fall? Shouldn’t the President of the United States, the only person who represents everybody in the country, lay out his plan, or must that remain a secret too? Will it just be revealed to us on the eve of Christmas or eve of the new calendar year? We will be asked to vote for it, to ratify it like lemmings, I suppose."

 

(Snip)

[Draggingtree]

Truth On Fiscal Cliff Negotiations [Reader Post]

 

By: james raider

 

 

 

 

which John Mauldin recently conducted with Rob Lehman and David Krone, the chiefs of staff for Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), and of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), respectively. Lehman and Krone are two very key individuals in the current budget negotiations. Mauldin, who writes on economics and investments, usually refrains from using an ideologically tempered pen. Late in the somewhat non-descript forty minute discussion, a head snapper gets dropped by Lehman, who works on the Republican side of the negotiating table.

 

At minute 37:00 of the linked video Lehman ® makes a statement about spending. “We’re talking about reductions in the growth of spending.” He confirms that there will be no reduction in spending. Krone (D), sitting next to him, is drooling out of camera shot. Washington does not spend less year-to-year. Ever. Is that clear? Negotiators are only negotiating amounts of spending increases and areas of such increases in spending. That’s it. Don’t believe anyone standing at a podium performing waffling prevarications in Washington while making claims of imminent spending cuts. http://floppingaces....ns-reader-post/

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

 

 

What concerns me is we will see the tax increases and no real entitlement reforms. And more importantly a decrease in the size of the federal government.

[Draggingtree]

Getting The Revenge They Voted For – Practical Uses of The Fiscal Cliff

 

 

All The Tax Hikes, None of The Spending Cuts and Very Little That Will Reduce The Deficit

 

 

By: Repair_Man_Jack (Diary) | November 29th, 2012 at 12:02 PM

 

Well, well, well. We have another crisis. It’s called “The Fiscal Cliff” and it just can’t go to waste.

 

I wrote earlier concerning the morally detestable class-warfare Democrats.

 

Any person who voted for Barack Obama for the express purpose of having him utilize the US tax and regulatory apparatus to take money away from the rich and give it to them personally, is the moral equivalent of a bank robber. Neither I, nor any other person alive, is entitled to two red cents out of another person’s stash just because we don’t have as much. http://www.redstate.com/2012/11/29/getting-the-revenge-they-voted-for-practical-uses-of-the-fiscal-cliff/

[Draggingtree]

@Draggingtree

 

 

What concerns me is we will see the tax increases and no real entitlement reforms. And more importantly a decrease in the size of the federal government.

You really don't think that the government is going to get smaller in size I am shocked, watch the video in the above post

[Valin]

@Draggingtree

 

 

What concerns me is we will see the tax increases and no real entitlement reforms. And more importantly a decrease in the size of the federal government.

You really don't think that the government is going to get smaller in size I am shocked, watch the video in the above post

 

 

I am watching this.

 

Yes I do expect the size of government to shrink. The only question is how will it shrink. Will we do it in a reasonable way or will Adams Smith's dead hand do it for us.

I keep quoting Herbert Stein "Trends that cannot continue....won't." We are reaching the end of a 100(?) year trend, and it cannot continue. What we are seeing is part of The Hinge Of History I have been talking about.

[SrWoodchuck]

Profound political pimpery.

 

From my post yesterday:

 

]"There are three classes of people in this country; there are the poor and the rich, and in between the two is what has often been referred to as the great backbone of America, that is the plain fellow. That is the fellow that makes from one hundred dollars a month up to the man that draws down five or six thousand dollars a year. Now, there is a great big army. Forget the rich; they can’t pay this debt. If you took everything they have away from them, they couldn’t pay it; they ain’t got enough. There is no use talking about the poor; they will never pay it, because they have nothing. This debt is going to be paid by that great big middle class that we refer to as the backbone and the rank and file, and the sin of it is they ain’t going to know that they are paying it. It is going to come to them in the form of indirect and hidden taxation. It will come to them in the cost of living, in the cost of clothing, in the cost of every activity that they enter into, and because it is not a direct tax, they won’t think they’re paying, but, take it from me, they are going to pay it!”[/i]