[VIDEO] Dem. Senator: 'Nobody Should Be Forced to Buy a Policy that Costs More than What They Had and Is Inferior'

Democratic senator Joe Manchin said that, under Obamacare, "nobody should be forced to buy a policy that cost more than what they had and is inferior to what they had":

"Senator manchin, you get the last word," said the ABC host this morning. "Are you seeing any indication from anyone in the administration that they are willing to go along with some sort of a delay?"

"I'm not sure," said Manchin. "I haven't spoken in detail with them. But I can tell you: if we have a bipartisan group, which we've had before ... George, nobody should be forced to buy a policy that costs more than what they had and is inferior to what they had. Those things have to be worked out."

Via: Weekly Standard

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HURT: No need for lectures from a debt-saddled president

In the seven years since President Obama voted as a U.S. senator not to raise the federal debt ceiling any higher, he and his government cronies have piled up $7 trillion in crazy new spending that even our grandchildren have little hope of ever paying off.

We citizens signed no document assuming responsibility for this unthinkable spending binge. We never co-signed any trillion-dollar loans.

Yet as reckless and inexcusable as this crowd’s behavior has been, we never missed a payment. We just keep on paying the bills and these people just keep on racking up crazy debt.

Anyone caught failing or refusing to continue paying the bills — no matter how strongly they object to them — has been fined, kicked out of their homes, imprisoned or worse.

Still, Mr. Obama and his government cronies have gone flat broke, yet again, using our credit. And like drug-addled little punks, they have come home — stinking and drunk in the night — and are now pounding on the windows demanding one more loan. They are at the height of their drug-fueled binge and they’ve just got to keep it rolling.

Seven years ago, when then-Sen. Barack Obama objected to raising the debt ceiling, he said that merely bumping up against the debt ceiling was “a sign of leadership failure.”

“It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies,” he intoned, senatorially.

Via: Washington Times

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Third Colorado state senator may face recall

Energized by historic recalls of two Colorado state senators last month, activists have begun collecting signatures to oust state Democratic Sen. Evie Hudak from office.

Hudak, who represents Westminster, a suburb northwest of Denver, is a favorite target of the GOP for her liberal voting record and a propensity to attract bad PR for herself.

Under Colorado election law, those wishing to prompt a recall election must collect 18,900 signatures from district residents – 25 percent of the total votes cast in the last election. Hudak was initially elected to the state Senate in 2008 after two terms on the state Board of Education.

In both senate elections, Hudak has won by narrow margins; in 2008 she topped Republican Libby Szabo with 51 percent of the vote. In 2012, she won with only 47 percent, narrowly edging out Republican Lang Sias by 0.7 percent. Sias’ defeat was blamed in Republican circles on the presence of Libertarian Lloyd A. Sweeny, who garnered nearly 7 percent of the vote. GOP analysts believe a majority of those Libertarian votes would have otherwise gone to Sias.

This is the second effort at recalling Hudak this year; the successful September recalls of Democrats John Morse and Angela Giron were the result of an original campaign that targeted them as well as Hudak and state Representative Mike McLachlan.

The recall petition cites strict new gun restrictions passed by the Colorado legislature as a reason for recalling Hudak. “She has infringed upon our constitutional right to keep and bear arms. She has voted to make all citizens less safe and to drive hundreds of jobs from Colorado,” the petition reads.

“A small group is seeking to undo the will of voters, who re-elected me to the Senate last November. Unable to defeat me then, they are now attempting a political power grab using a low-voter-turnout, no-mail-ballot recall election strategy,” Hudak told The Denver Post in a statement.

Voter turnout was indeed low in last month’s elections in Colorado Springs and Pueblo; in Morse’s Colorado Springs district only 21 percent of voters participated.

Via: Daily Caller

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Surprise, Surprise: Report Finds Homeland Security Wasting Money

In his oversight report, “Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities,” Senator Tom Coburn (R–OK) highlights several examples of cities using homeland security grants for ill-advised expenses. Senator Coburn’s report is an important one and a must read for the media and policymakers.

My hometown of Columbus, Ohio, is singled out for wasting terrorism funds on an underwater robot. In case you didn’t know, Columbus isn’t known for its large bodies of water, and not one tunnel in Central Ohio goes underneath water, so who knows what terrorist threat Mayor Michael Coleman sees in our shallow rivers.

Coburn, however, gets a couple of vital things wrong that would have made his report even more powerful. First, contrary to his report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not fail “to issue preparedness goals, intended to shape the use of [Urban Areas Securities Initiative] funds, until last year—nine years after the program was created.” Secondly, DHS did not fail to establish “defined performance metrics to assess the effectiveness of federal expenditures made to date.”

As I detail in my 2009 book Homeland Security and Federalism: Protecting America from Outside the Beltway, DHS released the Initial National Preparedness Goal in April 2005, with the National Preparedness Guidelines (the successor document to the Initial National Preparedness Goal) in September 2007. The most recent National Preparedness Goal issued in September 2011 is just a warmed-over version of the older documents. The fact that these earlier documents existed makes Coburn’s points all the more troubling.

Via: The Foundry

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Report: 2,000 Dead People Received Food Stamps

(CNSNews.com) – New York and Massachusetts are administering food stamps to 2,000 dead people, according to Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) catalog of government waste.

The 2012 Waste Book, released earlier this week, documents $4.5 billion in waste in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps.

Among his findings, Coburn said that, “The USDA Inspector General found roughly 2,000 dead people are still receiving food stamps in New York and Massachusetts combined.”

“Additionally, its investigation revealed 7,236 people in these states are receiving duplicate benefits, while 286 are on state lists that should exclude them from receiving food stamps,” the report said, amounting to $1.4 million in unnecessary payments each month, or $147.03 for each recipient, dead or alive.

But the waste in SNAP does not end there, as Coburn found that individuals who smoke marijuana can receive added benefits.

“In three states,” Coburn writes, “some individuals received more food stamp benefits simply because they smoke marijuana.”

Under the section “More money for the marijuana munchies,” the Oklahoma Senator detailed how some states previously offered a deduction for pot smokers.

Marijuana cigarettes and marijuana pipe. (AP)

“Marijuana has been linked to an increased appetite, known as getting the ‘munchies,’ so perhaps it is no surprise the states of Maine, New Mexico, and Oregon gave extra food stamp benefits to users of the illegal drug,” the report states.

It continues: “These states allowed some marijuana users to deduct the cost of the drug from their income when determining the amount of the benefits provided for which they are eligible.  In Oregon, the deduction ‘[i]ncluded … fees for obtaining a state-issued medical marijuana card, expenses incurred while cultivating marijuana and the costs of purchasing it from a third-party grower.’”

Via: CNS News

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