RSC still fighting for a balanced budget amendment

Against the backdrop of the ongoing drama of deficit reduction negotiations, the House of Representatives next week will vote on a balanced budget amendment that would require supermajorities in both chambers to run a deficit, raise the debt ceiling, raise taxes or spend more than 18 percent of GDP.

In a column today in The USA Today, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) explain why such an amendment is necessary to ensure the country doesn’t run up against a debt ceiling deadline time and time again:

While the federal government has consistently collected revenue of about 18% of U.S. economic output, federal spending has consistently been even higher. The debt resulting from these budget deficits builds up until the debt limit is reached. And rather than fight the spending lobby, politicians have taken the easy route of raising the limit without cutting spending. …

Near-term spending cuts are necessary to alter the course, but they will not be enough without long-term changes. Likewise, promises of cuts 10 years from now mean little without a way to enforce them. The only way to truly guarantee delivery from future politicians is if the Constitution demands it. That’s why the House will vote next Wednesday on a balanced budget amendment that would require supermajorities in both chambers to run a deficit, raise the debt ceiling, raise taxes and spend more than 18% of GDP.

With the balanced budget movement gaining momentum, members of the spending lobby want to argue that Congress and the president already have the ability to control spending. Ability and discipline are not the same. If Washington actually had the discipline to live within its means over the long term, every American citizen would not owe $46,000 toward the national debt.

The Republican Study Committee also released a video that depicts just how precarious and politicized the debt and deficit issue will continue to be without a balanced budget amendment:

Even as I’ve begun to feel cynical about the debt limit negotiations, I find myself feeling encouraged by this — not because a balanced budget amendment is likely to be adopted any time soon (the hurdles for constitutional change are quite high, of course), but because House Republicans aren’t giving up. They’re introducing and reintroducing ideas that could actually put us on a path to real fiscal reform. Even more importantly, the ideas they’ve introduced suggest they are listening to the American people, who say both that they favor a balanced budget amendment and that they oppose a debt ceiling increase. Republicans continue to run up against the difficulty of controlling just one branch of government, but their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed — and it will surely pay to have the ideas in place should they take back the Senate or White House or both in 2012.

Famous Sri Lankan Singer Raini Charuka Goonatillake who follow s her parent steps

Raini Charuka Goonatillake was born in 10th of April 1991 and she is the daughter of popular is Sri Lankan singer Rookantha Goonatillake and Chandraleka Perera Perera. She is very talented singer and has the voice of her mother popular Sri Lankan singer Chandarleka Perera. She was one of the upcoming singers in Sri Lankan music industry. Most of her songs are very popular among Sri Lankan young audience. She also perform live concert which performed by her parents at Sugathadasa Stadium in Sri Lanka. She currently lives in New York, United States of America and study over there. She also acted on Sinhala film which named Sinhawalokanaya which was based on Sri Lankan cricket. She is very talented singer and actress who have much bright future in Lankan entertainment sector. Here is some beautiful image collection of this wonderful Sinhala singer Raini Charuka Goonatillake.

You might also like:

Cati Angel

Very Hot and Sexy Sri Lankan Babes Photographs

Shanel (1)

Shanel - Sri Lankan Hot and Sexy Girls

Bachmann would consider debt limit increase — in exchange for Obamacare repeal

A sample of the ideological purity that some say makes Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) a surprisingly compelling contender for the GOP presidential nomination: Bachmann yesterday said she would support a debt ceiling increase if and only if the deal included the defunding of the new health care law, “the largest entitlement in the history of the country,” as she put it.

During an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, Bachmann stated her conditions for an increase: “They’d have to cut an enormous amount [of spending], including they would have to defund Obamacare.”

When Bill O’Reilly reminded Bachmann that repeal isn’t even on the table, she agreed and said, “No and that’s why I can’t go for [a debt limit increase]. I can’t go for it because never will we be able to balance our books ever in the future.”

She also pushed back against O’Reilly’s insistence that no debt ceiling increase would mean default. She stopped short of accusing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner of lying about the probability of default, but didn’t hesitate to repeat adamantly, “He’s wrong, he’s wrong, he’s wrong.”

“Well, of course, it’s not true that anyone wants to see the United States government default on its debt,” she said. “We don’t have to because the fact is we have sufficient revenue coming in to pay off the interest on the debt. We don’t have to default. … All you have to do is look at the books. We have sufficient revenue coming in. We can pay off all of those obligations first — and we must. We always have and we always will.”

What the nation can’t afford, Bachmann says, is another $2.4 trillion in debt or “wasteful Washington programs.”

Bachmann’s position on the debt ceiling — what O’Reilly called the “renegade” position — is a prime example of the way she favors the fight against big government over any kind of so-called legislative accomplishments (which all too often amount to bills passed for the sake of being passed) that could fill the gaps in her congressional record — the “nonexistence” of which has lately taken so much criticism. Of course, to some, that fight she’s been waging — all those “no” votes — amounts to its own kind of record — a record the other candidates lack.

Is debating one’s record in a Presidential primary an unfair attack?

Yesterday, my blog partner Tina Korbe scolded Tim Pawlenty for making an argument that Michele Bachmann didn’t have executive experience or a record of Congressional accomplishment in her three terms in Washington as a comparison to his own experience as a governor in Minnesota. Even though Tina says that Bachmann’s record in Congress is “admittedly a little thin,” she writes that Pawlenty looked thin-skinned for pointing it out. My friend John Hinderaker wrote last night at Power Line that while he thinks that Pawlenty would make a better President than Bachmann, but that he “crossed a line” by pointing out why:

It is easy to sympathize with Pawlenty’s dilemma. I have supported both candidates’ campaigns financially and consider them both friends, but my own view is that Pawlenty would make a better president. (Either would be a hundred times better than Barack Obama.) Still, he is in a difficult situation, and did not improve it by going on the offense against his fellow Minnesotan. It is a fine line, sometimes, between touting one’s own credentials and denigrating those of a competitor, but Pawlenty crossed it. Unfortunately, most Iowa voters’ takeaway will be that Pawlenty is desperate because of his failure to gain ground in the polls. He will be well advised not to repeat his attack on Bachmann.

Holy buckets, as we say here in Minnesota! Just what awful thing did Pawlenty say about Bachmann that crossed a line? John and Tina offer the same quote, which John casts as taking the gloves off:

“Well, I like Congresswoman Bachmann. I’ve campaigned for her. I respect her, but her record of accomplishment in Congress is non-existent. It’s non-existent,” Pawlenty told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” …

“We’re not looking for folks who just have speech capabilities, we’re looking for people who can lead a large enterprise in a public setting and drive it to conclusion,” Pawlenty said, touting his own experience as a two-term governor of Minnesota.

Pardon me, but this seems like exactly the kind of criticism most of us launched at Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008, and which we wished John McCain would have more often launched at Obama during the general election campaign.

John says he likes and respects both candidates, as do I, and both of us know the two Minnesota candidates a little. I also get that Republican primary candidates should save their most passionate critical salvos for Obama. However, in a primary, the candidates have to campaign against each other, too — and experience and records of accomplishment have to be fair game, especially as close as most of the candidates are on policy (with a couple of exceptions). Experience matters, and one of Pawlenty’s strengths is his executive experience.

Republicans want to make the case in 2012 that Obama is incompetent thanks in part to a lack of previous executive experience and any track record of accomplishment in the Senate. That case will be hard to make if Republicans nominate someone from the House with no executive experience and no track record of Congressional accomplishment. That’s as true of Bachmann as it is of Thad McCotter and Ron Paul (and Herman Cain, for that matter), but those candidates aren’t threatening to win the Ames straw poll next month, which is why Pawlenty compared his experience to Bachmann’s.

Frankly, this is exactly what is supposed to happen in primaries — contrasting experience and track records, arguing over policy, and eventually nominating the most effective candidate for the general election. Bachmann needs to have an answer for this valid criticism — and she did provide one. The supporters of individual candidates (and the candidates themselves) have to get used to taking some heat in a primary campaign, because if they can’t handle it now, they’ll fold when it comes to a general election.