Majority of Americans Would Prefer Gov’t Shutdown over More Spending

Molly Bruns
-
0
Majority of Americans Would Prefer Gov’t Shutdown over More Spending

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) A poll of likely American voters said they would choose to shut down the government before having Congress spend another dime.

Responses to the poll, done by Rasmussen Reports, showed that 56% of respondents preferred a partial government shutdown until Congress limits its spending, as opposed to 34% who said they would prefer the government spend more in order to avoid a shutdown.

According to Breitbart, almost three-quarters of Republicans and more than half of independents are inclined toward a shutting down the government until Congress can cut spending or keep it at steady levels. Only 41% of Democrats thought this would be productive.

On the flip side, 50% of Democrats expressed concern about shutting down the government and encouraged increased expenditures.

The poll found that the majority of all voters, regardless of party, believe Congress does have a spending problem, with 66% hypothesizing that politicians were “unwilling to reduce government spending.”

A minority of 21% believed taxpayers were the reason for the country’s massive debt, which sits at more than $31 trillion after President Joe Biden added nearly $4 trillion in debt during his first two years in office.

Biden’s spending puts him nearly on pace to match his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, although some $3.7 trillion of Trump’s $7.8 trillion in expenditures can be attributed directly to COVID-19 relief during his final year in office.

Since 2013, the first year of former President Barack Obama’s second term, the U.S. debt-to-gross-domestic-product ratio has exceeded 100%, meaning the country spent more than it brought in.

Nonetheless, Congress is on the brink of a negotiation to increase the debt ceiling.

On one side of the aisle, Republicans are pushing for massive cuts to offset government spending.

“The debate over our debt ceiling is the perfect example of Washington elites refusing to prioritize your best interests,” said U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. “We can’t keep rubber-stamping reckless spending. I’m fighting every day to stop it.”

Democrats are less enthusiastic about that possibility, which may result in a governmental default on its loans if no agreement can be brokered, as well as triggering a shutdown of nonessential federal services.

The Congressional Budget Office recently released budget figures showing that the federal government borrowed $4 billion per day in 2022, which is more than $10,000 per household and an overall deficit of about $1.4 trillion. Pre-pandemic deficits were less than $1 trillion.

The U.S. came very close to the current $31.4 trillion limit last week, causing the Treasury Department to take “extraordinary measures” to give Congress time to come to an understanding.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., indicated his willingness to meet with Biden to negotiate a compromise between raising the debt ceiling and making cuts to expenditures where necessary.

However, despite Biden’s having initiated the meeting, the White House made it clear that the president was not planning to budge on the matter of spending cuts.

MSNBC Claims Duly Elected House GOP Is a ‘Terrorist Organization’

Jacob Bruns
-
0
MSNBC Claims Duly Elected House GOP Is a ‘Terrorist Organization’

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) An MSNBC contributor threw gasoline on the flammable dung-heap that is the far-left channel’s editorial credibility by suggesting that newly empowered House Republicans belonged to a “terrorist organization,” Breitbart reported.

Jason Johnson, a journalism instructor at Morgan State University and go-to source for bombastic rhetoric, made the remark on Monday’s broadcast of The 11th Hour, hosted by the equally suspect Stephanie Ruhle.

It came during a discussion of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who recently declared his unconditional support for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

“I will never leave that woman,” McCarthy allegedly told a friend. “I will always take care of her.”

Johnson used the opportunity to offer an amateur psychoanalysis of McCarthy, claiming that he has become a servant to right-wing extremists.

“It’s one thing to say, that’s my work wife. Right?” he began.

“And it’s something else when you have Stockholm Syndrome. That’s what we have here,” he continued. “This guy’s been beat down by the far-right and his own party for so wrong that he’s convinced himself that he’s in love with Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

Johnson’s remarks followed a divisive political season in which President Joe Biden and other Democrats actively vilified their political opponents as a campaign strategy by declaring them an existential “threat to democracy.”

But despite a better-than-expected midterm performance that allowed Democrats to retain control of the narrowly divided Senate, the dangerous rhetoric from the Left has not subsided.

“Now, look, I make no judgment on who people line up with, but if you want to be in love with the terrorist sympathizer, that speaks volumes about whether or not you should be equipped to be potentially third in line to leave this country and case of a tragedy,” Johnson said.

Although McCarthy has been criticized for being too moderate by many GOP lawmakers, who forced 15 rounds of voting recently before electing him as House speaker, Johnson claimed he was merely a “front” for the party’s fringe elements.

“You have a dime-store front for a terrorist organization,” he claimed. “And this is just the public attempt to watch that relationship and pretend that they’re running a party under the guise of this brand-new BFF love relationship that they have because McCarthy has no spine and no love for this country.”

Of course, Johnson’s attack merely echoed a longstanding partisan talking point from the fringes of his own party. The radical Left has been describing the Right as terrorists routinely since former President Donald Trump was elected.

Last year, the website Salon also declared the GOP had “morphed, like an evil insect emerging from a chrysalis, into its final form: a terrorist organization.”

Dems Panic as House GOP Moves to Limit Biden’s Oil Reserve Raids

Mark Pellin
-
0
Dems Panic as House GOP Moves to Limit Biden’s Oil Reserve Raids

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Democrats have unleashed a full-panic gaslighting campaign in response to House Republican legislation that would help boost American energy independence and curb President Joe Biden’s reckless raids on the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

After Biden repeatedly tapped the SPR to artificially suppress gas prices in the run-up to November’s midterm elections, the new House GOP-majority is expected to pass the Strategic Production Response Act. The legislation would prohibit the Biden regime from further raiding the SPR without producing a plan to increase oil and gas leasing on federal lands.

The bill provides provisions that would allow the reserves to be tapped in the event of an actual energy emergency, not a political one like Biden has repeatedly been accused of manufacturing to justify his raids.

Rattled by the prospect of actually having to address the gas crisis it created, instead of simply draining the nation’s emergency supply of oil for political gain, administration officials went on the offensive and tried to preemptively blame Republicans for any price hikes at the pumps that might ensue.

Should the bill make it through the House and Democrat-controlled Senate, where it would likely face stiff opposition, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm vowed it would face a veto from Biden.

“He will not allow the American people to suffer because of the backwards agenda that House Republicans are advancing,” Granholm warbled.

The Biden administration last year drained the oil reserve to historically low levels in a series of draw-downs that Republicans called recklessly dangerous and politically motivated.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., blasted Biden when he attempted one of his string of oil grabs in October, accusing the president of continuing “to mortgage our nation’s energy security by drawing down the SPR to record lows.”

With no plan for how to replace the depleted supply, Republicans argued that the legislation is needed to keep the nation’s oil supply intact for national security.

“What happens if a war breaks out? That’s gonna lead to a major disruption in oil supplies,” said Bob Latta, a House Energy and Commerce Committee member. “We need to work together to prepare for all contingencies.”

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., touched on a similar point in response to Democrats’ hysterics about the bill and also their disingenuous warnings about it leading to higher gas prices. 

“If the President declares an emergency resulting from an energy supply disruption, the Secretary has full authority to utilize the SPR—HR 21 will not change or hamper that,” Rodgers, the House Energy and Commerce Committee chair, said last week, according to The Hill.

The GOP bill “simply addresses the politically-motivated use of the SPR,” she said.

George Santos Tied to Ilhan Omar-Style Immigration Marriage Scam

Mark Pellin
-
0
George Santos Tied to Ilhan Omar-Style Immigration Marriage Scam

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Serial fabulist Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., reportedly tried orchestrating an immigration marriage scheme similar to the dodge that Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., used when she allegedly married her brother.

Santos’s Brazilian wife, Uadla Vieira Santos, was rarely seen by Santos’s housemates and was only vaguely referred to as “a friend,” according to the Daily Beast.

One of those former housemates, Greg Morey-Parker, told the Daily Beast that Santos once “tried to get me to marry some Brazilian woman so she could get citizenship.” The pitch was made as a money-making opportunity, according to Morey-Parker, but the outlet’s report didn’t expand on details.

Omar has for years dodged allegations, deemed credible enough by the FBI to investigate, that the Somalia-born Democrat married her brother, who was reportedly a British citizen, so he could obtain a green car, according to The Blaze.

The openly-gay Republican Santos denied the allegation that he tried to hatch a marriage-for-profit immigration scheme, as he has previously denied being a drag queen before conceding that he had a history of crossdressing. Santos has also clarified that he was only “Jew-ish” when confronted about claims that his grandparents “survived the Holocaust” as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium who changed their surname.

“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos explained. “I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.’”

Santos, who was tapped to serve on the House Small Business Committee, has also been accused of fabricating large chunks of his professional and academic history. He previously conceded to lying about graduating from college and working for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs.

Santos’s planned marriage to his 18-year-old boyfriend, Pedro Vilarva, was sidetracked when the proposal was rejected not once, but three times. That didn’t prevent Santos from announcing the impending union on Facebook.

“Good evening everyone! As you all may already know Pedro and I have decided to join our toothbrushes! Lol and a very few friends have been selected to share this special moment with us!” Santos wrote in a 2014 Facebook “engagement dinner” invitation.

When Santos made the announcement, he was still married to Uadla Vieira Santos, according to the Daily Beast. Less than two weeks after that divorce was finalized, Santos filed the official paperwork to launch his 2020 campaign.

Biden’s ‘Defense Threat Reduction Agency’ Gives $3M to Wuhan-Linked EcoHealth Alliance

Mark Pellin
-
0
Biden’s ‘Defense Threat Reduction Agency’ Gives $3M to Wuhan-Linked EcoHealth Alliance

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) The Biden Defense Department’s Threat Reduction Agency, charged with “combating weapons of mass destruction,” last month awarded a $3-million grant to EcoHealth Alliance, disregarding multiple warnings that linked the company to the controversial Wuhan lab in China that many think was responsible for the origin of COVID.

The DOD grant was the latest largesse for EcoHealth, which has previously received copious funding funneled through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, formerly headed by Anthony Fauci.

Last year, GOP leaders demanded answers from the former COVID czar after NIAID had again funded the EcoHealth Alliance to study bat coronaviruses in Asia and dodged any accountability for how the money was being spent.

“We have grave concerns that one of your last acts at NIAID is to send even more taxpayer dollars to an organization whose prior involvement in the very same subject may have contributed to a global pandemic,” Republican House members Steve Scalise, James Comer and Jim Jordan wrote in an October 2022 letter to Fauci.

“Based on the totality of circumstances surrounding EcoHealth and the WIV that have transpired over the past two and a half years, your decision to continue funding this entity is downright shocking,” the lawmakers wrote.

Shocking or not, EcoHealth Alliance, “despite possibly having caused the pandemic and definitely having repeatedly and gravely violated terms of a US-government grant, currently has 12 active US-government grants and contracts, totaling more than $34 million,” wrote Richard H. Ebright, a board of governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University.

Add another $3 million to the COVID kitty for the EcoHealth Alliance, which it received from the DOD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, under the auspice of “scientific research” for “combating weapons of mass destruction,” according to USAspending.gov.

The grant money will be used for “reducing the threat of viral spillover from wildlife in the Philippines.”

EcoHealth’s latest windfall will likely be subject to Congressional inquiry, part of an overall investigation that Republicans plan to launch with their newly-won majority control of the U.S. House.

“The origins of COVID is something we’ve talked about a lot, and looking into whether or not taxpayer money was used by companies like EcoHealth Alliance to promote gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab, where many scientists have said that’s where COVID started, not at some wet market,” Scalise told Breitbart News.

Ghislaine Maxwell Says Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself

Ken Silva
-
0
Ghislaine Maxwell Says Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell said in an interview published Monday that she believes her former associate, diseased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, was murdered in the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center while awaiting his own trial for sex-trafficking charges.

In her first broadcasted interview since going to jail, Maxwell also spoke about life as a prison inmate and how she believes a photo of Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre is fake. But it was her comments about Epstein’s death that sent the internet abuzz—reigniting the “Epstein didn’t kill himself” meme that has circulated online since the financier died in prison under mysterious circumstances in August 2019.

“I believe that he was murdered. I was shocked, and I wondered, ‘How did this happen?’ Because I was sure he was going to appeal, and I was sure he was covered by the non-prosecution agreement,” Maxwell told British reporter Jeremy Kyle of TalkTV.

The non-prosecution agreement referenced by Maxwell was a sweetheart deal Epstein signed with the Department of Justice in 2008, in which he pleaded guilty to a state charge of procuring for prostitution a girl below the age of 18. Epstein was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade, and was reportedly allowed to leave the jail on “work release” for up to 12 hours a day.

After the Miami Herald published an expose on Epstein and his non-prosecution agreement in late 2018, Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. He was found dead in his jail cell on August 10, 2019.

Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide by hanging, but his lawyers contested that claim. Skeptics point to malfunctioning surveillance cameras, sleeping guards, and broken bones in Epstein’s neck as indications that his death was something other than suicide.

Because of Epstein’s extensive fraternization with high-profile politicians and celebrities such as Bill Clinton, Terry McAuliffe, Prince Andrew and Bill Gates, some claim that Epstein’s death was actually a hit job to silence him.

Maxwell was found guilty of child sex trafficking in December 2021, and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment last June.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Nike Flees Seattle’s Crime and Violence

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
-
0
Nike Flees Seattle’s Crime and Violence

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Nike’s popular Seattle location is closing its doors and fleeing the city under threat of skyrocketing crime, joining a growing number of high-profile corporations that have bolted from the city.

The store that was located at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Pike Street closed its doors for good on Friday, according to the Daily Mail.

Even though the woke company, which has been a consistent big donor for Democrats, has yet to provide an official reason for why it decided to shutter its store, residents told the Seattle Times that street crime was probably one of the major reasons why Nike moved out of the city.

King County, in which Seattle is located, suffered from persistently high crime rates, with 2022 being the deadliest year for homeless people.

The King County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that last year, 310 homeless people died. This is a 65 percent spike from 2021, including at least 18 homicides and 160 fentanyl-related overdoses.

The Seattle Police Department reported that, as of Nov. 2022, there were 285 rapes, 1,654 robberies and 3,258 aggravated assaults. Murder rates surpassed the 2021 figures, with 48 reported before 2022 was done, a 12.5 percent increase.

Nike regular customers from Seattle were devastated about the news as they visited the store for the last time on Friday, thinking that it might cause a domino effect when other businesses would leave the city, too.

“Downtown is a mixed bag,” said Jeffrey Rosen, a broker at Seattle Pacific Realty. “There’s some recovery going on — and there’s some folding up and going away going on as well.”

Nike is not the only company that closed its doors because of the crime rates. Aside from small businesses that suffered the most and closed their doors, too, two other major corporations — Starbucks and Amazon — decided that Seattle was not worth it. Facebook and Microsoft have also fled the crime-ridden city.

One of the driving forces responsible for the current state of Seattle is former Mayor Jenny Durkan, who allowed BLM and Antifa thugs to destroy the city and establish the city’s lawless CHOP zone in 2020, fostering an anti-law environment where crime has thrived.

Catholic Churches Attacked Nearly 300 Times Since 2020

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
-
0
Catholic Churches Attacked Nearly 300 Times Since 2020

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) After drug addict and criminal George Floyd died in May 2020, woke radicals went on rampages and attacked nearly 300 Roman Catholic churches in a spree of violence and vandalism.

The tracker from CatholicVote reported that, as of Sunday, the most recent tally is at 275, according to the New York Post.

“While the riots and looting mostly died down in the summer of 2020, the attacks on Catholic churches have continued and escalated,” the religious nonprofit organization said.

Arson, broken windows, decapitated statues and satanic graffiti are just some of the attacks against churches. Around 118 attacks were logged since the draft of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs was leaked, which eventually overturned Roe v. Wade.

Even though some attackers were stealing and thieving, the “vast majority” of radicals were simply pursuing their degenerate desire to destroy churches. According to the report, “the primary motive is not material gain.”

“Hostility Against Churches Is on the Rise in the United States,” a December report from the Family Research Council informed, and also found that attacks on churches spiked after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

The report found that there were 420 acts of hostility against 397 churches between January 2018 and September 2022 that took place across 45 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.

The report’s authors attributed the rise in attacks to “a collapse in societal reverence and respect for houses of worship and religion — in this case, churches and Christianity.”

“Americans appear increasingly comfortable lashing out against church buildings, pointing to a larger societal problem of marginalizing core Christian beliefs, including those that touch on hot-button political issues related to human dignity and sexuality,” according to the report.

CatholicVote noted that only 25% of the church attacks the organization has recorded have led to an arrest.

CBO Projects Social Security Depleted by 2033 Without Changes

Wire Editor
-
0
CBO Projects Social Security Depleted by 2033 Without Changes

(Brett Rowland, The Center Square) Fresh projections from the Congressional Budget Office show the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund would be exhausted by 2033 if benefits are paid as scheduled.

In January, Social Security beneficiaries got an 8.7% increase in monthly checks, the largest cost-of-living adjustment since 1981. The increase added $146 to the average recipient’s monthly benefit. That is expected to push the average benefit to $1,827, up from $1,681, according to the Social Security Administration.

The Disability Insurance Trust Fund would be depleted by 2048 under the same schedule, according to the latest report from the federal agency that provides budget and economic information to Congress. To keep the funds solvent through 2096, the federal government would need to immediately and permanently hike payroll tax rates by 4.9 percentage points or reduce benefits or implement some combination of tax increases and benefit reductions.

“After 2096, however, the gap between revenues and outlays would widen, and shortfalls would continue to increase,” according to the CBO report. If Social Security outlays were limited to payable revenues after the trust funds’ exhaustion in 2033, Social Security benefits would be about 23% smaller than scheduled benefits in 2034. They would be 35% smaller by 2096, and the gap would remain stable thereafter. Social Security, which is the largest single program in the federal budget, has two components.

The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance provides benefits to retired workers, their eligible dependents, and some survivors of deceased workers. Disability Insurance provides benefits to disabled workers and their dependents. Social Security is funded by payroll taxes and income taxes on benefits. The payroll tax is generally 12.4% of earnings up to a maximum annual amount. That amount was $147,000 in 2022.

Employees and their employers each pay half of the 12.4%. People who are self-employed pay the full amount, according to the CBO. To pay benefits as required by existing law and maintain trust fund balances through 2096, that 12.4% would need to be raised to 17.3% of taxable payroll, according to the report. “Other ways to maintain the necessary trust fund balances include reducing scheduled benefits by an amount equivalent to 4.9% of taxable payroll or combining tax increases with benefit reductions,” the report noted.

Many Americans depend on Social Security payments, according to the AARP. Social Security is the largest source of retirement income for most Americans, AARP research shows. It provides nearly all income for 1 in 4 seniors, according to AARP.

“Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security to help pay for Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree, which is more reckless than anybody’s ever done or had in the history of our country,” former President Donald Trump said Friday in a video posted on Truth Social.

Some Republicans have said that changes to Social Security and Medicare should be considered, according to media reports. Republican leaders have not embraced those calls.

Manchin Won’t Rule Out 2024 Presidential Bid

Contributing Author
-
0
Manchin Won’t Rule Out 2024 Presidential Bid

(Headline USA) Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said this week that he would not rule out challenging President Joe Biden for the White House in 2024.

Asked during an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd about his political future, Manchin said he’s not sure what he wants to do either way. He could run for reelection in the Senate, or he could seek a higher office.

“I haven’t made a decision what I’m going to do in 2024,” he said. “I have two years ahead of me. Everything’s on the table.”

The one position Manchin has ruled out is the governorship in West Virginia, he said.

Todd pressed Manchin on whether he has even higher aspirations than a governorship, and Manchin said, “The only thing I can tell you is what I will do is whatever I can, when I make my decision, what I think is best that I can support and represent the people of West Virginia, but also be true to this country and the Constitution of this country.”

Manchin did not answer a question about whether he would run for president as a Democrat or Republican.

“I’m telling you that I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that when I make my decision, I make it on based on what’s best, what I think I can do to support, and best for my country and my state,” he said.

Manchin also refused to endorse Biden for reelection in 2024.

“I haven’t decided on anything I’m going to do until I see what the lay of the land is going to be at that time,” Manchin said. “This country needs to unite. We need to come back together.”

According to reports, Manchin is considering joining his colleague Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent.

1...2,2252,2262,227...3,893Page 2,226 of 3,893