No matter how many times he repeats it, the fact remains that Frank Kratovil is anything but independent. After voting for highly divisive and unpopular legislation like Cap-and-Trade, the Stimulus and to make Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House, Kratovil has shown he is beholden to Nancy Pelosi and Democrat special interests at the expense of his constituents. No amount of spin or TV ads paid for through a war chest padded by Pelosi and Democrat special interests, can cover up Kratovil’s out-of-touch voting record
Not So Independent
September 1st, 2010Kratovil defined by his blue cast
August 12th, 2010Talbot County GOP Chairman Nick Panuzio pens an op-ed for the Star Democrat on Kratovil's out-of-touch voting record.
There are a number of decisions made by Congressman Frank Kratovil that should define his record and his decision-making. The first vote that that he cast was to elect Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House, and the first vote he will cast, if re-elected, will be for Nancy Pelosi. We all know that presidents propose budgets and the Congress, beginning with the House and ending in the Senate, passes budgets. There are other facts to be considered.
In January 2007, when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took control of the Congress, the unemployment rate was 4.5 percent and the national debt was $8.6 trillion. After nearly four years, the unemployment rate is 9.5 percent, and the national debt is approaching $14 trillion. There is a continuing attempt by Pelosi and Reid to blame President Bush, but it was the Democrats' bailouts, stimulus packages, ObamaCare, subsidies, takeovers and power grabs that have contributed mightily to driving our country to the edge of economic collapse. In passing these economic debacles, Frank Kratovil cast a vote for Nancy Pelosi 83 percent of the time. Yes, he did vote right on ObamaCare, but he voted wrong on the stimulus, cap and trade, the recent financial restructuring and many more pieces of legislation that have been rammed through the Congress during the last two years.
I would like to discuss one of the bills that Congressman Kratovil supported, the so-called stimulus package, the bill that has done nothing to stimulate the economy. I want to give the congressman credit and assume that he read the entire stimulus bill. If he did so, he would have found several items funded by the bill which were only recently released by Senators McCain and Coburn, who informed the public of their existence.
Fact Sheet on Maryland’s Budget: A Tale of Two Governors
August 4th, 2010Martin O'Malley
--Governor O’Malley’s legacy can be summed up very easily: Massive job losses, Record tax increases, and Historic budget deficits.
--Governor O’Malley inherited approximately $1 billion in surplus funds when he took office in 2007. Less than three years later, he presides over a $2 billion deficit. Moreover, the State’s structural budget deficit is the highest in history at $8 billion, according to The Baltimore Sun.
--In April, The Sun described Governor O’Malley’s budget gimmicks as “chewing gum and baling wire,” asking, “How is it that he still has not solved the problem for good?”
--He has increased the State’s future reliance on debt by 60%. Much like paying your mortgage with a credit card, he is paying for many current programs not with current revenue but instead with debt.
--State government spending has increased $3.2 billion on Governor O’Malley’s watch, despite a severe economic recession. Families and small businesses cut their budgets to prepare for tough times. Why didn’t Governor O’Malley?
--The federal government is now the largest source of revenue to Maryland state government, meaning that Maryland has become a ward of the federal government under Governor O’Malley.
--Governor O’Malley forced Marylanders to pay the largest tax increase in Maryland history in 2007, arguing that paying more in taxes was a “long-term solution” to Maryland’s budget. He was wrong. Marylanders instead got the largest budget deficit in Maryland history and the largest job losses in history.
--Governor O’Malley has offered no plan whatsoever to fix Maryland’s budget deficit and has drained the State’s Rainy Day Fund to less than half of what he inherited.
--Governor O’Malley will enact a monumental tax increase after November’s election. He has been asked repeatedly to rule out raising taxes but refuses to do so. His last tax hike hurt Maryland families and small businesses in a recession. Why would we give him more money?
--Governor O’Malley has given massive pay raises to his staff and to the bureaucrat who approved a 72% increase in consumer electricity rates, yet he furloughed thousands of hardworking state employees and bullied other state workers to make contributions to his re-election campaign.
Bob Ehrlich
--Bob Ehrlich’s budget legacy can also be summed up easily: He inherited a deficit and left a surplus.
--Bob Ehrlich inherited $4 billion in anticipated deficits in 2003, the largest in Maryland history at the time. Former Governor William Donald Schaefer said in 2004 that Bob Ehrlich had “the hardest job of any governor.”
--Four years later, Bob Ehrlich left his successor with approximately $1 billion in surplus funds.
Read the rest of this entry »
Where are the jobs?
July 29th, 2010From the Ways and Means Committee Republicans:
As Democrats’ “recovery summer” continues to disappoint, many long-term unemployed Americans have become so discouraged over their prospects of finding a job that they have quit searching for work altogether. Ironically, with the way the government calculates the official unemployment rate, when that happens the unemployment rate drops -- since it measures unemployment only among those currently searching for work. That’s what happened last month. Even though the economy actually shed jobs in June, the official unemployment rate fell from 9.7 percent to 9.5 percent because over 600,000 people dropped out of the labor force.
But just because those uncounted unemployed are not reflected in the official unemployment rate, they are no less unemployed. The following graph displays the unemployment rate Democrats predicted if their 2009 stimulus plan passed (just above 7%) with the official unemployment rate (9.5%) and what the unemployment rate would be if it included the current 2.5 million uncounted unemployed (almost 11%). With new July unemployment numbers due out next Friday, August 6, 2010, the question is: How many more unemployed Americans will go uncounted due to the failure of stimulus to create jobs?
Read more from the Ways and Means Committee Republicans here
Democrat Clock is Ticking for Tax Hikes
July 23rd, 2010RNC Co-Chairman Jan Larimer looks at the coming tax hikes if Democrats remain in control of Congress after November:
When the economy slowed down following the dot-com bust, Republicans in Congress worked with the Bush Administration to enact tax cuts to pump money back into the economy and allow taxpayers more freedom to save, invest, or spend their own money. Those tax relief packages helped spur our economy and generated economic growth.
Now, much of those tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, letting those tax cuts expire will cost taxpayers $200 billion next year alone, and $3.8 trillion through 2020. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat leadership in Congress, staying true to what they’ve done since taking power in 2006, are resisting efforts to renew the tax cuts and look set to let the tax relief expire at midnight on December 31st.
The impact this will have on individuals and small businesses will be staggering. The lowest income tax bracket will move from 10% to 15%. The marriage penalty will be reinstated. The capital gains tax will go up by a full third, from 15% to 20%. The tax on dividends will increase from 15% all the way to 39.6%.
Not content with these tax increases set to hit this winter, the Democrats piled on even more through the ObamaCare legislation. As a result of ObamaCare, the dividends and capital gains tax rates will go even higher in 2013, and small businesses and individuals will be faced with a cascade of new taxes and penalties as ObamaCare continues to be implemented. With the economy still struggling to come out of a recession, Democrats have chosen to raise taxes instead of lower them.
The Democrats’ refusal to continue the Bush-era tax cuts, and their insistence on enacting billions of dollars In new taxes to pay for ObamaCare, will mean continued economic difficulty and stagnant unemployment. The voters deserve better.
Read more: http://gop.com/index.php/rnc_women/comments/democrat_clock_is_ticking_for_tax_hikes#ixzz0uj5YZMqh
Separating Facts from White House Fiction
July 20th, 2010A must read from GOP.gov:
On July 14, 2010, the president’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) released its fourth quarterly report on spending from the Democrats’ $862 billion “stimulus” (including the $347 billion CBO estimated for interest payments on the borrowed money, the cost of the stimulus is actually $1.2 trillion). Vice President Biden echoed the chorus of the administration, touting the success of the bill and stating that “The economic initiatives that we took, they are working ... they are working.” White House spin aside, the facts show that the stimulus has failed to create jobs in the economy and that CEA’s deceptive report is preposterous.
CLAIM: “As of the second quarter of 2010, we estimate that the Recovery Act has raised employment by 2.5 to 3.6 million relative to what it otherwise would have been.”
FACT: The stimulus has not created net jobs in the economy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)—the official government agency responsible for tallying employment stats—there have been 3.42 million gross jobs lost since the stimulus was passed and 2.53 million net jobs lost.
CLAIM: “A key way that the CEA estimates the effects of the Recovery Act on GDP and employment is to use existing estimates of the macroeconomic effects of fiscal policy. That is, one can use mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus.”
FACT: The White House determines the impact of government stimulus spending by plugging numbers into a Keynesian “Multiplier Model.” This system simply multiplies the amount of dollars spent by the number of jobs the administration thinksthe money should produce. This voodoo math doesn’t consider actual employment statistics, and thus allows the White House to claim that the stimulus is creating jobs as the economy sheds them.
Live from Boston: Martin O'Malley's Budget Bluster
July 15th, 2010Kratovil = Out of Touch
July 13th, 2010Rep. Kratovil: “I thought they were the right votes”
Cap And Trade Could Cause The Loss Of Up To 41,500 Jobs In Maryland. (Maryland Economic Impact On The State From The Waxman-Markey Bill, National Association of Manufacturers and American Council For Capital Formation, 8/12/09)
Since The Stimulus Was Passed, Maryland Has Lost Over 16,600 Jobs. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, Accessed 6/23/10)
Then why is he running from his record and party?
“He talked about his ‘first impressions of Washington, D.C.’ and slammed the ‘process’ his own Democratic leaders use to pass legislation as broken and too driven by politics.”
“Meeting with a group of local business leaders Friday in Elkton to discuss issues including trade and taxes, Kratovil repeatedly referred to himself as an ‘independent’ and sounded more like a visitor to Washington, instead of the incumbent.”
“Kratovil dismissed polls that show he's extremely vulnerable, but acknowledged that voter anger about government red ink is part of a broader distrust with politicians running Congress.”
“‘I think it's not just frustration with the spending. There is a frustration with government in general,’ Kratovil said. ‘I mean we're losing faith in our institutions, we're losing faith in our elected officials…’”
(CNN, “Freshman Dem: ‘We’re Losing Faith’ In Officials,” 7/12/10)
GOLF OR GULF?
July 12th, 2010"President Obama’s frustrating tendency to hit the links rather than devote his undivided attention to providing a solution to the worst ecological disaster in American history represents an unacceptable lack of seriousness and focus. While communities along the Gulf Coast are reeling from the devastating economic and environmental impact of the ongoing spill, it is beyond offensive that this president would even think of scheduling a tee time. How much further out of touch can President Obama get?” – RNC Chairman Michael Steele
