Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, last week issued a strong rebuke to the “closed-door meetings” and “secrecy” that have characterized recent efforts to produce a bipartisan agreement.

“Secrecy cements the status quo: more spending, more debt, more runaway government. It is the enemy of accountability, change, and reform,” Sessions said in a statement. “We cannot simply rush through some secret deal that no one can amend, alter, review, scrutinize, or dispute.”

He called on party leaders to guarantee that any agreement on the fiscal cliff be placed on the Senate floor for a full week of open debate with amendments before a final vote.

President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist echoed the call for transparency.

“If Republicans are being unreasonable the whole world will see it; if Obama’s being unreasonable the whole world will see it,” Norquist told the Washington Free Beacon. “Let’s have an actual honest, transparent discussion, and not have to wait a year for Bob Woodward to write a book about it.”

One concern about the prevalence of closed-door talks and last-minute deals is that they validate the Democratic Party’s strategic refusal over the past several years even to propose a viable budget document.

More than 1,300 days have passed since Senate Democrats formally approved a budget resolution as required by law. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has maintained it would be “foolish” for them to do so.

Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), the incoming Senate Budget Committee chair, appeared poised to continue that dubious tradition.

Murray declined last week to commit to passing a budget this year and suggested an agreement on the fiscal cliff could preclude the need to do so.

Senate Democrats have argued previously that last year’s bipartisan debt ceiling agreement, which installed caps on federal spending over the next decade, absolved them of the need to propose and pass a budget.

GOP critics have long contended that Senate Democrats have declined to endorse a budget resolution because they do not have a viable plan to address the country’s long-term debt problem. The plan offered by President Barack Obama did not receive a single yes vote.

Republicans say Democrats have calculated that any serious budget they put forward would prove politically disastrous given the magnitude of the tax increases necessary to close the deficit absent meaningful spending cuts, which Democrats have opposed at every turn.

Simply raising tax rates on “the rich,” the Democrats’ favored plan, would not come close to solving the debt problem.

The federal government could tax high incomes at a 100 percent rate and still not raise enough revenue to cover the amount of the debt racked up in the past year.

Democrats in Congress remain divided on a host of issues including entitlement reform, the optimal proportion of tax hikes to spending cuts, and the definition of “wealthy.” Refusing to endorse a formal budget has allowed the party to avoid potentially awkward infighting.

Obama has been similarly hesitant to propose a plan to address the long-term debt crisis. His most recent budget was panned by independent experts for its reliance on accounting gimmicks and for failing to rein in the burgeoning federal debt, which has increased from about $10 trillion when Obama took office to its current level of more than $16 trillion.

According to the White House’s own projections, under the president’s plan the country’s “fiscal position gradually deteriorates” after 2022.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has admitted that the Obama administration does not have a plan to address the nation’s long-term fiscal problem.

“We’re not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem,” he told House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) in February. “What we do know is, we don’t like yours.”

Yet the president last week touted his budget as viable basis for compromise.

“I don’t expect the Republicans simply to adopt my budget,” he told members of the White House press corps. “That’s not realistic.”

Reporters did not follow up by noting that Democrats have already unanimously rejected Obama’s budget.

Even though the president has clearly stated his desire to raise taxes as part of any potential budget agreement, he has been opaque regarding what he plans to do with the new revenue.

Obama’s reelection campaign released an ad in July touting his plan to force “the wealthy to pay a little more so we can pay down our debt in a balanced way. So that we can afford to invest in education, manufacturing, and homegrown American energy for good middle class jobs.”

Republicans are concerned Obama and Democrats would use the revenue raised from tax increases to fund new spending initiatives rather than to pay down the national debt.

Some Republicans maintain that, by agreeing to negotiate with the White House and Democratic leaders behind closed doors, the party may put Republican fingerprints on unpopular economic proposals and thus relinquish political leverage on budget issues.

Leading Democrats in the Senate are already insisting that a deal on the fiscal cliff include a fresh round of stimulus spending.

The president, meanwhile, has yet to abandon his American Jobs Act, which proposed a one-year spending binge of nearly half a trillion dollars in borrowed funds.

The Middlesex County Republican Organization is asking the Senate Ethics Committee to launch an investigation into Menendez based on public records and media reports indicating the senator failed to disclose and seek permission for a series of flights to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic between 2010 and 2012.

Records indicate Menendez made at least four trips on a corporate jet owned by Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist who has donated more than $220,000 to Democratic candidates and committees since 1993. Melgen gave at least $12,600 to Menendez during that period.

“It does not appear that Senator Menendez’s apparent acceptance of private jet travel and luxury lodging was permitted by Senate gift rules,” the letter states. “Nor does it appear that Senator Menendez disclosed acceptance of this travel and lodging on his financial disclosure form—as he would be required to do even if the gifts were otherwise permissible.”

Melgen owns a private villa in the luxurious Casa de Campo resort in the Dominican Republic. Menendez is a frequent guest of Melgen’s and has participated in what one Dominican government official described as “sex orgies” with “higher-class” prostitutes according to reports from the Daily Caller

The Caller recently interviewed two Dominican women who claimed Menendez paid them for sex earlier this year.

Senate rules allow members to accept reimbursement from a private party for transportation, lodging, and other expenses related to official business as long as the activity is formally approved by the Senate Ethics Committee.

“There is no indication that the Melgen Jet travel was undertaken by Senator Menendez for any purpose connected with his official duties of office, and even if it was undertaken for an officially-related purpose there is no indication that the travel was appropriately approved and publicly disclosed as required by Senate Rules,” the letter states.

The only apparent record of reimbursement for the flights is a payment of $5,380 to Melgen’s company from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) for air travel on May 24, 2010. Reports indicate that Menendez, who was chairman of the DSCC at the time, travelled from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico on Melgen’s plane to attend a fundraising event with Puerto Rican donors.

Senate rules also permit members to accept travel and lodging as gifts of personal friendship. However, senators must obtain written approval from the Ethics Committees for all gifts exceeding $250 in value and list all such gifts on their annual financial disclosure report.

Menendez’s disclosure reports between 2010 and 2012 contain no mention of the flights and lodging, indicating that the senator did not receive committee approval for a personal gift exemption.

“Under any analysis, there is reason to believe that Senator Menendez has accepted a prohibited gift of private air travel,” the letter states.

If Menendez did receive approval for the gifts, but failed to disclose them anyway, it could warrant a criminal charge for making false statements on a federal government filing.

The Senate Code of Official Conduct requires members to refrain from “improper conduct reflecting on the Senate.” It is unclear if this includes the solicitation of prostitutes.

Senate Resolution 338 authorizes the Ethics Committee to investigate allegations of such conduct, and “recommend disciplinary action” if necessary.

“If Senator Menendez has indeed engaged in improper conduct contrary to Senate ethics rules and standards, he should be sanctioned appropriately,” the letter states.

The Senate Ethics Committee did not return a request for comment.

“I don’t know anything about it,” Menendez spokeswoman Tricia Enright said by email when asked for comment on the letter.

Enright did not comment on the allegations.

Speaking to a crowd at Cleveland State University, the Republican vice presidential nominee said the United States had failed to live up to one of the country’s ideals: that of equal opportunity.

“In so many ways, our nation’s history has been a long struggle to bring opportunity into life,” he said. “Even though so many barriers to equality have fallen, too many old inequities persist.”

Poverty rates are rising, food stamp use has increased dramatically, and our public education system is failing students, Ryan explained in the course of arguing that too many poor children lack the opportunity to rise out of poverty.

“Right now, America’s engines of upward mobility aren’t working the way they should,” he said. “The question before us today—and it demands a serious answer—is how do we get the engines of upward mobility turned back on, so that no one is left out from the promise of America?”

The answer, Ryan argued, was to rethink the federal government’s approach over the last several decades, which he characterized as spending “lots of money on centralized, bureaucratic, top-down anti-poverty programs.”

For the amount of money the federal government spent last year on such programs, Ryan said, the government could have simply written a $22,000 check to every poor person in America.

A Romney-Ryan administration would offer “real reforms for lifting people out of poverty,” he said, citing the bipartisan welfare reform law signed by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s as an example of a successful approach that should be applied “across the spectrum of anti-poverty programs.”

Ryan emphasized education reform, including school choice and defeating entrenched special interest groups in schoolhouses, as well as strengthening civil institutions such as churches and charities, as critical to fostering income mobility.

Ryan received a standing ovation when he pledged to overturn the Obama administration’s new rules requiring health plans offered by Catholic institutions to provide free contraception, an example of the government’s creeping intrusion into civil society.

Growing the economy, and getting the nation’s spending and debt under control to avoid a financial crisis, are also vital, he said, because the poor and vulnerable are always the hardest hit.

Though Ryan acknowledged that Republicans “don’t always do a good job” of laying out this vision, he slammed the oft-repeated argument that Republicans “think everybody should just fend for themselves.”

“That’s just a false argument … a straw man set up to avoid genuine debate,” he said.

Ryan has been highlighting these themes since long before Mitt Romney chose him as a running mate in August.

“Look at the results of the government-centered approach to the war on poverty,” he said in April during a speech at Georgetown University. “One in six Americans are in poverty today—the highest rate in a generation. In this war on poverty, poverty is winning. We need a better approach.”

Ryan’s speech called to mind his critique of “government-imposed barriers to upward mobility” in his opening remarks at a June hearing of the House Budget Committee, which he chairs.

Income mobility, which has been significantly undermined by President Barack Obama’s policies, was an important issue for Republicans to advance, said Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

“It’s important for Republicans to advance a positive social vision,” he told the Washington Free Beacon. “Something that is not just a critique of the progressive vision.”

Ryan’s emphasis on civil institutions was particularly relevant, Levin said, because of what he described as the “active effort to inject government into civil society.”

“I think there’s been an effort to turn the charitable sector into an arm of government,” Levin said. “This has always been a big difference between conservatives and liberals that is worth articulating. There are some things the government is never going to be able to do.”

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said income mobility was a “vitally important issue” that is too often ignored.

“We talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but it’s difficult for low income people to pursue happiness if they don’t have economic mobility,” she told the Free Beacon.

Allowing for greater school choice, Furchtgott-Roth argued, as well as promoting access to community colleges, would be a “major step” toward promoting such mobility.

The president’s policies over the past four years, however, have failed to adequately address the problem.

“We have seen a lot of government spending and it hasn’t worked,” she said.

Paul Ryan’s Speech at Cleveland State University

Part I

Part II

Yet the implication—that lobbyists have seen their influence wane under President Barack Obama—is belied by the facts.

The president has certainly talked a big game when it comes to getting tough on lobbyists.

“I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over,” he said as a candidate in November 2007. “They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president.”

However, the president’s actions have not matched his rhetoric.

“They will not run my White House”

Obama began seeking the advice of lobbyists before he was even sworn in. The Washington Post counted more than a dozen registered lobbyists on the Obama-Biden Transition Team, including the transition director John Podesta, founder and former president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress.

On his first day in office, Obama signed an executive order codifying this pledge to ban lobbyists from his administration, and crack down on the so-called “revolving door” between the federal government and the lobbying industry.

Just two days later, however, the nonpartisan fact-checking website PolitiFact noted that Obama’s policy included a lenient waiver clause that would allow the administration to hire lobbyists.

“We rate Obama’s ‘revolving door’ policy for former lobbyists his biggest broken promise,” PolitiFact wrote at the time.

The administration went on to hire at least 50 such lobbyists, granting waivers or recusals in order to get around the new rules.

Former lobbyists tapped for leading roles in the White House include: Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist; William Lynn, a former deputy secretary of defense who worked as a lobbyist for defense industry giant Raytheon; Steve Ricchetti, recently hired as a counselor to Vice President Joe Biden after making millions lobbying on behalf of taxpayer-subsidized clients such as Fannie Mae and General Motors; Ron Kirk, U.S. Trade Representative and former lobbyist for Merrill Lynch; and Cecilia Muñoz, director of the Domestic Policy Council and a former immigration lobbyist.

In some cases, the White House hired individuals who were not officially registered as lobbyists, but were actively involved in the lobbying industry.

As the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney pointed out, former White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer Andrew McLaughlin, who previously headed Google’s global public policy and government affairs shop, was never registered as lobbyist. He did, however, work directly on federal policies affecting his former employer, and was found to have discussed such issues with Google lobbyists, potentially in violation of ethics rules.

The New York Times reported in 2010 that senior White House officials had been holding hundreds of “off-site” meetings with lobbyists in order to avoid public disclosure requirements.

“The off-site meetings, lobbyists say, reveal a disconnect between the Obama administration’s public rhetoric—with Mr. Obama himself frequently thrashing big industries’ ‘battalions’ of lobbyists as enemies of reform—and the administration’s continuing, private dealings with them,” wrote the Times.

A congressional investigation earlier this year uncovered email exchanges between senior Obama advisers and industry lobbyists, some of which took place on private accounts. The emails revealed the extent to which lobbyists were intimately involved in the shaping of key legislation such as the controversial healthcare reform bill.

The president’s actions stand in direct contrast to his pledge to preside over “the most transparent administration in history.”

The lobbying industry has fared well under Obama. Total spending on federal lobbying has averaged nearly $3.5 billion per year since 2009, compared with an annual average of $2.4 billion during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

“They have not funded my campaign”

The president has refused to accept campaign donations from lobbyists. “We don’t take a dime from D.C. lobbyists or special-interest PACs—never have and never will,” Obama wrote in a December 2011 fundraising email.

Like his loophole-ridden “revolving door” policy, however, this promise is easily sidestepped.

The New York Times reported last year that at least 15 of Obama’s most prominent campaign bundlers were actively involved in the lobbying industry, though not officially registered as lobbyists.

This dubious distinction was highlighted in February, when the Washington Free Beacon reported that former Democratic congressman and Obama campaign bundler Ron Klein had registered to lobby on behalf of Spirit Airlines Inc.

Klein claimed the registration was a mistake, and subsequently deregistered. The Obama campaign declined to return the money Klein raised (between $200,000 and $500,000).

“Because the bundlers are not registered as lobbyists with the Senate, the Obama campaign has managed to avoid running afoul of its self-imposed ban on taking money from lobbyists,” the Times explained. “But registered or not, the bundlers are in many ways indistinguishable from people who fit the technical definition of a lobbyist.”

The campaign’s unregistered lobbyist bundlers include Sally Susman, who heads the lobbying shop at the pharmaceutical juggernaut Pfizer. Susman has raised more than $600,000 for the president this cycle, and helped organize a $38,500-a-head Manhattan fundraiser in June that Obama attended. She has also made at least four visits to the White House, according to visitor logs.

David Cohen, who oversees government outreach for Comcast, has raised more than $1.4 million for Obama this cycle, and hosted the president at his Philadelphia home for a June 2011 fundraiser.

Andy Spahn, who runs a government relations firm in Los Angeles, and has lobbied for the DreamWorks film studio, has raised more than $2 million for the president, along with DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Katzenberg’s DreamWorks is currently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) amid allegations that the studio illegally bribed Chinese officials to secure exclusive movie rights in the communist nation.

Michael Kempner has raised more than $3 million for Obama, making him the third largest campaign bundler this cycle. Kempner oversees a team of registered government lobbyists via his New Jersey public relations firm, MWW Group.

Obama appointed both Kempner and Spahn to presidential committees.

So far this cycle, the lobbying industry as a whole has contributed nearly twice as much to Obama (nearly $19 million) as they have to Romney ($10 million).

The notoriously gaffe-prone train enthusiast and current vice president of the United States made a number of factually inaccurate statements during last night’s debate.

1. The Obama administration “did not know” the Libyan embassy had requested additional security prior to the terrorist attack that killed four Americans

“We weren’t told they wanted more security there,” Biden said in response to a charge from Republican opponent Paul Ryan. “We did not know they wanted more security.”

The vice president’s statement stands in direct contrast to sworn testimony from State Department officials during a congressional hearing earlier this week.

Two security officials working in Libya at the time told members of Congress they repeatedly requested additional security prior to the attack out of concern for their safety, but were denied.

“All of us at post were in sync that we wanted these resources,” said Eric Nordstrom, the former head of regional security in Libya.

“We felt great frustration that those requests were ignored or just never met,” lamented Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, a Utah National Guardsman who led a security team in Libya.

State Department officials have confirmed that repeated security requests were made and subsequently denied.

Nordstrom said he believed the requests were not approved “because there would be too much political cost.”

The White House now claims Biden only meant that neither he nor President Obama was personally informed of the security requests, but press secretary Jay Carney on Friday awkwardly declined to say whether or not they ever were briefed on the matter.

2. Ryan and House Republicans “cut” embassy security by $300 million

The House Republican budget, which Ryan authored, proposed spending about $22 billion less on non-defense discretionary spending in 2014 compared with Obama’s budget, or about 0.63 percent of the federal budget for that year.

Budgets do not typically identify specific cuts, as those are determined by congressional appropriations committees. However, Democrats have extrapolated that $300 million of the $22 billion would be cut from embassy construction, maintenance, and security.

That is not necessarily true, however. And it is certainly not true that Republicans have “cut” the embassy funding—because the Ryan budget was never enacted.

A senior State Department official who testified before Congress earlier this week said budget considerations were not a factor in the decision to deny the U.S. Libyan delegation’s repeated requests for additional security.

3. The Obama administration has “decimated” al Qaeda

“We decimated al Qaeda central,” Biden said, echoing a popular Obama campaign talking point.

Intelligence reports and other sources, however, have indicated that the Islamic terrorist network responsible for the 9-11 attacks is actually on the rise throughout the greater Middle East and elsewhere.

The Free Beacon‘s Bill Gertz recently reported on an internal Pentagon report describing the terrorist group’s resurgence.

Most recently, an al Qaeda offshoot has been credited with carrying out the deadly attack in Libya that claimed the life of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and several other Americans.

“Al Qaeda is, unfortunately, alive and well in the Maghreb, Yemen, and elsewhere, as the administration will probably admit after the election,” former National Security Council member Elliott Abrams told the Washington Free Beacon earlier this week. “The claim that the organization was rendered toothless after [Osama bin Laden] was killed is simply not accurate, and every terrorism specialist in our government knows that.”

Lara Logan, chief foreign correspondent for CBS News, recently described the Obama administration’s declaration of victory in the war on terror a “major lie.”

4. Obama doesn’t want to raise taxes on families and small businesses earning less than $1 million a year.

“The middle class will pay less and people making a million dollars or more will begin to contribute slightly more,” Biden said of President Obama’s tax plan.

“We can’t afford $800 billion going to people who [are] making a minimum of $1 million,” he added.

President Obama has often stated his desire to raise taxes on all individuals and small businesses earning at least $200,000 a year, a proposal he included in his most recent budget resolution. Doing so is estimated to raise about $800 billion in new revenue over the next decade.

“Biden appeared to have moved the goal posts,” wrote Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s in-house fact-checker.

Raising tax rates on incomes above $1 million only, which some Democrats have proposed, would raise just $463 billion, or about half the figure Biden cited.

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Friday was forced to disavow Biden’s inaccurate portrayal of the president’s tax plan.

5. Syria is five times the size of Libya

“[Syria] is a different country, it is five times as large [as Libya] geographically,” Biden said.

This claim is literally false.

Libya has a geographic area of 1.76 million square kilometers, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. Syria has a geographic area of 185,180 square kilometers.

Libya is 9.5 times larger than Syria geographically.

6. Obama has ordered all American troops out of Afghanistan by 2014

“We are leaving [Afghanistan] in 2014. Period,” Biden said Thursday.

However, the administration has discussed maintaining an “enduring presence”—in the words of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta—in Afghanistan beyond 2104. That would likely consist of somewhere between 10,000 to 15,000 military advisers and special forces troops, contingent on an agreement with the government of Afghanistan.

7.The federal government is not forcing Catholic institutions to cover contraception

“With regard to the assault on the Catholic church, let me make it absolutely clear, no religious institution, Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic Social Services, Georgetown Hospital, Mercy Hospital, any hospital, none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact,” Biden said.

Yet 35 lawsuits against the HHS mandate, which forces insurance companies to cover contraception for free, are pending right now, including many from Catholic universities. The Becket Fund pointed out this fact in an email this morning objecting to the Vice President’s comments.

After an initial uproar against the Health and Human Services mandate requiring institutions to pay for insurance coverage of contraception, the Obama administration announced that “the cost would be shifted to health insurance companies,” reported the New York Times.

However, this concession has not placated religious groups, who argue that the rule violates the first amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom.

8. Biden voted against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars

The vice president said economic crisis of 2008 happened in part because of Paul Ryan “voting to put two wars on a credit card.”

“I was there, I voted against them,” Biden continued. “I said, no, we can’t afford that.”

Then-Sen. Biden voted for the Afghanistan resolution on Sept. 14, 2001, authorizing “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”

And on Oct. 11, 2002, Biden voted for a resolution authorizing unilateral military action in Iraq.

Biden did, however, vote against the First Gulf War to repel the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, arguing that the U.S. had no “vital interests” in the region.

However, experts insist that it is the president who suffers from a lack of policy details and has failed to offer a clear agenda for a possible second term.

When it comes to contentious issues such as tax reform and deficit reduction, President Obama has failed to provide a detailed view of what he hopes to accomplish in a second term.

“I don’t think we’ve seen anybody run for president with less of a clear plan for what he would do if reelected,” said Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “I haven’t seen anything that I’d call a second-term agenda, or a piece of legislation he says he wants to pass.”

“He’s basically going around saying ‘Hey, I killed Osama bin Laden, let me do stuff,’” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Despite a growing bipartisan consensus surrounding the urgent need for comprehensive tax reform that lowers rates by eliminating loopholes and deductions, the president has made no serious effort on this front during his first four years in office.

He disavowed his own deficit commission, which had put forward a framework for comprehensive tax reform, along with numerous proposals to reduce federal spending.

Obama did introduce a framework for corporate tax reform in February, which would lower rates and close loopholes. But the president only identified five loopholes he would eliminate to pay for his plan. That is enough to cover about 10 percent of the projected cost.

When pushed to identify specific deductions the president would keep or eliminate—such as the charitable tax credit—the White House has declined to elaborate.

“Obama basically does what he accuses Romney of doing: says we should lower rates, broaden the base, but we’ll figure it out later,” Levin said.

The president and his campaign advisers have attacked Romney repeatedly for a lack of specificity on taxes.

“Romney has never explained how he would pay for his massive new tax cut for the wealthiest,” Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said in an October 3 memo. (She recently had to disavow the campaign’s claim that Romney was proposing a “$5 trillion tax cut.”)

“We don’t know the details” of Romney’s tax plan, the president said during last week’s debate in Denver. “He won’t tell us.”

However, the president’s tax plan is considerably vague. His plan for “taxes and the budget,” as outlined on his campaign’s website, consists of two nebulous components—“Asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share” (raising taxes) and “Investing in the middle class” (more stimulus spending)—as well as a third (“Reducing the deficit by more than $4 trillion over the next decade”) that has been roundly dismissed as inaccurate.

Independent experts estimate the real savings Obama has proposed amount to little more than $2 trillion over 10 years—the vast majority of which is achieved through tax increases.

The president has often stated his desire to raise taxes by letting current rates expire on individuals and small business earning at least $200,000 a year. Doing so is projected to raise about $700 billion in new revenue over the next decade.

President Obama has been far less clear, however, as to where the additional $1.2 trillion in proposed deficit reduction would come from. The Obama campaign website says the president’s deficit plan would raise more than $1.9 trillion by “closing corporate loopholes and tax increases on high income earners.”

Obama’s plan to further increase taxes on upper-income individuals and small businesses is as vague as his corporate tax proposal. The so-called Buffett Rule, named after Nebraska billionaire and Obama donor Warren Buffett, is a “principal of tax fairness” the president introduced last year (but did not include in his budget), and is prominently featured on the Obama campaign website.

The Obama administration has not specified how the rule would be implemented. However, tax experts have estimated it would raise just $4.7 billion per year over the next decade, or enough to cover about 0.4 percent of the projected budget deficit in 2012.

The Democratic-led Senate failed to advance Buffett Rule legislation in April.

Norquist said Obama’s lack of a clear fiscal agenda is perfectly summed up by the fact that not a single Democratic lawmaker voted for his most recent budget proposals.

“It’s not Republicans saying his budget is garbage, it’s Democrats,” he told the Washington Free Beacon. “You’d think they’d vote for it just out of party loyalty.”

Obama’s 2013 budget was panned by independent experts for failing to rein in the burgeoning federal debt, which has increased from about $10 trillion when Obama took office to its current level of more than $16 trillion.

According to the White House’s own projections, the country’s “fiscal position gradually deteriorates” after 2022 under the president’s plan.

Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner has admitted that the Obama administration does not have a plan to address the nation’s long-term fiscal problem.

“We’re not coming before you today to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem,” he told House Budget Committee chairman and GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan in February. “What we do know is, we don’t like yours.”

Despite pledging the cut the federal budget deficit in half by the end of his first term—a pledge reiterated as recently as February 2011—the president has not come close to meeting that goal.

“His budget plan hasn’t really changed in four years,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). “The American people are not super fond of policies they’ve seen coming out of this administration, so you’d think the president would make some effort to change course, but he hasn’t.”

Obama did not formally introduce a deficit reduction plan until late 2011. Before that, the White House said the president’s plan had been laid out in an April 2011 speech at George Washington University—prompting an amusing response from current CBO director Douglas Elmendorf, who noted that budget analysts “don’t estimate speeches.”

“We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis,” Elmendorf told the House Budget Committee in June 2011.

With respect to federal entitlement programs, by far the biggest drivers of the national debt and deficit, the president has been vague and noncommittal, promising “modest adjustments” to Medicare. What he has actually proposed is to direct an appointed board of experts to cut the program’s growth at a slightly more vigorous rate.

“You get the sense that he just don’t care that much [about the deficit],” Holtz-Eakin said.

The reason Democrats have refused to put forward a viable long-term plan, Norquist argued, is that they do not believe the American people would support the large tax increases required to fund their desired level of federal spending.

“The size of the tax increase Obama and Democrats want is so big that they won’t get reelected if they actually voted for it,” he said. “Republicans have actually all voted for the Ryan plan, which is an actual budget.”

Given the tremendous uncertainty surrounding his policy proposals, it is unclear what Obama would seek to accomplish in a second term—or what he would be able to accomplish in the likely scenario that Republicans hold the House and pick up seats in the Senate.

Confronted with such concerns, Obama has suggested that Republicans will be more accepting of his policies if he is reelected.

“If Obama’s reelected, it’s a status quo election, which is essentially just waiting for the next election,” Levin said.

Obama’s agenda, whatever that might be, will be further handicapped in a second term due to the fact that roughly a dozen Democratic senators from red states such as Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, and South Dakota are up for reelection in 2014.

“Good luck asking them to support a giant tax hike,” Norquist said. “Look, Obama’s specifics going forward are about as lacking as the last time he ran for office. He ran on a secret in 2008, and he’s trying to do it again.”

At the very least, the report—which found that the Obama campaign likely pays millions more in additional fees to avoid using standard verification methods for online credit card donations—exposes the true record of a president who has repeatedly denounced the alleged influence of foreign funds in U.S. elections.

“I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities,” President Barack Obama said during his 2010 State of the Union Address.

Obama adviser David Axelrod repeated this charge throughout the 2010 election cycle, even going so far as to accuse organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Republicans Super PACs of being “front groups for foreign-controlled companies”

Federal campaign law prohibits U.S. political campaigns from knowingly accepting or soliciting donations from foreign nationals.

“The president and Democrats in general tend to be self-righteous about campaign finance issues, and yet obviously they are doing far less than they could themselves to enforce limitations on foreign donations,” said Scott Walter, executive vice president at the Capital Research Center.

The Obama campaign, which is on track to become the first billion-dollar presidential campaign, reported raising $181 million from more than 1.8 million individuals in the month of September. However, just two percent of those donations were above the reporting threshold ($250) set by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The average donation was $53, barely above the $50 limit threshold, under which campaigns are not even required to record a donor’s name.

The report, authored by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), suggested that small donations such as these, which can be collected without scrutiny from the FEC, compounded by the Obama campaign’s unwillingness to adequately secure its online payment page, create “significant vulnerabilities for the integrity of the campaign’s donation process.”

In some cases, the Obama campaign was found to have sent solicitation emails to foreign citizens, some of whom admitted having donated money—raising questions as to whether the campaign was knowingly violating the law.

“Given President Obama’s rhetoric about foreign influence in our elections, you’d think they’d bend over backward to ensure the very highest standards for his own campaign,” David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, told the Washington Free Beacon. “There are simple things they could do to make people a lot more confident, but it appears they haven’t done that.”

Kenneth Sukhia, a Florida attorney who analyzed the legal implications of the GAI report, wrote that the findings provided “clear justification for further investigation” into whether the Obama campaign “disregarded their responsibility under [the law] to ensure that the Campaign is not knowingly soliciting contributions from foreign nationals.”

Scott Coffina, a former assistant U.S. Attorney, said the Obama campaign’s solicitation and acceptance of foreign donations was “definitely investigation worthy.”

“There’s certainly a question of willful blindness [with respect to foreign campaign donations],” he told the Free Beacon. “Why would anybody, especially a political campaign, pay more for less adequate security measures? Clearly there is a vulnerability in the law that may be being exploited.”

Though the findings of the GAI report do not necessarily prove that the Obama campaign is knowingly breaking the law, further investigation would be a “legitimate use of law enforcement” that could shed light on these concerns, Coffina said.

Regardless of whether a formal investigation is launched, the optics may prove troubling for a president who has sought to portray himself as more ethical than his opponents with respect to campaign financing.

“It seems pretty clear they are trying to maximize their odds of getting donations without anything like honest disclosure,” Walter told the Free Beacon. “It would be nice, at least, if the left and the Obama administration would stop being so self-righteous about campaign finance law.”

The Obama campaign—whose lawyers reportedly tried to block the release of the GAI report—sought to downplay the recent allegations.

“We take great care to make sure that every one of our more than three million donors are eligible to donate and that our fundraising efforts fully comply with all U.S. laws and regulations,” campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher told The Daily Beast.

Obama faced similar criticism for not employing standard verification methods in 2008, when his campaign cemented its reputation as one of the most successful online fundraising operations in history.

The Obama campaign, which often touts its immense network of small donors, and has suggested it will be outraised by Republican opponents seeking to “buy the election,” has become increasingly reliant on large donations from wealthy liberals.

Earlier this year, the president renounced his prior objection to so-called Super PACs, third party groups that can raise unlimited amounts of money.

Priorities USA, a prominent pro-Obama Super PAC, recently outraised its Republican counterpart in the month of August. Additionally, the Obama campaign and its affiliate organizations have outraised Republicans through the end of August, $774 million to $736 million.

Walter said the GAI report, copies of which were submitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, and several states attorney general for review, could spur a congressional investigation, as well as changes to election law.

“I’m generally not a fan of lots of regulations of donations, but I think we can all agree that foreign nationals shouldn’t have the same freedoms to contribute that American citizens do,” he said. “It would be nice if Congress was willing to honestly look into this.”

Last week a video of a President Barack Obama supporter in Ohio claiming to have received a free phone from the president—“[Obama] gave us a phone!”—went viral, prompting media outlets to investigate.

Since 1985 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has operated a program called Lifeline, originally designed to provide free landline phone service for low-income individuals. The government subsidizes telecommunications firms providing the service, and those firms also pass on costs to customers via the “Universal Service Charge” on their phone bills.

The program expanded to include cell phones in 2008. That change has rapidly increased the cost to the federal government—$1.6 billion in 2011, up from $772 million in 2008. The number of Lifeline beneficiaries rose from 7.1 million to 12.5 million during the same period; cell phones account for roughly half of that 12.5 million.

One of the major providers of the free cell phones—3.8 million subscribers as of late 2011—is Miami-based TracFone Wireless, a company whose president and CEO, Frederick “F.J.” Pollak, has donated at least $156,500 to Democratic candidates and committees this cycle, including at least $50,000 to the Obama campaign.

Pollak’s wife, Abigail, is a campaign bundler for Obama who has raised more than $632,000 for the president this cycle, and more than $1.5 million since 2007. She has personally contributed more than $200,000 to Democratic candidates and committees since 2008.

The Pollaks hosted Obama at their Miami Beach home in June for a $40,000-per-plate fundraising dinner, and hosted a similar event with Michelle Obama in July 2008. The couple personally donated a combined $66,200 to Obama’s reelection effort that year.

Visitor logs indicate that Frederick and Abigail Pollak have visited the White House seven times. In 2009, the president appointed Abigail to serve on the “Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of the American Latino.”

TracFone, a direct financial beneficiary of the Lifeline program, receives $10 a month for each subscriber in the form of federal subsidies. The company can make an additional profit selling extra minutes to Lifeline subscribers who exceed their monthly allowance of 250 prepaid minutes.

TracFone and other wireless providers claim that revenue from selling additional minutes to Lifeline customers is low, but decline to publicly release such figures.

The program’s rapidly increasing costs have attracted the attention of Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and have prompted calls for reform. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), for example, found that the program was “ripe for fraud.” In some cases, McCaskill noted in a December 2011 press release, the government was issuing multiple free phones to the same individuals.

“I remain troubled by the expansive potential for the program to be abused, especially since Americans contribute to the program through their monthly phone bills,” McCaskill, who is up for reelection, wrote in a formal letter to the FCC. “The current requirements to determine eligibility often do not require customer documentation for participation in Lifeline, which may result in individuals receiving phones who should not be.”

Rep. Tim Griffin (R., Ark.) has introduced legislation to restore the program to its originally intended purpose—providing landlines for use in emergencies—and stop the federal government from issuing free cell phones. Griffin told the Daily Caller he had heard reports of individuals receiving dozens of phones, some of which were of the expensive smartphone variety.

The FCC in response to such pressure announced in February 2012 to reform the program and “reduce the potential for fraud while cutting red tape for consumers and providers.”

TracFone, which did not return a request for comment, is the U.S. affiliate of America Movil, one of the largest phone service providers in Latin America.

America Movil is one of many business ventures controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, currently the world’s richest man, according to Forbes. Slim’s stake in the firm accounts for more than half of his $70 billion net worth.

Slim—who bailed out the New York Times and is often referred to as “Mexico’s Mr. Monopoly”—has visited the White House at least twice, according to visitor logs.

Obamacare, which passed in 2010, sought to reduce Medicare spending by strictly capping the program’s growth at GDP plus 1 percent. In his most recent budget proposal, Obama went even further, calling for Medicare growth capped at GDP plus 0.5 percent.

However, the president told the Washington Post in 2009 that this approach to Medicare reform was “wrong” and “doesn’t solve the underlying problem.”

Imposing strict caps on Medicare growth would mean “people being thrown off the rolls or cutting benefits,” Obama warned in 2009. In effect, Medicare recipients would “get less health care,” he said.

Here is Obama’s full quote:

What I think is probably the wrong approach is to think, well, the way to solve this is Medicare is spending X, and we’re just going to cap it at Y, and whatever that means in terms of people being thrown off the rolls or cutting benefits, you know, then so be it. Because that doesn’t solve the underlying problem which is health care costs themselves are still escalating at a 6 or 7 or 8 percent rate. All we’re doing is we’re just saying to people, you know what, you’re going to get less health care.

This “wrong approach,” however, was ultimately incorporated into the president’s plan. Under the law, if Medicare growth exceeds the predetermined caps, a 15-member board of political appointees has sweeping powers to make additional spending cuts. Congress, meanwhile, has little power to stop those cuts from taking effect.

Obama has relentlessly attacked Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan for their proposals to restore solvency to Medicare through increased competition among private insurance providers, rather than government-enforced price controls.

Medicare’s chief actuary Richard Foster, however, has expressed greater confidence in the Republican approach, in terms of the likelihood that it will rein in Medicare costs.

Foster has also estimated that the plan to cut roughly $310 billion in Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and other health care facilities would result in about one-fourth of those facilities becoming unprofitable by 2030, and would likely be forced to cut benefits or restrict access to care, just as Obama warned in 2009 could happen.

The president’s health care law has, by his own standard, failed to “solve the underlying problem” of rapidly increasing health care costs. Despite promising that his law would reduce premiums by $2,500, healthcare premiums have increased by more than $3,000 since Obama was elected.

Illinois court records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon reveal that Foster’s now ex-wife accused him of physical and emotional abuse prior to the couple’s divorce in 1996.

A March 1996 court filing contends that Foster “pushed, shoved, and caused physical abuse and emotional harm” to his then-wife, who had asked Foster repeatedly to leave the family home because his presence was “upsetting” to their two young children.

Foster’s wife’s attorney requested a temporary restraining order against Foster from “calling, harassing, or touching” his client, the records show.

A divorce settlement agreement, citing “irreconcilable difficulties and differences,” was finalized on Oct. 24, 1996.

The settlement includes a “miscellaneous provision” under which Mr. Foster sought to prevent his former wife from moving outside a certain school district by imposing a $50,000 penalty for doing so.

A circuit court judge questioned the unusual provision in a later court filing, saying he doubted its “enforceability.”

“It almost sounds, on the initial surface, as if you are holding someone hostage to stay within any school district, which is not the law of the State of Illinois,” Judge Keith Brown told Foster’s attorney on Nov. 22, 1996.

It is unclear what became of the settlement provision.

Foster has since remarried, according to his campaign website, which also notes that “Bill and [his ex-wife] Ann are both very proud of remaining on good terms and making things as easy as possible for their kids, who seem to be doing well in life!”

He is one of at least two former Democratic congressmen whose divorce records reveal accusations of spousal abuse.

Former Rep. Charlie Wilson’s (D., Ohio) effort to reclaim his House could be undermined by  renewed scrutiny into his 1990 divorce records, in which Wilson admitted to choking and shaking his then-wife, and slamming her into a refrigerator.

Foster, a physicist and businessman by trade, was first elected to Congress in March 2008 in a special election to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R., Ill.). He lost to current Rep. Randy Hultgren (R., Ill.) in 2010.

He is running in a new district in 2012, one that was recently redrawn to favor Democratic candidates. He faces seven-term incumbent Congresswoman Judy Biggert (R., Ill.).

Foster’s campaign has raised almost $1.3 million this cycle, and has received contributions from Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz ($2,000 via her campaign committee) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ($10,000 via her political action committee, PAC to the Future), according to the Federal Election Commission.

Wasserman Shultz and Pelosi have repeatedly accused the Republican Party of waging a “war on women.”

Before joining Congress, Foster was part of a physicist team that discovered the top quark, the heaviest subatomic particle ever observed.

Foster’s campaign did not return a request for comment.