Israeli Official Suggests Boehner Misled Netanyahu On Speech To Congress

Sources claim an Israeli official suggested Friday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been misled into thinking an invitation to address the U.S. Congress next month was fully supported by the Democrats.

Netanyahu was invited by the Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, to address Congress on March 3, an invitation Boehner originally described as bipartisan.  The topic of his speech would supposedly be relations with Iran.

The move angered the White House, which is upset that the event comes two weeks before Israeli elections and that Netanyahu is expected to be critical of U.S. policy on Iran.  Most gatherings of this nature are organized between heads of state – not between a head of state and congress or parliament of another country.

“It appears that the speaker of Congress made a move, in which we trusted, but which it ultimately became clear was a one-sided move and not a move by both sides,” Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi told 102 FM Tel Aviv Radio on Friday.

Hanegbi is a senior member of Netanyahu’s Likud party.

The interviewer asked if that meant Netanyahu had been “misled” into believing Boehner’s invitation was bipartisan, a characterization Hanegbi did not contest.

Hanegbi did not say Netanyahu would refuse the invitation.

Asked whether the prime minister should cancel or postpone the speech, Hanegbi said: “What would the outcome be then? The outcome would be that we forsake an arena in which there is a going to be a very dramatic decision (on Iran).”

There has been much criticism of Boehner by Democrats and repeated statements by Boehner and other Republicans explaining their position.

Top Democratic lawmaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday the event was “politicized” and she hoped it would not take place.  Also, the White House said it would not meet Netanyahu during the visit.

Netanyahu has denied seeking electoral gains or meddling in internal U.S. affairs with the speech, in which he is expected to warn world powers against agreeing to anything short of a total rollback of Iran’s nuclear program.

A Netanyahu spokesman declined to comment on Hanegbi’s comments on Friday.

Acknowledging that Democrats had been “pained” by the invitation, Hanegbi said Netanyahu and Israeli emissaries were making “a huge effort to make clear to them that this is not a move that flouts the president of the United States”.

More:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/06/israel-boehner-misled-netanyahu-congress-speech

Former Tea Party Representative Joe Walsh On Campaign Donations

TYT Network

Joe Walsh is a former Illinois Republican congressman who was in office from 2011 to 2013.

He’s now hosts the Joe Walsh Show, which airs on WIND-AM 560 in Chicago and WNYM-AM 970 in New York.

While in office, Walsh was a Tea Party favorite and vocal critic of the Obama Administration, going against government spending, Obamacare, taxes, gun control and immigration policy.

Here he talks about campaign finance and raising donations and money for his campaign.

Partisanship In Regards To The Netanyahu Invite

Michael Smerconish speaks with former U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, and Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) on how partisanship is impacting U.S. foreign policy.

CNN

Climate-Change Denier Ted Cruz To Oversee NASA And Science Subcommittee

Secular Talk

According to the Huffington Post, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was named chair of the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, where he will oversee NASA and science programs.

Appointed Jan. 8, Cruz is expected to be confirmed to the new role by the end of the month as one of many changes to the new Republican-controlled Congress.

But the Republican senator’s words and actions during his time in office have painted him to be a far cry from an advocate for the sciences, leaving many concerned about the future of space and science funding.

Cruz’s infamous hours-long speech in September 2013 led to a 16-day government shutdown barring 97 percent of NASA employees from appearing for work. Interns to the agency were temporarily displaced when the NASA-provided housing was closed during the shutdown, and many have said the agency suffered lasting damage due to the freeze.

114th Congress: Awkward Swearing-In?

CNN reporter Alexandra Jaffe was on Capitol Hill for day one of the 114th Congress interviewing legislators.

CNN

Vox: Obama Is Unpopular. He’s Also Accomplished An Incredible Amount.

According to Vox, since November 26, the Obama administration put forward new anti-smog regulations that should prevent thousands of premature deaths and heart attacks every year.   Also, Obama’s appointees at the Federal Reserve implemented new rules curbing reckless borrowing by giant banks that will reduce profits and shareholder earnings but increase the safety of the financial system.   He also normalized relations with Cuba after decades and created a plan to protect millions of unauthorized immigrants from deportation.  Also, on Saturday, Democrats broke a congressional logjam and got many nominees confirmed.

Vox:  “It has been, in short, a very busy and extremely consequential lame-duck session. One whose significance is made all the more striking by the fact that it follows an electoral catastrophe for Obama’s party. And that is the Obama era in a microcosm.

“Democrats’ overwhelming electoral win in 2008 did not prove to be a ‘realigning’ election that handed the party enduring political dominance. Quite the opposite. But it did touch off a wave of domestic policymaking whose scale makes Obama a major historical figure in the way his two predecessors won’t be.”

Vox continues:  “It’s old hat at this point, but given the mixture of conservative rage and liberal disappointment that Obama generally inspires, it’s worth emphasizing that his first term offered legislation on a truly historic scale. The Affordable Care Act and related measures an expansion of the welfare state rivaled by only the New Deal and the Great Society.

“The tendency of today’s slow-as-molasses Congress to work via megabills means that consequential measures like new rules mandating calorie labeling at chain restaurants stand as mere provisions of Obamacare rather than counting as substantial measures on their own.”

Republicans Can Still Go After Obamacare

According to Mother Jones, now that Republicans control Congress, they’re again threatening to end Obamacare. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader-elect Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed to hold a repeal vote when Republicans take over the upper chamber in January, adding that GOPers “will go at that law…in every way that we can.”

Obamacare is not going anywhere as long as President Barack Obama is in office. But there is a sneakier way GOPers could deal a blow to the health care law in the next two years: They can make the law look more costly than it is, boosting the case for dismantling it.

In 2012, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)—which produces official budget projections—calculated that the combined effect of the tax increases and spending cuts in the Affordable Care Act will reduce the deficit by $109 billion over the next decade. (This is the CBO’s most recent estimate.)

Conservatives cried foul, saying that the CBO double-counted savings in the law and ignored billions in health care spending in order to make the economic effects of the law seem rosier than they were. They charged that Obamacare actually adds billions to the deficit.

But how does health care spending affect the deficit? Only the Medicaid expansion is government run insurance. The insurance on the exchanges is from private companies, so that wouldn’t affect the government budget.

The Bright Side: They Might Reduce The Deficit

During the last two years of the Clinton administration – when there was a Democratic President and Republican Congress – budget deficits were reduced, and (if the numbers are real), the federal government was actually running a surplus.

Wikipedia states: “The surplus in fiscal year 2000 was $237 billion—the third consecutive surplus and the largest surplus ever.”

Graph from Wikipedia.

According to Politico, in 2009, when the Barack Obama took office, the budget deficit was $1.4 trillion, and in 2015 it is projected to be $478 billion.

House Republicans Move Forward To Sue President Obama Over Healthcare

Court documents state that one day after the President’s decision speech on immigration reform, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives filed a lawsuit challenging the implementation of Obama’s signature healthcare law over employer-based coverage and payments to insurers, apparently as retribution.

Jonathan Turley, the lead counsel for House Republicans, said in a Friday blog post that the president’s actions blurred the lines between branches of government and usurped the ability of Congress to use the “power of purse” during the appropriations process.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday filed the lawsuit challenging the implementation of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law over employer-based coverage and payments to insurers, according to court documents.

Republican officials say the House can still—and very well might—sue Obama over his orders to protect as many as five million immigrants from deportation, but the fact that they chose Friday morning to file their healthcare lawsuit sent a message that they would follow through on their own threats of action.

The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Washington against the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Treasury, targets a decision to delay implementation of the law’s employer mandate, which requires employers with more than 50 employees to offer healthcare coverage.

House Speaker John Boehner, in a statement, said that Obama had bypassed Congress to take “unilateral actions” when implementing the healthcare law, named The Affordable Care Act, and also known as Obamacare.

House Appropriations Committee: Defunding Executive Actions On Immigration ‘Impossible’

According to The Hill, it would not be possible to defund President Obama’s executive actions on immigration through a government spending bill, the House Appropriations Committee said Thursday.

In a statement released by Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) before Obama’s scheduled national address, the committee said the primary agency responsible for implementing Obama’s actions is funded entirely by user fees.

As a result, the committee said the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) agency would be able to continue to collect fees and carry out its operations even if the government shut down.

“This agency is entirely self-funded through the fees it collects on various immigration applications,” the committee said in a statement. “Congress does not appropriate funds for any of its operations, including the issuance of immigration status or work permits, with the exception of the ‘E-Verify’ program. Therefore, the appropriations process cannot be used to ‘defund’ the agency.”

Sources:

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/224837-appropriations-panel-defunding-immigration-order-impossible