Brilliant : "No budget, no pay"

The total non-activity of the part of President Obama and the Democrat majority in the Senate in trying to resolve the current national debt ceiling limit has become almost a joke. And it has led Republican House Speaker John Boehner to organise his majority to make their own debt ceilng proposal. We already know, dear readers, that whatever the GOP presents will be ridiculed by the Democrats -- but finally the GOP has decided to confront head-on the political tricks being played by Obama, Harry Reid and his Senate Democrat majority. The Republican House will vote next week to permit the federal government to continue to borrow money to meet its obligations. If approved, the House will have enabled America to avoid an immediate market-destabilizing confrontation with President Obama over the debt limit. The measure would give the government three more months of borrowing authority beyond the ceiling expected to be reached in mid-February. The bill will not force immediate spending cuts. Instead, it proposes to force the Democratic-controlled Senate to join the House in debating the federal budget, something neither President Obama nor his Democrats in Congress have offered in the past four years, even when they controlled both houses of Congress, preferring to avoid budget debates by operating under continuing spending resolutions. The House idea is ingenious - it would condition the pay of members of Congress on passing a congressional budget measure. Boehner told GOP lawmakers at a retreat in Williamburg, Va. : "The principle is simple: 'no budget, no pay.'" True to form, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said : "If the House can pass a clean debt-ceiling increase to avoid default and allow the United States to meet its existing obligations, we will be happy to consider it." Boehner may have hit on the only tactic that can unite all Americans - punish Congress, already at the bottom of the political barrel in opinion polls, for ignoring the fact that they and Obama are obligated to present a budget. Boehner has already won $2 trillion in spending cuts as a condition of increasing the government's borrowing cap in 2011. His new idea is far better than Obama's and Reid's method of threatening the most vulnerable Americans with a cut-off in Social Security and Medicare payments. Boehner said : "The Democratic-controlled Senate has failed to pass a budget for four years. That is a shameful run that needs to end, this year." Key GOP conservatives, including the current and former chairmen of the Republican Study Committee, a powerful group inside the House GOP, support Boehner : "This is a necessary first step as we work to halt the decline of America and puts the focus where it belongs: on the Senate who has failed to do their jobs to pass a budget for more than three years." The statement was issued by RSC Chairman Steve Scalise, and former chairmen, Jim Jordan, along with Tom Price and Jeb Hensarling. So, instead of presenting yet another GOP House budget that the Senate always refuses to consider, Speaker Boehner is hitting a do-nothing Congress where it will hurts most - in their own pocketbooks.