Posted on 11/13/2014 7:28:16 AM PST by xzins
CHQ Chairman Richard A. Viguerie made the point in his book TAKEOVER that the greatest impediment to governing America according to conservative principles is not the Democrats – it is the progressive establishment of the Republican Party.
And there is no better proof of this theorem than the role Kentucky Republican Representative Hal Rogers, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is playing in the current battle over President Obama’s plan to grant an unconstitutional amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
Before the final tallies of the votes in the 2014 midterm wave were even official Rogers announced that he was preparing an omnibus spending bill and that he had the agreement of Republican leaders to pass the bill by the end of the year.
According to an interview with CQ-Roll Call, the Kentucky Republican said House leaders will make the case to skeptical conservatives at a caucus meeting on Thursday (today) that it’s better to clear the decks on fiscal 2015 now, during the lame duck session, than to wait until Republicans take Senate control next year. Waiting would require passing another short-term continuing resolution once the current one expires Dec. 11.
Setting aside the fact that such a move gives the recently defeated Democrats unprecedented power over next year’s spending, it amounts to unilateral disarmament in the face of Obama’s announced plan to grant an unconstitutional amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
According to CQ-Roll Call, Republican Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona has already convinced more than 50 of his Republican colleagues to sign a letter asking appropriators to include language blocking Obama’s planned amnesty in any omnibus brought to the floor of the House.
“This is an opportunity for everybody to come together and speak clearly and forcefully that doing this unconstitutional act would be a mistake, and if you do it, there won’t be funding for it,” Salmon told the paper’s Shawn Zeller.
Now here are two key points in Zeller’s article that should give every conservative pause about the direction of the new Republican Congress under the current leadership:
First, Rogers says, that an omnibus would allow Congress to deal with the threat posed by the Islamic State militia to U.S. interests in Iraq and Syria, as well as the Ebola outbreak in Africa. Obama has asked Congress for $6.2 billion for Ebola, $5.6 billion to fight the Islamic State and $3.7 billion to handle a surge in child migrants at the southern border. Rogers says he’s going over the requests and wants to help.
Second, Rogers said he met Wednesday afternoon with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and secured his commitment to lobby reluctant conservatives to support the omnibus. “He’s making a very strong pitch, as is all of leadership, to pass an omnibus rather than a CR,” Rogers claimed to Zeller.
What a conservative Member of Congress should do about Obama’s request to put more money into the ill-advised deployment of American military personnel to “fight” Ebola in Africa, Obama’s ill-conceived air campaign against the Islamic State and Obama’s giveaways to illegal aliens is by no means universally agreed upon, which is why such matters should be handled in regular order, not in a rush during a lame duck session of Congress that gives the overwhelmingly defeated Democrats unprecedented power and influence in the decisions.
What’s more the push for an omnibus is a gross display of hypocrisy by Appropriations Chairman Rogers who has spent most of his chairmanship calling for appropriations to be handled in “regular order,” rather than as big last minute omnibus packages as was the practice when Democrat Nancy Pelosi was Speaker.
But the worst damage that Rogers’ push for an omnibus spending bill does is to unilaterally disarm Republicans in the face of Obama’s plan to grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
Rogers’ statement that such language would make it impossible to pass an omnibus shows that he is more interested in “getting things done” than in “getting things done right,” or worse yet, that he is so out of touch that he completely missed the major motivator in the recent wave – opposition to amnesty for illegal aliens.
As we pointed out yesterday, the Obama -- Reid plan for the lame duck is to get Republicans to pass an omnibus early, and then ram through the confirmation of dozens of liberal judges and administration appointees and implement Obama's planned amnesty for illegal aliens after Republicans have unilaterally disarmed.
Rogers insistence on an omnibus spending bill, rather than a short term Continuing Resolution (CR) that funds the government until Republicans have control of the Senate, plays right into that trap.
We already know Hal Rogers is no conservative, but by opposing including language in the omnibus to prohibit Obama’s planned amnesty for illegal aliens and a CR that retains the Republicans' power to defund the implementation of Obama's amnesty, Rogers is proving he does not have a clue about what motivated grassroots conservatives to turn out and vote Republican less than two weeks ago.
There’s an old bit of Washington wisdom that says there are three political parties on Capitol Hill: Democrats, Republicans and Appropriators. Even such establishment figures as Karl Rove and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus say Obama’s planned amnesty is “illegal” and “wrong,” and that Republicans ought to stop it “at all costs.” Given how far out of sync Hal Rogers is with Republicans, that leaves only two choices as to where Rogers’ loyalties really lie; Appropriator or Obama Democrat.
I am sick of ‘omnibus’ and ‘comprehensive’ bills for they are hundreds (thousands) of pages long and always seem to contain deceit, trickery, subterfuge, and anguish. This method of writing law needs to be rejected by Americans and those who propose such laws need to be primaried and defeated. They are the friends of big government and not the friends of the voters.
Instead of taking bills to the president, let’s just have the Speaker and Majority leader issue findings and then sign “Congressional Orders” of implementation. That’s what the Executive is doing. Sauce for the goose.
Start with the border fence.
This is what happens when a GOPe candidate stays in power. The next sellout will be Boehner and then McConnell….sickening.
Republicans should NOT agree to an omnibus bill and should only agree to a continuing resolution that is short term (i.e., does not cover all of FY 2015).
To do otherwise is to waste an entire year of the 2 year Congress that begins in January. It would be STUPID.
They--the Republicans--also need to understand that altering the demographics of a community or neighborhood in this insane pursuit, serves the interests of no rational person. (See A Lesson In Absurdity.) The idea that there is something wrong with wanting to preserve your cultural heritage is the insane result of Leftist propaganda, accepted as idealism in Academia, over the past three generations. It is neither idealistic or altruistic, only self-destructive.
William Flax
William Flax
This Amnesty Things will bring them out of the woodwork.
Ran for governor c. 1983 as a conservative; must not have meant it
I’m sick of them talking about “getting things done”. We want things undone NOW!
LOL! Must not have.
Predictable behavior. Predictable results.
That is such a good point, Atreides. To let the lame duck establish the agenda is to give up one of the 2 years that you have just won in an election. It's foolish, self-defeating acquiescence.
Amen! He is my districts alleged representative. I haven’t voted for this turd since 2008. He is a big government, wild spending, pork laden Robert Byrd wannabe.
With the utter stupidity flowing from the mouths of the GOPE leadership they will be lucky to win the Louisiana senate seat. They are rolling over, showing their lies and surrendering even before 30 days have passed since election day. The GOPE leadership would all probably be field-marshal’s in the French army they are so adept and impressive at taking sure wins and turning them into their own asses getting kicked.
Nothing they have done since election day has surprised me, bought and paid for crooks.
Well said.
The mask is off. Now we can see that Republican Leadership = Democrats in Drag.
Want change? Go get Sarah!
“Start with the border fence.”
Only if that includes deportation.
A border fence without deporting the millions of foreign nationals illegally squatting in the United States just fences them in. And fully half of the illegals crowding in here come by plane.
A refusal to deport is defacto amnesty.
I said start with the border fence because the border fence has already been approved long ago and never executed. (By Bush or Obama). My point is that if the congress has the power to issue Congressional Orders revoking presidential executive orders that change the law, then Congress also can order the continuation of projects already begun and previously funded.
A failure to execute what has been approved does not mean it cannot be executed. I could even argue that an abdication of execution goes first to the vice president and then to the Speaker of the House. I can see the Congress arguing that a president has become incapacitated in the execution of the Supreme Law of the Land due to undue influence and pressure
Hal’s district includes Corbin KY, right?
Iirc there’s a major immigration paperwork processing center there. Coincidence?
“I said start with the border fence “
Yeah I saw that. I’d rather start with the fence and deporation both, since a fence is pointless if you’re just going to leave illegal foreign nationals alone once they get past the fence. Or when they come in by air like half of them do.
“Build the Fence!” is a scam by the GOPe and their lapdog mouthpieces like Hannity because it lets them give the appearance of enforcing immigration law when they aren’t. It’s boob bait for bubba. You can tell they are frauds since they never demand Deportation, which is the only way that illegal alien occupied states like California can be reclaimed by America.
The Border Fence was authorized by Congress when Mexico George was President. Like Obama he put the interests of lawbreaking foreign nationals first and he had no interest in getting the fence built. Amnesty was what Dubya wanted. His “gift” to the country was to leave tens of millions of illegals undeported so that Barky could have the opportunity to permanently alter the nature of the America people by making them defacto citizens.
California is now the northernmost nation of Latin America. The rest of the lower 48 will join that club before the end of Obama’s term because the ruling class of the GOP is in complete accord with him on the issue of amnesty for illegals. You better learn Spanish.
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