Obama Failing to Lead?

President Barack Obama is running into resistance from congressional Democrats over several key economic proposals — blunting the party’s ability to send a clear message to middle-class voters that Democrats feel their pain.

Obama has run into friction from fellow Democrats over plans to freeze some federal spending, to use bailout funds for small-business lending and to limit the reach of big banks.

And Obama’s call for a jobs bill left Senate leaders pledging a vote as early as Monday — but offering no details of what a measure might include or how much it would cost.

All of this paints a picture of a governing party that faces uncertainty about the way forward on the economy, especially in the wake of a shattering defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race last month.

White House aides insist that the Democratic pushback on Obama’s ideas is just a normal part of legislating and that Obama is likely to get much of what he wants in the end because of the Democrats’ sizable congressional majorities. That was Obama’s message to Senate Democrats this week, when he implored them to use their legislative might to lead the way on the economy.

But in the early going — at a moment when Democrats believe it’s critical for Obama to demonstrate that he understands voters’ worries about the economy — there has been infighting and frustration on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have proved to be a difficult group for Obama to lead. - Politico Story

Ill. Gov. Running Mate has Lengthy Rap Sheet

On the same day Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn officially claimed the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, he found out that his newly-minted running mate has a rap sheet that includes alleged domestic battery and tax evasion. The revelation has shocked Democrats, leading to worries that his presence could taint the entire statewide ticket.

According to court records obtained by the Chicago Tribune, Scott Lee Cohen, a millionaire pawnbroker who prevailed with a narrow plurality in the crowded primary for lieutenant governor, was accused by his ex-girlfriend, a prostitute, of holding a knife to her neck in a 2005 domestic dispute.

Cohen said in a statement Wednesday that he had no intention of ending his bid.

“I have no intention of stepping down or stepping aside. When the facts come to light, after my ex-wife and ex-girlfriend speak, the people of Illinois can decide, and I will listen to them directly,” said Cohen.

“I tried to tell everyone about this early on. I wanted to talk about all of these issues, but everyone wrote me off, and said I didn’t have a chance to win. Now that I’m the Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor, the day after the election, there are questions. I am happy to answer any and all questions; I just need time to do so,” he said.

Cohen prevailed in the primary by using his own wealth to outspend his opposition, and by touting his plan to create job fairs to spur economic development across the state. With the gubernatorial and Senate primaries dominating the headlines, hardly any attention was paid to the downballot contests. - Politico Story

White House and Sen. Bond Wage War of Words

The White House called on Missouri Sen. Kit Bond to apologize Thursday for saying the Obama administration had compromised national security by disclosing information about the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, prompting a caustic retort from the senator.

Bond, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to the president this week accusing the White House of sharing information that "reached the ears of our enemies abroad," when it confirmed that the accused Christmas Day bomber was cooperating with law enforcement. He claimed that he had been told to keep information about Abdulmutallab's interrogation strictly confidential.

"An apology on that is owed because it's not true," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in his Thursday briefing. "The reason that charge is made is only to play politics."

Gibbs said members of Congress had been informed of Abdulmutallab's cooperation in a hearing and the administration had held a background call with reporters to "contextualize ... what this testimony meant."

"I think he owes an apology to the professionals in the law enforcement community and those that work in this building, not for Democrats and Republicans, but who work each and every day to keep the American people safe and would never ever, ever knowingly release or unknowingly release classified information that could endanger an operation or an interrogation," Gibbs said.

Bond responded by escalating the war of words.

"After telling me to keep my mouth shut, the White House discloses sensitive information in an effort to defend a dangerous and unpopular decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab and I'm supposed to apologize?" he said in a statement to POLITICO. - Politico Story

Stimulus Millions Going to Waste

Federal agencies are spending stimulus money at the rate of $196 million an hour. And they will do so every hour for the next eight months until a September 30, 2010, deadline.

"When you put that kind of money out the door that fast, there's a possibility of $55 billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse connected with it," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Thursday before a Senate Finance Committee hearing examining the lack of oversight in the $878 billion dollar economic stimulus bill passed a year ago.

Grassley said he fears much of the money is going to some individuals and businesses that don't qualify for it and projects that do not serve taxpayers best interests. Judge for yourself:

-- $233,000 to the University of California at San Diego to study why Africans vote. Jobs created: 12, but seven of those are Africans in Africa.

-- In Nevada, $2 million in stimulus money built a new fire station, but because of budget cuts, the county can't afford to hire firefighters to work there.

-- Penn State University got $1.5 million to study plant fossils in Argentina. Of 5 jobs created, 2 belong to Argentines.

-- Researchers the State University of New York at Buffalo got $389,000 to pay 100 Buffalonians $45 each to record how much malt liquor they drink -- and how much pot smoke each day. Consumption is then reported via an automated phone hotline. Cost per job: almost $200,000.

-- The Obama administration is spending $5 billion to weatherize homes. But one Texas county spent $4 million to weatherize just 47 homes. That's $78,000 per house. Each retrofit is supposed to save homeowners $500 a year in energy costs. That means taxpayers will recoup their investment in 156 years, long after the home is probably torn down. - FOX News Story

Top Canandian Official Travels to US for Health Care

A prominent Canadian politician’s decision to undergo heart surgery in the U.S. has touched off a debate about national health care in his own country.

At the center of controversy is Danny Williams, premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. Williams’ decision to head south across the border for his surgery is drawing fire from defenders of the Canadian health-care system – a favorite example for proponents of a government-run health care in the U.S.

Williams, a millionaire and former lawyer, left Canada on Monday to seek treatment at an unspecified hospital in the U.S. It is not clear what kind of surgery he’ll undergo, though Newfoundland Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale said that having the surgery in the province was not an option.

So what about a hospital in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver?

"Virtually all forms of cardiac surgery are looked after in Canada, and I would say extremely well," Dr. Chris Feindel, a cardiac surgeon at Toronto's University Health Network told the National Post. "Personally ... I would have my cardiac surgery done in Canada, no matter what resources I had at my disposal."

Feindel was quick to point out that U.S. patients have come to UHN's Peter Munk Cardiac Centre for valve repairs.

Canadian Sen. Wilbert Keon, a retired heart surgeon and professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa, told the Toronto Sun that Newfoundland does not have the kind of "post-surgery technical support to allow all advanced complicated procedures to be performed there." - FOX News Story

McCain Attacks White House for $2.5 Million Census Ad

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) doesn't think the government should be competing with Doritos by spending $2.5 million on a 30-second Super Bowl at about the census.

"While the census is very important to AZ, we shouldn’t be wasting $2.5 million taxpayer dollars to compete with ads for Doritos!," McCain said via Twitter.

The tweet was a follow-up to statements the Senator made at a balanced budget press conference earlier Thursday, and just one more commentary to add to the arsenal of conservative media outlets, which have been giving the story plenty of play.

"The census happens every 10 years. Everybody knows it happens," McCain said, before questioning why the government would spend millions on a commercial when families across America are tightening their belts. "It's shameful."

McCain's census-commercial complaint — the $2.5 million expenditure in a projected $130 million dollar census awareness budget — was only part of McCain's attack on President Barack Obama on Thursday. The former GOP presidential nominee balked at the notion that Obama is serious about the deficit.

"Then the next day, the President announced $100 billion of new spending called a jobs bill — not a stimulus — a jobs bill," McCain said caustically of Obama's deficit freeze proposal. - Politico Story

Democrats Attack White House for Failures

Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.

Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.

The sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room.

“There was a lot of frustration in there,” said a Democratic senator who declined to be identified.

“People were hot,” another Democratic senator said.

Democratic senators are frustrated that the White House hasn’t done more to win over the public on health care reform and other aspects of its ambitious agenda — and angry that, in the wake of Scott Brown’s win in the Massachusetts Senate race, the White House hasn’t done more to chart a course for getting a health care bill to the president’s desk.

In his public session with the senators Wednesday, Obama urged them to “finish the job” on health care but did not lay out a path for doing so. That uncertainty appeared to trigger Franken’s wrath, and the sources in the room said he laid out his concerns much more directly than any senator did in the earlier public session. - Politico Story

White House on Defense for Being Soft on Terrorist

The Obama administration is moving to regain the upper hand in the political wars over terrorism by mounting a newly aggressive defense of its handling of the Christmas Day bombing suspect.

After enduring weeks of withering criticism from Republicans, Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday fired off a five-page letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and ten other Republicans who questioned why suspect Umar Abdulmutallab was interrogated for only 50 minutes, why he was later read Miranda warnings and why no consideration was given at the outset to placing him in military custody.

Holder also defended the broader strategy of trying some alleged terrorists in the civilian criminal justice system.

“I made the decision to charge Mr. Abdulmutallab with federal crimes, and to seek his detention in connection with those charges, with the knowledge of, and with no objection from, all other relevant departments of the government,” Holder wrote. “I am confident that, as a result of the hard work of the FBI and our career federal prosecutors, we will be able to successfully prosecute Mr. Abdulmutallab under the federal criminal law. I am equally confident that the decision to address Mr. Abdulmutallab's actions through our criminal justice system has not, and will not, compromise our ability to obtain information needed to detect and prevent future attacks.”

Separately, the White House moved to deflect some of the soft-on-terror criticism Wednesday by declaring that no plea deal is on the table. “Abdulmutallab has not been offered anything,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters. “The Department of Justice takes his cooperation ‘into consideration.’”

The claim came as something of a surprise since Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan indicated last month that such a deal was “on the table.” - Politico Story

Unemployment Claims Rise Again

WASHINGTON -- The number of newly laid-off workers filing initial claims for jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week, evidence that layoffs are continuing and jobs remain scarce.

The rise is the fourth in the past five weeks. Most economists hoped that claims would resume a downward trend that was evident in the fall and early winter.

The Labor Department says that new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 480,000. Wall Street economists had expected a drop to 460,000.

The four-week average, which smooths fluctuations, rose for the third straight week.
The number of people continuing to claim benefits was unchanged at 4.6 million. - FOX News

Sen. Harry Reid Pumping Millions into Re-Election Campaign

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, trailing badly in the polls, is pouring money from his prodigious fundraising operation into the state Democratic party organization to bolster his reelection campaign.

Reid has tapped his campaign war chest for dozens of state and local Democratic candidates as well as party organizations representing African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, women, gays and college students. But the bulk of Reid’s largesse is going to the Nevada Democratic Party, which will play a critical role in his race, especially in getting out the vote this November.

Reid helped funnel nearly $660,000 to the state party in 2009 alone, according to Federal Election Commission records. These funds came from Reid’s reelection campaign, his leadership PAC — the Searchlight Leadership Fund — and a joint fundraising committee created by Reid’s campaign and the state party. President Barack Obama, who will be making another trip to Nevada later this month to stump for Reid, was the headliner at a multimillion dollar fundraiser last year that benefited Reid’s reelection campaign and the state party.

Sources close to the Reid campaign said the veteran lawmaker will pump hundreds of thousands of additional dollars into the state party’s coffers throughout the year, even as he looks to raise $25 million or more for his own race. He has already raised more than $15 million.

Reid’s Senate Democratic colleagues, including Majority Whip Dick Durbin, as well as a PAC founded by former Democratic aides, kicked in an additional $57,000 to the state party, most of which was donated in late December. Even former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Reid’s Democratic predecessor, gave $4,000 to the state committee last year. - Politico Story

Obama White House Threatens National Security for Politcal Cover

The nation’s top spy says partisan politics is hindering the ability of intelligence officials to deal with the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair is criticizing his own White House bosses for leaks about the case, but he’s not sparing Republicans who quickly politicized the Obama administration’s handling of the terror attempt.

“The political dimension of what to me ought to be a national security issue has been quite high. I don’t think it has been very particularly good, I will tell you, from the inside, in terms of us trying to get the right job done to protect the United States,” Blair told the House Intelligence Committee.

“We’re just trying to bring intelligence and law enforcement to bear to get the right info to make sure that those who threaten our country get behind bars,” Blair said.

Blair’s comments came after sharp questioning from Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) about a Tuesday night briefing held for reporters at the White House. Two senior officials offered new details about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s interrogation, outlining how counterterrorism agents traveled to Nigeria to enlist help from his family.

“The decision made last night at the White House to be releasing what I would consider to be classified information or damaging information, and I just wondered if the entire intelligence community was consulted before these political decisions were made,” King said.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) also hammered the White House “broadcast” that Abdulmutallab was talking again. “I can’t figure out a reason that would happen other than political cover,” Thornberry said.

“I have been surprised by the combination of reality and politics having to do with this issue. I just try to do the job, to do the right thing for the country, and I just can’t control all of the politics,” Blair responded.

The White House briefing was aimed at pushing back against pitched Republican attacks about giving Miranda rights to the alleged underwear bomber. Led by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Republicans have accused the Obama administration of jeopardizing national security when they read Abdulmutallab his rights after he was arrested in Detroit. - Politico Story

USA Commander in Chief

That is the Leader of the Military?

Majority of Americans Don't Trust Obama's Claims

During his State-of-the-Union address Wednesday night, President Obama spoke about a deficit of trust between the American people and political leaders. New Rasmussen Reports polling on the president’s speech shows just how deep that trust deficit has become.

The president in the speech declared that his administration has cut taxes for 95% of Americans. He even chided Republicans for not applauding on that point. However, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that taxes have been cut for 95% of Americans. Most (53%) say it has not happened, and 26% are not sure. Other polling shows that nearly half the nation’s voters expect their own taxes to go up during the Obama years.

The president also asserted that “after two years of recession, the economy is growing again.” Just 35% of voters believe that statement is true, while 50% say it is false.

Obama claimed that steps taken by his team are responsible for putting two million people to work “who would otherwise be unemployed.” Just 27% of voters say that statement is true. Fifty-one percent (51%) say it's false. - Rasmussen Reports

You Can get Pregnant Via Oral Sex!

A strange tale of oral sex, a knife fight and the most unlikely of pregnancies recently brought to light by the blogosphere has doctors touting the triumphant persistence of sperm.

In 1988, a 15-year-old girl living in the small southern African nation of Lesotho came to local doctors with all the symptoms of a woman in labor. But the doctors were quickly puzzled because, upon examination, she didn't have a vagina.

"Inspection of the vulva showed no vagina, only a shallow skin dimple," so doctors delivered a healthy baby boy via cesarean, the authors wrote in a case report published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Her birth defect -- called Müllerian agenesis or Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome -- didn't necessarily surprise doctors, but her pregnancy did. Even the 15-year-old girl could not believe she was pregnant.

Yet by looking at her records the hospital staff realized the young woman was in the hospital 278 days earlier with a knife wound to her stomach. The average pregnancy lasts 280 days. After interviews, they gathered that "Just before she was stabbed in the abdomen she had practiced fellatio with her new boyfriend and was caught in the act by her former lover. The fight with knives ensued." - Read More at ABCNews.com

Underwear Bomber Talking Again - Too Bad it is over a Month Late

It’s time for a little offense in the war on terror -- domestic front, that is.

(And the countdown is on until the first withdrawal.)

Just when you thought it was the economy, because at least it wasn’t about health care, President Obama’s national security policies are getting the full Washington treatment -- and the full pushback, too.

Between the New York reaction to plans for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the congressional push to shelve plans to try terror suspects on US soil, and the the severe Hill reaction to the ways in which the “underwear bomber” has been questioned -- there’s no quarter for the president in this debate.

But the White House is fighting back with the big weapons: Senior intelligence and military officials are leading the charge, in an unusually broad and blunt way -- insulating, perhaps, the political side from some of the fallout. (A fallout that will, inevitably, involve concessions: There’s no way these funding amendments ever get to the floor in Congress.)

As they have with “don’t ask, don’t tell,” with military leaders getting out further than even the president himself in explaining the rationale and the process, this is using the troops you’ve got in a high-stakes battle.

Suddenly, we know an awful lot about the fact that a terrorism suspect is talking, and how he started talking again.

“The Nigerian man arrested on Christmas Day for allegedly trying to explode a bomb on a plane arriving in Detroit has begun talking again to authorities, officials said Tuesday, a development that is likely to ratchet up the debate over whether he should be tried in federal court or before a military tribunal,” Richard A. Serrano and Greg Miller write in the Los Angeles Times.

“The family of the failed Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab, played a pivotal role in getting their son to start cooperating with federal authorities in sharing information about Al Qaeda, a senior administration official said Tuesday evening,” ABC’s Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller report. “Abdulmuttalab has been cooperating with authorities and sharing intelligence since last Thursday, another administration official told ABC News.” - ABC News Story

Obama can and will try and put a spin on how good of a job he did. However, the bad news is that it is now old intelligence (over a month older) and everyone that this person had contact with has had the time to move or change their plans.

Rush - Thank God Obama's Agenda has failed

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh says he thanks God “every day” that he sees problems for President Barack Obama.

In an interviewing airing Wednesday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” Limbaugh said the country has lucked out each time one of Obama’s initiatives has failed.

“The fact that his agenda has totally failed this year is the best thing that could have happened to this country,” Limbaugh said. “I thank God every day that it is going down the tubes.”

Limbaugh added that he was thankful that “this Massachusetts election happened,” referencing Republican Scott Brown’s win in the Senate special election there last month.

Limbaugh said that he watched Obama deliver his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress last week, but “gave up after 50 minutes.”

“I heard it all before. There was nothing new in it. The only difference was the tone,” Limbaugh said, belittling Obama “a young inexperienced guy, who is just mad.”

“This is the first time in his life there is not a professor who can turn his C into an A, or to write the law review article for him he can't write. He is totally exposed. There is nobody to make it better,” Limbaugh said. - Politico Story

Obama Not Helping Sen. Reid with Latest Comments about Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- President Barack Obama is known for having a way with words, but some lawmakers from Nevada wish he would pipe down about trips to Sin City.

After sparking a firestorm of criticism from Nevada's elected officials for suggesting that people saving money for college shouldn't blow it in Las Vegas, Obama told U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a letter that he wasn't saying anything negative about Las Vegas.

It was the second time since taking office that Obama singled out Las Vegas as a potential example of spending excessively.

"I was making the simple point that families use vacation dollars, not college tuition money, to have fun," Obama said, according to the letter released by Reid's office. "There is no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country's great destinations."

Obama said he always enjoys his visits to Las Vegas.

A White House spokesman referred to Obama's letter to Reid and said the administration had no further comment.

Perception and reputation are sensitive issues for Sin City as it struggles to find footing amid a two-year meltdown of foreclosures, bankruptcies and unemployment. Tourism is the Silver State's backbone, and several lawmakers said they were shocked that Obama singled out Las Vegas again after commenting last February that bailed-out banks shouldn't go to Las Vegas using taxpayer money. - FOX News Story

Al Qaeda Attack in Near Future

WASHINGTON -- Al Qaeda can be expected to attempt an attack on the United States in the next three to six months, senior U.S. intelligence officials told Congress Tuesday.

The terrorist organization is deploying operatives to the United States to carry out new attacks from inside the country, including "clean" recruits with a negligible trail of terrorist contacts, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. Al Qaeda is also inspiring homegrown extremists to trigger violence on their own, Panetta added.

The annual assessment of the nation's terror threats provided no startling new terror trends, but amplified growing concerns since the Christmas Day airline attack in Detroit that militants are growing harder to detect and moving more quickly in their plots.

"The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like 9/11. It is that Al Qaeda is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect," Panetta told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Al Qaeda is increasingly relying on new recruits with minimal training and simple devices to carry out attacks, the CIA chief said as part of the annual assessment of national threats provided to Congress by the top five U.S. intelligence officials. - FOX News Story

Obama Raising Taxes by $1.4 Trillion

WASHINGTON -- While President Barack Obama is proposing to cut some taxes for companies that hire workers, his budget would raise a host of other taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals.

The budget proposal released Monday would extend Obama's signature Making Work Pay tax credit -- $400 for individuals, $800 for a couple filing jointly -- through 2011. But it would also impose nearly $1 trillion in higher taxes on couples making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000 by not renewing tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush. Obama would extend Bush-era tax cuts for families and individuals making less.

Obama revived numerous proposals for business tax increases that didn't fare well in Congress last year, including a scaled-down plan to increase taxes on U.S. companies with major overseas operations, and plans to increase taxes on oil and gas companies.

In all, Obama would increase taxes on some businesses and wealthy individuals by a total of about $1.4 trillion over the next decade, while cutting taxes for middle-class workers and other businesses by about $330 billion. The bottom line: Tax receipts would increase by about $1.1 trillion over the next decade.

Congressional Democrats praised most of Obama's initiatives, but their lukewarm response to some of the tax increases suggests a tough fight for the administration. Obama's proposal to increase taxes on international businesses would be better addressed as part of a package overhauling the entire tax system, said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee.

Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the top Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said, "This budget features too many new taxes, too much new spending and too much new debt." - FOX News Story

Reid Lives in Fantasy World as he blames GOP

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is accusing Republicans of undermining national security, saying GOP filibusters of White House nominees are leaving critical posts empty at the State Department and Department of Homeland Security.

In caustic opening remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday morning, Reid said Republicans are playing "games" while the nation remains under terrorist threat.

“Republicans have repeatedly asked fearful families to put their concerns on hold while they score political points and play partisan games," Reid said.

The majority leader, who is increasingly frustrated with his chamber's inability to confirm certain White House nominees, says Republicans have "exploited" and "abused" the rules of the Senate to grind the government to a halt.

"When a young Nigerian terrorist boarded an airplane bound for America on Christmas Day, there was no permanent boss at the TSA — the agency created after 9/11 specifically to keep air travel safe. When he tried to blow up that plane, the top positions at both of the intelligence agencies within the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security were similarly empty," Reid said. “Why? Because Republican senators refuse to let this body hold a vote on the highly capable people the president has asked to serve in those roles."

Reid listed names of what he deems as four "exceptionally qualified" nominees that have been blocked, including the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness; the assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research; the under secretary of homeland security for intelligence and analysis and the U.S. representative to the Conference on Disarmament.

Republicans also successfully filibustered the nomination of Erroll Southers to run the TSA — and he later pulled his name from consideration last month.

"For political reasons, a handful of Republican senators are standing between these experts and their offices," Reid said. "And that means they are also standing between the American people and their security.

But Republicans claim the blame for the lag in nominee confirmation falls squarely on Reid's shoulders, since he makes the Senate schedule. - Politico Story

Reid is full of sh@%!!!! He is the man in charge and his party have for the last year and currently still does hold a fillibuster proof majority. So if someone is being held up, it is due to his own party. They can override anything that the GOP does if they want to.

You have to understand why this guy is in the fight of his life to try and keep his job.

Scott Brown Miracle Election Ad

Obama Budget Hand Delivering US to Bankruptcy?

President Barack Obama’s new $3.83 trillion budget is a chickens-come-home-to-roost moment for Democrats who skipped past the deficit to tackle health care last year and now risk paying a heavy price in November.

The great White House political gamble was to act quickly — before the deficits hit home — and institute major changes which proponents say will serve the long-term fiscal health of the country. Instead, a year of wrangling and refusal to consider more incremental steps have brought Obama and Congress to this juncture, where waves of red ink threaten to swamp their boat and drown reform altogether.

“It’s very important to understand, we won’t be able to bring down this deficit overnight given that the recovery is still taking hold and families across the country still need help,” Obama told reporters Monday. But with $5.08 trillion in deficits over the next five years, his spending plan seems also a cry for help in the face of what he sees as intransigent Republican opposition.

Not until 2014 to 2015 — midway through what Obama hopes will be his second term — is there any chance of approaching a sustainable budget. Even then, the president admits he will need the help of a bipartisan fiscal commission willing to tackle long-range issues like Social Security reform.

New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, called Monday for a bolder “game-changing budget that will turn things around.”

“I’m available if they need me, but I don’t think they’re thinking big,” Gregg told POLITICO, checking off his list of ideas, including a freeze on spending — ramped up by taking out all money now earmarked for lawmakers’ home-state projects. - Politico Story

It is ironic how this President and his Democratic friends in the House and Senate can think big and go for broke on things like Health Care and Climate Change, but can't make the tough decisions to bring down the Federal Deficit.

It Obama's plans, the Deficit cutting doesn't even happen until he is out of office, or hopefully out of office.

Obama Budgets Breaking the Bank

As President Obama prepares to unveil his $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal year 2011, which begins Oct. 1, the White House is projecting the current fiscal year will end with a $1.6 trillion deficit, congressional sources confirmed to Fox News.

Next year's budget will have a nearly $1.3 trillion debt, according to those sources, dropping to just over half that -- $700 billion in fiscal year 2013 -- before jumping back up to $1 trillion in 2020, the furthest out that budgeters will predict.

A $1.6 trillion deficit would represent more than 10 percent of the gross domestic product, but the White House says over the next 10 years, the average deficit will represent only 4.5 percent of GDP annually. Last year's deficit was $1.42 trillion.

The numbers come as the president and congressional Democrats have pivoted from preparing a $1 trillion health care proposal to focusing on jobs and the deficit. Speaking at the State of the Union last week, Obama told a joint session of Congress that he wants to freeze spending -- beginning in 2012 -- on discretionary spending except the military, veterans and homeland security. The president said that would save $250 billion over 10 years. - FOX News Story