Today word came out that the House GOP Conference has just adopted a complete earmark ban for the rest of the year in order to curb spending and hold the Democrats accountable.

Here are what some members of the Republican Study Committee are saying, with two of them being a part of the Indiana Delegation.

Rep. Dan Burton (IN-5)

Because of the irresponsible spending and public outrage over largess in Congress, I have sworn to not request, and to vote against, earmarks since 2007.  Until today, I was one of just thirty-two members of Congress to take that pledge.  Today, with the entire conference of House Republicans adopting our ban on all earmarks, we have sent a clear message to the American people that we are serious about cutting spending, and serious about an ethical appropriations process in Congress

Rep. Mike Pence (IN-6)

No doubt earmarks are being talked about in a different way by the democratic majority. Democrats were cutting “backroom deals” to persuade reluctant House Democrats to vote for the president’s proposal, and said “the American people want us to change business as usual.

Rep. Eric Cantor (VA-7)

Democrats’ promises to clean up Washington politics “is being broken every day.”

Rep. John Boehner (OH-8)

For millions of Americans, the earmark process in Congress has become a symbol of a broken Washington, Today House Republicans took an important step toward showing the American people we’re serious about reform by adopting an immediate, unilateral ban on all earmarks.

You can read the full article here from The Daily Caller and here is the list of t the 32 members in the Republican Study Committee that signed unto this total earmark ban.

Read more after the leap

Bud Bernitt, who is running for Congress in the Eighth District, issued the following press release yesterday:

Roads bring jobs, and that is why I am challenging my Democratic opponent to sign a pledge to support the extension of Interstate 69 from Evansville to Indianapolis. Voters have made it clear to me: Build Interstate 69. Now.

The economy is performing poorly and unemployment in the United States is 9.7%. The right medicine for the Eighth is I-69, and that is why I plan to talk up Interstate 69 throughout this entire race and right on through November.

(Read more after the leap)

Earlier this week, America’s entitlement problem came into full view as millions of Americans, the main stream media and a million talking heads on cable news lambasted Senator Jim Bunning for daring to refuse unanimous consent for a bill extending unemployment and COBRA benefits and Medicare reimbursements among other things.  Senator Bunning sought to highlight our debt problem and ensure that the Senate enforced their previously passed Pay-Go bill by blocking the vote.  While the mainstream media was busy lambasting Senator Bunning for filibustering (side note: He was not filibustering, he was refusing unanimous consent. If you are going to talk about it, get it right MSM) against millions of Americans who rely on those benefits because of the difficult economic situation, they ignored that this bill has a price tag of approximately $10 billion.  Senator Bunning’s sin was daring to ask “How are we going to pay for this?”  After being hammered by both sides of the aisle, the press, cable news, late night talk shows and the blogosphere, Senator Bunning finally relented last night and allowed the vote to proceed with it passing 78-19.

While it is certain that many people are relying on this money to help them get through this hard time, the American reaction to this is a microcosm of what would happen if more politicians would dare ask the question, “How are we going to pay for this?”  Anyone who has been paying attention to the meltdown that is currently in play in Greece knows that people don’t like their benefits being taken away, whether they can pay for them or not.  What needs to occur in this country before we can address our debt problem is to acknowledge that we have an entitlement problem. For decades unions, politicians, teachers, parents and the media have been telling us that we deserve everything that the government hands us and that it is our right to take as much as we can get.  All the while, our debt has been silently growing while we gorged ourselves on all the benefits we can’t pay for.  As evidenced by the riots that have spilled into the streets in Greece after their government “announced a fresh austerity package that includes an immediate freeze on pensions, further salary cuts for public sector workers and sharp increases in excise and value added taxes,” taking away people’s “rightful” benefits does not go over well.  The outpouring of hatred directed at Senator Bunning over the past couple of days for denying Americans the money they are “entitled” to begs the question, what would happen if the government really did start cutting programs, benefits and subsidies?

While I would love more politicians to begin to ask the “How are we going to pay for it?” question and begin massive cuts of government programs, it is not easy and that it is rarely attempted.  People don’t like being told no, especially after being told yes for so long.  I am warning you, unless Americans have a dramatic change in the way they look at what they are entitled to, the day cuts begin, bust out your rubber bullet guns and face shields and riot gear because it is going to be a bumpy riotous road to defeating the debt.

This first year of his Presidency looks like it has taken a toll on him.

Last week, former Congressman and current Senate candidate John Hostettler tweaked Evan Bayh by sarcastically predicting that Bayh wouldn’t vote for ObamaCare because it would endanger his wife’s access to lucrative stock options as a member of the board of directors of health insurance giant WellPoint.

Well, Hostettler was wrong and he was right. He was wrong in that Bayh did very much vote for the ObamaCare legislation. But Hostettler was correct in that Bayh was not going to let his family’s finances suffer from the passage of ObamaCare.

What Hostettler didn’t count on was that the legislation itself–damaging as it might be to Indiana’s state finances, as much as it might expand government, as much as it allows Federal tax dollars to fund abortions, and for all of its other myriad faults–still contained benefits for WellPoint and thus for the Bayh family.

Evan Bayh didn’t need to worry about voting against his family when he voted for the bill. Bayh didn’t get anything for Hoosiers in the sell-out-a-thon that came in the mad rush to get this abomination passed, but some things ended up in the bill that benefit WellPoint and thus the Bayh family’s finances.

Evan Bayh has his priorities, after all, and it’s pretty clear that big insurers like WellPoint (and his family’s bank account) are way up there on that priority list. Ordinary Hoosiers, not so much.

As lefty blog FiveThirtyEight notes, the greatest benefit to health insurance companies comes from the insurance mandate contained within the legislation. Everybody must now buy insurance, and the legislation provides $400 billion in subsidies to private insurers to help make that happen. It also expands the customer base for companies like Wellpoint by almost ten percent.

Over the course of the next ten years, the Senate’s bill directs about $447 billion in public subsidies to people for the purchase of private health insurance. (This is in addition to another $400 billion or so in subsidies for the expansion of Medicaid).

Another way to look at this is that the Senate’s bill will add about 17 million nonelderly members to the private insurance companies’ enrollment relative to the baseline case, according to the CBO. As about 177 million nonelderly Americans currently have private insurance, this represents a 9.6 percent increase in their customer base.

WellPoint, as one of the largest insurers in America, is going to get a big slice of that $400 billion pie. It’s also going to see its customer base swell by around ten percent as many people who don’t currently have insurance (for whatever reason) are forced to buy it from companies like WellPoint.

Read more after the leap.

From Marlin Stutzman who is running against Evan Bayh

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If there is one thing I’ve learned over the course of the last year as I’ve traveled this state, it’s that Hoosiers are looking for authenticity from their elected leaders. If there is a second thing that I’ve learned, it’s that when it comes to college sports in Indiana, you better know who your audience is. In a recent appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program, Senator Bayh managed to pull off what I thought was a very difficult feat–insulting an entire state by masking his voting record, and revealing himself as someone that apparently doesn’t pay much attention to one of his state’s home teams.

During the interview, Bayh shared his concern for incoming Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly for having to deal with the loss of starting quarterback, “Casey Clausen,” but more on that a bit later. The real purpose of having Bayh on the program was to have the Senator speak about his newfound desire to become a fiscal conservative. He shared that we must now start to look at addressing the runaway spending and crippling debt that faces our nation, and will shackle future generations. With triangulation like that we must be nearing an election year. It’s unfortunate that MSNBC let Bayh off the hook for his appalling fiscal record, but then again, the Senator has been given a free pass his entire career.

(Read more after the leap)

Via the National Journal’s Hill Briefs:

The Obama administration will tell Congress Wednesday that it expects to lose about $30 billion of the $82 billion government bailout of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, two administration officials familiar with the report said today, according to The Detroit News.

Which is odd because as you may recall, it was the auto companies who got at least some portion of the TARP money (that’s right, it wasn’t just Wall Street) but in separate National Journal article from yesterday…

The president boasted that the Troubled Asset Relief Program will spend $200 billion less than expected and said he would use some of that money for small-business loans. That sets up a potential battle with Republicans in Congress who want the funds to be used for deficit reduction.

It’s a strange dichotomy when TARP funds are simultaneously lost and found.  One might think with a spare $200 billion of taxpayer (and Chinese) money we might want to pay down the deficit and help slow down the devaluing of the American dollar.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for helping out small businesses.  But you know what small businesses would like even more?  Having their money back and their loans that they do have actually being worth something.

Even Saturday Night Live was able to pick up on this in their own way (It’s SNL, so watch at your own risk).

In case you missed it, Congressman Mike Pence had the following editorial in the Indy Star this morning.

Move America forward with pro-growth agenda

By Mike Pence

As Hoosiers enjoy this holiday season, we remember the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform and the brave soldiers who will spend this holiday away from home. We owe our Armed Forces a debt of gratitude we can never repay.

While many families face the holidays without their loved ones, countless Americans face their own personal struggles. The U.S. Department of Labor recently announced that the national unemployment rate remains at a heartbreaking 10 percent and 11,000 jobs were lost last month. More than 15 million Americans now stand in unemployment lines across the country.

Indiana’s unemployment also has risen as more than 300,000 Hoosiers are now unemployed. Under the leadership of Gov. Mitch Daniels, our state is weathering the storm better than other states in the Midwest. Even with the greatest efforts, a state cannot reverse the trend if the federal government refuses to cooperate with wise economic policies.

In Indiana and around the country, families are asking, “When will things get better?” and “Where are the jobs?” These are important questions that deserve honest answers.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama promised that his $787 billion stimulus package would keep the national unemployment rate below 8 percent and the rewards of massive deficit spending would be seen “immediately.” Since that time, the administration has insisted that its stimulus plan is working.

However, roughly 2.6 million American workers have lost their jobs since the president signed the stimulus bill into law. In the city and on the farm, millions of families struggle to balance their checkbooks this holiday season. The proposals being advanced in Washington to address these challenges are inadequate. Last week, the president hosted a “jobs summit” — another meeting with the same experts who crafted the first stimulus plan. And in Congress, there are more plans to grow government and place an even greater pile of debt on the shoulders of our children.

All this talk is a tacit admission that the policies of President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are not working. Record debt and runaway federal spending have taken our economy from bad to worse. If all this weren’t bad enough, there are still plans to pass a national energy tax and a government takeover of health care.

The American people know we can’t borrow and spend our way back to a growing economy. We need leadership in Washington that will help lift the burden on struggling families and unleash the innovative spirit of the American people. The way to bring America back is by helping working families keep more of their hard-earned money. House Republicans introduced an economic plan built on the pro-growth principle of tax relief for small businesses, hardworking Americans and family farmers. We also introduced comprehensive proposals to achieve energy independence and to lower health-are costs.

With many families hurting this holiday season, we must focus on what makes America great. To get this economy moving, let us work together on the time-honored principles of hard work and fiscal responsibility. With faith in God and in the American spirit, we can bring this country back and ensure that our best days are still to come.

Former Indiana Congressman Chris Chocola has a great write up on Human Events about the colossal fail that was President Obama’s “jobs summit”.

It was a foregone conclusion that the nation ignored the White House’s “Jobs Summit” last Thursday. Even the presidents’ allies acknowledged the afternoon confab of friendly CEOs, labor bosses, and economists was a publicity stunt. And so it was.

But if you watched cable news at all that day, you probably saw live interviews of administration officials repeating a new and not unwelcome talking point from the Obama White House. Both the vice president and president made the point in their opening remarks.

Biden: “[The government] can help create the conditions that make for a stronger economy, make a stronger economy possible. But it’s you, all of you in this audience here, who are in the position to make it a reality.”

Obama: “While I believe that government has a critical role in creating the conditions for economic growth, ultimately true economic recovery is only going to come from the private sector.”

A pro-growth, economic conservative could hardly wish for a more market-oriented, downright supply-side perspective, especially from the authors of the stimulus, cap-and-trade, ObamaCare, and the Detroit takeovers. The White House’s most disciplined spokesmen left it there. Alas, though Messrs. Biden and Obama are many things, disciplined spokesman they are not.

Congressman Chocola now runs the Club for Growth which is a fiscal watchdog group in Washington D.C. Read more of Congressman Chocola’s write up at Human Events, here.

(H/T – Red State)

So I was reading The Hill this evening and while getting my political junkie fix, this story caught my eyes. Speaker Pelosi says “Americans could absorb increased deficit if it means jobs”.

From The Hill

Americans could be ready to “absorb” increases to the deficit if it means higher employment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday.

As the Congress prepares to put together a new spending package focused on creating new jobs in the U.S., the Speaker said that while it’s a “false choice” to pose the situation facing lawmakers as a balance between jobs and increased deficits, Americans would rather have jobs.

“So if somebody has the idea that the percentage of GDP of what our national debt is will go up a bit, but they will now — and their neighbors and their children will — have jobs, I think they could absorb that,” Pelosi said in a conference call with liberal bloggers on Tuesday, audio of which was posted by ThinkProgress.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has said that the lower chamber hopes to move a jobs package by the Christmas holiday recess. Democrats have begun exploring different options for creating jobs, especially as unemployment continues to rise while 2010, an election year for lawmakers, quickly approaches.

Pelosi said deficit growth has been “stunning,” but rejected the idea that a jobs bill would necessarily pose a threat to the deficit.

“We don’t subscribe to the idea that some are for deficit reduction and some are for job creation; we think, again, as I said at the beginning, that’s a false choice,” she said. “We’re never going to decrease the deficit until we create jobs, bring revenue into the Treasury, stimulate the economy so we have growth.”

The Speaker said Democrats must also “shed any weakness” about being confrontational on the issue out of fear that the party would be labeled as insensitive to the deficit.

Pelosi suggested, too, that if lawmakers are reluctant to spend for job creation, similar problems that plagued the U.S. during the Great Depression may strike again.

“If we pull our punch, as they did in the mid-’30s, we shouldn’t be surprised if history repeats itself,” she explained.

“It’s a very important debate for us to have in this country, and I would hope that the president’s speech would be a balance between job creation and sensitive to deficit reduction,” Pelosi added. “But I think if anybody is asked in the public, ‘Would you rather have a job or a percentage of GDP or our national debt will go up a little bit?,’ I think everybody wants a job.”

Let’s look at this a minute shall we? Pelosi has offered different packages none of which did nothing to stimulate the economy, but only created more government and more debt. The last stimulus package hasn’t accomplished anything, save for creating jobs and allocating money to over 400 non-existent congressional districts, and now she wants Stimulus Package Part 2 “The Quest for More Money”. The House passed “Health Care Reform” which, if signed into law, will cause nothing but more government and red tape including the creation or expansion of over 130 agencies. Yeah, because this is what the people want!

Read more after the leap.

According to WRTV-6, Indiana is now out of the running for a Harley Davidson plant.

Harley-Davidson has announced that a Kentucky location is the only one it is considering if it relocates its York, Pa., motorcycle plant. The company earlier said that it was also looking at locations near its Kansas City, Mo., plant; in Shelbyville, Ind.; and in Murfreesboro, Tenn. The York Dispatch reported that a company statement said that Harley-Davidson representatives met with Kentucky officials this week. Harley-Davidson spokesman Bob Klein said the company is also still considering the possibility of staying in York

One wonders if the entire focus of this was to get money from PA Governor “Fast” Eddie Rendell for refurbishing the York, PA Harley Davidson plant.