The new 'Cromibus' spending bill passed the House yesterday and went to the Democrat dominated Senate. It essentially funds everything through September of 2015, even Michelle Obama's lunch program.
This essentially is an attempt to undercut the incoming GOP congress by removing its main weapon..the power of the purse.
The sole exception is the Department of Homeland Security which is funded until Feb. 27, 2015. That's a bone thrown at GOP conservatives to give the new congress something to work with to try and fight the president amnesty by executive diktat.Expect Boehner and his cronies to fight any attempts to rein in President Obama's amnesty order tooth and nail.
Sarah Palin:It stinks to high heaven. Did arrogant politicians not get the memo that Obama’s agenda was decisively defeated in last month’s historic midterm landslide? Good Lord, America said loud and clear not just “no” but “hell no” to Obama’s failed policies. Americans who pay attention said absolutely no to Obama’s amnesty for illegal aliens.
We also said no to the mother-of-all unfunded mandates, Obamacare, and voters believed promises that they would ratchet down the $18 trillion debt. Well, our bad for apathetically trusting politicians. No, on second thought, it’s not “our bad.” Some of us warned and worked hard to elect candidates who would buck the status quo. Many conscientious Americans did all they could to open the eyes of low-information voters. It was tough going up against Obama’s lapdogs in the media and the power liberals have to play their politics of personal destruction against commonsense conservatives.
But really how out-of-touch do these politicians have to be to misunderstand our recent mandate to stop Barack Obama's fundamental transformation of the greatest nation on earth?
The Republican Leadership in the House just flipped American voters the bird by sidelining the new Congress we just elected.
GOP Rep: House Leaders Made False Promise to Get My Crucial Vote :Representative Marlin Stutzman (R., Ind.) accused House Republican leadership of reneging on a deal made with him to get his support on a crucial procedural vote that almost killed the $1.1 trillion cromnibus funding bill.
“I was very surprised and even more disappointed to see the cromnibus back on the floor,” Stutzman said in a Thursday evening statement. “The American people deserve better.” [...]
“I supported the rule because I was informed by leadership that the cromnibus was dead and a short term CR would take its place,” Stutzman said.
After President Obama came out in favor of the funding bill, Republican leaders spent the day whipping their members and hoping that Democrats would deliver the requisite number of votes.
“The cromnibus bill, over 1,600 pages long, does many things but what is most important is what it does not do,” he said. “It fails to directly address President Obama’s dangerous executive action on immigration and fails to include many of the solutions that could have been passed in January with a Republican House and Senate in an open process.”
Dave Brat (R-VA) in a statement:“I had two opportunities to try to prevent the omnibus bill from becoming law, and I exercised both of them. Regardless of the many policy disagreements I had with the bill, this vote ultimately wasn’t about policy for me. This bill funds an illegal act. Above all, this vote was about following the law and the Constitution.
“Without the amendment that my House colleagues and I proposed yesterday, this omnibus bill allows funding for President Obama’s unconstitutional executive amnesty for approximately five million illegal immigrants.
“Despite having claimed several times that he didn’t have the authority to enact amnesty without Congress, President Obama acted anyway. Under our Constitution, the president can’t create the law; the president has to follow the law.
“I cannot vote to allow an agency of this government to commit an act that the president and the House leadership on both sides have previously agreed is illegal. Allowing the funding of executive amnesty, even just until the end of February, allows the program to be implemented and amnesty to be enacted.”
John Hayward, Human Events: Anyone who raises the slightest objection to this panicky spending bonanza is denounced as a penny-pinching extremist monster who just wants to kill children, puppies, and kittens for fun, by shutting down the government that keeps them alive. You don’t want Obama to throw up barricades around your national parks and memorials again, do you? No? Then shut up and spend.
The sole reservation in the winder spending festival is the Department of Homeland Security – which, as Fox News explains, is only funded through February, so the GOP leadership can pretend it’s going to stage a huge fight over Obama’s illegal amnesty orders next year. This is supposed to mollify the starchy citizens who still care about antiquated notions like the rule of law, the separation of powers, the value of citizenship, and national security long enough for the Establishment to enjoy its holiday vacation:
The bill finances the day-to-day operations of every Cabinet department except Homeland Security through Sept. 30, 2015, with $521 billion for defense and $492 billion tied to non-defense. Another $64 billion is provided for overseas military operations.
However, the plan would only fund the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 27, 2015. That is a move by House GOP leaders to tee up a debate in early 2015 over the president’s recent executive action that could suspend deportation for as many as 5 million illegal immigrants.
Some conservatives nevertheless want to wage that battle now, and use the current spending bill as leverage. Though the House voted last week against Obama’s immigration plan, these lawmakers want to do more.
Strong opposition to the House budget plan from the Republicans’ conservative wing could force GOP chamber leaders to rely on Democratic votes to avert a government shutdown. House Speaker John Boehner can afford to lose only 17 caucus votes before he must turn to support from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi, D-Calif., has said her party would be willing to help but has signaled she may make some demands.
Wonderful. Let’s have a big round of applause for the GOP Establishment, ladies and gentlemen! They managed to throw away the most remarkable electoral victory in a generation in only one month, maneuvering themselves into a position where the losers who got crushed will be making demands to win their support for a bill that effectively ratifies their will through half of their sojourn in electoral exile.
There was no reason to give the defeated Democrats anything except a stop-gap bill to fund the government through January, at which point the incoming Republican majorities should have exercised control over everything. If the Democrats don’t like that deal, let them shut down the government in a fit of pique, and tell voters how they party they just threw out of power should be allowed to control their lives for an extra year. Not only would that be smart politics – giving the Republicans more fiscal leverage to stand up for America against Obama’s amnesty, instead of just funding for the Department of Homeland Security – but it would represent more sensible and responsible government. All of this multi-trillion-dollar monstrosity is linked together; all of it should be on the table; the flab should be liposuctioned out of every agency at once in a comprehensive plan for fiscal sanity and increased American liberty.
Drew At Ace of Spades HQ: What we should be focusing on is that the establishment of the GOP was far more interested in cutting deals with the Democrats than they were in exercising the power of their new majorities come January.
Look at the provisions that the GOP included in CrOmnibus that set off the Democratic progressives and some TEA types...
First was an increase the limits donors can give to political parties.
The provision would increase the amount of money a single donor could give to national party committees each year from $97,200 to as much as $777,600 by allowing them to set up different funds for certain expenses. The change would be a huge boost for party committees that have faced steep challenges in recent years from well-funded outside groups.
...
“Conservatives support the First Amendment and believe there should be no limits on political speech,” said Ken Cuccinelli, president of the Senate Conservatives Fund. “Unfortunately, the new limits included in the omnibus only increase political speech for party insiders while silencing the majority of Americans who are fed up with Washington.”
The second was a 'reform" of Dodd-Frank. Republicans have been running against Dodd-Frank for years. Normally their critique is that it hurts small businesses that can't afford to comply with a maze of regulations. The reform the GOP stood fast on? A provision literally written by Citigroup.
The derivatives provision would let JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc. (C:US), Bank of America Corp. (BAC:US) and other banks trade almost all swaps in divisions that have government backstops like deposit insurance. It would repeal a requirement that some of the trades be pushed out to separate units, which Wall Street argued would drive up costs for clients and increase risk in the financial system by moving the trades to firms less regulated than banks.
So thanks to the brave leadership of John Boehner, Harry Reid and Barack Obama we made it easier for political parties to fend off outside interest groups and make sure banks can trade derivatives again with the knowledge that if things go south, the taxpayers will foot the bill. The chairman of Citigroup certainly must be pleased with his personal lobbying efforts.
I'm not one to say there's no difference between the GOP and Democrats, that's silly. But it's not nearly enough or as much as they like to pretend.
The story isn't that a minority of the GOP found common cause with some Democrats to oppose these deals, it's that after facing a populist backlash after the failed GOP administration of 2001-2007, the party has successfully weathered the storm and returned to business as usual. Big donors and big business get theirs. Meanwhile voters who thought they voted for spending cuts and opposition to amnesty just six weeks or so ago are told, sorry can't do it. Good luck ever collecting.
Rush Limbaugh: The news is that the Republican Speaker of the House has thrown in with Barack Obama. I don't care what the Democrats are doing. What does that matter? Holy smokes. John Boehner has just squandered the election results before the Republicans even are sworn in to run the Senate, along with the House, if I've got this right.
Yeah, we're supposed to look the other way while our Speaker of the House gets in bed with Obama and advances the Obama agenda, takes care of it, amnesty, Obamacare, fully funded, done deal. The election must not have mattered.
And then we got Elizabeth Warren out there who's staking her claim to the presidency while Mrs. Clinton isn't looking. To show you how out of whack things are, Elizabeth Warren of, "You didn't build that. You didn't make that happen" fame, well known communist socialist Elizabeth Warren is now being credited as practically the only person in Washington standing up for the little guy via her opposition to some of the relaxation of regulations in Dodd-Frank and some of the campaign finance. By the way, about that campaign finance stuff, that everybody's upset about in the omnibus bill, I'm gonna tell you exactly what that is.
We had a caller about it yesterday. The lady was fit to be tied. She was angry and she was right to be, because the limits have practically been obliterated, which means that corporate donors can just start giving left and right. It used to be a limit of $37,000. Now it's $737,000, something. It's incredible. But the point of it, do you know why it's in there? You know why? The Republicans put it in. You know why it's in there, folks? This is how corporate America's gonna defeat the Tea Party. By allowing limitless donations from that crowd under the rubric that it's campaign finance and money is speech and freedom of speech and First Amendment. The theory is that Main Street, Tea Party people can't come close to competing with corporate money.
So it is a Republican establishment ploy that kind of dovetails nicely with Obama sicking the IRS on the Tea Party to basically eliminate them as a viable threat by relaxing a registration in Dodd-Frank that pretty much permits corporations to spend any kind of money they want on politics. It's kind of a dichotomy. It's a dilemma, in terms of figuring out what to think about it.
Let me tell you about a congressman named Marlin Stutzman. Marlin Stutzman is a Republican from Indiana, and he is claiming, he's put out a press release on this now. He's admitting to this publicly. He's not relying on a publication to say it, he's saying it himself that he was lied to; that he was lied to by the Republican leadership; that the Republican leadership reneged on a deal they made with him to get his support for the omnibus bill. Want the details? He said, "I was very surprised and even more disappointed to see the cromnibus back on the floor. The American people deserve better."
Elizabeth Warren, is, for all intents and purposes, threatening to shut down the government. Now, where this thing is in the Senate's kind of up in the air, but she's threatening to shut down the government. And the media is praising her. The media is praising her for principled opposition. And, as you know, Republican shutdown, why, it's the end of the world, it's the end of everything as we know it. [...]
The media is reporting this as, for all intents and purposes, a done deal. They are reporting that all the action was in the House, and once the House voted for the $1.1 trillion omnibus, since the Democrats run the Senate it's a fait accompli that it's gonna get done.
That's not the case because there's a flamethrower over there named Elizabeth Warren, and she's not happy with what's in the Republican bill -- and neither, for that matter, is Nancy Pelosi. So the Senate's not done on this. They did a couple-of-days spending bill, and the Senate's gonna take its time and still argue about it, debate this. Now, the consensus is that the Senate will ultimately pass it, because that's what Obama wants, and the Democrat Party's still loyal to him
But that's not a fait accompli.[...]
President Obama and John Boehner want a bill that the bases of their respective parties reject. Boehner is enabling (or did enable) the passage of a bill in the House that the Republican base wants no part of. They don't want Obamacare fully implemented or funded, and they do not want Obama to get away with this executive amnesty. Boehner has worked with Obama
And the Republican version of the bill in the House flies in the face of what both the Democrat base and the Republican base want. The Democrat base doesn't like the relaxation of regulations in Dodd-Frank, which is campaign finance, basically. There's some things the unions don't like about pensions as well, because their pensions are gonna end up being devalued.
There are a couple other things in it that the Democrat base is not happy about. Another thing being reported is that Elizabeth Warren is taking a stand on an issue that, if successful, would embarrass Obama. This is being reported. This is not my opinion. You can find this story somewhere in the Drive-By Media stash today. The stand that she is taking on the issue is a very populist stand. It is a stance against Wall Street.
Wall Street has been given a great gift in the omnibus spending bill: Relaxation of regulations on Dodd-Frank. Opposing Wall Street... Remember Occupy Wall Street? Opposing Wall Street is a huge ticket item for Elizabeth Warren, particularly if she wants to run for president. The presumptive nominee, of course, is Mrs. Clinton. We're right back where we were 2007 and 2008 with the Washington establishment of both parties concluding that Hillary Clinton will be the nominee.
We've been there.
We've done that.
And out of the blue, in 2007, came Barack Hussein Obama. Out of the blue this year is coming Elizabeth Warren, and she's got a ready-made entry and a ready-made ticket with her populist opposition to the Wall Street favors that are in the omnibus bill. Obama is in favor of relaxing those regulations on Wall Street because Obama is in bed with Wall Street and has been from the get-go, but his base is not really aware of that.
The Democrat Party base has been driven insane with hatred for Wall Street. They've been driven insane with hatred for the US military. They've been driven insane with hatred for the CIA. The Democrat Party base has been driven insane by the radical nature of what everybody thinks are mainstream Democrats. Obama is as closely tied and in bed with Wall Street as anybody is, and Elizabeth Warren is not.
And she is distancing herself from the Democrats and particularly from Obama in a major way by taking a stand on that issue regarding Dodd-Frank. If this bill goes down to smithereens because of this, it would be an embarrassment to Obama. Again, this is what's being reported. It is also being reported that Barack Obama is being abandoned by Democrats by the score on this because the Democrats are not happy with a couple of provisions.
See, the Democrats are not invested in Obamacare to the degree that you would believe. Remember, Obamacare is why they lost, in their minds -- and you've heard by now the old stat that half the Democrat senators remaining in the Senate who voted for Obamacare, for one reason or another, are gone. We've had Chuck-U Schumer and Tom Harkin and a number of other Democrats publicly throw Obamacare under the bus claiming it was bad bill.
(summarized) "It was a mistake timing-wise. We shouldn't have done it before we shored up the economy." There are Democrats running away from Obamacare. It's John Boehner who's in bed with Obama on Obamacare, not the Democrats. And one of the things we're supposed to be taking great satisfaction from watching is the Democrat fallout over Obamacare.
But Boehner has picked up the slack there with the Republican omnibus bill, which fully funds it. So now the Democrats are free to walk away from it, which they wanted to do and have. So when you see it reported that Democrats are abandoning Obama by the score, one of the things they're abandoning him on is Obamacare. Look, they have lost big in the last two midterm elections.
This is still... The scope of this defeat is still not accurately reported in the Drive-By Media, although if you keep your radio tuned to this station, you will soon hear that the Washington Post has a story today which fulfills a prophecy of mine back in 2008, 2009. I wasn't the only one, but I might have led the pack on this, as referring to Barack Obama's presidency as Jimmy Carter's second term.
Today's Washington Post pretty much says that, and they do it with polling data. They do it on the basis that there is a nationwide malaise among the American people, that they are despondent and depressed and feeling hopeless. There's no opportunity for the American dream. There's no opportunity for economic advancement. It's not a pretty picture, and it's being painted in the Washington Post. Jimmy Carter's second term.
Lisa Lerer, Bloomberg: On one side of the debate are strategists and officials, including some aligned with Clinton, who believe their path to the White House in the post-Obama era rests with wooing centrist, working class voters. To progressive activists, union members, and other parts of the "professional left," as an Obama aide once called them, victory lies in running on an aggressive, populist economic message.
"Some of the jockeying now is trying to strategically make sure Hillary understands that she can't be an economic moderate without generating pushback," said Andy Stern, the former head of the Service Employees International Union. "Progressives are anxious that her policies, not her heart, will be too generous toward Wall Street."
With the Senate soon to be in Republican control, progressives aspire to become their own power center that can force Democrats to stand strong on economic issues. By aligning themselves with Warren, who’s an outspoken advocate of Wall Street regulation, groups like MoveOn not only grow membership lists and bank accounts, they also raise their profile.
While Warren is their billboard, the real target is likely Clinton. A history of pro-business economic policies and a roster of rich Wall Street donors make progressive and union activists anxious about the direction of her leadership and political loyalties. Though she has yet to announce a campaign, they're trying to send the message that their concerns should not be taken for granted. "I think the fact that people are encouraging a person who probably isn't going to run may just be a manifestation of wanting to make clear that Secretary Clinton is not going to walk in and assume there's a coronation," said Stern. "She's going to have to work it policy-wise, particularly on the economy"
The Hill- Warren Makes Her Mark:Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s crusade against the $1.1 trillion spending bill backed by the White House firmly establishes the Massachusetts populist as a powerful player in Washington.
The freshman Democrat took on President Obama and her party’s leadership, and appeared to inspire an uprising in the House.
The fight earned her comparisons to Texas firebrand Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, another relative newcomer to the Senate who has shown outsized clout in his party.
Warren lost the battle in the House when the spending bill was approved in a late-night 219-206 vote, and the fight is now moving to Warren’s turf in the Senate.
If she continues to fight hard against the bill, it will pull her into a deeper clash with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who backed the spending deal and has just named Warren to his leadership team.
“I have to assume Elizabeth Warren is running for president. That’s what you do when you run for president. You get out front,” said Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee who backed the spending bill opposed by Warren.
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