Simpson and Bowles

These are my links for February 19th:

• New Bowles-Simpson deficit plan would cut $2.4 trillion – Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson proposed a new framework Tuesday to cut the country’s debt by $2.4 trillion over the next decade.Bowles and Simpson were the co-chairmen of President Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission in 2010, and their recommendations came to serve as a yardstick for other debt-reduction proposals.
• Obama, the puppet master
• Obama blackmails tax payers while blaming Republicans –
• Tea Party challenger to McConnell emerging – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could see a primary challenge from local businessman Matt Bevin, who sources say is reaching out to Tea Party groups in the state to gauge support for a 2014 Senate run.Sarah Duran, president of the Louisville Tea Party, told The Hill that Bevin had been in touch with her over the phone to discuss his run multiple times over the past few weeks, and that he met with the group two weeks ago to discuss his interest in the race.
• GOP senators waiting for Obama outreach
• Colorado Democrat: Women Don’t Need Guns If They ‘Feel Like They’re Going To Be Raped’ –
• Obama leak lets ‘Gang of Eight’ look tough on immigration | WashingtonExaminer.com – RT @ByronYork: New: Obama leak lets ‘Gang of Eight’ look tough on immigration.
• Twitter / Flap: Way to go @LizMair! We need … – Way to go @LizMair! We need to see you on the Tee Vee much more!
• Sessions: “The leaked plan is little different in its substance from the Gang of 8 plan” | WashingtonExaminer.com – Sessions: “The leaked plan is little different in its substance from the Gang of 8 plan” | #tcot
• Sessions: “The leaked plan is little different in its substance from the Gang of 8 plan” | WashingtonExaminer.com – Sessions: “The leaked plan is little different in its substance from the Gang of 8 plan” #tcot
• Why is Obama threatening to release his own immigration plan? – The brutal truth, as some Republicans aren’t shy about noting, is that Obama’s bill isn’t all that different from Rubio’s. And to the extent that it is different, Democrats and their immigration-lobby allies will go on agitating to make the final product more like O’s bill if/when it passes. He can live, happily, with Rubio’s bill as law. On the other hand, If Obama talks up his own bill and ends up polarizing the issue until the compromise falls apart, great! He’ll happily use that as leverage for the “GOP hates Latinos” talking point in 2014. Realistically, the only way he’ll have a truly consequential second term is if Democrats can take back the House; that’s what his gun-control campaign right now is all about, and that’s what the fate of things like cap-and-trade rests on. If Republicans hang onto the House next year, O’s last two years will be spent mired in lame-duck misery. If they don’t, he’ll be the rare president who ends eight years in office with a flurry of significant “achievements.” I think Obama would be willing to trade that legacy for the legacy of having passed comprehensive immigration reform with GOP help, especially given what it means for Democratic electoral gains long-term, but if he does get the House back in 2014 then he can pass immigration reform — and an assault-weapons ban, and cap-and-trade — later. The only true disaster scenario for him is if immigration talks collapse now and the GOP holds the House in 2014 anyway. That’s quite possible, and maybe even probable, and that’s why he’s not being more aggressive right now in trying to sabotage the negotiations.
• Sessions: “The leaked plan is little different in its substance from the Gang of 8 plan” – Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., may have quickly denounced the immigration plan President Obama leaked this weekend, but most conservatives see little difference between Rubio’s efforts and Obama’s framework. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee released the following statement on the leaked Obama plan today:The release of the President’s immigration plan is more than a misstep or clever political maneuver. It is a dramatic disclosure of his real immigration ideology and goals. The plan grants amnesty on day one while making hollow promises of future enforcement that will never occur. The plan is a giveaway for the special interests and the open borders lobby. This president will never dedicate himself to enforcing the law, and this plan offers only further proof of that.It is plain what is happening. The special interests are again in the White House, demanding and getting their favors granted, while American workers and the public interest are again locked out.
• Immigration reform groups use low-key strategy against Rubio amnesty – Immigration reform groups are responding cautiously to the Feb. 14 revelation that Sen. Marco Rubio’s aides apparently tried to portray them as left-wing, anti-Christian misanthropes.Their low-key response has helped tamp down the potential conflict with Rubio, who is working with seven other senators on a controversial rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws.The senator’s spokesman, Alex Conant, also downplayed the revelations sketched in the Washington Post’s article.
• Immigration Double Kabuki – Maybe there is some Beltway logic to this story that I don’t understand. Here’s the situation: Obama wants an immigration bill. He knows that if he comes down heavily on one side Republicans might get their backs up and oppose whatever he proposes. So he is giving the Senate “negotiators” space. I understand that much. Never mind that the Senate “Gang of 8? negotiators are seven amnesty-first supporters plus Marco Rubio, who is also an amnesty-first supporter (if he wasn’t he wouldn’t have Cesar Conda as his chief of staff). Let’s assume for now that if these eight Friends of Amnesty can come up with a deal the rest of the Senate can pretend it’s a “bipartisan compromise,” at least until the public finds out what is in it.
• Obama’s Amnesty Bill = Rubio’s Amnesty Bill – Over the weekend, the White House leaked parts of a proposed amnesty bill to USA Today’s Alan Gomez. Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, described the proposed bill as a backup plan in case the Senate doesn’t act. Unlike the Schumer/Rubio amnesty plan, the administration bill contains no enforcement “triggers” that would have to be met before the amnestied illegals could move from green card lite to full green-card status. Rubio said the bill would be “dead on arrival” if it were to be introduced, while Paul Ryan said it would take things “in the wrong direction.”The “backup plan” stuff is nonsense — the point of leaking the bill is to enable Rubio to say that his amnesty plan is waaay different from the dastardly Obama plan, even though they’re identical in the only respect that matters: amnesty immediately for all illegal aliens, with work cards, Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses, the right to travel abroad and return, etc. The president has repeatedly said he wants to stand back and let Congress come up with a bill because if he were to send one to Congress it would be toxic for Republicans — i.e., those Republicans who desperately want to sell out their constituents by backing amnesty but are afraid of the voter backlash. The Rubio and Ryan criticisms of the proposed bill sound almost as though they were scripted by Schumer and White House to make the Senate Gang of Eight scheme seem more palatable to such Republicans.