A SPECIAL NOTE: TODAY marks 19 days before the 40th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision that spearheaded the legalizaion of the abortion of the unborn in America. I am in the midst of a 40 day period of prayer and (limited) fasting to honor the memory of the over 55 million ! unborn that have been murdered and the tens of millions of their mothers, fathers, and siblings who have been victimized by this great American Holocaust.
PLEASE PRAY: 1. For the girls/women each day contemplating an abortion; the abortionists and their staff; the crisis pregnancy centers seeking to serve the women facing unplanned pregnancies. 2, For the passage of even more state laws that will effectively help to limit the number of abortions being performed. 3. The defunding of Planned Parenthood that performs over 300,000 abortions (about 1/3 the toal) for profit and still receives almost 1/2 billion dollars in federal tax dollars. 4. That one day America might finally pass a constitutional amendment promoting the Sanctity of Every Human Life - in effect oulawing both abortion and euthanasia. 5. For churches/Christians being pro-life- not just claiming to be but demonstrating it conclusively by their actiions.
NOTE: If you've been watching the news the past few days, you may have heard the uproar over the House initially deciding to postpone the vote on aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Well, as usual, you probably noticed that nothing of WHY it was delayed was presented by the mainstream media. I hope you sensed something was wrong with such one-sided coverage. Sure enough, as you'll read below, there was a reason for the delay: there was enough pork added on for a Texas-size barbeque. Just business as usual for those catering to special interests! Truly disgusting!
"Uproar Over Bloated Sandy Aid Package" - By Amy Payne, January 3, 2013 A SPECIAL NOTE: TODAY marks 19 days before the 40th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision that spearheaded the legalizaion of the abortion of the unborn in America. I am in the midst of a 40 day period of prayer and (limited) fasting to honor the memory of the over 55 million ! unborn that have been murdered and the tens of millions of their mothers, fathers, and siblings who have been victimized by this great American Holocaust.
PLEASE PRAY: 1. For the girls/women each day contemplating an abortion; the abortionists and their staff; the crisis pregnancy centers seeking to serve the women facing unplanned pregnancies. 2, For the passage of even more state laws that will effectively help to limit the number of abortions being performed. 3. The defunding of Planned Parenthood that performs over 300,000 abortions (about 1/3 the toal) for profit and still receives almost 1/2 billion dollars in federal tax dollars. 4. That one day America might finally pass a constitutional amendment promoting the Sanctity of Every Human Life - in effect oulawing both abortion and euthanasia. 5. For churches/Christians being pro-life- not just claiming to be but demonstrating it conclusively by their actiions.
NOTE: If you've been watching the news the past few days, you may have heard the uproar over the House initially deciding to postpone the vote on aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy. Well, as usual, you probably noticed that nothing of WHY it was delayed was presented by the mainstream media. I hope you sensed something was wrong with such one-sided coverage. Sure enough, as you'll read below, there was a reason for the delay: there was enough pork added on for a Texas-size barbeque. Just business as usual for those catering to special interests! Truly disgusting!Leaders from New Jersey and New York blew up yesterday after House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) postponed a vote on an aid package related to Hurricane Sandy. But the bill is so loaded with pork projects that these officials should consider directing their anger at the Obama Administration, which is hijacking the aid meant for their constituents.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie “in an angry news conference decried the ‘selfishness and duplicity,’ the ‘palace intrigue,’ ‘the callous indifference to the people of our state,’” ABC News reported [1].Representative Peter King (R-NY) accused Boehner of “plunging ‘a cruel knife in the back’ of storm-ravaged residents ‘who don’t have shelter, don’t have food.’”
The real “selfishness and duplicity,” however, comes from those who insist that this bill is meant for Sandy’s victims—when in reality, it is a special-interest money fest. This is a terrible way to treat storm victims, by piling on other projects and tying them to an emotional legislative vote. It amounts to exploiting disaster victims, which is inexcusable. That’s where the anger should be focused.
The estimate of insured losses from Sandy comes in around $20 billion—but the total aid package proposed is three times [2] that amount. Roughly $28 billion of the request is marked for future disaster-mitigation projects.
The bill includes funding for Head Start, the federal day care program. As Heritage’s Lindsey Burke, the Will Skillman fellow in education policy, explains [3], some Head Start centers may need repairs from hurricane damage, but handing the program $100 million—as the Sandy aid package would—is a large expenditure that deserves more scrutiny. Other questionable items in the package, which have received wide media coverage, include money for fisheries in Alaska, free money for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and repairs to the Smithsonian. Heritage’s Patrick Louis Knudsen adds that “there is the truly audacious $17 billion in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds, an embarrassingly transparent slush fund [4].”
As Heritage visiting fellow Matt Mayer has said, there is a much larger issue here. The spending request [5]:
Hurricane Sandy is the type of disaster that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should address. Federal assistance is needed. But the Obama Administration’s exploitation of hurricane victims for billions in additional government spending deserves an angry response from those affected by the storm.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Quick Hits:
The real “selfishness and duplicity,” however, comes from those who insist that this bill is meant for Sandy’s victims—when in reality, it is a special-interest money fest. This is a terrible way to treat storm victims, by piling on other projects and tying them to an emotional legislative vote. It amounts to exploiting disaster victims, which is inexcusable. That’s where the anger should be focused.
The estimate of insured losses from Sandy comes in around $20 billion—but the total aid package proposed is three times [2] that amount. Roughly $28 billion of the request is marked for future disaster-mitigation projects.
The bill includes funding for Head Start, the federal day care program. As Heritage’s Lindsey Burke, the Will Skillman fellow in education policy, explains [3], some Head Start centers may need repairs from hurricane damage, but handing the program $100 million—as the Sandy aid package would—is a large expenditure that deserves more scrutiny. Other questionable items in the package, which have received wide media coverage, include money for fisheries in Alaska, free money for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and repairs to the Smithsonian. Heritage’s Patrick Louis Knudsen adds that “there is the truly audacious $17 billion in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds, an embarrassingly transparent slush fund [4].”
As Heritage visiting fellow Matt Mayer has said, there is a much larger issue here. The spending request [5]:
''reflects the President’s cavalier attitude toward spending and deficits. He intends to exploit loopholes in the Budget Control Act that allow this new spending, above existing spending limits, without offsets. In an era of chronic trillion-dollar deficits, this is an act of willful fiscal negligence.Mayer says the priority should be Sandy’s real victims: “all requests for funding for federal departments and agencies that does not flow to states, localities, businesses, or citizens for response and recovery activities should not be included in this supplemental request.”
Hurricane Sandy is the type of disaster that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should address. Federal assistance is needed. But the Obama Administration’s exploitation of hurricane victims for billions in additional government spending deserves an angry response from those affected by the storm.
[bold and italics emphasis mine]
Quick Hits:
- According to reports, President Obama plans to move forward with immigration and gun control [6] proposals early in his second term.
- President Obama signed the fiscal cliff deal via autopen [7] yesterday.
- The swift passage of the fiscal cliff deal violated House Republicans’ pledge to allow the public three days [8] to review legislation and President Obama’s promise to post bills online for five days [9] before signing them.
- The Al Jazeera network, which is financed by the government of Qatar, is taking over Al Gore’s Current TV [10] network.
- Delaying the across-the-board defense cuts, as the fiscal cliff deal did, is not a solution—they must be stopped. The Defending Defense coalition has more [11].
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org; URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2013/01/03/morning-bell-uproar-over-bloated-sandy-aid-package/
URLs in this post:
[1] reported: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/chris-christie-calls-disgusting-boehners-decision-yank-sandy/story?id=18114029#.UOVuSKzjunp
[2] three times: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/24/fuzzy-numbers-drive-obama-hurricane-sandy-request/
[3] explains: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/17/hurricane-sandy-relief-bill-packed-with-new-head-start-spending/
[4] embarrassingly transparent slush fund: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/17/hurricane-sandy-relief-bill-more-spending-than-disaster-aid/
[5] spending request: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/12/hurricane-sandy-disaster-aid-request-too-big
[6] immigration and gun control: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-quickly-go-immigration-reform-and-gun-control_693547.html
[7] signed the fiscal cliff deal via autopen: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamas-staff-use-autopen-sign-fiscal-cliff-legislation_693578.html
[8] three days: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/house-vote-fiscal-cliff-bill-breaks-gop-3-day-pledge-read-bill
[9] post bills online for five days: http://promises.nationaljournal.com/ethics-reform/post-bills-online-before-signing-them/
[10] Al Gore’s Current TV: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/al-jazeera-said-to-be-acquiring-current-tv/
[11] more: http://blog.heritage.org/2013/01/02/defending-defense-dont-just-delay-defense-sequestration-stop-it/
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