Posted on 12/04/2014 12:48:06 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The House on Thursday voted to bar the executive branch from deferring the deportation of undocumented workers, taking its first direct action against President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
The 219-197 vote was largely symbolic as the measure is headed for certain death in the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he won't take up the legislation. The White House has also threatened to veto the measure.
The vote on legislation sponsored by Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) is intended to help Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) move a bill next week that would fund most of the government through next September and avoid a government shutdown on Dec. 12.
Republicans are up in arms over Obama’s actions on immigration, which could provide legal status and work permits to up to 5 million people.
Conservative groups have pressed the GOP to defund agencies implementing Obama’s order in response to the president’s actions.
But Boehner and his leadership team have settled on a strategy that would fund most of the government through September 2015, while only funding the Department of Homeland Security for a few months. Appropriators are expected to release the legislation on Monday.
Dozens of Republicans are expected to vote against the funding measure next week, which will force Boehner to win Democratic votes for the measure. Only 7 Republicans voted against Yoho’s bill, while three others voted present. Only three Democrats supported it.
Heritage Action spokesman Dan Holler said the influential conservative group didn't issue a key vote for the Yoho bill because “it is purely symbolic.” The group is urging Republicans to oppose the House GOP leadership’s funding plan.
Yoho said the measure reaffirmed the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution.
“To vote no against the bill is to vote no against the Constitution,” Yoho said.
But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the measure was “cold-hearted.”
“Millions of hardworking, law-abiding families will be able to celebrate the holidays with a renewed hope in the future,” Pelosi said. “With this bill, Republicans would tear apart millions of families and throw thousands upon thousands of American children into foster care.”
Before the vote, the White House also criticized the House GOP's measure.
"It's a little nonsensical for them to pursue this course of action but not inconsistent with their strategy," said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. Earnest argued the vote would roll back some of the president's initiatives in a way that would devote law enforcement resources to not focusing on criminals but instead deporting DREAMers.
"Many of them are American in every way but their paperwork," Earnest said.
The White House kept up the criticism in an afternoon conference call.
"The United States House of Representatives is voting to break up families," a senior administration official said.
Though the Democratic Senate is not expected to take up the bill, the official stressed that the vote “has consequences,” especially for Republicans.
"They would rather go back to a system that has no differentiation between Dream Act students who are trying to get right by the law versus people who aren't."
Boehner, for his part, dismissed criticism from conservatives in his party who say the leadership's response to Obama wasn't aggressive enough. He said his team's approach— the disapproval measure, plus keeping DHS on a short funding leash — was the best option until Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress next month.
“We think this is the most practical way to fight the president’s action,” Boehner said. “And frankly we listened to our members, and we listened to some members who are frankly griping the most.
“This was their idea of how to proceed,” he added.
Yoho is one of the House conservatives who has frequently butted heads with leadership. He voted against Boehner as Speaker two years ago.
Boehner said it would be an “act of monumental arrogance” if the Senate ignores the Yoho bill.
“The American people elected us to do their will and not to bow to the whims of the White House that regards the legislative process established by the Constitution as little more than a nuisance,” Boehner told reporters before the vote.
The seven Republican no votes were Reps. Mike Coffman (Colo.), Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla.), Jeff Denham (Calif.), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Illeana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.) Marlon Stutzman (Ind.) and David Valadao (Calif.). With the exceptions of Gohmert and Stutzman, who thought the bill did not go far enough, these Republicans are supportive of immigration reform.
Democratic Reps. Collin Peterson (Minn.), John Barrow (Ga.) and Mike McIntyre (N.C.) voted in favor of the bill.
The three present votes were Republican Reps. Raul Labrador (Idaho), Paul Gosar (Ariz.) and Steve King (Iowa), who have all criticized the Senate's immigration reform bill. Gosar said he voted present because he thinks the bill is a reflection of a strategy that doesn't go far enough.
"I don't want to give any cover to misgivings," Gosar said in an interview. "We might as well send him [Obama] a nice Christmas card. I'd rather send him a piece of coal and a stick."
Legislative theatre. Nothing more.
They could do something effective: shut off his money.
But legislative theatre is easier and, like Gruber, they think the electorate is stupid.
“......House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the measure was “cold-hearted.”
“Millions of hardworking, law-abiding families will be able to celebrate the holidays with a renewed hope in the future,” Pelosi said. “With this bill, Republicans would tear apart millions of families and throw thousands upon thousands of American children into foster care.”
Before the vote, the White House also criticized the House GOP’s measure.
“It’s a little nonsensical for them to pursue this course of action but not inconsistent with their strategy,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. Earnest argued the vote would roll back some of the president’s initiatives in a way that would devote law enforcement resources to not focusing on criminals but instead deporting DREAMers.
“Many of them are American in every way but their paperwork,” Earnest said.
The White House kept up the criticism in an afternoon conference call.
“The United States House of Representatives is voting to break up families,” a senior administration official said.”....
David Horowitz - October 2013”....... The political consequences of the differences between conservatives and progressives is not only not small, it affects the way both sides conduct their political battles. Progressives focus on an impossible future, a utopia of promises, and this justifies for them their unscrupulous means. Issues for them are merely instruments for accumulating political power. Conservatives look to the past as a guide to what is possible and humanly practical, and what is not. Issues for them are problems that need to be fixed, and they take seriously the policies they devise to address them. This puts conservatives at a huge political disadvantage. It causes them to argue policy as though they were debating a party with whom they shared goals and only differed on the means to get there. But that is far from the case.
Take the present debate about a government shutdown. A statement from Boehner’s office explains, “The entire government is shut down right now because Washington Democrats refuse to even talk about fairness for all Americans under ObamaCare.” This is a proposal for compromise and is designed to portray Republicans as reasonable. We’re all part of the same social contract, and we need to give on both sides to resolve the impasse. We’re all interested in fairness, when all is said and done. If individuals were to be given a year’s extension under Obamacare, as corporations already have been, that would be fair. But since when is Obamacare about fairness? That’s a Democratic façade and talking point, courtesy of the Republican Speaker. By way of contrast, this is how the Democrats make their argument: “Republicans are trying to shut down the government so they can prevent us from providing all Americans with affordable healthcare.” In other words, Democrats are standing up for fairness and ordinary Americans, against the selfish Republicans who want deny them affordable care and shut down their government. This is three lies in one sentence. But who do you think wins that vote?
If you want to fight the left you have to fight fire with fire. That means first and foremost you have to hold them to account for hurting the people they are pretending to help. Whose opportunities are going to be wrecked by Obamacare? Health care taxes will go up for those who pay taxes – the middle class — while their incomes will go down. Already Obamacare is cutting the workweek to 30 hours. Whose pocket books do you think that is hitting?
They claim conservatives are conducting a war against minorities; we need to throw the truth back in their faces. We need to tell the people that progressives are the principal oppressors and exploiters of minorities and the poor in this country. Progressives control the inner cities, which are teeming with the nation’s minorities and poor; and they run the broken public school systems that have become dumping grounds for those who cannot afford a private education.
The city of Milwaukee has been run by liberals and progressives without interruption for more than 100 years. What is the consequence of this progressive rule? Milwaukee’s median household income is forty percent below the rest of the country. The black unemployment rate is 27%, three times the national average for everyone. Milwaukee’s population is majority black and Hispanic, and 30% of it lives below the poverty line. A third of Milwaukee’s public school children drop out before they graduate; those who do are barely literate. That’s what progressive policies achieve. Don’t let them forget it.
Conservatives need to put the human disasters of progressive policies in front of people every chance they get. We need to confront progressives with the misery they have created in America’s bankrupt cities, Detroit and Chicago, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, St. Louis, and the nation’s capital, and every city they have controlled for 25, 50 and 100 years, without interruption.
Conservatives need to talk less to the voters’ heads and more to their hearts. Government debt is not just an accountant’s nightmare. Debt is a form of economic slavery. If you add up all the taxes Americans pay — federal, state, local, income, sales — Americans already work half the year for government rather than for themselves. Like Obamacare and the political use of the I.R.S., debt is a threat to individual freedom.
Freedom is what our cause is about not just fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility has no emotional appeal except to people who already understand what it means. Fiscal responsibility is a means to an end. The end is freedom, and that is what inspires commitment and sacrifice and the passion necessary to win. Because it speaks to the heart.
Conservatives need to speak up as champions of the little guys, the underdogs, whose lives are being steadily constricted – made less free — by the ongoing destruction of a system that once afforded more opportunity for more people than any other in the history of the world. Conservatives need to speak up for the young whose future horizons are being rapidly diminished as the trillion dollar Obama deficits pile higher and higher. Conservatives need to speak for all Americans whose security under Obama has been degraded to the most dangerous levels since the end of the Cold War.
This is the threat we face, and the sooner we grapple with it the greater our chances to survive it. The most important battle in the world today is not being waged in the Middle East but here at home in the United States. If we lose this battle, everything is lost. But if we will take the measure of the enemies of freedom and prepare ourselves to fight them, we have a better than even chance to win.” — David Horowitz - October 2013
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3233207/posts?page=13#13
Says Boehner:
“...frankly we listened to our members, and we listened to some members who are frankly griping the most.”
Anytime, 100% of any instance, where someone uses the term “Frankly” they are dealing in deceit.
Boehner is a dishonest plick with the spine of a jellyfish.
Next up, a strongly worded letter.
They are really pulling the wool over my eyes. They be so tricky and clever! That’s cuz they be smart and wes all dum. /s/
Nonsense.
Send them back with their parents.
My team is Tea Party and I have not talked with them about where they stand on Obama’s illegal action.
I will do it and see what kind of reaction I get. I have Hispanics in the Tea Party here. Given that, most Hispanics I know are not at all happy about illegal immigration and they are not of the Left’s tribal mentality.
We’ll see.
There are not enough of us, I fear.
There are not enough of us, I fear.
The times are what they are. It might get worse before it gets better.
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