Lame Duck or Dead Duck

By Bill Wheaton

Press Media Group, LLC

Published in the Lynchburg Ledger on November 19, 2010

The Congress has reconvened for what is called a Lame Duck session.  There are at least 63 Democrat seats in the House of Representatives (three from Virginia) that changed to Republican as well as 6 Senate seats.  The question is whether they will listen to the voters or use this session to push through as much of their liberal agenda as they can.

Being Democrats, I suspect they will make a push to pass more of their liberal agenda. 

The only thing that may save us from the liberal onslaught is that many Democrat Senators are up for election in 2012.  They may have heard the voters where the defeated Senators did not.

There were three special elections in the Senate to fill unexpired terms.  These Senators can be seated immediately but only two will- both Democrats. The lone Republican winner (in Illinois filling the remainder of Barack Obama’s Senate term) will not be seated immediately because Democrat election officials on Illinois are refusing to certify the election results in a timely manner.

There are two issues to be brought up that I am most interested in.  One I want them to pass, and one I want them to defeat.

I think one of the issues made clear in the historic vote this year is that the economy needs to be stimulated.  Any stimulus bill where government keeps spending will do nothing but grow the deficit, which will further depress the economy.

In a recession, the last thing you want to do is increase taxes and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of the year will do exactly that.  The Democrats love to engage in class warfare, and the Bush tax cuts are a prime example.  They seem perfectly willing to extend them for the “middle class,” but oppose any extension for the “wealthy.” 

It is the so-called wealthy who are the job creators in our free enterprise system.  I have never gotten a job from a poor person.

Obama and the Democrats hate those who have worked hard and earned substantial sums of money.  They seem to think the rich got that way by stealing from the poor. 

When I was a teenager, I was glad that there were rich people, because they would hire and pay me.  Back before the days of golf carts, teenagers like me used to caddy at golf courses.  I caddied at an exclusive country club and made good money.  You had to be rich to belong to this club, and I didn’t resent them one bit.

Congress needs to make the Bush tax cuts, all of them, permanent.  Right now, employers and business people have no idea what their taxes are going to be and are essentially sitting on their hands.  If Congress makes the tax cuts permanent and Obama signs it, I believe it would be the biggest shot in the arm for the economy we could provide.

The issue I don’t want congress to pass is a bill repealing “don’t ask-don’t tell” for the military.  This law, enacted in 1993, bars open homosexuality in the armed services. Although Clinton watered down the actual law, the law has functioned fairly well. About 14,000 men and women have been separated from the armed services under that law over the past 17 years. That's less than 1 percent of total military separations, most of which were for other reasons such as pregnancy, substance abuse, being overweight, etc.

Homosexual activists, including the Log Cabin Republicans and their media allies, are turning up the heat on the lame duck Congress to overturn the law before a more conservative Congress is seated in January.

 

Gen. James Amos was just appointed Marine Corps Commandant by President Obama, replacing Gen. James T. Conway, considered the military's most outspoken advocate for keeping the ban.  Gen. Amos has not wavered from Gen. Conway's stance. He said during a trip to California that with troops fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now was not the time to change policy.  Gen. Amos said, "There is nothing more intimate than young men and young women — and when you talk of infantry, we're talking our young men — laying out, sleeping alongside of one another and sharing death, fear and loss of brothers,  I don't know what the effect of that will be on cohesion. I mean, that's what we're looking at. It's unit cohesion, it's combat effectiveness."

His remarks seemed to stun Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs who supports repeal.  Mullen appears to be more interested in political correctness than an efficient military.

In Iowa, where they elect their judges, three of the seven Iowa Supreme Court Justices who overturned the state's referendum to define marriage as being between one man and one woman, were up for a retention vote. All three were kicked off the bench by the voters.  Better than 54 percent of voters rejected all three judges.  Any time the people have a chance to vote, they reject the homosexual agenda.

Harry Reid, who unfortunately was not defeated although I contributed to Sharron Angle’s campaign, will be returning next year.  However, this year, he has not promised to bring the issue up for a vote.  Those in the Senate up for re-election in 2012 need to be mindful of the Iowa vote.

5th District Congressman Tom Perriello has one last chance to do us dirty in Congress.  It might be prudent to flood his office with calls telling him to extend all the Bush tax cuts and oppose the repeal of “don’t ask-don’t tell.”