Posted on 12/18/2015 6:03:36 AM PST by xzins
Why I won't support the latest last-minute $1.1 trillion spending bill. By SEN. TED CRUZ December 17, 2015
It's Christmastime in Washington, D.C., and that can mean only one thing: Congress is once again playing Santa Claus. The names at the top of its list are the Washington Cartel: The big businesses and lobbyists who get in bed with career politicians to do nothing but grow government. And left off the list: the American taxpayer.
Thanks to last year's landslide elections, Republicans now control more seats in Congress, more governorships and more state legislative seats across the country than at any time since the 1920s. We retired Harry Reid and took control of the Senate. And yet today marks a milestone and an ignominious one. Before long, Republican leaders in the Senate and House intend to join hands with a majority of Congressional Democrats to pass a bill that funds President Barack Obama's disastrous agenda well into 2016.
So how did the Republican leadership in Congress embrace its mandate for change? Let me count the ways:
First, shortly after taking the reins of power in the Senate, the GOP-led Congress fully funded President Obama's illegal and unconstitutional amnesty. Then, the GOP-led Congress institutionalized and expanded Obamacare policies by permanently surrendering on the so-called "doc fix." To accomplish this feat GOP leadership broke with the long-established bipartisan practice of paying for the doc fix and added half a trillion dollars to our nation's debt over two decades.
Then, GOP leadership confirmed Loretta Lynch, Obama's nominee for attorney general, who told us all ahead of time that she intended to ignore the plain text of the law. Next, Senate GOP leadership facilitated the approval of Obama's disastrous Iranian nuclear deal. They did so via a convoluted, backwards disapproval process that was designed to fail, and then did nothing to prevent the deal's implementation or stop more than $100 billion from going to Iran and its terror proxies.
Then the GOP-led Congress forfeited what was left of its budget discipline and passed former Speaker John Boehner's Golden Parachute budget deal. This deal added $80 billion in federal spending and debt above the 2011 budget caps, the one conservative budget victory in the Obama era.
In December, the GOP-led Congress ushered through an irresponsible multibillion-dollar highway funding bill that reauthorized the expired, cronyist Export-Import Bank, and put taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in corporate welfare.
The GOP-led Congress this month also passed yet another massive education overhaul with unanimous Democratic support. The overhaul perpetuated top-down mandates that do little to reduce the large and ever-growing role of the federal government in education.
And while I am encouraged that the GOP-led Congress finally took a significant step toward repealing Obamacare and defunding Planned Parenthood in this month's budget reconciliation bill, GOP leadership included it in a bill that commanded no leverage with Obama. They placed it in a bill the president will instantly veto, instead of including these priorities in Friday's government funding bill, one that must be signed into law if the president wants to keep the federal government open.
To understand the priorities of Republican leadership, contrast these actions with the last-minute stocking stuffers that did make their way into this must-pass bill to fund the government:
+ Quadrupling of H-2B visas for low-skilled workers, which will only drag down wages, kill American jobs, and hurt working men and women
+ An open door to fund the president's Green Climate Fund that will effectively rubber stamp the job-killing Paris climate
+ Relief from Obamacare taxes for well-connected labor unions and the healthcare industry, while millions of Americans continue to suffer under Obamacare's skyrocketing premiums, deductibles, and lower quality of care
+ And a complete failure to prevent the resettling of refugees from nations where ISIL or Al-Qaeda controls large swaths of territoryâthis despite a veto-proof majority in the House of Representatives in favor of strengthening the screening process for refugees
Since taking control of the Senate, Republican leadership has joined hands with a majority of Democrats to thwart their own caucus' efforts to stop the Obama agenda 24 times. During each of these 24 votes, this so-called Republican majority successfully passed legislation with a majority of Democrats in support and a majority of Republicans opposed. This is why I have said that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is the most effective Democratic leader in modern
But don't take my word for it. Take Sen. Chuck Schumer's, the vice chair of the Senate Democratic conference. Today Sen. Schumer summed up what's wrong with Washington when he told Politico, "Sen. McConnell wants to see the Senate work. But the good news for [Democrats] is, to make it work, he has to do basically our agenda."
Though the Senate majority leader promised a return to "regular order" this year, we have seen minimal attempts to pass individual appropriations bills. These targeted bills would fund the government piece-by-piece and enable the people's representatives to have a greater say in how their tax dollars are spent.
Instead, in a tactic that will go mostly unnoticed, this government funding deal was once again negotiated behind closed doors, and then, like several recent "must-pass" bills, will be rammed through the Senate in no time with limited debate and no floor amendments via a parliamentary mechanism called a "privileged message." A privileged message is a tool that has been abused by Congressional leadership to circumvent committees of jurisdiction and bypass regular order of business to expedite legislation for immediate final passage.
Leadership is employing this tactic to pass a one-trillion-dollar-plus spending bill at the last minute in a matter of days without giving the American people a chance to debate whether it advances their ideals or their best interests. It's all or nothing. Take it or leave it. They will countenance no debate on whether we should continue to fund Obamacare, or Planned Parenthood, or the disastrous Iranian nuclear deal. There's one light switch to fund the government, and we can turn it either on or off.
Leadership will call this "legislating." "Governing," they say, their voices set an octave lower to convey an informed seriousness. And while they exit the U.S. Capitol, patting themselves on their backs, and make beelines for Washington cocktail parties where many a toast will be raised to their "effectiveness," working Americans who will never step foot in a Georgetown salon will continue to struggle under this administration's failed policies.
When I'm traveling this country, people often ask me why Washington isn't listening. Over and over again, from coast to coast, they ask me how Washington can be so tone deaf to their volcanic frustration with the failed tax and spend policies that have absolutely crushed them. Well, I am listening to them, which is why I cannot and will not support this massive crony Christmas giftâa bill that effectively forfeits our massive Republican victories of 2014 and cements Obama's priorities for nearly the full remainder of his term.
That is exactly what is happening.
Someplace yesterday when reading an article on the establishment on Fox trying to sell the idea that Cruz was in favor of amnesty just like Rubio, I ran across something I didn’t know about the old comprehensive immigration bill.
I did not know that that bill, even though it paid lip service to border security, did not establish in law that new illegals could not also receive that amnesty. That blew me away.
It says the same thing you are saying here: they will legalize this crop of ultra-low wagers and bring in another crop to do those jobs while the former low-wagers take minimum wage jobs and higher....eventually replacing native Americans.
This is an all out assault, not just on sovereignty, but on the existence of America.
Ralph Peters was suspended from FOX News for 2 weeks for using words far less vile than yours.
Perhaps the Moderator of JR will be appropriately much harsher towards your transgression.
And there in lies the great last hope that elections will fix what is BROKE in America and I am here to tell you it will not
There are way too many takers and not enough producers left as Ayn Rand so magnificently writes about in the book. Until the balance is restored by first removing people that keep feeding the takers by force then obliterating the takers by force or attrition we spin our wheels voting. Reason why, we can put new faces into position but the feeders corrupt the new faces and the cycle starts over.
I say, let's feed some pigs until they pop to save America
I guess the citizens of the USA will need to be eating tree bark to survive before they decide to clean up their government. Obviously by then it will be way too late.
I just emailed my Congressman Rick Allen and told him that his vote for this bill was nothing more than a give away to Pelosi and Obama. Also told him that he is no better than the man he replaced, a democrat named John Barrow. The GOP is dead .
In great detail, Ted Cruz lays bare the many specific examples of deceit and parliamentary tricks that the Republican leadership has employed to thwart the will of Republican voters. He shines a light in all the dark corners of Washington forcing the cockroaches in Congress to scurry for cover.
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Yep. Although perhaps the strange collection of posters who claim that Ted Cruz is really for Amnesty although he voted against it will sally forth and claim that Cruz was for this monstrosity of a spending bill even though he certainly will vote against it.
I am 100% in agreement with Cruz’s assessment.
Listening to Breitbart radio on the way to work this morning, so was every caller.
We’ve lost the country if this passes.
We will be just another European nation.
What was the point of the American Revolution, if we just become another European nation 200+ years later?
We might as well anoint Obama as King and be done with this charade.
This may be the election of our lives, literally, as a Sovereign American nation.
H2B increases and resettling Illegal aliens here?
We have enough illegal lawn mowers and roofers now.
Not to mention, LEGAL immigrant abuses by American companies driving out our own workforce from the marketplace?
This congress has done NOTHING to stop this takeover.
WTF?
Are you talking about the guy from the Dallas TV show? Did not know he had a moderator or needed one. He died.
CURB STOMP.
Thank you. This lady gets so sick of the vile language used by some on FR. I understand the frustration that brings those words forth, but there are many ladies present here who do not want to be subjected to those words.
Supine catamite BuffaloHead had a problem with me writing that these traitors need to be hauled from their offices by their ballsacks and be curb stomped. Reported me to Jewish Republic, I guess... and the post was yanked... I think the user actually wants me excommunicated from here so that they may further their uniparty agenda.
Jugears, junior...
Looks like your post was removed due to language. A certain word could not stay.
You are here long enough to know that we don’t write offensive words in full. Symbols in place of letters gets the point across.
But you do get bonus points for using “catamite.”
It was very appropos.
I disagree. The GOPe wants what Obama wants, Big Government and a crushed middle class. That’s not surrendering.
This cake was baked before the drunk Boner resigned. Paul Rhino not one iota of difference. PIMARY EVEYR SINGLE ONE OF THESE ‘REPUBLICRATS’.
The only alternative is about 10 or so conservatives to abandon or get elected in the next election, that are neither Republican or Demoncrat, and as a third party that could control the agenda in the Senate. Since neither of the 2 current parties would have a majority, the only way anything could get approved would be to abide by the new parties desires, much like the Gang of 8, but with a much more conservative agenda. Maybe Ted Cruz is laying the groundwork for that.
The democrats and republicans are friends. They would find 10 of their friends across the aisle to help them out. They don’t get called the ‘uniparty’ for nothing.
These folks don't give a damn about American citizens.
We need conservatives... Maybe Jeff Sessions can help find some honorable Americans to start the process of becoming tomorrow's leaders.
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