Graham
Threatens Hagel Confirmation Over Benghazi; Rand Paul Is Like a Side Order
Sen. Lindsey Graham found another
excuse to block the nominations of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan:
Benghazi. On CBS’ Face The Nation, the South Carolina
Republican said he wants more information from the White House before
either will be confirmed. Graham was simple when explaining his stance on the
matter: “No confirmation without information,” he said. Graham wants to know if
the President ever called the Libyan government to ask for help when the U.S.
consulate was under attack on September 11. “I don’t think we should allow
Brennan to go forward to the CIA directorship, Hagel to be confirmed for
secretary of Defense, until the White House gives us an accounting,”
Graham said. “Did the president at any time during this eight-hour attack, pick
up the phone and call anybody in Libya to get help for these folks?” Graham
asked. “Secretary [Hillary] Clinton said she was screaming on the phone at
Libyan officials. There’s no voice in the world like that of the president of
the United States. And I do believe if he had picked up the phone and called
the Libyan government, these folks could have gotten out of the airport, to the
annex and the last two guys may very well be alive. And if he did call the
Libyan officials and they sort of blew him off, that would effect whether or
not I would give foreign aid in the future to Libya. But if he failed to call
on behalf of those people under siege, then I think that’s a massive failure of
leadership by our commander in chief.”
Sen. Rand Paul doesn’t see his Tea
Party response to the President’s State of the Union address as a sign of division
in the Republican party. It’s just “extra,” Paul said on CNN’s State of the Union, like the order of
coleslaw you get with fish and chips. “To me, I see it as extra response, I
don’t see it as necessarily divisive,” Paul said. “I won’t say anything on
there that necessarily is like, ‘Oh, Marco Rubio’s wrong.’ He and I don’t
always agree, but the thing is, this isn’t about he and I, this is about the
tea party, which is a grassroots movement, a real movement, millions of
Americans who are still concerned about some of the deal making that goes on in
Washington.” Paul said his response would call for the President to cut foreign
aid to Middle Eastern countries like Egypt and Pakistan, requiring a balanced
budget and cutting federal taxes. Paul also touched on Kentucky politics, like
how he doesn’t anticipate a Tea Party challenger to step to Senate leader Mitch
McConnell. “I think it’s unlikely,” Paul said. “I haven’t heard any Republican
challenger come forward. I don’t know, but I haven’t heard of any challenger
come forward.” He also joked about the rumors Ashley Judd was going to run for
office in his state. “When I heard Ashley Judd might run for office, I thought
it was Parliament since she lives in Scotland half the year,” he said.
House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi is
sick and tired of spending cuts and she just won’t take them anymore. At least
that’s how we interpreted her comments about sequester solutions on Fox News Sunday. “The fact is we’ve had
plenty of spending cuts, $1.6 trillion in the Budget Control Act. What we need
is growth,” Pelosi said. Pelosi made the case that slashing spending
indiscriminately would hinder the countries growth potential. “It is almost a
false argument to say we have a spending problem,” the former Speaker of the
House said. Unfortunately, Pelosi knows spending cuts can’t be ruled out of a
potential sequester deal, but she stressed more revenue is the answer. “What we
do need is more revenue and more cuts,” Pelosi said. “What I would like to see
that is a big, balanced, bold [budget] proposal. Short of that, we must do
something to avoid the sequester.” She sees cutting oil subsidies as a good
place a start adding revenue. “We have made the cut in terms of agriculture
subsidies, there are tens of billions of cuts there. That should be balanced
for eliminating subsidies for Big Oil,” Pelosi added. “It isn’t as much as
spending problem as it is a priorities.”
Sen. John
McCain wants the President to stop yakkin’ so much and
hold a sit down at the White House with top party leadership to try
and end the sequester standoff. That’s the plan he revealed today on Fox News Sunday. “What I would like to
see is the president call the [party] leaders over to theWhite House and
say, ‘Look, we’ve got to solve this problem,’” McCain said. “All he does is go
out and make speeches.” Critical spending cuts will click in on March 1 if
another deal can’t be reached to avoid it, just like the fiscal battle that
dominated the holidays. “Republicans and Democrats are responsible for this new
‘cliff,’ and I’ll take responsibility for it for the Republicans. But we’ve got
to avoid it, we’ve got to stop it,” McCain said. “The president is the same one
that during the campaign said, ‘It’s not going to happen.’ He just dismissed
it.”
Sen. Angus King isn’t sure the
assault weapons ban is going to pass through the House, he said on State of the Union. The Maine
independent is “skeptical” of the ban, but he said he’s bullish on universal
background checks and magazine limits. The problem with the assault weapons
ban, King said, is that it’s too easy to cheat the restrictions. “I’m
skeptical,” he said. “I’m leaning against simply because what I want to focus
on is the functionality, not the looks… What we really need to do is focus on
what will really work, and to me that’s universal background checks and perhaps
limits on magazines,” King said.House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said he’s the oversight for every U.S. drone strike that the President orders during his appearance on Face the Nation. On the other Sunday shows, many politicians were questioning the amount of oversight that governs the drone program. John McCain suggested the Pentagon should be in charge of drones instead of the CIA during his appearance on Fox News Sunday. Rogers said he’s the guy who looks over everything before the strikes are authorized. “I, as chairman, review every single airstrike that we use in the war on terror, both from the civilian and the military side when it comes to airstrikes,” Rogers said. “There is plenty of oversight here. There’s not an American list somewhere overseas for targeting, that does not exist. … The oversight rules have been consistent.” Rogers also defended the strike against Anwar al-Awlaki, saying when an American “joins forces with the enemy” they lose their constitutional rights to due process and can become targets of the American military. “Our options were limited,” Rogers said. “This was a tool that we could use to stop further terrorist attacks against Americans.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor attacked the President for trying to
raise taxes “every time you turn around,” during his appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press. “The problem is every
time you turn around, the answer is to raise taxes,” Cantor said. “He just
got his tax hike on the wealthy. And you can’t in this town every three months
raise taxes. Again, every time, that’s his response.” Cantor was speaking in
reference to the coming sequester negotiations that are going to grip
Washington. Unsurprisingly, Cantor wants more spending cuts. “We’ve got a
spending problem, everybody knows it,” he said. “The House has put forward
an alternative plan, and there’s been no response in any serious way from the
Senate and the White House. And it’s time, we’ve really got to do it.”
David Gregory asked how Cantor could even think about letting the sequester
happen when his own state, Virginia, would be hit so hard by the automatic cuts
to defense spending. “The bottom line is we want tax reform, but we want to
plug those loopholes that the president talks about, to bring down tax rates
because we believe that’s pro-growth and we can get the economy growing again,
let people who earn the money keep more of it,” Cantor said. “The president’s
not talking about that. He’s talking about raising more taxes to spend.”
http://jhaines6.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/graham-threatens-hagel-confirmation-over-benghazi-rand-paul-is-like-a-side-order/
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