Free Republic

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is moving forward with votes on President Obama’s trade agenda next week, even though pro-trade Democrats have yet to promise their support. McConnell on Thursday filed motions to advance fast-track authority and a separate package of trade preferences for African nations combined with an extension of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), a program that helps workers displaced by foreign competition. The Senate will vote to end debate on fast-track Tuesday and then will vote on final passage of the measure later that day or Wednesday. Immediately afterward, the Senate will vote to end debate on...

Well. This is telling. One of the striking aspects of Donald Trump’s announcement that he is running for president is the vehemence of his critics – on the conservative side. The normally even-keeled Dana Perino almost foamed on the set of Fox News’ “The Five” as she fumed about Trump’s line that he would not only build a wall that only he could build along the Mexican border but he would make the Mexicans pay for it. Over at National Review the normally astute Kevin Williamson went off not just the deep end but the very, very deep end in...

The path of destruction House Ways and Means Committee chairman Paul Ryan is blazing to sneak Obamatrade past unsuspecting Americans is getting longer and wider. Now it’s become clear he’s using firefighters, of all people, to get it done. To engage in the complicated procedural chicanery needed to revive the once-dead Obamatrade, bringing its Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) portion back to life, Ryan needed to gut a previous bill that has passed the House and Senate and then insert Obamatrade into it. It’s actually a very similar process to how Obamacare passed the House. So, the bill Ryan chose was...

A very interesting dynamic was present in the race for San Antonio mayor last weekend that bears watching for both parties.Ivy Taylor, who was appointed San Antonio mayor when Julian Castro left to run HUD last year, won a full term on Saturday, defeating a long-time Democrat, former state senator Leticia Van de Putte. Taylor is the first black to get elected mayor.San Antonio is a Democratic city, Texas’s second largest, and is majority Hispanic. The city is represented in Congress by Democratic Rep. Will Hurd, a former CIA agent and a conservative who opposes amnesty and favors increased...

In the final hours before the House votes on a new leadership-concocted scheme to sneak Obamatrade past the American public, it’s been revealed that pro-Obamatrade forces are now aiming to sneak a renewal of the highly controversial Export Import Bank into the deal to secure Senate passage later if the House passes it on Thursday. “I and all the other members there are looking for a guarantee … for a deal to be good it’s got to have enforcement, TAA, I think it’s got to have Ex-Im reauthorization,” Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat who’s angling for this in the deal,...

Ever since the mid-1990s, the House of Representatives have operated under an informal governing principle known as the Hastert Rule, a rule that required a “majority of the majority” in order to pass legislation. Simply put, the rule meant that the Speaker of the House would not allow a floor vote on a bill unless a majority of the party in charge supported the bill, while preventing the minority party from passing legislation unwanted by the majority. This practice came to an end under Gutless On Principles (GOP) Hall of Shame member John Boehner, and it served as the perfect...

When a group of House conservatives voted last week to kill a trade bill favored by President Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and other GOP leaders who support the measure steamed. Representative Mick Mulvaney (R., S.C.) celebrated the revolt as a coming-of-age moment for rebel backbenchers. “Yesterday will be the day that we look back at as the day that conservatives finally started getting organized in the House,” he wrote in a note to the Spartanburg Tea Party. Led by Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), a platoon of conservatives demanded that Boehner agree to a series of concessions in exchange...

Senate Republicans are coalescing around a plan to extend Obamacare subsidies for up to two years if the Supreme Court strikes them this month. The court is due to rule within days on whether the president’s health care law allows people using HealthCare.gov to get insurance subsidies. If the court rules against the White House and strikes the subsidies, Republicans say they want to be ready to protect the more than 6 million people who could lose their subsidies. In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, Republicans crafted the outline of a plan that would extend the subsidies for a period of...

With the House poised to reconsider Trade Promotion Authority [TPA] as a stand alone measure as early as Thursday, House Speaker Rep. John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell reaffirmed their focus on achieving a key aspect of Obama’s trade agenda. “We are committed to ensuring both TPA and [Trade Adjustment Assistance] get votes in the House and Senate and are sent to the President for signature,” the pair said in a joint statement Wednesday afternoon. “And it is our intent to have a conference on the customs bill and complete that in a timely manner so that...

Bam! That’s the sound of President Obama smacking head first into our nation’s system of checks and balances. It turns out that you actually can’t run the country all by yourself, even if you’re the smartest fellow in the room. That’s proving quite a shock to our legacy-hungry commander in chief, who is responding to various setbacks with increasing indignation and hauteur. But, never, ever, moderation. Mr. Obama has pursued an ambitious agenda since he entered the White House, increasingly acting alone. Ever since he won passage of Obamacare in 2010 through an odious series of back-room favors, and then...

Dear Matt Bevin, Like millions of other grassroots conservatives, I am ecstatic to see you as the Republican Party’s nominee for governor in the commonwealth of Kentucky. You’re a rare breed in that regard -- you’re actually a Republican. You may recall I interviewed you several times last year when you were running for U.S. Senate in the GOP primary opposite incumbent Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY). We were always impressed with the way you carried yourself in those interviews, as was my audience. You clearly knew your stuff and you weren’t a shrinking violet by any means. We were disappointed...

After suffering a defeat last week when Democrats voted down the trade subsidy component of the trade bill (TAA), Obama and Boehner realized they lacked the votes to pass TPA at this juncture. So, Plan B ensued. Just how far is Boehner willing to go to pass Obamatrade? Boehner had the House Rules Committee draft a resolution enabling leadership to bring up TPA at a moment’s notice on any day through July 31. Today, the House passed the rule 236-189. Only six conservatives voted against this rule today. Aside from the complications of it being conflated with the intelligence bill,...

The House of Representatives voted today, June 16th, to change their rules and extend the delay passed last Friday after the trade assistance portion of the fast-track bill was soundly defeated. It's a delay tactic to give both lobbyists for both parties plenty of time to purchase a path forward on the legislation that failed in the House last week. The vote went down largely along party lines, 236-189 "that saw just a handful of Republicans vote against it, and a handful of Democrats vote for it." In order to pass fast-track to the treasonous Obamatrade, a series international, corporate...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that he and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) have consulted with President Obama on passing fast-track trade authority after it suffered a big setback last week. McConnell believes the trade package passed by the Senate in May can still make it to Obama’s desk despite getting blown up in the House last week. “The speaker and I have spoken with the president about the way forward on trade,” McConnell told reporters. “It’s still my hope that we can achieve what we’ve set out to achieve together, which is to get a six-year trade...

After talks with President Barack Obama, top Republican leaders in Congress put together a quick rescue plan Tuesday for highly controversial, White House-backed trade legislation that derailed in the House last week. Officials said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., were likely to split the stalled bill into two parts in hopes of sending them to the president separately, with Republicans providing most of the needed votes for one part, and Democrats for the other. The first would consist of stand-alone legislation strengthening Obama's hand in global trade talks by giving Congress the right...

Tuesday at the White House press briefing, press secretary Josh Earnest revealed that President Barack Obama has not talked to House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi since last week when she handed him a resounding defeat on his Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal by not supporting a key measure for financial aid to displaced workers. However Earnest said the President has had spoken “on a couple occasions yesterday” with Republican Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner

The House easily passed a measure on Tuesday to give lawmakers through the end of July to figure out how to pass President Obama's trade agenda. The extension, attached onto a "rule" establishing parameters for floor debate on an unrelated intelligence authorization bill, sailed through on a vote of 236-189. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) set up a process last week allowing the House to conduct a do-over of the failed vote on aid for workers displaced by trade deals, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). Under House rules, the chamber would have had to vote again by Tuesday absent an...

House GOP leaders booted three members off the whip team for voting against a procedural rule that structured how a critical trade package was brought to the House floor last week. Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) informed Reps. Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.), Steve Pearce (N.M.) and Trent Franks (Ariz.) on Monday that they were no longer a part of the GOP’s vote-counting operation, a source close to the whip team confirmed. Scalise’s decision was based on longstanding whip team rules that stated members must “vote as a team on procedural matters” but are free to vote against leadership on underlying legislation,...

Displaying a rare flash of anger, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Tuesday chastised the nearly three dozen Republicans who voted against a procedural rule that structured how a critical trade package was brought to the House floor. “I made it pretty clear to the members today I was not very happy about it,” Boehner told reporters after a closed-door meeting with rank-and-file members at the Capitol Hill Club. “You know, we’re a team. And we’ve worked hard to get the majority; we’ve worked hard to stay in the majority. “And I expect our team to act like a team, and...

Economist Frank Roche, who once again will attempt to unseat Republican Rep. Renée Ellmers in North Carolina’s second district in 2016, explains that a review of simple trade data demonstrates that fast-track authority has been a “net loss to the United States.” An expert in macroeconomics and financial market analysis, Roche entered a primary race with Ellmers in 2013 after she repeatedly betrayed the conservative constituents who elected her. With only $50,000 raised for his campaign, Roche ended up earning the support of more than 412 percent of voters in his district. Encouraged by that support and observing Ellmers’ continued...