Tag Archives: government

Roll Call Votes

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Senator Bob Corker (R, TN) has a bill in his Foreign Relations Committee that would require President Barack Obama to submit the deal he’s “negotiating” with Iran concerning the latter’s nuclear weapons program to Congress for approval or disapproval. His bill is was cosponsored by a large number of Democrats, so large that a week ago, he had 64 Senate votes for its passage.

Those Democrats are disappearing faster than fog in the West Texas sun as Obama begins turning up the heat on them. In their finest Saul Alinsky fashion, though, they’re covering their fade with a move to amend and gut the bill. As Kimberly Strassel put it in her op-ed at the link,

The goal of these amendments is to render the Corker legislation useless. Yet if Republicans balk, watch for Senate Democrats to howl that the GOP is acting in a partisan fashion, or refusing to be flexible. And watch for those same Senate Democrats to then use those complaints as their pretext for voting against the legislation.

And

[I]t appears that Mr Corker’s only path to 67—if that is even possible—is to so water-down his own bill as to make it useless. Does he want a meaningless 67-vote victory? The better route is to shoot for 60, send a principled bill to the president’s desk, and force the commander in chief and his defenders to solely face the consequences of a bad Iran deal.

Indeed. And Corker should demand a roll call vote in his committee, and Republicans should demand a roll call votes on the Senate floor, both on passage and on the veto override vote.

And that information should be bruited about in the 2016 campaign season—including in the Democrat primaries.

A Stay on Illegal Immigration

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Federal Judge Andrew Hanen has refused to stay his temporary injunction blocking President Barack Obama’s refusal to deport some 4 million illegal immigrants in Federal custody or whose whereabouts otherwise is known to the Feds. Hanen’s injunction will remain in force while Obama’s men appeal the stay to the 5th Circuit.

Refusing to stay his injunction has the effect, among others, of blocking Obama from pursuing (pending that appeal’s outcome) his Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program and his planned expansion of the 2012 program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

OF course, enforcing that block is problematic. Aside from the obvious reasons for suspicion, there’s this about that 2012 program from Hanen’s order and ruling:

The Court finds that the Government’s multiple statements on this subject were indeed misleading, as detailed in the Order filed simultaneously with this Order. It also finds that the remedial measure taken by counsel for the Government through the filing of an “advisory” on March 3, 2015, was neither prompt nor fully candid.

Since this administration, once again, has shown it cannot be trusted, there’s no reason to suppose Obama won’t move ahead apace with both programs.

Hanen wasn’t done, though. In a separate order, on the matter of that 2012 program and the President’s men lying about it, Hanen

also issued a separate ruling Tuesday night allowing the states to conduct discovery into their separate claim that the administration, beginning late last year, improperly implemented part of its immigration program, even though it had allegedly represented to Judge Hanen that it wouldn’t do so until February.

The Modern Liberal Limited Government

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The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2015 was 0.1% on April 2, up from 0.0% on April 1. Following this morning’s international trade release from the US Census Bureau, the nowcast for the change in real net exports in 2009 dollars increased from -40 billion to -33 billion. The nowcast for real equipment investment growth declined from 7.5% to 6.1% following the international trade report and the Census Bureau’s M3 manufacturing report.

That’s the Atlanta Fed’s prediction of our GDP performance in the just concluded first quarter of 2015. The official number will be out at the end of this month. The real equipment investment growth shrinkage is interesting, too: that’s future production capacity for our businesses, and they’re not optimistic.

As Power Line put it,

[L]iberal policies—extravagant government spending, steadily mounting debt, endless regulations, cronyism and the suppression of innovation, promotion of expensive energy, war on cheap electricity, and all the rest—have condemned a generation of Americans to limited opportunities for employment, promotion and the acquisition of wealth.

That’s limited government, modern Liberal style: government limits on individual opportunity.

Integrity, Take Two

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The House Oversight Committee issued the subpoenas to two agents who are familiar with the March 4 episode, which occurred as authorities were investigating a possible bomb threat while President Obama was in the residence. During the investigation, two agents, who were reportedly drinking that night, nearly drove over the object in question, which turned out to be a book.

One of the subpoenaed agents was on the ground at the White House that night, sources said.

The subpoenas became necessary when Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy refused to allow them to testify voluntarily.

Naturally, Jeh Johnson, Homeland Security Secretary, and whose department owns the Secret Service, is objecting.

Director Clancy and I must fight to protect [the agents] against the visibility, public glare, and inevitable second-guessing, of a congressional hearing.

Sure. Because everything Johnson, Clancy, and the Homeland Security generally do is entirely above board, while Congress cannot be trusted. Neither can the American people be trusted. Far more importantly, the Secret Service must never be questioned, must never be second-guessed.

Johnson went on:

I, too, want to know what happened on the night of March 4. This is why the Department’s Inspector General is conducting a thorough investigation into the matter.

Of course, we can’t know there’s an internal investigation. Johnson and Clancy are zealously keeping whatever it is they’re doing—or not doing—secret. Even from our elected representatives.

The Arrogance of Obama

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It’s breathtaking scope is made manifest in his “negotiations” with Congress on the matter of his “negotiations” with Iran over the latter’s nuclear weapons program.

“We’re open to talking to Congress about what they might do, how they might be heard on the Iran deal and how they might play an oversight role,” a senior Obama administration official said. “Some people in Congress will certainly want to take some vote.”

Awfully decent of Obama to be willing to seem to consider allowing Congress to do its Constitutional job.

Congress has mandated roles to play in international agreements; it’s required to play them. Congress, in the person of the Senate, must formally, and positively, approve any international agreement or that agreement is unenforceable and functionally nonbinding—it’s only a Presidential agreement. Congress must fund the agreement or it cannot have effect.

Of course, Obama knows this, hence the arrogance of his minion’s statement.

There’s nothing to discuss here. Congress must take the steps it must take, and it must stop wasting time on Obama’s idle chit-chat with it. Disapprove the issue of the current “negotiations” with Iran as the carefully leaked details of that describe it. Pass severe sanctions on the Iranian régime and on Iran when the “negotiations” fail, as will be the case even should the current outline be accepted by the Obama administration and the mullahs. Pass them again over Obama’s veto. There’s nothing here to discuss with him.