Posts Tagged ‘Kevin Cramer’

Can We Stop The Runaway Pork Trainwreck?

Monday, August 9th, 2021

The more people look into the details of the massive “infrastructure” bill, they more reasons they find why conservatives should kill this giant pile of pork:

Analysts from The Heritage Foundation have found a variety of flaws that should give pause to legislators in both chambers…

1. Adds Hundreds of Billions to the National Debt.

With the national debt having increased $5.2 trillion since the start of 2020 (or $40,000 per household) and the economy at risk of serious inflation, America is in dire need of fiscal responsibility from the nation’s leaders. Unfortunately, the Senate bill offers anything but.

For starters, it bails out the Highway Trust Fund to the tune of $118 billion. The fund suffers from chronic deficits due to overspending. Rather than bring it into balance, senators are whipping out the national credit card, and then pretending they didn’t when it comes to keeping score.

2. Fake and Inappropriate ‘Pay-Fors.’

The bill includes many provisions designed to pay for the spending spree, which are dubious, inappropriate, or both.

This includes a laundry list of tired budget gimmicks, including the sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, extending long-standing fees, and spectrum sales. Many of these gimmicks have a history of falling short of expectations.

Another gimmick, known as “interest rate stabilization” (or “pension smoothing”) would allow corporations to reduce pension contributions and increase their profit margins, leading to more revenue from the corporate income tax. This would shortchange the pension funds by roughly $9 billion for the sake of less than $3 billion in additional tax revenue.

In an attempt to increase capital gains tax revenue, the bill also includes a rule that would force cryptocurrency companies to disclose personal information on their users to the government. This surveillance mandate would be technologically impossible for many key parts of the industry to comply with, including “miners” who maintain the networks, “stakers” who save in crypto, and even software developers, potentially driving these functions offshore altogether.

While legislators anticipate a $28 billion tax windfall from crypto, it will almost certainly bring in far less. For example, an IRS probe into the Coinbase crypto exchange market led to only $25 million in tax assessments.

The bill also repurposes hundreds of billions worth of funds that were originally passed in COVID-19 relief bills. The vast majority of this amount (such as states turning down harmful unemployment benefit expansions) would not have been spent, meaning this represents fake savings.

3. Sets Up a $3.5 Trillion Left-Wing Bonanza.

Congressional Democrats have repeatedly stated that they will not allow any infrastructure bill to reach President Joe Biden’s desk for signature unless it is accompanied by a $3.5 trillion package passed along party lines through the budget procedure known as reconciliation.

Another fun tidbit on the infrastructure bill: it includes $1 billion for The Appalachian Regional Commission, which, by some amazing coincidence, just happens to be run by Joe Manchin’s wife Gayle:

Buried in the 2,702-page bipartisan infrastructure plan that senators could pass as soon as this week is $1 billion in funding for a commission run by the wife of Sen. Joe Manchin, one of the key Democratic negotiators.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would allocate $1 billion for the Appalachian Regional Commission, an economic development partnership agency between the government and 13 states in the Appalachian region that’s co-chaired by Gayle Connelly Manchin.

President Biden tapped Gayle Manchin for the role in March, and she was unanimously confirmed by the Senate one month later.

The proposed legislation envisions spending $1 billion over the course of five years in order to fund the Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization initiative, a program that provides grants to communities affected by coal-related job losses. Biden initially proposed the funding increase as part of his $4 trillion “Build Back Better” economic agenda.

In a May statement, Gayle Manchin said the $1 billion – which will roughly double the commission’s current funding level – will allow it to “more adequately meet the overwhelming needs of communities impacted by job losses resulting from the decline in the coal industry. These grants will be instrumental to the long-term diversification and economic growth in Appalachia.”

Which she really means, of course, is that the graft will flow to people Manchin, Biden and other Democrats approved of, including Democratic Party donors, leftwing activists, etc. Because this is how the game works.

Shamefully, 17 Republicans have voted to help cram this crap sandwich down America’s throats:

Roy Blunt (Mo.)
Richard Burr (N.C.)
Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.)
Bill Cassidy (La.)
Susan Collins (Maine)
Kevin Cramer (N.D.)
Mike Crapo (Idaho)
Lindsey Graham (S.C.)
Chuck Grassley (Iowa)
John Hoeven (N.D.)
Mitch McConnell (Ky.)
Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)
Rob Portman (Ohio)
James Risch (Idaho)
Mitt Romney (Utah)
Thom Tillis (N.C.)
Todd Young (Ind.)

Collins and Romney I can understand, but there’s no way in hell senators from North Carolina, Idaho or North Dakota should ever be supporting this giant pile of garbage.

Is there still time top stop this garbage? It seems that D.C. insiders have greased the skids for this runaway pork train, but at least we should try. If you live in a state represented by any of the senators, I would suggest constacting them immediately and state your full opposition to the bill.

LinkSwarm for October 5, 2018

Friday, October 5th, 2018

Welcome to the season where ugly monsters in lurid costumes go running around shrieking at the sheer delight at scaring other people. And those are just the Democratic protestors on Capitol Hill!

The Brett Kavanaugh cloture vote today, and the Supreme Court confirmation vote is Saturday. And Kavanaugh links dominate the top of this LinkSwarm:

  • Republicans are fired up after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, and the Democratic edge for the 2018 midterms has disappeared. Or so says that notorious Republican shill organization, NPR.
  • More on the same subject:

    Let’s say you’re Joe Manchin in West Virginia. What you needed was for this nomination to be uncontroversial, and a sure thing for confirmation. A party-line contested vote the whole country is watching is a nightmare. Why? Because in a red state like the one Manchin represents, the majority will favor confirmation and find it to be a decisive issue in their vote — so Manchin voting against Kavanaugh will set him up to reap the wrath of the voters in a state which went 65 percent for Trump in 2016.

    But it’s worse than that for Manchin, because he doesn’t have a good escape from the Kavanaugh confirmation. You’d say his easy way out is to vote yes, except what the Left has done is to so whip up their voters with the Ford allegations and the copycats who followed that Manchin will lose votes from his own side if he votes to confirm the judge.

    This isn’t a theory, by the way. It’s what the polls show.

  • A new poll finds that 58 percent of voters in West Virginia think Brett Kavanaugh should be confirmed to the Supreme Court following his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
  • The Public Opinion strategies poll commissioned by the Judicial Crisis Network found an overwhelming majority of West Virginians (59 percent) thought Kavanaugh’s testimony was more believable than Christine Blasey Ford, who accused the federal judge of sexually assaulting her more than 35 years ago at a drunken high school party. Those who believe Kavanaugh include 81 percent of Republicans, 43 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of Independent voters.
  • Manchin is locked in a dead-heat race against Patrick Morrissey, West Virginia’s Attorney General, and his vote is now going to be the defining issue in that race either way.

    Manchin’s conundrum isn’t unique. Claire McCaskill in Missouri is already a committed no on Kavanaugh, and her troubles have begun as well…

  • A new poll released by The Missouri Scout on Saturday shows that Republican challenger Josh Hawley has taken a two-point lead over Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) in the Missouri Senate race just days after she announced she will be voting against the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
  • Hawley leads McCaskill by a margin of 48 percent to 46 percent in the poll conducted by Missouri Scout over two days, from Wednesday, September 26 to Thursday, September 27.
  • McCaskill announced her opposition to Kavanaugh on September 19. The second day of the poll was conducted on the same day Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of attempting to sexually assault her 36 years ago at a time and place she cannot recall and with no corroborating witnesses or evidence, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    The Missouri Scout poll had worse news for the incumbent Democrat — in that what’s driving down her numbers is unquestionably the Kavanaugh vote…

  • Significantly, the poll found that 49 percent of likely voters said the Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh has made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while only 42 percent said it made them more likely to vote for her.…
  • Among female respondents, 47 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 42 percent said it made them more likely.
  • Among male respondents, 50 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 41 percent said it made them more likely.
  • Among Non-Partisan respondents, 46 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 39 percent said it made them more likely.
  • Among Republican respondents, 85 percent said the confirmation process made them less likely to vote for McCaskill, while 8 percent said it made them more likely.
  • Among Democrat respondents, 82 percent said the confirmation process made them more likely to vote for McCaskill, while 8 percent said it made them less likely.
  • Also, a new poll commissioned by NBC North Dakota News showed the race between Democrat incumbent Heidi Heitkamp and Republican challenger Kevin Cramer has the latter with a commanding 51-41 lead. That poll has the Kavanaugh nomination as the most important (with 21 percent) of nine named issues in the race, with 60 percent of North Dakota voters polled saying they support the judge’s confirmation against only 27 percent opposed. Heitkamp has publicly called herself a “no” vote, which amounts to more or less a surrender in the race. Without North Dakota, there is only a minuscule chance of the Democrats winning control of the Senate.

  • And still more:

    Of all the cohorts measured by the poll (including Independent men and women), Democratic women are the only group to display less enthusiasm for the midterms this week than they did in July. Meanwhile, Republican women seem invigorated. In July, 81 percent of Democratic women said the November elections were very important, compared to 71 percent of Republican women. Now, Republican women are 4 percentage points likelier to view the midterms that way (83 percent to 79 percent). That’s a 14-point swing in female voters’ interest in the midterms—after the hearings, and in Republicans’ favor.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “Will the ‘Brett Bounce’ Unseat Bob Menendez in New Jersey?” Let’s hope so. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • “Accused doxxer of GOP senators allegedly threatened to publish lawmakers’ children’s health info.” I just can’t imagine why Republicans are so upset with Democrats in congress…

  • And unless Kavanaugh is confirmed, things will get worse:

    There is no circumstance where everyone involved with those norm-breaking steps suddenly wakes up, has a crisis of conscience, and realizes that they were morally wrong. The only way they decide not to take similar steps in the future is if they conclude that those steps are not effective.

    If these sorts of tactics work, we will get more of them. Right now, Kavanaugh could be a squish who wimps out on Roe vs. Wade and I’d still want him on that court, because this isn’t really about him anymore. This is about what kind of proof is needed before you believe a man is a monster. This is about whether decades of respected public and private life can be wiped away by an allegation without supporting witnesses. This is about whether anyone who ever knew you at any chapter of your life can suddenly come forward and paint you as a malevolent deviant of every kind . . . or whether people who never knew you at any chapter of your life can suddenly come forward and paint you as a malevolent deviant of every kind.

  • The Democrats’ war against the presumption of innocence:

    Social justice presumes the guilt of certain people because of their politics, their positions, their races and their genders. It creates different rules for different classes of people with some entitled to an absolute presumption of innocence, even in the face of indisputable guilt, and others forced into an equally absolute presumption of guilt, even in the absence of any indisputable proof of their guilt.

    America cannot operate under two systems of guilt and innocence, one public and one private. If the majority of Americans are to be judged by a system that presumes their guilt, that attitude will inevitably go on to permeate the courtroom. By eroding the presumption of innocence in public life, the left is eroding it as a legal right. Lynch mobs and kangaroo courts can’t be expected to stop at the courthouse door when they are celebrated and operate freely throughout the rest of the land.

    Kavanaugh’s case is about more than the malicious exploitation of the #MeToo movement to destroy a political opponent. It’s the latest assault on the social presumption of innocence by shadowy forces whose ‘scoops’ dominate the media through cut-outs while their sources remain silently invisible.

    If kangaroo courts and media lynch mobs succeed in overturning a Supreme Court appointment, they will have proven that their war on the presumption of innocence extends even to the highest court in the land. If a Supreme Court justice can’t be presumed innocent, what hope do the rest of us have?

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Let’s not put too fine a point on it: Christine Blasey Ford is a liar.

  • China used it’s supply chain to implant a spy chip in many of America’s top companies, including Apple and Amazon. This is why outsourcing so much of your technological infrastructure is a national security issue.
  • Apple and Amazon issue strenuous denials. I’m not sure they could do otherwise, even if the allegation is true, especially since Amazon currently derives the lion’s share of its profits from AWS. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • President Donald Trump’s approval rating hits 50%.
  • Including 35% of blacks. That’s disasterous for Democratic electoral chances. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Theresa May will change her Brexit policy, or the Tories will change their leader.

    Worse than Remain? Well, yes. May’s Brexit proposals — now known as “Chequers,” after the PM’s country house, where they were imposed on a surprised cabinet days after May had personally assured the secretary of state for exiting the EU that she had no such intentions — would effectively keep Britain inside the EU’s single market (i.e., by accepting its current and future regulations) and its customs union, and keep it subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice while forfeiting its votes in all EU institutions.

    Not enough for you? Then ponder this: The London Times has reported that the government is now prepared to cut a deal with the EU that would prevent a post-Brexit U.K. from reaching free-trade deals with other countries such as Australia, Canada, and . . . the United States. Such a deal would breach the reddest of red lines laid down by Theresa May and the Tory party since the 2016 referendum. Yet no one thinks the report is mistaken. And May has continued to say in interviews that final agreement with the EU will require concessions from both sides. But what has May left to concede?

  • More pushback on the Linux SJW-inspired CoC change. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Saudi solar project flops. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • 96 sheriffs endorse Ted Cruz.
  • Austin government needs an independent audit. Naturally the the city power structure is opposed…
  • “Kamala Harris: ‘We Would Apply The Same Fair Standards To Any SCOTUS Nominee Whose Life We Were Trying To Destroy.'”
  • A typeface to help retain memory? There’s just one tiny problem…

  • First edition of The Wealth of Nations to be auctioned.
  • “Bottle of whisky sold for world record £848,000.”
  • Swedish road covered in herring after elk accident.”
  • Happy birthday, Wallace Stevens.