Weekly Republican Address :Corker upcoming Senate debate on president's Iran deal Saturday August 8, 2015

Rather than 'end' Iran's nuclear program, this deal allows them to industrialize it over time -- with our approval. Instead of the once promised 'anytime, anywhere' inspections, this agreement gives Iran nearly a month of advanced notice to hide any evidence of developing a nuclear weapon. And this deal won't allow a single U.S. inspector on the ground, relying on an arm of the UN to conduct those inspections. Even worse, there are two secret side deals -- we can't ever see -- that appear to restrict inspectors' access to key sites. And after only nine months, all major sanctions will be relieved. At that point, the leverage shifts from us to Iran.

Via: You Tube

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Senators return to work on fiscal crisis, but uncertain about how, when it will end

FILE: October 3, 2013: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor after a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.REUTERS

Two top senators gave bleak assessments Sunday of the likelihood of Congress swiftly reaching deals to end one fiscal crisis and avert another, with the Republican lawmaker saying Democrats are now overreaching in their demands.

“We will see our way through this, but the last 24 hours have not been good,” Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker told “Fox News Sunday.” “I agree that Republicans started with the overreach, but now Democrats are one tick too cute. They are now overreaching.”

Corker argues that Senate Democrats want Republicans, as part of the fiscal negotiations, to roll back the steep cuts to government spending, known as sequester and signed into law in the 2011 Budget Control Act.

He told Fox News the cuts are just as much the law of the land as ObamaCare, which Republicans tried to dismantle in the deals – one to end the partial shutdown of government services that started Oct. 1 and another to agree on the nation's borrowing limit before Thursday’s deadline.

Corker also said he thinks the White House told Senate Democrats earlier in the weekend to pull back.  

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is among 24 senators who have given bipartisan support to a proposal put forth by Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins that Majority Leader Harry Reid rejected Sunday.

Via: Fox News

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GOP Senators Shrug Off Debt-Limit Date

Republicans appear to be increasingly dismissive of the October 17 deadline the White House has set for when the federal debt limit must be raised to avoid an economic disaster. Even relative moderates such as Senators Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) and Bob Corker (R., Tenn.) are shrugging it off.

“I do think it is an important date, and I don’t want to minimize that,” Corker told reporters when asked about the October 17 deadline, before adding: “Is that the real date? No.” The government likely has until around November 1 before the situation becomes “problematic,” he said, based on his discussion with financial leaders across the country. 

Corker also shrugged off concerns about the volatility in financial markets due to uncertainty over the debt limit. ”That’s a part of what happens when you get close to a deadline,” he said. ”That’s not my concern. My concern is that we do something constructive that’s good for our nation.”

Hatch, who referred to Jack Lew as “one of the most partisan, political secretaries of the Treasury that I’ve seen,” slammed Democrats for their refusal to take up a House-passed bill to prioritize debt payment to avoid default. “The fact of the matter is, there are going to be some parts of the government that are going to be hurt if we don’t get this resolved,” he said. ”There are some that I think we could live without, too.”

Via: NRO
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Sen. Corker: 'No Common Ground' in Budget Talks

The White House and a breakout group of eight Republican senators have been unable to find agreement in their attempts at reaching a bipartisan budget deal, separated by long-standing differences over whether to only reduce spending on large benefit programs or whether to combine those cuts with increased tax revenue.

Following a meeting Thursday in the White House, one of the Republicans, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, said the talks had gone nowhere.

"It's pretty evident that there's no common ground right now," Corker said.
The White House described the talks as candid and helpful. Obama has insisted in the past that a big deal over the budget had to include closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy.

The eight senators, some participating by teleconference, met in the White House Situation Room with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors and budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell. The group last met at the White House four weeks ago.

At the conclusion of Thursday's meeting, no future meeting was scheduled.

The setback comes just ahead of negotiations designed to avoid a government shutdown after the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 and about six weeks before the administration says the government will hits its borrowing limit.

Both the White House and congressional Republicans are bracing themselves for a confrontation. While both sides believe they might avoid a government shutdown with a stop gap measure in September, neither side has yet figured out how to extend the debt ceiling after it hits the $16.7 trillion limit.
Via: Newsmax

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Sunday Show Round Up: Lawmakers Call for Intervention in Syria

Concerns amongst lawmakers and officials escalated in light of robust evidence Bashar al Assad’s forces carried out a chemical attack on civilians earlier this week.

“I think we will respond in a surgical way and I hope the president as soon as we get back to Washington will ask for authorization from Congress to do something in a very surgical and proportional way, something that gets their attention that causes them to understand we’re not going to put up with this kind of activity,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.

Shortly after the interview, the BBC reported that the Syrian government “agreed to allow UN inspectors to investigate allegations of a suspected chemical weapon attack near Damascus.”

Supporters such as Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) have increasingly advocated for some form of military intervention, but critics previously cautioned against this approach, fearing that intervention could “trigger” a larger conflict and further destabilize the Middle East region.

Amr Moussa, former Egyptian foreign minister and former Secretary-General of the Arab League, warned against intervention on ABC’s This Week. “They always start like that, limited [air] strike, then it widens and grows and grows and then all the region will be involved.”

Via: WFB

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Graham: Obama's Cliff Meeting is Political Theater

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders were to meet on Friday for the first time since November with no sign of progress in resolving their differences over the federal budget and low expectations for a fiscal cliff deal before Jan. 1.

Instead, members of Congress are increasingly looking at the period immediately after the Dec. 31 deadline to come up with a retroactive fix to avoid the steep tax hikes and sharp spending cuts that economists have said could plunge the country into another recession.

"It's feeling very much to me like an optical meeting than a substantive meeting," said Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, noting that it was not a sign of urgency to set a meeting for mid-afternoon with a deadline just days away.

"Any time you announce a meeting publicly in Washington, it's usually for political theater purposes," Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on Thursday on Fox News.

"When the president calls congressional leaders to the White House, it's all political theater or they've got a deal. My bet is all political theater," said Graham, adding that he did not believe an agreement could be reached before the deadline.

With taxes on all Americans set to rise when rates established under former President George W. Bush expire on Dec. 31, lawmakers would be able to come back in January and take a more politically palatable vote to cut some of the tax rates.

U.S. stocks fell on Friday, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping 0.48 percent as investors fretted about the lack of certainty.

But some in the market were resigned to Washington going beyond the New Year's Day deadline, as long as a serious agreement on deficit reduction comes out of the talks in early January.

"Regardless of whether the government resolves the issues now, any deal can easily be retroactive. We're not as concerned with Jan. 1 as the market seems to be," said Richard Weiss, a Mountain View, California-based senior money manager at American Century Investments.

The new factor in the mix was involvement by Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who held conversations with Obama this week and said he expected a new proposal from the president that he would consider.

Via: Newsmax

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