SCOTT WALKER RESPONDS TO ATTACKS BY CUTTING TAXES, AGAIN

By: Grover Norquist
2/21/2014 10:15 AM

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The establishment press first went for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s throat. The attacks may not be fatal, but they put Christie off his game and delayed and maybe ended his opportunity to become the prohibitive favorite for the 2016 Republican nomination.

Now they are coming for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

This week all the Republican governors are meeting in Washington D.C. for the Republican Governors Association annual meeting. But it might be best understood as the first caucus—two years before Iowa. Christie, Walker, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Sam Brownback and Mike Pence are all governors who could credibly run for President based on their policy and political successes in their respective states.

So how is Scott Walker responding to the establishment left’s coming attacks?

He is cutting taxes in Wisconsin. Again.

Walker announced a series of tax cuts totaling more than $800 million in this year’s budget: a $406 million cut in property taxes and $100 million in lower income taxes. The property tax cut will save the average homeowner $100 over last year. The personal income tax will be cut by reducing the lowest income tax bracket from 4.4 percent to 4.0 percent. Every family will receive a tax cut of about $58 per year.

In addition, the state will reduce its withholding tax for state income taxes saving taxpayers $322.6 million each year. This will save the average family of four about $58 each month.

Via: Human Events

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Illinois governor signs pension overhaul into law

Gov. Pat Quinn has signed landmark legislation Thursday to reform Illinois' massively-underfunded pension system, though the new law is certain to face threatened lawsuits by labor unions.

The overhaul, approved by the General Assembly this week after years of delay and inaction, cuts benefits for most employees and retirees. It has a June 1 effective date, but could be delayed by the legal challenges.

Quinn, who often signs new laws in celebratory public events, signed the pension bill Thursday afternoon in a private ceremony. It was a mark of how politically sensitive the issue is in Democrat-controlled Illinois, with hundreds of thousands of public employees and retirees across Illinois being negatively affected.

Illinois' $100 billion shortfall in funding employee retirement benefits is considered the worst pension crisis in the nation. For decades, while other states dealt with similar problems, Illinois lawmakers and governors skipped or shorted payments to their state's five pension systems. It led to repeated downgrades of the state's credit rating and diverts millions of dollars from education and social programs.

Via: Fox News Political

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Obama Moving Gitmo Terrorists into Illinois?

AP File

Lawmakers claim administration opening door to Gitmo transfer with Illinois prison buy

The Obama administration plans to buy an Illinois prison that at one point was considered for housing Guantanamo prisoners, in a move Republican lawmakers claimed would open the door for ultimately carrying out that plan.

Administration officials, though, denied that they were looking for a new home for Guantanamo inmates. They insisted the decision to buy Thomson Correctional Center, an under-used state prison 150 miles west of Chicago, was a move to alleviate overcrowding and create jobs in the process.

"This is about public safety and 50 percent overcrowding in high-security prisons," one Justice Department official said.
Officials insisted Guantanamo detainees would not be coming to Illinois.

But Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf, among the lawmakers who opposed the federal purchase of the prison, claimed Tuesday that the Obama administration could still carry out its plan -- perhaps by moving prisoners from another federal prison to Thomson, and then using that prison to house Guantanamo detainees.

"The president says his goal is to shut down Guantanamo Bay and move the prisoners here," Wolf told Fox News, accusing the administration of circumventing Congress. "This gives him a great opportunity to do it, particularly right after the election."

Wolf chairs a key House subcommittee overseeing the sale. He was referring to Obama's pledge immediately after taking office that he would shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp -- a pledge that stands as one of the president's most glaring unfulfilled promises to his base.

The move to transfer prisoners stateside, though, was met with a fierce backlash among some lawmakers who worried it would pose a security risk.

The Obama administration and Federal Bureau of Prisons is now going ahead with the $165 million purchase of the Illinois prison, though strictly as a move to ease overcrowding, they say. The move was first announced by Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn.

Via: Fox News

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DeMint joins national effort to keep feds from bailing out state pension systems

Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn is getting hit with a nationwide backlash over his suggestion that the federal government bail out the state employees’ pension program

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Critics have in the past several days pounced on the suggestion, made last year when Quinn, in announcing the state’s fiscal 2012, said part of Illinois' long-term effort to reduce the estimate $167 billion in under-funded liabilities would be to seek “a federal guarantee of the debt.”

Among those leading the charge is Republican Sen. Jim DeMint. The South Carolina senator has joined the Illinois Policy Institute’s national “No Pension Bailout” campaign -- an effort to stop Congress from attempting to rescue failing state and municipal pension plans.

“Our greatest concern is states will assume they can run their pension systems into bankruptcy and then turn to the federal government for bailout,” DeMint said Thursday.

He also suggested the problem is the result of state legislators trying for decades to win over voters through pension promises based “on accounting methods that would put any business in jail.”

The conservative policy group estimates the total amount of under-funded pension liabilities in states is at least $2.5 trillion, with Illinois leading the nation.

The basic plan floated by Quinn would be for the federal government to rescue the pension program through buying the state’s bonds, which critics say are too financially risky to attract investors.  

Quinn said after announcing the budget that seeking the federal guarantee was only a precaution, then later called the related wording a “drafting error,” according the non-partisan Citizens Against Government Waste, which nevertheless gave the governor its September 2012 “Porker of the Month” award.

Via: Fox News

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