Senator Paul Ryan unveiled a $1.6 trillion funding & tax package.

[Belle]

2,009 pages!   
Ryan's spin  included that the R's "won more victories in the tax package than in the $1.1 trillion omnibus." & that the Obamacare Cadillac tax has been postponed for 2 years.  Guess who the Cadillac tax helps most?  The labor unions & Harry Reid really pushed hard for this. 
 

Ryan has already said that he will rely on Democrats to help push the package through, so barring some unforeseen opposition, the bill is likely to sail through both houses of Congress.

The White House is gloating over this victory & rightfully so.  Plenty of liberal pork.  Did the R's cave?  I don't see it that way.  I think they embraced all that spending as well.

A few features:
- increase in Planned Parenthood spending
- green light on Syrian refugees
- no cuts in funding for global warming
- NLRB gets to expand employer liability
- medical device tax is delayed for 2 years.
- "budget agreement includes the largest spending on renewable energy in history."
- "five-year extension of tax breaks for wind and solar energy companies."

[Chris_]

I may be mistaken, but I just heard it was voted down.  The federal government will continue with a two-month continuing resolution on funding.

It was on the chryon on the local Fox station.

[thundley4]

I may be mistaken, but I just heard it was voted down.  The federal government will continue with a two-month continuing resolution on funding.

It was on the chryon on the local Fox station.

I hope it was. It was nothing but a Democrat wish list.

[J P Sousa]

So Ryan is better than Boehner how ?

[Belle]

Check out Drudge's headline today: 

Ryan gives it all away

This particular link takes you to lefty Slate:

Ryan unveiled a few thousand pages of consequential tax, spending, and regulatory legislation costing roughly $2 trillion and gave Congress and the public two whole days to review everything.

Here's more:
- "nixed a rider that would have blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed “waters of the United States” rule that would expand its jurisdiction against polluters under the Clean Water Act."
- "The U.S. government’s contributions to the international Green Climate Fund will continue."
- "The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will maintain its independence from congressional appropriations."

Ryan will have to pass the omnibus with the same organic governing coalition of mostly Democrats and some Republicans that Boehner himself used to pass most necessary legislation

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/12/paul_ryan_s_first_deal_is_just_like_john_boehner_s_old_ones.html

Over 2,000 pages, there's more than I can read about.
- $1.6 Billion for illegals @ our borders though 2018.

HHS asked the Department of Defense last week to make plans for 5,000 more shelter beds to be made available.

Ya'll remember reading about those closed door meetings?  Check it out:

The $1.1 trillion omnibus funding bill includes language that would dramatically increase the number of visas available for foreign workers, setting off alarm bells among conservatives and labor unions. 
Congressional leaders quietly slipped the provision into the 2,009-page funding bill, with rank-and-file lawmakers only discovering it Wednesday morning.

- The funding bill "could more than triple the number of H-2B visas"(non-agricultural seasonal workers).
Sessions estimates the number of H-2B visas will soar from 66,000 to 250,000 because of the language in the omnibus.

@ Chris & thundley4: sure hope so!
@ J P Sousa:  I believe Ryan will be worse than Boehner.

 

[mrclose]

http://youtu.be/PBqrWL3h9-g

[Belle]

Rush weighs in on this mega spending bill.

When you surrender the power of the purse -- and that's the primary power the House of Representatives has.  Not a penny of money can be spent in this country by this government without the House of Representatives authorizing it.  Obama can spend all he wants, but if the House doesn't give him the mechanism, he can't spend any of it.  But the Republicans squandered that.  They gave up the power of the purse.

Rush lists (2) reasons for giving up this power:
- "...they are literally paranoid and scared to death of even being accused of doing something that would shut down the government."
- "...many Republican donors want every bit of this money spent, and they have donated voluminously to key Republicans in order to get the money spent. So it's not all Republican fears. It's not all Republican caving.  A lot of it is Republican fealty and loyalty to some of their donors."

Repeated stabs in the back like this -- which have been going on for years -- combined with Obama's policy destruction of this country, is what has given rise to Donald Trump.

Sanctuary cities, fully funded.  All Mideast immigration programs, fully funded.  All these things that have been exploited by terrorists.    All refugees, fully funded.  The release of criminal aliens, fully funded. 
Everything!
The Democrat leftist wet dream has just been paid for.

[Belle]

Lyin' Ryan's Omnibus pork bill went through with ease in the House & Senate. 
In case you haven't seen the vote tally, I'll link it.

House:  http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2015/roll705.xml

Senate:  http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=114&session=1&vote=00339

Feel the love: 
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/16/paul-ryan-betrays-america-1-1-trillion-2000-plus-page-omnibus-bill-funds-fundamental-transformation-america/

Obama signs off:

Obama signs $1.8 Trillion tax and spending bill into law.

& off they all go on vacations; the donor class happy, the progressives gloating, the rinos patting themselves on the back, & not a care as to what so many Constitutional loving Americans think about this rotten deal.
 

[Chris_]

So... how many months of Obama's government does $1.6 trillion cover?  Four months?  Five?

[DLR Pyro]

So... how many months of Obama's government does $1.6 trillion cover?  Four months?  Five?

less if he or his wife are vacationing

[J P Sousa]

Rubio (R-FL), Not Voting

Hmmmmm....

[thundley4]

Rubio (R-FL), Not Voting

Hmmmmm....

He claims his non-vote was the same as a no vote. Sounds a lot like Obama supporter's explanation for all of Obama's "present" votes.

[Belle]

After all the wheeling & dealing with the liberals, here's Mitch McConnell's Bah Humbug to the rest of us.

"The way you have a good election year is to nominate people who can win.”

  We got the message, Mitch. 
Nominate the most liberal, sleep across the isle, candidate.  We need more, not less of them.

"We will not nominate anybody for the United States Senate on the Republican side who’s not appealing to a general-election audience."

&, of course, he brings up skeletons:  O'Donnell, Angles, Mourdock & Akins.
He forgot to praise the Tea party turncoats:  Rubio, Flake, Ernst, Ayotte...
 
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/263742-mcconnell-warns-gop-voters-we-need-candidates-who-can-win

Another point of view.

Too many of you just don’t get it. The Pub. party has filed divorce papers to rid itself of the base. You just have not been served yet apparently. You old white people living in the past are a dying breed. Most of you won’t be around in 10-20 yrs. and your children and grand children did not and are not reproducing like rabbits, and are not spitting out enough new voters for the Pub.party, so they are going with the new demographics…illegals and Muslim immigrants and refugees as well as legal immigrants. Even if they don’t vote Pub. right away, they will still be a benefit for the CoC cheap labor pool.

The Pub party no longer needs you. They told you this 2 yrs. ago in the primaries. You did not listen. McConnell and Boehner have been telling you this over and over and Paul Ryan and the entire GOPe told you this yesterday. You still are in denial. Trump is your last hoorah. After 2016, it’s all over for you. You have only one recourse. If you want to get some measure of revenge, you can and should vote a straight dem. ticket for the rest of your life if Trump is not an option. The GOPe is never going to represent your interests again. You can take it to the bank.
they lie on December 19, 2015 at 11:31 AM

 
 

[obumazombie]

The budget shell game will be supported by owebuma sycophant journalists who are expert at trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear...

What little remains of the economy's momentum appears to be riding on Christmas season consumer spending being perceived as strong.
Unfortunately, it hasn't been.

Following up on her early Friday excuse-making for why things haven't gone too well at the malls so far
— it's because the weather has just been too darned nice
— Anne D'Innocenzio at the Associated Press worked over the available statistics to leave readers with the impression that it's not all that bad, and that there's plenty of time for a comeback.

The linchpin of her effort is her claim that online sales continue to grow nicely.
That's not so.

One never wants to rule out a strong finish to Christmas shopping and a frantic final week of the year, especially given last year's fast finish, which seems to have come out of nowhere.
But a careful reading of the AP reporter's write-up, combined with references to information at the National Retail Federation she chose not to cite, indicates that it's going to be tough (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

HOLIDAY SALES PATTERN SKEWS ONLINE; MALLS LOSE SOME LUSTER


More often shoppers are making the decision to sit on their couches rather than head to stores this holiday season.
Online sales growth so far this holiday season is surpassing growth in sales at physical stores, according to First Data, which analyzed online and in-store payments from Oct. 31 through Monday.

Sales growth for stores is up 2 percent, while online sales rose 4.6 percent, according to First Data, which declined to give dollar figures, [1] citing proprietary reasons.

Total spending, including sales in both physical stores and online, climbed 2.4 percent, stronger than the 1.8 percent growth during the same period last year. [2]

While physical stores still account for the majority of spending, the uneven growth between buying at locations and on websites signals the continuation of a big shift [3] in how U.S. consumers are shopping.


Notes:

[1] — Astute readers may wonder why we should be so impressed with year-over-year online sales growth of 4.6 percent.
We shouldn't be.

That figure seriously trails the National Retail Federation's 2015 prediction:
NRF expects online sales to increase between 6 and 8 percent this year.

Using expected sales in the months of November and December and economic data derived from the U.S. Department of Commerce, NRF’s chief economist expects online retailers will see solid growth this holiday season.
Using the 7 percent midpoint of NRF's prediction, through the first 46 days (Oct. 31 to Dec. 14) of the total measurement period (Oct. 31 to Dec. 31), the 4.6 percent in reported Christmas season online sales growth so far is only two-thirds of what the NRF expects.

It's also only about two-thirds of the 6.8 percent year-over-increase in online sales reported in 2014.

[2] — Desperate to put a good face on a serious and potentially ugly situation, D'innocenzio compared this year's growth so far vs. 2014 (2.4 percent) to last year's growth compared to 2013 (1.8 percent).
That's not much to celebrate in the first place, and the fundamental problem with the comparison is that the early stages of the 2014 Christmas shopping season was hit by legitimately problematic weather in several parts of the country — something which hasn't happened this year.

[3] — As seen earlier, this "big shift" to online buying is nowhere near as big as it has been in prior years.
Combined with comparatively flat brick-and-mortar sales, the shopping season is not shaping up well, despite the stat D'innocenzio cited in Item [2].

The points made above make one wonder what in what alternative universe D'Innocenzio and the "analysts" she cited are living, as seen in these two subsequent paragraphs:

This season, Mother Nature appeared to provide an extra lift to online sales, analysts said. While unseasonably warm weather has hurt overall sales of cold-weather items, it appears to be driving more shopping to buy on their PCs or mobile phones since they don't want to waste a pleasant day inside a mall.

"Store traffic is down everywhere, and it's compounded by the weather," said Steven Barr, U.S. retail and consumer sector leader for PwC.
"We do believe that warm weather is driving consumers online."

Seriously, they want us to believe that consumers are saying, "Aw, the weather is so swell that I would rather stay indoors and buy stuff online than go to the malls and enjoy the nice day."
But online sales growth has also been disappointing so far, so the incurable optimists have nowhere to hide.

Meanwhile, D'Innocenzio insists that all is well, and there's nothing to worry about:
First Data doesn't make predictions for holiday sales.

But the National Retail Federation, the nation's largest retail trade group, expects sales for November and December to rise 3.7 percent to $630.5 billion. There's still plenty of time for that estimate to come true: Christmas is a week away, and there are some of the biggest shopping days left.

The 2.4 percent overall increase D'Innocenzio cited earlier is also only two-thirds of the NRF's expectation, meaning that results are trailing expectations by one-third across-the-board.

It would appear that no one at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, is allowed to say that the season is not going well.
Because it isn't, and they won't admit it.

full article...



http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tom-blumer/2015/12/20/aps-dinnocenzio-makes-disappointing-online-sales-growth-seem-strong#sthash.zr6RmUkR.dpuf