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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.
…
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
The answer lies in article five of our constitution. Article one is dormant. Article two and three are over shot. Article five is the only mechanism by which the nation can reach into its government and modify/clarify its powers downward.
The common sense approach espoused by Mike Lee and the Freedom Caucus is now considered “extreme”. If you agree with Mike Lee, congratulations you are an extremist.
As long as this view is predominant in DC and the MSM there is not much else that can be done until the GOP has a super majority in the Senate and a true conservative in the White House. Don’t hold your breath.
True, but I don’t so much trust the nation to do that well after they elected Obama twice and Hillary has a fighting chance.
and Ricochet
Couldn’t resist.
I had a double post, and couldn’t seem to delete it. Since I couldn’t edit the post to nothing, I left a character in the space.
With this lot, Newt would have never become Speaker and the Contract with America, forcing Clinton to move to the center, would have never occurred.
Imagine what 8 unbridled years of liberalism would have looked like… … …
Oh. Never mind.
Rush Limbaugh called for disbanding the Republican Party today. Start over. What I’ve been saying since 2012.
Old alliances are breaking. Fasten seat belts, bumpy ride ahead.
Edit: Wasn’t “May you live in interesting times” a curse?
LilyBart, just having fun with one of my friends on Ricochet. It’s the Friday before Christmas and we gotta find whatever little cheer we can here amongst ourselves because there isn’t anything to cheer coming from Washington.
I know. Merry Christmas!
Isn’t this a false choice. This bill or no bill. There is a third option, a better bill. Some things may be deal breakers but not everything that conservatives dislike in this budget would be a deal breaker. Take the exact same bill but strip the HUD section or the immigration H2b visas or both, and I bet it would still get passed and signed. No one can expect perfect, but better was a possibility.
If the Republicans left things on the table, you’re absolutely right. I personally doubt that they did, and were more motivated by the threat of a veto. There’s also a post above by Duane Oyen that’s really on the mark.
long game? I hear this all the time. Problem is that this long game appears to be more like a “Never Will Happen” game.
Bully for Rush.
You’re right that we’ve not been the best deciders, as of late. I’m also concerned with such a country’s ability to avoid another attempted suicide by 1.4 trillion cuts.
The best way I’ve been able to comfort myself is as such:
The founders knew that power was only as restrained as its level of diffusion would allow. That is why I’m so favorable toward the state convention process. Instead of one hall of power there might be fifty-one.
And the risk/reward proposition seems favorable since, as was noted here on ricochet, the worst that could happen is nothing.
But, really I only mean to be mostly in agreement with your concern.
This is a direct consequence of Republican leadership preemptively surrendering to Obama for seven years. They won’t impeach, won’t shut down, won’t take the reins on spending… and they announce it in advance. They won’t even bluff. It’s embarrassing, even though I understand that, had a shutdown occurred this year, it probably would have handed Felony the presidency on a platter — with the media doing the heavy lifting, of course.
I think Paul Ryan is a decent man. But what we need to counteract the Alinsky Left right now is ruthless, not decent. I’m not sure he understands who he’s up against.
What?!?!?!?! Did you not hear John McCain in 2008? Obama’s a nice guy! Here, I’ll give you another chance to redeem yourself. The most honorable
BrutusMcCain said:Got it?
<sarc>
At least George is honest about this- he wants us to go for the shutdown on principle, and hang the consequences. Those consequences would, in my opinion elect Hillary, but you can have a different belief.
But I am disappointed to see the naive responses of so many. Do you seriously believe that observant Catholic Paul Ryan is responsible for funding Planned Parenthood because he wants to and had an alternative that would have preserved all the rest of the stuff on our wish list? Ryan is from Janesville, where closing of GM factories has cost the town a lot of jobs, but he doesn’t care about his constituents, so open the floodgates to immigrants who will suck up all the work away from his constituents?
That this funding measure- after months of Republicans trying to pass appropriations department by department and being blocked at every turn, could have been negotiated in public with all of these comments about every single little element? Has any commenter here ever negotiated a complex agreement? (it is my job, BTW)
And Rush’s comments are pure ratings fodder. He knows better. It is the same “raw meat for the masses” instinct that had him praising Trump for months.
I wouldn’t comment on the ordnance load for a Soviet aircraft because I don’t know much about Soviet aircraft. I wouldn’t talk about wildcat oil exploration because I know nothing about it. But the whole world is expert on Congress.
Agree. And as far as my Senator Mike Lee and offering solutions, the above approach is what he would get next year. If there is any incumbent we need to keep, he qualifies. Solutions we need are those that will fix the process. We need a lot more like Mike Lee.
Today, Rush reluctantly (2:25, before news break) mentioned lifting the oil export ban, and at least acknowledged that it was kind of a big deal. His final take was that it would be used as a cudgel by the Dems in next year’s election, however–which could be said about virtually any concession that may have been on the table.
Boehner is sitting in the tanning booth with a drink in hand laughing. It’s business as usual and now, as a lobbyist, he’s raking it in on top of his congressional pension. Life is good for Johnny boy.
That’s just it though, the real threat of a veto existed for larger issues, not for every issue. If Republicans care they can get Obama to sign budgets with things that he does not like. (Funding has been cut off to close Gitmo for years) I think a budget that the President would sign, rather than one that has the White House declaring victory, was possible.
Great comment, Duane. Makes me think that electability is still a good category to consider when it comes to choosing a presidential candidate.
Aren’t the solutions implied by his criticisms? For instance, he says that there weren’t votes on a number of provisions that were unrelated to each other – so he is suggesting there should be a separate bill on each topic with its own vote, rather than combining various unrelated topics into one gargantuan bill.
Duane Oyen,
Thanks for your excellent comments here.
I’m glad that somebody can keep their eye on the ball!
When there is no other response at all. When there seems to be nothing left to do but last ditch desperation efforts. I’m not justifying Trump; I’m just telling you where a lot of people happen to be.
Your comments are so very depressing because I fear they are now the conventional wisdom.
Our system of government, conceived as an extension of popular sovereignty, whose function is to provide an orderly society while preserving our civil liberties is, by your lights, an anachronism.
We have an executive. An executive who oversees a vast organization concerned with everything from national security to food and drug safety to highway maintenance to disaster preparedness to school lunches and almost everything else that a citizen needs.
We have elected representatives who should, but don’t, oversee that executive and hold him accountable.
We are supposed to have a citizenry that holds those elected representatives to account for the failings of the executive.
But you discard all that, because “We’ll wind up with Hillary” or “We should just trust our leaders” or “The critics just want ratings.”
Your argument is Progressive in its purest form: American Constitutional democracy is an antiquated relic from a distant past, we need to embrace governance by scientific experts.
What I’m almost certain of, here, is that Duane would not describe his own comments this way
Thanks for the Constitution lesson; I never knew any of that. Ahem. FYI, I tend more toward “the wisdom of crowds” than I do Tommy Wilson, Mr. Rule-By-Experts. You have zero evidence for yuour claim based on my posts.
I like to think that my comments reflect reality, as it has always inhered. Including back in 1800. Marbury v. Madison was about pork-barrel stocking of government jobs with political supporters. The Constitution and the dormant commerce clause exist because of the Articles and things like the government support of the Erie Canal and NY attempts to thus beggar their neighbors.
You can’t do everything- Reagan didn’t even try, nor did GWB- each focused on one biggest thing and addressed the others as they were able. Like it or not, if the people demand certain things, they will get them.
Spending is all sheer momentum. Congress and the President know they’re going to spend trillions; it’s just a question of when, how much, and where.
No one takes a step back to ask why there’s a Department of Energy – that doesn’t produce energy. Why the Dept. of Agriculture props up food prices for commodities produced in such mass as they can’t give the stuff away. No one asks. Why? Because that’s how they did it last year.
That’s how budgets grow, annually, and the bigger the budget, the more garbage stays tucked inside it, confident in the reality that even if a single ray of sunshine manages to land on its line item, that so few people will know or care that said line item will be there next year, increased by 3-5%, and everyone in gov’t will vote for people who propagate the growth of gov’t, regardless of the utility of the spending, or its Constitutional basis, or more pointedly, the spending’s lack of Constitutional basis.