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Title: Sen. DeMint in driver's seat~Politician specific & focused on what he wants
Source:
The Sun News
URL Source: http://www.thesunnews.com/2011/07/3 ... en-demint-in-drivers-seat.html
Published: Jul 31, 2011
Author: Laurie Kellman - AP
Post Date: 2011-07-31 08:05:30 by Happy Quanzaa
Keywords: DeMint, Tea Party
Views: 115
Comments: 4
WASHINGTON -- He calls himself Sen. Tea Party. That almost says it all about Sen. Jim DeMint's role on the nation's political scene in these nervous days of debt limit warfare and pre-election posturing. But unlike the fractious movement as a whole, DeMint is specific and focused on what change, exactly, he wants: passage - not just a vote - of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. Without it, he says, no consideration should be given to raising the nation's borrowing limit. Even, he says, if the country runs out of money for paying all its bills after Aug. 2. The larger problem for DeMint is the government's $14.3 trillion debt, the equivalent of $46,580 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. "That is the threat, not a debt ceiling, but the debt," the South Carolina senator told a tea party audience this week at a Capitol Hill rally. DeMint's preference for conservative principles over compromise - and his success last year getting tea partyers nominated over some GOP party favorites in last year's elections - have vexed Republican leaders. Some in the GOP complained that while DeMint's activities may have won like-minded conservatives several seats in Congress, they also enabled Democrats to keep some vulnerable seats and maintain their majority. His insistence on a balanced-budget amendment as part of any debt deal was the inspiration for several House Republicans - some of them also from South Carolina - to force Speaker John Boehner to pull his own debt-ceiling proposal and amend it to their liking so it could win passage in the House Friday evening. Within two hours, the Senate rejected it. Six Republicans joined all of the majority Democrats in doing it. Earlier in the week, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, the Republicans' presidential nominee in 2008 and one of the party's biggest maverick, disparaged the tea party by name and DeMint implicitly for acting is if a balanced-budget amendment could be passed as part of a debt-ceiling increase under such a tight deadline. "Maybe some people [who] have only been in this body for six or seven months or so really believe that," said McCain, a balanced-budget amendment supporter himself. "Others know better." DeMint's support for like-minded candidates in GOP primaries has boosted his influence in the party since his election to the Senate in 2004. Earlier this month, moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine co-authored an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal with DeMint, giving her re-election campaign some conservative credibility in the face of a challenge from the right. Sen. Orrin Hatch, who watched his fellow Utah Sen. Robert Bennett fall to a tea party challenge in 2010, is actively courting the populist movement more than a year out from Election Day. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, long an unapologetic defender of the special spending "earmarks" that DeMint deplores, switched and embraced the earmark ban now in effect. DeMint says he'd rather be in the minority than an unprincipled majority. So when the House on Friday passed Boehner's debt limit bill with changes that would require Congress to pass a balanced-budget amendment before the next time Congress has to raise the debt limit, DeMint still voted against it in the Senate. The change also wasn't good enough for four of South Carolina's five Republican House members, who, like DeMint, insisted that Congress first pass the constitutional amendment as a condition for any debt-ceiling increase. "Principled conservatives may disagree on this matter, and I respect their opinion," DeMint wrote, "But I believe America cannot wait any longer before we get serious about balancing the budget."
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., leads other GOP senators June 29
in a call to bypass the holiday recess to stay in Washington
and work on the debt crisis.
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#3. To: Happy Quanzaa (#0)
Over the next 75 years, true unfunded liabilities of the government amount to $215 trillion. If the government kept proper books in the Socialist Insecurity system, this is what we'd actually see. The government won't follow generally accepting accounting standards, so the real magnitude of the debt is hidden. With the boomers retiring, there isn't much time left before the entire system collapses within itself.
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestThe larger problem for DeMint is the government's $14.3 trillion debt, the equivalent of $46,580 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.
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