Posted on 03/22/2018 11:04:15 AM PDT by Sopater
Republicans rolled out a two-thousand-page-plus omnibus spending bill Wednesday night, which they expect to pass by Friday's deadline, giving no one any real chance to read it.
And while there is much in it for Democrats to like, there is much for conservatives to oppose, as Republicans ignore campaign promises to limit spending and grow government instead.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, appeared on Fox News around 10 o'clock last night, telling host Laura Ingraham that he's read only about 200 pages of the 2,232-page bill, and "this is not about draining the swamp," he said.
"I mean, we continue to fund sanctuary cities. We continue to fund Planned Parenthood. We don't build the wall, but yet we put money in for a tunnel. The last time I checked, when the president was campaigning, he wasn't campaigning for a tunnel between New Jersey and New York. It was campaigning about a border wall on our southern border, and so, you know, there's a lot to be disappointed. We're still going through this. But I'm not very optimistic there will be conservative wins in this."
The New York-New Jersey tunnel is the pet project of New York-area Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan told "Fox & Friends" it's up to the Trump administration to decide whether New York gets the money for the tunnel. But an aide to Chuck Schumer told The Associated Press the tunnel is likely to get more than half of the the $900-million sought for the project this year.
Appearing with Meadows, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, an Illinois Democrat, was smiling. He said the bill funds "a lot of shared priorities," including military and domestic programs. He pointed to funding for the opioid crisis, the National Institutes of Health, and veterans.
"I'm hopeful that we can come to a compromise by tomorrow," Krishnamoorthi said.
Meadows said the fact that Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat, was smiling is a problem:
"Here's one of the interesting things. Yes, we'll end up with a trillion dollar deficit that probably will come out in October of this year, trillion-dollars-plus. But here's the other interesting thing. You don't have to read the fine print to understand that we're going to grow the size of government by 12 to 13 percent. So When you're looking at that kind of growth, I don't know that his (Krishnamoorthi's) district or my district, anybody back home saw a 13 percent increase in their wages but yet we're somehow going to give government a raise like that?" Meadows asked.
"Here's the other problem, Laura, is this. We have a Republican-controlled House. We have a Republican-controlled Senate. And we have a Republican in the White House. And we have a Democrat here tonight saying how great this bill is. There is a problem there when you have that."
"This is a good deal for Democrats," Ingraham agreed.
Krishnamoorthi said if the bill rebuilds military programs, he's happy.
"Maybe we should think about that next time we commit our troops to some godforsaken country," Ingraham interjected. "Maybe we should think about what it's going to cost before we commit our troops again to another multiple deployment intervention."
Meadows said, "If we wanted to fund the military, why didn't we just put forth the funds to fund the military and deal with the nondefense discretionary (spending) separate. But somehow we put them together so that we grow the size of government. That's the problem."
Ingraham noted that Republicans have broken their promise to give the American people and lawmakers three days to read the bill. "I would say 98 percent of them, and I'm being charitable, will not have read this," she said. "And we're going to have to pass it to see what's in it. We're back in that stage." Ingraham said Congress should return to regular order.
Krishnamoorthi agreed: "I'm really disappointed that Speaker Ryan didn't present us with this particular bill sooner than tonight. We need regular order around here so -- I'm rank and file, I'm not leadership. I don't run the trains around here. All I can say is, I need more time to read through this thing. I'd like to work with people like Congressman Meadows and make it a better bill. But if the choice is not funding the troops, not taking care of the veterans, not taking care of the opioid crisis, and a shutdown, I can't do that," Krishnamoorthi said.
Ingraham noted that the Republican leadership is putting Krishnamoorthi and all lawmakers in that position: "And it's the way Washington works. It's like, you gotta do what you gotta do, you gotta pass it because otherwise the troops aren't going to get--it's just ridiculous! We cannot do this to the American taxpayers and our future generations," Ingraham said, concluding the interview.
The difference is......Democrat politicians actually care what they’re voters think and do. That’s why they’re temper tantrums work. Republicans also care about what Democrat voters want....they don’t care about their own base.
“Why do we even have two parties, if they both do basically the same thing?”
Two cheeks on the same butt.
“a lot of shared priorities,” another democrat freezer gets filled with cash.
“What it all means is we have to fight harder IN THE PRIMARIES, not lay down and fight less.”
What it all means is eventually we will have to fight in the streets, not the primaries. I doubt I will be in it but my sons and grandsons will and I hate to leave them stuck in this s—t! But it may happen sooner than I think. Fix bayonets!
i was thinking that some of them had already said they were not going to run for re-election.
Don't know if that's the case or if I just have a fuzzy memory!
Just saw this over at Instapundit. Ping to BroJoeK
“With all the overlapping ownership interests it’s almost like all the big tech companies are really just a single consortium or conglomerate. A cartel? One of those c-words.”
Nonsense, no "order" is necessary.
Parties in power nearly always lose lots of seats in their first mid-term election, often losing their majorities, just as Democrats did in 2010.
Trump said it himself: the biggest problem Reps face is complacency, thinking now the hard work is done and we can relax.
Then if we add to complacency intramural squabbling and the Republican defeat in November could be historic.
Of course, we won't let any of that happen, will we?
Spoken like a true Russian troll farm bot.
How's your weather there, comrade DL?
Far be it from me to defend the likes of Facebook & Twitter.
I never use them.
I ask myself the same question about centralva.
Some people make it their mission to disunite the US and one can't help wondering why.
It's starting to sound like "New York" is a metaphor for something else or someone else.
Doesn't New York have enough troubles without lumping in everybody else one doesn't like in with them?
Some people need a “boogieman”. Nice n neat. Some people are idiots too...
And "our" side seems to be doing everything it can to insure this is a self fulfilling prophecy.
Attempting to portray me as a Russian troll is a poor way to rebut the obvious fact that New York and it's assorted Plutocrats more or less control the news in this nation, and their money influences a great deal of the makeup of congress through their contributions.
New York has an outsized influence in the direction of the nation. It has established connections to the eternal state in Washington DC, and it uses those connections and influence to advance it's policy preferences regardless of whether or not they are actually in the best interest of the country as a whole.
And to accomplish this influence, that is why they control the news.
The problem for the Jews of Hitler's broadcasts of anti-Jewish propaganda was not that they had to listen to them, it's that other people were listening to them.
Twitter and Facebook are dangerous to us because other people do use them, and they get their censored and biased information from these sources.
"New York" is a metaphor for something else. It is a synecdoche used to describe the larger body of behind the scenes Plutocrats that influence the government to put their policy preferences ahead of what would occur in a natural Representative Republic.
The city of New York is chosen to represent this class of people, even though it is clear that all of them do not live in New York, but New York is the closest thing to a center of mass of the beast, and so it must serve to describe the whole.
Let’s not delude ourselves. America is ruled by the Five Cities, Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, and Hollywood. The rest of us just pay taxes. The heart of the beast is New York, the Ivies being its nursery and Washington its storefront.
https://amgreatness.com/2018/03/26/never-again-omnibus-bill-is-a-product-of-the-swamp/
The city of New York is chosen to represent this class of people, even though it is clear that all of them do not live in New York, but New York is the closest thing to a center of mass of the beast, and so it must serve to describe the whole.
Let’s not delude ourselves. America is ruled by the Five Cities, Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, and Hollywood. The rest of us just pay taxes. The heart of the beast is New York, the Ivies being its nursery and Washington its storefront.
So you have a quarrel with all of modern Western urban civilization.
Calling it "New York" is just a way of hiding how much you hate the world we live in.
A country as rich as America will have a "New York" somewhere.
Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix -- they're all a part of the same culture and all have the same kind of people in them, and they're what you get in rich countries.
There's much in modern Western culture to object to, much in New York (or "New York") nowadays that we could do without.
But you're just as mad at what New York (or "New York") was in 1950 or 1850 when they were very different from what they are now.
That indicates that your posts can't be taken seriously (except maybe as warning signs from an unbalanced mind).
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