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Mike Lee Knows the Score
Although he’s not my senator, I follow Mike Lee on Facebook. He posted this comment regarding the Omnibus bill. It’s dead-on. We know the system is broken. It’s going to take the people to fix it.
Here we are again: another year of legislative dysfunction capped by an undemocratic, un-republican process that uses the threat of another manufactured crisis to impose on an unwilling country the same broken government policies that have repeatedly failed the people they are supposed to serve. The bill moving through Congress today and tomorrow – made up of the omnibus spending bill and tax extenders package – and the process that produced it are an affront to the Constitution and an insult to the American people. I’m not even talking about the substance of the bill, which is bad enough. I’m talking about the way it was produced. A small handful of leaders from the two parties got together behind closed doors to decide what the nation’s taxing and spending policies would be for the next year. And then, after several weeks, the negotiators emerged – grand bargain in hand – confident that the people they deliberately excluded from the policymaking process would now support all 2,242 pages of the legislative leviathan that they cooked up. This is not how a self-governing – or self-respecting – institution operates, and everyone here knows it.
He continues:
The leaders who presided over these negotiations were elected, just like the rest of us, to represent the people residing in their state or congressional district, not the entire population of the country.
Yet they just excluded 99 percent of the country from this process, as if their representatives are just partisan seals, trained to bark and clap on cue for their leaders.
That anyone is celebrating this bill as some kind of achievement is just further evidence of how out of touch Washington has become.
Indeed, the very premise of this process – that the establishment leaders of the two parties can accurately and fairly represent 320 million Americans – is itself absurd.
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More:
Puerto Rican rum exporters, racehorse owners and breeders, speedway owners, salmon fisherman… this bill has something for everyone – except for one group: the hardworking individuals and families living in one of America’s forgotten communities left behind by Washington’s broken status quo.
I’ll be the first to admit that there are some laudable provisions in both the spending and the tax bill that make important policy reforms.
There’s the two-year moratorium of Obamacare’s ill-conceived medical device tax, and the defunding of Obamacare’s cronyist risk-corridor program.
There’s the lifting of the government’s foolish ban on crude oil exports, and the extension of several sound tax provisions that never should have been temporary in the first place.
But the process has been rigged so that we can’t vote on these commendable policy reforms by themselves. In fact, we can’t vote for any one of these sensible, positive reforms without also voting for each and every dysfunctional, irresponsible, and unsustainable policy found in the two-thousand-page bill.
Nor, it appears, will we have the opportunity to amend a single provision found within this massive legislation. This is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. That means no up-or-down votes on controversial provisions that members of the House and Senate – as of 36 hours ago – had no idea were going to be in this bill.
No up-or-down vote on: the president’s controversial Green Climate Fund; the unpopular and unwise cybersecurity measure; the divisive rules promoted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and the backdoor tweaks to the H2B immigration visa program hidden in this bill.
Nor will we have a chance to add back in the priorities of the more than five-hundred members of Congress who were not in the negotiating room.
What do you think?
Published in Politics
That is a great write up. If he isn’t willing to vote against it or make a case for Congress exercising the power of the purse it is a bunch of mental masturbation.
I am sure we will hear all kinds of protestation from republicans today and early next week, but in the end their primary goal is to grow the government and ensure their longevity in office.
The time it deserved was the 3 months since the last stop-gap spending bill.
He’s right that the process is broken, but he offers no solutions in this. It’s just kvetching.
That is my take on it as well and I am a Mike Lee fan.
He does have me about half convinced to tell them vote this steaming pile down and do it the right way, no matter how long it takes, but I know the rest of the nation won’t stand for such a thing. One thing this bill does: puts Obama in the record book as being the only president to never enact a budget.
This is a sterling example of why Donald Trump is soaring in the polls.
Now, cue the RINOs and other blame-conservatives-firsters to show up and call opponents of this bill “hobbits” and “wacko birds.”
This ‘budget’ keeps getting worse …. They stripped out the Gosar Amendment! WTH?
I’d love to know what the Republicans actual objectives are – because they’re willing to compromise everything important to me to achieve them.
Earlier in another tread, someone named Frank said that saying “The Republicans are worthless” is unserious hyperbole. Sadly, its just an accurate description.
I know there were a lot of disappointed comments about the answers given during the last Republican debate and how we are in the dumper with choices. I’m more worried about getting through another 12 months. The level of dishonesty and corruption on both sides at both state and federal levels is so huge. I hope whoever is elected on day one starts the cleanup from top down. I also hope whoever is on the Oval Office will tap the talent we have – no they are not perfect, no one is. Carson for Surgeon General, Trump as Secretary of State, if they are not elected president, etc. We have more to fear from the other side – more than anyone can imagine – our Republic like Carson said is the patient – in the sick ward. I’m afraid for where we are headed.
But since when is insanity the appropriate response to stupidity?
“More Mike Lee, please.”
I would love to know what they got in exchange for this ‘compromise.’ What was worth handing over control of our local neighborhoods to federal government (HUD), with all their twisted diversity / redistribution goals?
BTW, while Ryan is handing over control of the racial make-up of our neighborhoods to HUD, he was busy building a big fence around his own house and yard!
I have come to loath these people.
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If Mike Lee doesn’t like it, that’s great. Neither do I. Mike Lee, however, can do a bit more about it. He can lead a revolt against the leadership.
I agree with everything Mike Lee said, and it’s time that the serious people in Congress, and there are some, stood up and did something to bring back sensible legislative and budget processes.
Besides being the right thing to do it would be extremely politically popular.
Sure, the process is broken, immigration is broken. Everything is broken.
The system is just about power and “spoils” for most of the republican ‘leaders’. And for the democrats (and an alarming number of republicans, including Ryan), its a system for imposing their view of a better more ‘compassionate’ socialist system – through power and control over the people (and money) of course.
One of the most discouraging things in the last few years for me was seeing how the republican ‘powers that be’ will marshal all their talents and efforts to defeat attempts to primary their ‘chosen’ people with more conservative limited-government types (example: the Thad Cochran vs Chris McDaniel race). They show a determination and ability to strategize on these efforts that I never see when they’re busy ‘representing’ their voters!
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It’s the insanity of pent up emotions. Trump is just the puppet of our anger. That makes him useless and dangerous.
Lemme play Devil’s Advocate here . . . If the Omnibus Bill does not go through there is a good chance the federal government would grind to a halt. The blame for this will fall to the Republicans. Hillary wins in a landslide.
Nothing substantial will be accomplished until we have a majority in the House and the Senate and a Republican living in the White House.
Paul Ryan is playing a long game.
Someone (I assume Ryan) made a political calculation that a shutdown wasn’t advisable. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other, but that’s the alternative. It’s fine to stand on principle, but BHO holds most of the cards.
It is a response to desperation.
I’ve seen my own congressman, Sean Duffy weakly plead that we just don’t know what it’s like in Washington (paraphrased.) The first thing up on my FB page this morning was discussion among local friends with some chomping at the bit to go visit Ryan when he’s “home” making the rounds. I hope that aside from the quiet time with his family, he has a most uncomfortable break.
Washington can NOT address this. There’s no Indiana Jones in the snakepit with the special effects mojo to do what needs done. So, any hope at all of preserving our liberty and property must come from outside Washington. I have no idea what that would be. Is there an action that honors the original intent of the constitution but brings about a full on rejection of the parasitic toxins grown up through the structure of Washington?
What is insane is doing the same thing over and over again – voting republican – and keep thinking we are going to get a different result.
Trump may be stupidity and there may only be a 1% chance he will do the right thing, but enough people realize there is a 0% chance republicans are going to do the right thing. Thus he has a shot whether any of us like it or not.
Most don’t. They just need you to know they don’t like what they are about to sign (or not) and why. Unfortunately, you rarely see the follow up “here’s my plan.”
The only Congressman I know that routinely let’s you know every bill, how he voted, and why is Rep. Justin Amash from Michigan. Of course he’s on the GOPe hit list.
Lee is right, but I think he is merely setting the stage for future changes to Senate rules to make catchall CR’s almost impossible again.
Before about 25 years ago, a CR was purely a dollars extension, a lump that allowed spending to temporarily continue at the same rate. But when the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings sequesters were causing problems for DoD, the Congress busted the caps by passing a CR (if I recall, it was 1989 or 1990 and I was in Washington due to some funding issue, so I was affected) for the first time that had specific language regarding where the money could be spent and also increased money, the precedent for today’s action. It was of dubious legality, but is now kind of grandfathered as all too frequent custom, and has been used by Harry Reid as the extortion method to block things he does not like.
The problem is that this practice forces all appropriations into one pot of money instead of separate appropriations for each Cabinet Department, which lets Harry torpedo what he won’t accept based on all-or-none (government shutdown) rather than one Department at a time. Mitch McConnell tried everything he could think of to do appropriations separately by Department, and all were blocked by Reid’s ability to filibuster and force a shutdown.
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To get by this, what we need are some changes to Senate rules that make it far more difficult to play the all-or-none single lump game. For example, any filibuster of appropriations must be a marathon talk session and the caucus leader must personally be the only talker, no ability to be relieved by another Senator; Appropriations can only be filibustered for x days, a lower threshold (55 votes) for ending a filibuster of Appropriations Bills; etc.
This needs to be done at the beginning of the Congress- in several areas McConnell has been working assiduously to be sure that the Republicans control the Senate- and win re-election in some tough Blue states (NH, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) so that such changes can be made. The Ex-Im genuflection was almost 100% to protect Mark Kirk, another compromise was made for Kelly Ayotte, etc.
That is why so much of this outrage over individual tradeoffs is not fair to the Senate leadership. They have a tough hand, fighting a slimy moron like Harry Reid, backed up by a president who doesn’t care what the law says and a compliant media that agrees with all of their goals.
I don’t think I can hit the LIKE button enough for this comment.
BTW, this thing passed in the House 316-113, so it was a bi-partisan barrel over which we’ve been bent. Senate was 65-33.
I agree with Lee one hundred percent. The appropriations process is fundamentally broken because of the Republican leadership’s insistence on loudly claiming responsibility for preventing the federal government–at least the seventeen percent deemed “non-essential”–from ever “shutting down.” This gives the Democrats the whip hand to stall the “regular order” appropriations process in favor of a single up-or-down vote on the eve of Armageddon that preserves all of the spending priorities enacted when the liberals had rare bicameral super-majorities.
Now the goalposts move further left and the prevent-the-apocalypse CR strategy is being deployed–successfully!–by the Left to actually advance Obama’s spending priorities.
This will continue until the Republicans assert Congress’s power of the purse. If parts of the federal government shut down, presumably at least some liberal constituents will also be adversely affected. Blame the Democrats and make the argument.
The last time we tried this, amidst predictions of certain electoral disaster, Mitch McConnell found himself Senate Majority Leader. And this was with John Boehner blaming his own party on late night television.
Imagine what might be accomplished by standing up for the voters who put Republicans in control of Congress.
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