“K St. lobbyists predict a big rebound in 2013,” blared in gigantic bold letters at the top of the front-page article in “The Hill” newspaper on March 5, 2013.  Let us all hope that headline is not true.  Because what is good for K Street is bad for American taxpayers and vice versa, for the most part.  Those of us who have worked on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. have friends who are or have been corporate lobbyists on K Street which runs parallel to Constitution and Independence Avenues, between the Capitol Building and the White House.  “The Hill” article reported that “K Street firms are predicting a strong rebound in 2013.”

As usual, the RINO (Republicans In Name Only) wing of their national party  --  and their comrades in the establishment media, such as Bill O’Reilly on Fox News  --  have given up on defunding ObamaCare.  Their argument is that the president won reelection and it is time to acknowledge that fact. 

What is it about what the Founding Fathers  --  and about what the Constitution  --  gave this great country that the establishment does not understand?  The People’s House, i.e. the United States House of Representatives, is supposed to be the most powerful part of government. 

The headline of the top story in “The Washington Post” on Sunday was:  “Stymied by a GOP House, Obama looks ahead to 2014 to cement his legacy.”  What that means, in plain English, is that America will be in gridlock for at least the next two years.   When the Republicans took over control of the House of Representatives in 2010, Barack Obama’s left-wing agenda was stopped in its tracks.  However, like most two-term presidents, Obama is concerned about his legacy.

Obama can claim only one major achievement for his legacy.  ObamaCare was rammed through Congress with no Republican votes in the Senate or the House  --  also a first for a major new entitlement program  --  and is deeply unpopular with the American people and it is only going to get worse. 

Obama desperately wanted to continue his radical agenda in the last Congress, but was stopped cold after the historic Republican victory in 2010.  He did, however, force the Republicans to vote for his $620 billion tax increase legislation after his reelection which also had some $330 billion in spending increases.  Even so, a minority of Republicans in the House voted for the gigantic Obama tax increase which had virtually unanimous Democrat support.

After Barack Obama rammed his $620 billion tax increase bill through Congress with hardly any Republican support, he is now advocating even more tax increases.  He, of course, will not use all of these gargantuan and economy-dragging tax increases to reduce the national debt nor his annual $1 trillion deficits   --  four such deficits so far and counting  --  but President Obama will use the additional tax revenue for his new spending programs. 

Indeed, President Obama was in North Carolina yesterday pushing for all kinds of new spending programs including $1 billion in federal aid for a network of 15 so-called “innovation institutes” which will foster “more efficient” business models.  This guy’s appetite for new government programs is insatiable.  You would have thought that the absolute failure of Obama’s $1 trillion stimulus program in 2009 would have taught him a lesson.  But listening to both his second inaugural speech and his state of the union speech on Tuesday shows that Obama absolutely is not chastened by the abject failure of his big government programs and he wants even more spending. 

Since November’s election, which gave the Democrats the White House and the Senate and the Republicans the House of Representatives, there have been two major pieces of legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives; the first, a big spending and taxing bill, and the second, a big spending bailout bill.  Both times, the Republican-controlled House passed the bills with a very small number of Republicans voting for them. The Republican leaders could have, and should have, refused to bring these bills to the House floor for a vote. In the first of these two big spending bills, the Republican-controlled House also passed the biggest tax increase in some 20 years; Barack Obama’s whopping $620 BILLION tax increase legislation.

When the Tea Party and conservative movements gave control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans in 2010 with a huge pick-up of 63 new seats,   --  after the GOP had lost majority control in 2006 because of their prolific spending  --  and control of the House again with a large majority last November, there was no way conservatives believed that the Republican Party would repay them with two gargantuan back-to-back spending bills. 

After the Republicans and their congressional leaders lost the battle to stave off Barack Obama’s gigantic $620 billion tax increase bill  --  which actually also increased federal spending  --  and after John Boehner nearly lost his bid for reelection as Speaker of the House of Representatives on the first ballot last Thursday, the Republican leadership (most especially Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,) should be walking on egg shells. 

The conservative base of the Republican Party is infuriated over the way Boehner and McConnell capitulated to Obama.  Other conservatives, at the very least, are disappointed in their leadership, such as it is, during the 112^th Congress. 

The Republican congressional leaders now have to win the three upcoming “fiscal cliff” battles during the next two months or Nancy Pelosi will resume her speakership of the House of Representatives on January 3, 2015:  the debt ceiling fight in late February or early March; the “sequestration” battle in March; and the “budget resolution” confrontation which must be settled by March 27^th.

Barack Obama reached the high point of his 2nd term just 19 days before he is sworn-in for his 2nd term.  The passage of Obama’s $620 billion tax increase bill will be the zenith of his remaining 4 years in office.

Obama will sign nothing of substance into law unless conservatives in the House of Representatives  --  who suffered a temporary setback on the first day of 2013  --  approve of that law. 

Indeed, Speaker John Boehner will not allow any major legislation that conservatives do not approve of to reach the House floor after the fiasco which occurred on the floor of the House of Representatives last night.  In violation of former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert’s rule of not bringing to the House floor any major legislation which does not have a majority of the Republican majority approving of the legislation, Boehner caused the Republicans in the House to suffer a major defeat. 

Boehner managed to get only 85 Republicans to vote for Obama’s $620 billion tax increase bill. An overwhelmingly majority of Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats (172 out of 188 voting Democrats) voted for Obama’s tax increase bill.  It was a stunning defeat for Boehner’s leadership style.   

Republicans should let Barack Obama jump off the “fiscal cliff” if he wants, but they can also do something productive for the American taxpayers.  That is why the American people gave them huge majorities in the House of Representatives in both the 112th Congress in 2010 and in the 113th Congress in last month’s election.  The Republicans in the House of Representatives should pass a permanent extension of President George W. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, leave town and have a Merry Christmas.

Newt Gingrich was quoted in a “NewsMax.TV” article on Saturday that he is almost afraid that agreement will be reached to avoid the country from going over the so-called “fiscal cliff,” because “the agreement will be ‘a really bad deal.’”  Remembering past deals such as the one President Ronald Reagan said was one of his worst decisions  --  i.e. Reagan said he would deliver $1 dollar in tax increases for every $3 of federal spending cuts offered by then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill  --  Speaker Gingrich said, “I don’t see any evidence that the president is prepared to deliver liberal Democrats in the Senate for any kind of spending cuts that matter.” 

This writer recently wrote a commentary entitled “Will GOP Leaders Become Bob Michelized?”  Unfortunately, during the past couple of weeks, the answer seems to be in the affirmative.  The headline referred to the former Republican House Minority Leader, Congressman Bob Michel, R-IL, who was perfectly content to position his party in the minority for his entire 14 years as GOP leader in the House of Representatives.  That is, until an upstart Republican Congressman from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, warned Michel that he would challenge him for Republican leader during the next congressional leader elections.  Michel promptly announced that he would not run for reelection in 1994.

Meanwhile, because House Minority Whip Gingrich organized a massive and historic issues-oriented campaign during the election of 1994, including a “Contract with America,” he not only became leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, but Gingrich became Speaker of the House.