Friday, July 29, 2011

Goodlatte's fingerprints all over the pulled vote in the House

For years, Congressman Bob Goodlatte has been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, champions of the BBA (Balanced Budget Amendment).  According to CNN this afternoon, one of the reasons why Speaker Boehner pulled the vote last night was that the bill didn't have the BBA in it. 

It pretty clear now that Goodlatte is at the center of this mess, as one of the lead hostage takers of the nation, all because they wanted to insert the Balanced Budget Amendment.

I’ve just got one question: What do we do if the nation finds itself in another situation where we have to actually declare war, or take extraordinary measures to address a national crisis?

In order to address the worst case scenario, we would have to repeal the BBA, which would take weeks or months, and by the time that happens it would probably be too late. Otherwise Congress (both the House and Senate) would have to break the law. 

At that point everyone in Congress that voted to ignore the BBA, and the President once they signed the bill, would be eligible for impeachment because they violated the Constitution in order to save the country.

Talk about a Constitutional Crisis! 

This is just insane!  Goodlatte, Cantor, and all the other Tea Party hostage takers would rather burn down a nation in order to pass a bad law that could usher in a constitutional crisis. 

This isn't leadership.  This is wholesale extortion

Call Congressman Goodlatte and tell him to stop holding the nation hostage and give up the Balanced Budget Amendment

Harrisonburg Office
P: 540-432-2391

Staunton Office
P: 540-885-3861

Lynchburg Office
P: 434-845-8306

Roanoke Office 
P:540-857-2672

Washington, DC Office 
P:202-225-5431

Image found at:  http://www.thepoliticalguide.com/Images/reps/bobgoodlatte.jpg 

Krugman is right!

No matter how many ways you slice it, President Obama has bent over backwards to work with the GOP and their Tea Party leadership to address: 1) raising the Debt Ceiling, and 2) making painful cuts to entitlements. 

Even when the GOP gets what they want, which is massive, massive cuts in entitlements and other government programs, they are still not willing to concede the other part to the problem - Revenues

Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, lays it out in his column this morning, how if the GOP and the Tea Party really cared about governing and what's best for the people of the United States, they would have agreed to the President's and Democrats' conditions on revenues by closing tax loopholes and eliminating some very popular exemptions in order to pay down the national debt and start bringing cost under control. 

As further evidence of the willingness of Democrats to do what's best for the financial stability of the nation, and the world, they even proposed taking out most of their demands on the revenue side of the ledger by pointing out that with both Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, we would be able to count that funding towards reductions in spending. 

But yet again, the GOP and Tea Party deny that the money spent on both wars counts towards our deficit spending.  Are they really that departed from reality that they thought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were freebies?  That Iraq and Afghanistan didn't cost this nation a dime?  Come on! 

So Paul Krugman is absolutely right.  Even when the GOP and Tea Party gets everything they want, and more, they care more about what's best for their own political base than what's best for the nation. 

Even if Obama agreed with them that the world was flat and that the planet was actually cooling rather than heating up, it still wouldn't be good enough for them. 

Don't look, but the GOP and the Tea Party are about to off all the hostages.  In case you're wondering who the hostages are - they're US. 

Image found at:  https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHNS9y0WzUJ3cOzBoJiqqZlMVOk1jAUMji1tFUKtsRY7x3pLpEkODX82LlDU7VGkhGWs1yoYeA2v6prAclkS5cmF3WnP4yFbwTvOH4XRfaclC6xX62YYxzMEI11rAKpuJevFZ7MLm-gmyX/s1600/hostage.jpg