Posts Tagged ‘Harry Reid’

Now I, for one, am a fan of bike paths. We have one that goes right past our house that links to 60 miles or so of bike paths. I love it.

I’ve often said: “We can thank nature loving liberals for these nice bike paths we have” — though I imagine a few snail darters were killed during construction of these bike paths (which makes bike paths something of a dilemma for liberals).

Fair enough. And they are a public good that everyone can use.

But I certainly don’t consider them a viable mode of transportation. They’re for exercise and recreation. They wind through the forests and creeks and go down by Lake Michigan. Nice.

At least I feel like I’m getting something for my tax money.

But this is a matter for local government — has nothing to do with what the Feds should be concerned about. Our local government can decide if we need bike paths, tennis courts, playgrounds, drinking fountains, hiking trails, skateboard parks, whatever. All fine. This is what local government is for.

We’re now facing an economic meltdown — an economy that’s teetering on the brink of a full-blown collapse. We have a $14.5 trillion debt. We have zero economic growth. Median incomes have dropped to 1996 levels. Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says we are now in the “early stage of economic crisis.” In other words, something much worse is coming even than what we have seen to date from Obama.

So why is Harry Reid wasting everyone’s time talking about bike paths?

Wanda and Ben enjoy bike paths, but don’t consider it one of the major issues to be talking about during these times of economic crisis. Nor is this a federal concern.

Here’s a link to Chicago area bike path maps >>>

As you can see, we have lots of bike paths here in the Chicago area — paid for with local tax dollars. We really don’t need Harry Reid to build us some more.

But understand that these are not really spending cuts. They’re slowdowns in spending increases.

WASHINGTON TIMES: With no debt deal done and both sides racing an Aug. 2 deadline, Democrats and Republicans on Sunday readied separate backup plans to try to raise the government’s borrowing limit and cut spending.

House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, pitched his colleagues on a plan to raise the borrowing limit by about $1 trillion and match that with similar sized spending cuts — enough to last through the rest of the year, and leaving for later the heavy lifting on taxes and bigger spending items.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he is working on a plan to raise the debt limit by $2.7 trillion, coupled with an equal reduction in projected future spending. In a concession to Republicans, he said that plan would not include tax increases, but that the new debt level would last through the 2012 elections.

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But then Reid recants after momentarily lurching into the truth.

WASHINGTON POST: In sharp contrast to the toasts and tributes of Wednesday night’s state dinner hosted by President Obama, a bipartisan collection of congressmen are already asking sharply critical questions about China’s handling of its domestic economy and its alleged human rights abuses.

In an interview with a Las Vegas news station, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) called Hu a “dictator,” On Capitol Hill, a top House Republican compared Hu to ancient Chinese emperors.

Even before Hu set foot on U.S. soil, several senators reintroduced legislation to push international sanctions against China for alleged currency manipulation.

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WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Americans can give thanks in this Christmas season for an end to the reckless and destructive 111th Congress. This is the Congress that passed Obamacare, against the wishes of a substantial majority of the public, on Christmas Eve of last year. In the dead of night, Democratic lawmakers stuffed the monstrous 2,700-page bill with special-interest goodies and political payoffs like the “Cornhusker Kickback” and the “Louisiana Purchase.” As we have learned since, most members were still ignorant of the bill’s contents three months later, when it gained final passage in the House. No surprise that its immediate results — both intended and unintended — have been almost uniformly bad.

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