Cruising the Web

Charles Krauthammer finds the models for the major reforms in Paul Ryan's plan. He's reforming poverty programs along the lines of the very successful 1996 Welfare Reform Act. He's applying to all of Medicare the approach that was used for Part D, an approach that, alone of entitlement programs, beat cost projections. This is one opportunity to introduce competition into health care and help limit the increase in health care costs. And for taxes, he's doing just what was done in the 1986 tax reform by eliminating loopholes and then using the saved money to cut rates. These are tried and successful reforms.

Oh, no. If the government shutdown doesn't get averted, the Obama family will miss out on their planned trip to Williamsburg.

So the WHite House officials are leaking that the President's approach to negotiations over the budget is a deliberate choice to try and stay above the fray and then swoop in at the end and try to negotiate a compromise. He wants to be seen as the closer who can close the deal. It's the model he used for the tax cuts in December and for the health care bill. We'll see if it works and everyone in the federal government can wait it out to see if they will be staying home for a few days.

The WSJ suggests that the GOP perhaps hold off on going to the mattresses over this debate over the 2011 budget and save their fire for the debate over the 2012 budget.

Police have found one of the people making death threats to Wisconsin Republicans. Katherine Windels is now saying she just doesn't know why she wrote Republicans saying, “Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks.”

What an irony that the Lisbon Agenda just hasn't worked out the way that was hoped and now it is Portugal that needs a bailout.

How's that civility thing working out? Congresswoman Louise Slaughter says that Republicans came to Congress "to kill women."

And then there is the lovely Sheila Jackson-Lee who says that Paul Ryan wants to keep grandparents from being able to see their grandchildren grow up. You know. Demagoguery just isn't what it used to be if this is the best that the Democrats can come up with.

One promise that Barack Obama is keeping - his administration's promise for higher energy costs.

Now this is true leadership. Charlie Rangel admits that the reason that the Democrats didn't pass 2011's budget last year as they were obligated to is because the budget was a "political hot potato." There's a slogan for the Democrats: "Vote for us and we'll avoid issues that are political hot potatoes.

Six myths about a federal government shutdown.

An Instapundit reader has a good question.

It seems to me that whenever there is a threat of a government shutdown, it’s portrayed as just this side of a tsunami-level disaster. When government workers – teachers, sanitation workers, etc – go on strike, it’s portrayed as the middle-class worker sticking up for himself. Why is it that a government shut-down caused by a desire to spend less money is different than a government shutdown caused by workers failing to do their jobs – isn’t the effect the same?