Tag Archives: immigration

Congress over the next Two Years

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This is what our newly elected Congress needs to do over the next two years.

  • Re-pass the 40 jobs bills which Senator Harry Reid (D, NV) suppressed, without changing a word. Do it with a roll call vote, forcing the Democrats onto the Congressional voting record. President Barack Obama will veto or sign them.
  • Repeal the ACA and Dodd-Frank. Do these with roll call votes, forcing the Democrats onto the Congressional voting record. Obama will veto or sign them.
  • Repeal various parts of ACA, Dodd-Frank, one by one. Do each with a roll call vote, forcing the Democrats onto the Congressional voting record. Obama will veto or sign them.
  • Repeal most of the EPA’s regulations, particularly the ones impacting coal, oil, natural gas, and how private lands can be used. Do it with a roll call vote, forcing the Democrats onto the Congressional voting record. Obama will veto or sign them.
  • Pass tax reform with lowered personal, business rates, closed loopholes and subsidies. Do it with a roll call vote, forcing the Democrats onto the Congressional voting record. Obama will veto or sign them.
  • Pass budgets each year that fully fund the Federal government without funding the ACA or Dodd-Frank remnants and severely restricting funding for the EPA and the Labor Department and its political arm, the NLRB. Do this with roll call votes, forcing the Democrats onto the Congressional voting record. Obama will veto or sign them. Make clear how the obstructionist President prefers to shut off government altogether in his temper tantrum if he can’t have his way.
  • Pass border control legislation. Do it with a roll call vote, forcing the Democrats onto the Congressional voting record. Obama will veto or sign.
  • Pass immigration entry reform legislation contingent on a decently secured border, but don’t wait on border security to pass this. The contingency will allow this reform to be passed this session. Do it with a roll call vote, forcing the Democrats onto the Congressional voting record. Obama will veto or sign.
  • Pass legislation vis-à-vis existing illegal aliens contingent on a decently secured border and entry reform, but don’t wait on those to pass this. The contingency will allow this reform to be passed this session. Do it with a roll call vote, forcing the Democrats onto the Congressional voting record. Obama will veto or sign.
  • Seriously restrict regulation delegation authority. Do it with a roll call vote, forcing the Democrats onto the Congressional voting record. Obama will veto or sign.

Our Congress needs to do this against a backdrop of House—and now Senate—hearings into Fast and Furious, IRS, Benghazi, VA, Secret Service failures, immigration lawlessness, NSA snooping, Iran’s nuclear weapons program, DoJ stonewalling of those investigations. Both chambers need to pursue these investigations and associated hearings with zeal, but they shouldn’t be in attack dog mode.

Our Congress needs to take action on the findings of the House Select Committee on Benghazi chaired by Congressman Trey Gowdy (R, SC).

This adds up to a full slate of activities for the 114th Congress.

All cases—legislation and investigative hearings—have two purposes. The first, and foremost, purpose is to get government out of the way of our economy so we can regain our prosperity and to learn and expose the truth of what’s been going on during the Obama administration so that those…failures…can be corrected. The secondary purpose is to keep the Obama administration’s failures of policy and of behavior in the public’s eye.

Don’t waste time on an impeachment effort. They don’t have the votes to convict in the Senate, but the effort will let the NLMSM change the subject away from the Obama administration failures. Of course, the NLMSM might well attempt simply to spike the stories about the legislation and the investigations and hearings, like they did Jonathan Gruber’s truth-telling and most of them did Obama’s immigration “reform” speech last night. But it’ll be a hard thing to spike for two years.

This will be the most effective way of demonstrating the distinction between Conservatives and Democrats/Progressives, of showing what Conservatives stand for and work to achieve compared to what the Democrats/Progressives stand against and work to block. It will give Americans a choice in 2016: a President of little experience and no accomplishment—Hillary Clinton channeling one aspect of Barack Obama—a President bent on Progressive, Big Government policies without regard to the law or the American people—Elizabeth Warren channeling another aspect of Barack Obama—versus a Conservative President, bent on reducing government’s intrusion into Americans’ lives and shrinking government’s interference with Americans’ economy.

This will shape the elections of 2016.

Three Press Conferences

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After the “what shellacking?” outcome of Tuesday’s mid-terms, Senate Minority Leader (and expected Majority Leader in the next Congress) Mitch McConnell (R, KY) held a press conference in which he invited bipartisanship and a working-together atmosphere in which the President and Congress could get done the things that need doing in those areas in which there was substantial agreement and continue debating those matters in disagreement.

A few hours later, President Barack Obama held his own press conference. In this one, the principle, Obama, also invited bipartisanship and a working-together atmosphere. So long as the Republicans came along with him. If they did not, he would act unilaterally, most particularly on immigration, via Executive Order. After all, he insisted, the election outcome was a demand by the voters—especially those two-thirds who stayed home and didn’t vote—to “work together.”

The next day, with the offer of peace and willingness to compromise having been thrown in Republicans’ face by Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) came out angry, offering to work with the President, but warning him against going against or around Congress.

Two out of three isn’t bad. Unfortunately, that third is willfully rejecting the voters’ demand—especially of those voters who voted.

No, Mr Obama, the outcome was not a demand to work together. It was a repudiation of your behavior, of your policies, of the policies of your party. The results are plain, not just at the Federal level, but also in the governors’ mansions where Democratic Party governors were ejected, for a net gain of three governorships by the Republicans, and in the 99 State legislative houses, where Republicans increased their control to 67-69 of those chambers (some elections remain too close to call).

Neither, though, was this set of outcomes a mandate for the Republicans to enact their plans (which, despite the NLMSM’s attempt to spin otherwise, have been quite specific). Republicans, under our system, were simply the alternative on the ballot. Suggesting that if it’s repudiation of the one it must be endorsement of the other is a cynically false dichotomy proffered by that same NLMSM.

This was a demand, rather, to do something else. Not necessarily what the Republicans propose, just most definitely to stop doing what the Democrats and Obama have been doing, and do something else.

That will take the two parties working together, and where the Democrats continue their obstruction, it will take the Republicans exercising their majority power and the majority authority the voters have given them—for now—so overwhelmingly.

And it will take Obama getting out of the way.

Outcomes

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Tuesday’s mid-term elections have the potential to be a sea change in the governance of our country and in the direction we take as a nation. The elections have resulted in a sharp change of control of the Senate to the Republicans, giving them both houses of Congress for the last two years of President Barack Obama’s term; an expansion of House control by 13 seats; a net gain of three (so far) governorships; and an increase in Republican control, depending on how too-close-to-call local races come out, to between 67 and 69 out of 99 of State legislatures. The governorships are especially telling given some particular victories: Scott Walker in Wisconsin, John Kasich in Ohio, Rick Scott in Florida, Bruce Rauner in Illinois, and Larry Hogan in Maryland, among others.

Together, these outcomes represent a stark and clear repudiation by Americans all across our country, in Red States and Blue, of the policies of President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats. This is demonstrated not only by the broad swath of States involved in the Senate and Gubernatorial elections, but especially by the fact that every Representative in the House was up for election—Americans in every district of America had something to say on the matter—and by those state legislature results: Americans in every local district had something to say on the matter.   It’s also demonstrated by the fact that Obama put his policies on the ballot—every single one of them—and the voters said, “No.”

Now Republicans need to do things.

In short order, they need to organize and publish a coherent legislative agenda, as House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R, CA) said on the night of those elections that he wanted them to do. Then, just as quickly, they need to pass legislation with specific, simple, coherent requirements. A good set of bills with which to start would include tax reform, jobs (re-execute, for instance, the 40+ jobs bills the House passed and sent to the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) personally killed them); immigration reform; repeal of Obamacare; a series of bills to restore health insurance and to improve the operation of health insurance and health care systems; approval of the Keystone XL pipeline; and elimination of “green” subsidies (and subsidies for oil and gas companies).

It’s entirely likely that Obama will veto most, if not all, of those bills.

However, if the Republicans in Congress put forward a coherent plan and then act with specifics in the first days and weeks of the new Congressional Session, three things will occur: Republicans will demonstrate that they can govern better, with more coherence, and less intrusion into Americans’ lives than the Democrats have done; our economy finally will take off; and whatever Obama does—sign or veto—will enable the Republicans to shape the 2016 elections on terms favorable to them.

In the meantime, Congressional Republicans need to be alert to, and able to stop, Obama and Reid shenanigans during the Democrats’ lame duck next couple of months. The Senate Democrats, don’t forget, have judgeship confirmations to approve, and they have an Attorney General to confirm, and they have cover for Obama’s immigration travesties to provide, and they have….