The October surprise is … There isn't one

With just weeks to the November midterm election, political pundits left and right are predicting an "October surprise" – a rabbit-out-of-the-hat game changing something that would preserve the Democratic majority in Congress.

The "surprise" is there isn't one. Reid and Pelosi are demanding voters re-elect Democrats on the merits of their achievements. Good luck.

Following this new tactic, Harry Reid has stopped his failed negative campaign to demonize Sharron Angle and has started to advertise all the good things he has done for Nevada as Senate majority leader. He is taking Nancy Pelosi's advice that Democrats "run on their record."

What a wonderful record it is. As a result of Harry's connections/juice/leadership, Nevada boasts the highest unemployment rate of any state and the highest foreclosure rate, too. When Harry Reid became majority leader, the Nevada unemployment rate was 4.4 percent. Today it is 14.4 percent.

Reid also sided with Obama and Mexico in condemning Arizona's attempt to enforce the federal border law that Obama wouldn't enforce. He stood and applauded when the Mexican president addressed a joint session of Congress and attacked the state of Arizona.

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Harry isn't too swift on foreign policy, either. He called Gen. Petreaus a liar and predicted the failure of the Bush "surge" in Iraq, declaring for the troops in the field (and the enemy too) that "the war is lost." Recently, Reid praised Gen. Petreaus and predicted that the Obama "surge" in Afghanistan would be successful.

On the domestic front, Harry pushed through a 2,000 page health-care "reform" last Christmas Eve that no senator read, and it is now causing ripples of higher cost for health insurance to spread out into the already hurting economy. Last week, I got my AFTRA union brochure proudly announcing that AFTRA support of Obamacare would only cost me 5 percent more next year for health insurance. Gee, thanks.

Then there was the Obama/Reid/Pelosi "Recovery Act." Despite assurances of recovery, the recession drags on, made worse by uncertainty injected into the marketplace by erratic tax policy, bailouts of the "too big to fail" banks, endless extensions of unemployment payments rather than jobs and random "stimulus" grants apparently aimed to preserve government budgets while piling up trillions of dollars of new government debt. What a record.

The "Cash for Clunkers" subsidy wasted more taxpayer money while not increasing the number of cars sold, only the timing of the sale. Similar efforts to lower mortgage costs through new debt financed federal subsidies only made the housing collapse worse. Way to go.

Meanwhile, Reid and Pelosi failed to do the job they were elected to do. Consider the "record" of non-action Reid, Pelosi and the Democrats are running on

Congress failed to adopt a federal budget for fiscal year 2011, which began Oct. 1. Maybe they had second thoughts about putting into print their plan to spend $1,641,000,000,000 (that's $1.641 trillion) more than projected federal income. In fiscal year 2010, Pelosi, Reid & Co. borrowed 42 cents of every dollar spent. As even Obama has stated, since the federal entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, welfare and unemployment insurance) took 58 percent of the budget, all the rest of the federal government was funded by borrowing. What an "achievement."

Reid and Pelosi also failed to decide what to do about extending the Bush tax cuts. The Treasury Department has said that failure of Congress to act by mid-November will result in the tax withholding tables for 2011 reflecting the pre-Bush higher tax rates for everybody, which means that every paycheck will get smaller Jan. 1, 2011. No Senate action on taxes is yet scheduled for November. Acting on Christmas Eve (Harry's favorite legislative session day) will cause chaos at the Treasury, and every business with a payroll scramble to figure out how much to withhold for taxes. Good Job.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said last week that the Democrats were the party of food stamps, while the Republicans were the party of job creation.

In a startling response, Speaker Pelosi agreed. She defended the 30 percent increase in food-stamp recipients since Obama was sworn in, saying that food stamps and unemployment checks were the best stimulus the economy could have. "Every dollar of food stamps results in $1.72 of new economic activity," she said.

So there you have it. Democrats out in the open, honestly asserting that the economy would be better off with more people on welfare and food stamps.

The choice couldn't be clearer than that. And no "October surprise" can mask the importance of the voter decision on Nov. 2.