Free Republic

President Obama’s forthcoming budget request will seek tens of billions of dollars in fresh spending for domestic priorities while abandoning a compromise proposal to tame the national debt in part by trimming Social Security benefits. With the 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to the era of austerity that has dogged much of his presidency and to his efforts to find common ground with Republicans. Instead, the president will focus on pumping new cash into job training, early-childhood education and other programs aimed at bolstering the middle class, providing Democrats with a policy blueprint heading into the...

Other timely observations on the current House Speaker (and head of the Vichy Republican faction) from the founder/prez of the Media Research Center L. Brent Bozell, as heard on Levin's show this last Tuesday... (The GOPis) falling apart...  no longer grounded by principle, but instead  by politics- and it's lousy politics at best The budget agreement -which is being touted as a 'compromise'- is one more retreat by the Republicans When is the last time you remember a  'compromise' that favored the Republicans?  This 'compromise' is... 'you give-up less  than you thought you might' Projected savings that come at the end...  you shake your head...

Lynn Westmoreland (Vichy-GA) will betray his district this afternoon and vote for the Murray-Ryan budget compromise.

Let's get something out of the way. I know we are in an era of divided government and that we can not expect to achieve all of our conservative goals. That's a given fact. If we expect to achieve anything, we must be willing to compromise on some issues. That's what Paul Ryan is already saying as he tries to sell the new budget deal he has reached with Democratic Senator Patty Murray to his fellow Republicans. I also know we have moved from government crisis to government crisis with predictable reliability. No budget deal has been reached for years. Our...

This was shaping up to be Paul Ryan's moment. With the Republican Party reeling from a government shutdown and a near disaster over the debt limit, the chairman of the House Budget Committee was tasked with leading the GOP in a six-week bicameral budget conference. Republicans, who demanded these talks in exchange for a short-term budget resolution, were expected to pursue big-picture negotiations over America's long-term fiscal challenges. But that's not going to happen. Since being appointed as the Republican negotiating chief two weeks ago, Ryan has endeavored to lower public expectations for the committee, saying he hopes to pursue...

As Seattle Gun Rights Examiner Dave Workman reported yesterday, rumor has it that the NRA is in negotiations with anti-gun fanatic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on new legislation to turn non-violent "gun crimes" into felonies, requiring long prison times for mere possession of an "illegal gun": Two more people were murdered and 14 other wounded in weekend shootings in Chicago, according to today’s Chicago Sun-Times, but according to today’s Capitol Fax blog, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s lobbyists “are engaged in serious talks with the NRA” about how to crack down on criminals and lower the body count. Presumably, the legislation under...

The White House appeared to reject a proposal by House Republicans Tuesday morning to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, calling the proposal "a partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans." "The president has said repeatedly that Members of Congress don’t get to demand ransom for fulfilling their basic responsibilities to pass a budget and pay the nation’s bills," said White House spokesperson Amy Brundage. The White House also announced that the president and Vice President Biden would meet with House Democratic leaders at the White House at 3:15 Tuesday afternoon. Attendees will...

Breitbart News reported that House Republicans have offered a new deal to the White House to end the fiscal stalemate. The GOP plan, authored primarily by House Budget Chair Rep. Paul Ryan according to Hill sources, would meet Obama's demands in exchange for negotiations on a longer-term budget agreement. At least two high-ranking Capitol Hill sources have told Breitbart News that Ryan’s plan would also help protect Obamacare as it is currently implemented. Ryan's office deny the claims. “What your sources are attempting to attribute to Congressman Ryan is not accurate,” Kevin Seifert, Ryan’s spokesman, said in an email. But...

Some things stay the same as they have been for years. In this world of politicians who almost never do what they say they will do, there is one political party who can be depended on to do the same thing every time a discussion is started about the amount of money our government spends. Whenever a fiscal conservative brings attention to the fact that our government is spending far more money than it brings in, you can always depend on what the Democrats will do. They will nod their heads in agreement and say the fiscal responsibility needs to...

WASHINGTON -- It is the most thunderous proof of the Taranto Principle to date. I am speaking of the Senate's rejection of the House of Representative's proposal to delay the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act for a year, along with the federal subsidy for Congressional lawmakers and their staffs if and when these selfless public servants enter health care exchanges. You cannot have such subsidies and neither can I, but Congress and its aides can. The Senate will not even negotiate over it. The insightful James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal coined the Taranto Principle when he...

It's a simple question. Why is the federal government of the United States shut down? A simple question that has a simple answer. The mainstream media will not tell you the truth about the government shutdown. All you will hear out of them is how the Republicans are causing trouble for everyday American citizens by their refusal to compromise their right-wing ideology. It sounds bad when it's said like that, but it gets even worse when you finally understand just how much of a lie that statement really is. The Republicans are not to blame for the government shutdown. The...

WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) — Democrats in Congress have made it clear they do not plan to negotiate with Republicans in any fashion until the U.S. House passes a “clean” continuing resolution to fully fund the government and Obamacare. That was evident late Tuesday when House Democrats killed a GOP bill aimed at reopening small slices of the federal establishment, including the Department of Veteran Affairs, the Park Service and a portion of the Washington, D.C., government funded with local tax revenue. After a Tuesday strategy session, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) said if Democrats are “really concerned about funding the VA, let’s...

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accused Senate Democrats of refusing to sit down with House Republicans and work out a compromise on the continuing resolution after the Senate tabled a motion to conference with the House the same day as the federal government shutdown. “They’ve now said they won’t even sit down and work out differences. They won’t even talk about it. They literally just voted against working out a compromise. They seem completely opposed to negotiation or compromise on a law that’s killing jobs, driving up premiums and driving people out of the...

Among the pearls of wisdom conveyed in Ecclesiastes is that everything has its time. "A time to be born ... a time to die, a time to plant ... a time to uproot, a time for war ... a time for peace." The founders of the United States drew up a Constitution to serve as an operating manual, in its checks and balances, for peaceful, deliberative government. They understood human nature and set up a system in which competing interests would have to give in. Compromise, they understood, is a necessary lubricant for the wheels of government "of the people,...

I was told as a young squab growing up in west Texas that life is about compromises—finding a happy medium between two parties in any given situation so that neither party feels like it’s being deep fried in bacon fat. After 22 years of marriage I have found that concept advantageous. For instance, when I’m required to watch a chick flick, my wife insists on Sandra Bullock’s movies, yet I like Pamela Anderson’s … um … movies. So, in the spirit of fairness, we settle on Kate Hudson films. For mood music mi esposa digs Andrea Bocelli. I, on...

White House spokesperson Jay Carney criticized Republican leaders for moving “away from compromise,” but when asked if the administration would accept any delay in Obamacare, he replied, “No.” "House Republicans have decided to pursue a path away from the center, away from compromise in favor of voting on a piece of legislation that they know will not become law,” Carney said Wednesday. …

Gov. Chris Christie said Wednesday night he’s a little too busy with his re-election bid this year to have a beer with Sen. Rand Paul. The senator from Kentucky made the pitch earlier in the day, hoping to ease tensions that have escalated in the past week between the two potential 2016 Republican presidential contenders. But Christie gave no indication he plans to take up Paul on the effort. “I’m running for re-election in New Jersey, I don’t really have time for that at the moment. If I find myself in Washington, I’ll certainly look him up,” Christie said on...

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) suggested in an interview Friday that he supports the border security deal crafted by Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) . . . . //////////////////// Excerpt only.

A long-simmering feud between establishment Republicans and tea partyers is in full view again with Sen. John McCain accusing younger colleagues of using tactics that might tempt Democrats to change Senate rules that now protect the minority party. How to deal with the government’s debt and spending became the latest quarrel between the GOP’s 2008 presidential candidate and tea party champions such as Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah. …

If there is one key word that we have heard over the past several years, it is compromise. Everywhere you turn, no matter what issue we are talking about, compromise always comes to the top of the discussion. In almost every instance, it is the liberals declaring that conservatives need to compromise. They threaten us with all kinds of rhetoric, declaring that we are hard-nosed, hard-headed, stubborn, all because they say we refuse to compromise. Let's look a little closer. We compromised on fiscal issues by agreeing to a deal to end the so-called fiscal cliff earlier this year. What...