Bush to Pelosi: Your House is a Mess!

Congressional Dodo bird Dems can't get a budget passed. Can't pass a children's health bill, can't do much but bash Bush! Time for the grownups to come in and clean the House?

U.S. President George W. Bush (C) makes a statement while flanked by (L-R) Minority Deputy Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Chairman of the Republican Conference Adam Putnam (R-FL) on the North Portico of the White House October 30, 2007

President Bush Urges Congress to Pass Appropriations Bills
White House transcript
October 30, 2007

THE PRESIDENT: ...Congress is not getting its work done. We're near the end of the year, and there really isn't much to show for it. The House of Representatives has wasted valuable time on a constant stream of investigations, and the Senate has wasted valuable time on an endless series of failed votes to pull our troops out of Iraq. And yet there's important work to be done on behalf of the American people.

They have not been able to send a single annual appropriations bill to my desk, and that's the worst record for a Congress in 20 years. One of the important responsibilities of the Congress is to pass appropriations bills. And yet the leadership that's on the Hill now cannot get that job done.

They've also passed an endless series of tax increases. You know, they proposed tax increases in the farm bill, the energy bill, the small business bill, and of course, the SCHIP bill. They haven't seen a bill they could not solve without shoving a tax hike into it. In other words, they believe in raising taxes, and we don't.

Spending is skyrocketing under their leadership -- at least proposed spending is skyrocketing under their leadership. After all, they're trying to spend an additional $205 billion over the next five years. Some have said, well, that doesn't matter much; it's not that much money. Well, $205 billion over the next five years in the real world amounts to this: $4.7 million per hour, every hour, for every day, for the next five years. That's a lot of money.

And that doesn't even include spending that would actually pay for 2 million people to move from private health insurance to an inefficient, lower-quality, government-run program. Despite knowing it does not have a chance of becoming law, the Senate will now take up the second SCHIP bill the House passed last week. I believe the Senate is wasting valuable time. This bill, remarkably, manages to spend more money over five years than the first bill did.

After going alone and going nowhere, Congress should instead work with the administration on a bill that puts poor children first; a bill that will take care of the poor children that the initial bill said we got to do; a bill that would stop diverting money to adults. You realize some major states in the United States spend more money on adults than they do on children? We want a bill that enrolls the more than 500,000 poor children currently eligible for the program who are not a part of the program.
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[A]gain ask Congress to send me a clean Veterans funding bill that we have already agreed to by Veterans Day, so we can keep America's promise to those who have defended our freedom and are recovering from injury. I again urge them to pass a clean Defense appropriations bill, and a war supplemental bill to fund our troops in combat.

I know some on the Democrat side didn't agree with my decision to send troops in, but it seems like we ought to be able to agree that we're going to support our troops who are in harm's way. I know the members feel that way, standing with me. I hope the leadership feels that way, and they ought to give me a bill that funds, among other things, bullets, and body armor, and protection against IEDs, and mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles. It would be irresponsible to not give our troops the resources they need to get their job done because Congress was unable to get its job done.

Dems Would Rather Fight than Work Together with GOP

New Congress at war over everything
By: Patrick O'Connor
The Politico
Oct 30, 2007

In a closed-door meeting before the last vote on the children’s health care bill, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer appealed for the support of about 30 wavering Republican lawmakers. What he got instead was a tongue-lashing, participants said.

The GOP lawmakers, all of whom had expressed interest in a bipartisan deal on the SCHIP legislation, were furious that the Democratic leader from Maryland had not reached out to them in a more serious way early on. They also criticized him and Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois for failing to stop his allies outside Congress from running attack ads in their districts, while they were discussing a bipartisan deal.

The result was a predictable one for this bitterly divided Congress. The House vote for a second SCHIP bill was a healthy majority, but not the two-thirds needed to override another veto vowed by President Bush. Only one Republican switched his vote — to oppose the measure.

Democrats accused Republicans of hurting kids. Republicans howled about a heavy-handed, uncompromising Democratic majority. And another chance at bipartisan consensus slipped away.

“They spent $1.5 million through their various shill outreach groups attacking me and a handful of my colleagues,” Rep. Ric Keller (R-Fla.) said before the Hoyer meeting, “but they did not spend five minutes to approach me to ask for my vote.”

This us-against-them mentality has been an ongoing storyline of the new Democratic­-controlled Congress. On the big items — Iraq, health care and spending — party leaders have shunned compromise.

Meanwhile, Congress Approval Rating Sinks LOWER!

Rush Limbaugh has a higher approval rating in Nevada than Democrat Majority Reader Senator Harry Reid. In California, even Senator Dianne Feinstein (a responsible legislator by comparison to Sen. Barbara Boxer and Pelosi) is tanking along with Pelosi and Boxer (full size poll graphic here).

Needed: An Aggressive GOP Campaign for 2008

By now, the damage of a do nothing but investigate, spend and raise taxes Congress should be clear to even the most "principled" conservative voter.

What's needed is a long term, coordinated campaign at every level of political discourse to highlight the weaknesses of Democrats. It wouldn't hurt to put forward a renewed version of the 1994 "Contract with America" based on conservative values.

One thing we learned in 2006: A weak response invites defeat. And the costs are too high to permit that mistake to remain uncorrected!