NO, TERM LIMITS IS NOT A FOOL'S ERRAND

When politicians are in office too long, they begin to feel it is their's to keep, to be passed on to their heirs. Louis the XVI and Marie Antoinette don't hold a candle to what's becoming the United States Congress.

These long term politicians are becoming more and more dictatorial, and goodness knows they know better how to run our lives than the citizens. Mark Tapscott writes an excellent piece about this in the Washington Examiner:

No, Term Limits is Not a Fool's Errand
by Mark Tapscott, Editorial Page Editor, November 10, 2009

Somewhere in the liberal print and broadcast media today very important people are using the words “DeMint” and “Coburn” in the same sentence with words like “fools,” “doomed,” or ‘hopeless.” And, as usual, these very important people are wrong.

Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, of course, are the Republican senators from South Carolina and Oklahoma, who today introduced a constitutional amendment providing for a maximum of two six-year terms for members of the Senate and three two-year terms for representatives. Co-sponsors include senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas.

DeMint-Coburn is, uniquely, one of the most radical proposed changes in American politics in decades, and the reestablishment of one of the oldest conservative traditions of the American political culture, with roots deep in the colonial era.

They called it “rotation in office” in colonial days. It was so widely held that nobody batted an eye when Thomas Jefferson proposed term limiting members of the Continental Congress. The limits were needed, Jefferson said, “to prevent every danger which might arise to American freedom by continuing too long in office the members of the Continental Congress."

Americans continued to view rotation in office as self-evidently necessary after the Constitution was adopted, even though the exalted document lacked a term limits provision. Rotation was such a given that it was a commonplace before the Civil War for most members of a new Congress to be freshmen.

No wonder novelist James Fennimore Cooper observed in 1828 that most office-holders held the view that "contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed."

It was not until the New Deal era and thereafter that it became routine for congressmen to stay in Washington year after year after year. Today, the re-election rate for the U.S. Congress is typically 90 percent or more, with only a few dozen competitive seats “up” in an election.

Call it what you will, though, term-limiting federal senators and representatives, just as presidents, many state legislators, and city councilmen are, would have a profound effect on American politics. As DeMint said:

"As long as members have the chance to spend their lives in Washington, their interests will always skew toward spending taxpayer dollars to buy off special interests, covering over corruption in the bureaucracy, fundraising, relationship-building among lobbyists, and trading favors for pork – in short, amassing their own power.”

The power of congressional incumbency must be broken. If it’s not, there will be no changing the culture of corruption and hypocrisy epitomized by earmarks, Charlie Rangel, trillions in deficits as far as the eye can see, and members voting on 2,000-plus page bills they haven’t read.

That is the reality Tea Party protesters must confront if they want permanent change in America. A 1994 Supreme Court decision saying voters cannot be prevented from voting for whomever they please for Congress has been widely viewed as the final word on term limits.

But it doesn’t have to be the last word. A momentous change has occurred in public opinion in the nearly 10 months since President Obama took office. Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have seriously over-played their hand, thereby inciting a conservative renaissance and a seismic shift to the right among independents.

Hotline editor Amy Walter points to the fact Obama carried independents in Virginia by one point in 2008. A year later, Republican Bob McDonnell carried the same voters by 33 points. In New Jersey, Obama’s four-point margin in 2008 became a 30-point margin for Republican Chris Christie.

There is a growing “throw all the bums out” feeling in this country that threatens career politicians in both parties. The rotting fruits of their tenure are only beginning to stink up the place, and they don’t know how to do anything but make it worse.

Change is coming, and, unlike 1995 and the Contract with America failure, I’m willing to bet that this time around term limits won’t be denied.


Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com

WASHINGTON POLITICIANS' MOST TITANIC LIE

If we stop the deficit spending, we may be able to save Social Security and our economy. If the government would just lower spending, they wouldn't have to keep robbing from the Social Security Trust Fund.

Sounds logical, no? The only problem is we now have an administration dead set on expanding government control and spending tax dollars on tunnels for turtles and airports to nowhere, not to mention millions to the Clinton Library [?] from the Stimulus Bill which was passed to create jobs and "save us from the brink".

Let's do as Sen. DeMint suggests -- take the wheel and vote these crooks out of government. Make a list from his SenateConservatives.com.

Senator Jim DeMint R-SC writes about our social security in the Washington Examiner:


Washington Politicians' Most Titanic Lie
by Sen. Jim DeMint, OpEd Contributor, October 1, 2009

If you watch C-Span for a while, you’re sure to hear a politician or pundit criticizing some idea by comparing it to “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” It’s a vivid illustration of the short-sightedness and futility of so much of what Washington does superficially to improve failed programs.

In Washington today, however, we are witnessing an unprecedented extension of the Titanic analogy: Both parties and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are focused on rearranging our deck chairs while there is still time to steer around the iceberg, if only someone would grab the wheel.

This week, the Associated Press reported that for the next two years, the Social Security system will pay out more money than it takes in. The story contained the following bizarre formulation:

“The deficits — $10 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2011 — won't affect payments to retirees because Social Security has accumulated surpluses from previous years totaling $2.5 trillion. But they will add to the overall federal deficit.”

How can it be that Social Security has $2.5 trillion in reserves, but that a mere $19 billion shortfall will add to the federal deficit? Because the “surpluses” do not exist. The Trust Fund is empty and has been for years. There is no money in there; just IOU’s. That’s why the 2010-2011 shortfalls will add to the deficit – we don’t have the money.

The very concept of a Social Security Trust Fund is not so much a myth as it is a lie. For decades, Congress has raided the Trust Fund to pay for other government programs and used accounting gimmicks to hide the true size of the deficit.

Even at the end of the Clinton Administration, when the federal government was supposedly running a surplus, the national debt went up every single year. The surpluses were as imaginary as the Trust Funds.

So insatiable is Washington’s appetite to spend that the federal government has not only spent all the money it has, but all the money previous generations were thought to have saved, and now we’re working our way through the money future generations hope to earn.

What our government has done is a crime. And yet, almost no one in Washington – in either party – seems interested in the giant iceberg we’re steaming toward… Not when there are deckchairs to rearrange!

This year alone, the Senate has passed a $787 billion stimulus, a $350 billion Wall Street bailout extension, a $400 billion, earmark-infested omnibus spending bill, a $109 billion loan to the International Monetary Fund, $6 billion to federalize charities and pay volunteers, $3 billion for cash for clunkers, $400 million in corporate welfare to help tourism corporations advertise overseas, and a $4 billion bailout of the Postal Service.

(To see how your Senator voted on these Titanic Spending Bills, go to SenateConservatives.com, a site I’ve created to hold senators of both parties accountable.)

And now Congress is working its way through 2010 appropriations bills that will increase spending 10-20 percent over last year. Those bills will include thousands of willfully wasteful earmarks, spending billions of dollars we don’t have.

And all of this is being done in a fiscal context that can only be described as terrifying. This year, Washington will spend twice as much as it takes in. The national debt is now as large as our entire economy, nearing $12 trillion borrowed from countries like China.

The long-term projected shortfalls for Social Security and Medicare alone are more than $100 trillion. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn has warned that every child born in America today is burdened with a $400,000 bill to pay for federal programs in the coming decades.

It is in this climate – incredibly, maddeningly – that Congress and the president are trying to pass a health care takeover plan that will cost an additional trillion dollars in the near term, and orders of magnitude more in the long run.

And all along, the architects of this fiscal catastrophe are called “progressive” and compassionate, while skeptical taxpayers at tea parties and town halls are derided as crazy.

And thus comes the Titanic comparison full circle. You see, when our leaders finally run us into that iceberg, they know they will have seats set aside for themselves in the lifeboats. It’s the rest of us, our parents and our children, who will find ourselves locked in steerage, forced by our ruling class to pay for their sins, and go down with the sinking ship.

There’s still time to rescue the ship, but Washington is too busy fiddling with the deckchairs. To prevent catastrophe, the American people are going to have to take the wheel.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint is the junior senator from South Carolina.

HEALTHCARE IS ALSO THE GOP'S WATERLOO

As Congress reconvenes after a tumultuous August break, most Americans are unsettled, knowing their future hangs in the balance. Republicans are especially concerned, as they feel a lack of representation from their elected officials. This is going to be a make or break year for these officials, as constituents watch with a hawk eye. The Republican party also hangs in the balance.

The following is an excellent op-ed from the Senate Conservatives Fund:


Healthcare Is Also the GOP's Waterloo
SCF, September 6, 2009

One of President Obama's early attempts to deflect attention away from his unpopular health care policy was to attack Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) for saying the debate would be Obama's "Waterloo."

Of course, now everyone agrees DeMint was right. Saying this debate is make-or-break for the president now is stating the obvious.

But one thing that may be overlooked is that the health care debate is also the GOP's Waterloo. Just as the president has everything to lose, so do Republicans.

Conservative activists across the country are energized like never before in their opposition to government health care. They expect Republicans to hold firm, and will turn on them if they don't. The GOP is already suffering from straying from its core conservative principles. If Republicans fail this critical test, the damage done to their brand could be irreparable.

Some Republicans -- especially in the Senate -- believe it is their duty to work with Democrats to "do something" on nearly every issue. Never mind the fact that this "something" is almost always harmful to Americans. And never mind that these same Republicans swore an oath to protect and defend a Constitution, which repeatedly tells the Federal government what it cannot do rather than what it can do.

Infected by the "do something" disease, there is a very real chance that a few Republicans will be drawn into negotiations they cannot possibly win. Anything Republicans agree to will be twisted by a Democrat-controlled Congress and the most liberal President in modern times into something they don't even recognize a year or even months from now (see TARP).

President Obama is going to make the case Wednesday night that health care reform is the equivalent of putting a man on the moon and that both parties have a responsibility to come together to get it done. If Republicans fail to recognize that that is a debate where they cannot compromise, they could become a permanent minority party.

Conservatives are winning this debate and Republicans can make huge strides toward regaining the trust of the American people by fighting to stop the President's plan. Or they can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and help the Democrats put America on a one-way trip into socialism.

The Party of Reagan can either stand on principle and make millions of Americans proud to be Republicans again. Or it can remind everyone why it is still unfit to lead. For Republicans as much as for the president, the stakes could not be higher.

Liberal Lies About National Health Care: 3rd

Continuing her enlightening series on National Health Care, Ann Coulter tackles Medicare, illegal immigrants, and abortion. Her knowledge and charming wit is always enjoyable and makes one oodles more knowledgeable in the machinations of the liberal mind.


Liberal Lies About National Health Care: Third in a Series (Commemorative Plates On Sale Now!)
by Ann Coulter, September 2, 2009

(9) If you like Medicare, you'll love national health care, which will just extend Medicare's benefits to everyone.

Hey -- I have an idea: How about we make everyone in America a multimillionaire by pulling Bernie Madoff out of prison and asking him to invest all our money! Both Medicare and Bernie Madoff's investment portfolio are bankrupt because they operate on a similar financial model known as a "Ponzi scheme." These always seem to run fabulously well -- until the money runs out.

Not only is Medicare bankrupt, but it is extremely limited in whom and what it covers. If Medicare were a private insurer, it would be illegal in many states for failing to cover hearing aids, podiatry, acupuncture, chiropractic care, marriage counseling, aromatherapy and gender reassignment surgery.

Moreover, Medicare payments aren't enough to pay the true cost of those medical services it does cover. With Medicare undercutting payments to hospitals and doctors for patients 65 and older, what keeps the American medical system afloat are private individuals who are not covered by Medicare paying full freight (and then some). That's why you end up with a $10 aspirin on your hospital bill.

National health care will eliminate everything outside of Medicare, which is the only thing that allows Medicare to exist.

Obviously, therefore, it's preposterous for Democrats to say national health care will merely extend Medicare to the entire population. This would be like claiming you're designing an apartment building in which every apartment will be a penthouse. Everyone likes the penthouses, so why not have a building in which every apartment is a penthouse?

It doesn't work: What makes the penthouse the penthouse is all the other floors below. An "all-penthouse" building is a blueprint that could make sense only to someone who has never run a business and has zero common sense, i.e., a Democrat.

(10) National health care won't cover illegal aliens -- as the president has twice claimed in recent radio appearances.

Technically, what Obama said is that the bill isn't "designed" to give health insurance to illegal aliens. (That bill, the "Health Insurance for Illegal Aliens Act of 2009," was still being drafted by Ted Kennedy at the time of his death, may he rest in peace.)

But unless the various government bureaucracies dispensing health care are specifically required by law to ask about citizenship status, illegals will be covered. We can't even get employers and police to inquire about citizenship status, but liberals assure us that doctors will?

And by the way -- as with the abortion exclusion -- the Democrats expressly rejected amendments that would have required proof of residency status to receive national health care.

Still not convinced? Day after day, The New York Times has been neurotically asserting that national health care won't cover illegal aliens (without ever explaining how precisely it will exclude illegal aliens).

So far, just this week, these Kim Jong Il-style pronouncements have appeared in the Treason Times:

-- "Illegal immigrants will be covered. (Myth)" -- Katharine Q. Seelye, "Myth vs. Fact vs. Other," The New York Times, Sept. 2, 2009

-- "(Sen. Jim DeMint) fueled speculation that a health care overhaul would cover illegal immigrants, although specific language says it would not." -- Katharine Q. Seelye, "Fighting Health Care Overhaul, and Proud of It," The New York Times, Aug. 31, 2009

-- "'Page 50: All non-U.S. citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free health care services.' ... The falsehoods include (that italic statement)." -- Michael Mason, "Vetting Claims in a Memo," The New York Times, Aug. 30, 2009

-- "But that would not help illegal immigrants. Contrary to some reports, they would not be eligible for any new health coverage under any of the health overhaul plans circulating in Congress." -- Duff Wilson, "Race, Ethnicity and Care," The New York Times, Aug. 30, 2009

The last time the Times engaged in such frantic perseveration about a subject was when the paper was repeatedly insisting that Durham prosecutor Mike Nifong had a solid case against the Duke lacrosse players.

By August 2006, every single person in the United States, including the stripper, knew the stripper's claim of "gang rape" was a lie. That was when Duff Wilson -- quoted above -- co-wrote the Times' infamous cover story on the Duke case, titled: "Files From Duke Rape Case Give Details but No Answers." No answers!

(11) Obama has dropped his demand for the ironically titled "public option" (i.e., government-run health care), which taxpayers will not have an "option" to pay for or not.

Liberals never, ever drop a heinous idea; they just change the name. "Abortion" becomes "choice," "communist" becomes "progressive," "communist dictatorship" becomes "people's democratic republic" and "Nikita Khrushchev" becomes "Barack Obama."

It doesn't matter if liberals start calling national health care a "chocolate chip puppy" or "ice cream sunset" -- if the government is subsidizing it, then the government calls the shots. And the moment the government gets its hands on the controls, it will be establishing death panels, forcing taxpayers to pay for abortions and illegal aliens, rationing care and then demanding yet more government control when partial government control creates a mess.

Which happens to be exactly what liberals are doing right now.

------------------------------------------------------
Ann Coulter is Legal Affairs Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS and author of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Slander," ""How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," "Godless," "If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans" and most recently, Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and their Assault on America (available here).

------------------------------------------------------

DeMint Portrayed as Assassin in Political Cartoon

When the going gets tough, the left fight dirty -- as usual. Of all the politicians in congress these days, I don't know a more soft spoken gentleman than Senator Jim DeMint. He reminds me of Thomas Paine, unafraid to speak up against tyranny.

This is atrocious, and HotAir has brought it out in the open for full exposure. Let's keep up the heat: (hat tip to RedState)


DeMint Portrayed as Assassin in Political Cartoon
posted at 6:39 pm on July 25, 2009 by Pundette

*Scroll down for update.

The Washington Post featured this in today’s paper as one of the better cartoons of the week: (above)

Is it okay to portray Sen. Jim DeMint (or anyone else) as a sniper? And what, or whom, is he aiming at?

Supposedly the target is “healthcare,” but the cartoon obviously refers to DeMint’s remark about breaking Obama. It’s not much of a jump to believe that the cartoonist intends us to imagine that DeMint’s target is Obama.

Maybe I’m being touchy. It’s just a cartoon and it’s supposed to be edgy. But most Americans are quite sensitive to suggestions of presidential (or other) assassination, and particularly so when it involves a sniper taking aim from a tall building.

The Post showed terrible judgment when they chose to run this.

*Here’s a link to a photo of the tenements mentioned by commenters below, courtesy of a commenter at RedState.

http://www.life.com/image/85755475/in-gallery/24651/life-exclusive-the-day-mlk-died

Waterloo — Barack Obama Intends to Break the Back of the American People

Sen Jim DeMint had the audacity to speak out against Obama's back-breaking plans, and is now being attacked.

He must have struck a nerve. Keep those phone calls and faxes going.

Erick Erickson at RedState does a brilliant recap:

Waterloo — Barack Obama Intends to Break the Back of the American People

Jim DeMint, on a conference call the other day, said healthcare is Barack Obama’s Waterloo. If healthcare fails, Obama is broken.

Jake Tapper reports the White House intends to use that comment to rally its troops in the healthcare fight:

"Officials will say the people being 'broken' are the American people going bankrupt paying for health insurance premiums that increase 10 percent every year, the source says, and that those who want to use this issue to break the president are doing nothing but working for insurance companies and insurance executives."

Um, actually Barry and Rahm, the American people are broke now because of your spending. And we cannot afford more.

It is laughably outrageous that Barack Obama would dare say health insurance is driving Americans to bankruptcy when the very plan he proposes would bankrupt the entire country.

Irony with Barack Obama knows no bounds.

Just the other day, Barack Obama said , “I will not sign on to any health plan that adds to our deficits over the next decade. And by helping improve quality and efficiency, the reforms we make will help bring our deficits under control in the long term.”

Yet, every single Democrat proposal compounds the deficit to such a massive degree that the CBO has not had time to do all the math and its latest numbers are subject to further change.

“The $1 trillion plan, which was unveiled on Tuesday, 'would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period,' according to a report submitted to Congress by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation.”

The American people are broke. It is not the insurance companies that did. It’s Obama’s out of control spending.

Senator Jim DeMint Commentary on Freedom

One of my favorite Ronald Reagan quotes is: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

Jim DeMint, Senator from South Carolina, has written a brilliant new book "Saving Freedom" which I hope you all read. Here is an excerpt of a powerful Jim DeMint commentary on freedom, and suggestions on what we can do, starting in the home. (hat tip Glenn Beck newsletter)


"What Washington refuses to understand is that government systems will always fail because they are not free. Private schools perform better than public schools. Private health insurance provides better care than government programs, and controls its own costs. And on and on. Without the competitive pressures and transparency of a free market, government agencies have no motivation to improve their services. After 10 years in Washington, I have concluded that both parties are slow to recognize this one simple fact: freedom works, and government doesn’t.

That’s why I wrote Saving Freedom. Washington simply will not change on its own. To change our politics, we first have to change our culture. We need to remember that freedom demands responsibility. We need to reject politicians who promise us something for nothing, and instead take back both our freedoms and the responsibilities that go with them. We must not only end our growing dependence on government; we must become independent in our own right.

Given the space and choices to make our own decisions, whether in education, health care, civil society, or in business – the American people will thrive, as they always have. But the political class in Washington will not easily return the power it has taken from us – we must take it back, in two ways.

First, we must remake America’s culture of responsibility: in our family life, in our communities, and in our businesses. We must prepare our nation for its rebirth of freedom, so that when government finally does begin to change, our culture and economy can hit the ground running.

And second, this cultural renewal must assert itself in the political arena. Elected politicians are only as unresponsive as their constituents allow. They know that every letter and email and phone call represents hundreds more just like them. They know that Big Government’s worst enemy is an informed citizenry, ready at the next election to punish anyone who infringes on our God-given and constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms. Get involved, and I promise – we will see results.

Freedom can be saved, but it can’t free itself. Like the patriots of Bunker Hill and Philadelphia, of Gettysburg and Normandy, our generation must now take up that banner for ourselves. Saving Freedom is never easy, but it’s always worth it. Please read Saving Freedom and join the fight!"