The Daily Strike-1/25/10-One Year Anniversary: THANK YOU READERS!

Good evening and welcome to the Daily Strike. Today is the one year anniversary of this blog. I can't believe we've made it this far! Thanks to The Big Picture for his support and contributions. Also thanks to Small Town Roots and Sister Strike for contributing a couple of entries. And, of course, thank you to our loyal readers! I wish we were as happy this year as we were this time last year, but that's life I guess.

2010 HOUSE ELECTIONS: You'll notice to the right of your screen that I have added my predictions for the 2010 House elections. I project that the Democrats will hold 229 seats, the Republicans 182 with 24 tossups. I think, in reality the picture is a lot worse for Democrats. These top line numbers include races that I deem to be "leaning" Democratic. Most of these seats are Democratic incumbents who are vulnerable given the political environment. If the environment continues to get worse, a lot of these lean Democrat seats could fall to the GOP, along with a large majority of the tossups. I only have 4 GOP seats rated more competitive than "likely GOP." Basically, the best case scenario this point is for the Democrats to lose about 25 seats.

WORST...IDEA...EVER: President Obama apparently will propose a three year freeze on discretionary spending during Wednesday's State of the Union address. This is a horrible, horrible idea for so many reasons. For one, discretionary spending is a tiny part of the federal budget. Freezing current levels will only save about $250 billion over ten years, hardly a dent in the deficit. Secondly, the effort is playing into the GOP/moderate Democrat/mainstream media meme that we should be cutting spending during a recession. In fact, we should be doing the EXACT opposite. The government should be spending money when the private sector can't. Finally, the effort will be exposed as completely phony, because Democrats raised discretionary spending by 10% over the past year, and that does NOT include the stimulus bill. This may give Obama some brownie points with the DC press corps, but it represents a callous disregard for Americans who will suffer the effects of arbitrary budget cuts. This is a profound mistake by President Obama, the worst of his presidency besides expanding the war in Afghanistan.


THE SENATE: The House was out of session today, but the Senate was surprisingly keeping somewhat busy. By a vote of 89-0, the Senate confirmed Rosanna Peterson to be a District Court Judge in Washington. The Senate will return to the bill raising the debt ceiling tomorrow.

That's it for now. For my one-year anniversary present, call your member of Congress and tell them to a) support the health care bill and b) OPPOSE freezing discretionary spending.