Ed. note: This post has been expanded and otherwise altered from the original.
Paul Ryan rides to the rescue of the Republic
From the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and The Hill, with reference to recent statements by Republican House – Senate budget conference designee Representative Paul Ryan and the status of his “negotiations” with Senate lead conferee Patty Murray —
Via WSJ: “Obamacare’s here now,” Ryan said. He also predicted there wouldn’t be the same kind of “theater” over extending the debt ceiling.
That would be the “theater” of October that established Republicans as serious about doing what most of them said they would do — stop Obamacare.
Via The Hill: (Ryan) said Republicans now understand that a shutdown won’t stop ObamaCare because it is a mandatory program, not a discretionary agency budget line item.
“ObamaCare is an entitlement, they are not related,” he said.
So Mr. Ryan, let us get this straight about something as silly as the U.S. Constitution and hornbook law. You, as a member of the House of Representatives, are not responsible for . . . or the Constitution does not hold that . . . bills for raising revenue (or sustaining or extending revenue bills) shall originate in the House of Representatives? Or, to avoid quibbles, are you saying the House has no roll in even approving Senate proposals?
Or . . . as regards so called “mandatory programs” are you saying that a previous Congress can bind . . . or should be able to bind a current or future Congress? Consider this analysis which appeared in none other than Slate Magazine, hardly a repository of doctrinaire Tea Party constitutionalism:
Courts have long held that Congress cannot “bind” future Congresses—that is, it can’t force a future session of Congress to carry on its own policies. That practice, formally known as “legislative entrenchment,” is seen as privileging one group of lawmakers over another, “binding” future to the priorities set in the present. In the 1996 case U.S. v. Winstar Corp., Justice David Souter quoted the British jurist William Blackstone, who said that “the legislature, being in truth the sovereign power, is always of equal, always of absolute authority: it acknowledges no superior upon earth, which the prior legislature must have been, if it’s [sic] ordinances could bind the present parliament.”
Of course liberals invoke such hornbook analysis to end previous Republican dominated enactments. In Ryan’s absurd analysis, legislation (there is no special legal obligation to the term “entitlement,” including Social Security, unless it is made part of the Constitution) is inherently on a one-way track when enacted primarily by Democrats. Republicans are only there to sand the rails.
The very use of the term “entitlement” by Ryan with reference to Obamacare is at a minimum an inept, imprudent, injudicious, impolitic, and stupid repetition of the big government narrative. Or worse, it needs to be asked, is it an assumption by our chief Republican negotiator of that narrative? Furthermore, if the concept of “entitlement” applies, and is something that makes Obamacare sacrosanct, how is it that it will not be sacrosanct later should Republicans take the Senate and keep the House?
If this is Ryan’s way of saying the House will not hinder Obamacare in order to avoid blame for the train wreck it is, he needs to say in every breath that the Republican House is intent on replacing Obamacare now, before the concept of government run healthcare is inculcated into the body politic, that Republicans will not allow the takeover to happen, and that Republicans will not give up any tool to do so.
On such an important matter Ryan should never ever say or imply that the House has no political power vis a vi the Senate or the Presidency, or any Constitutional prerogatives to stop Obamacare. The truth is, if the Republican House stood firm, it could stop Obamacare now, and it would not require a particular profile in courage to do so – only response to popular sentiment.
We understand that many conservatives and others are saying that because of the fiasco regarding its implementation, Obamacare will result in the death of big-government liberalism. In spite of the growing public sentiment in opposition to Obamacare that thought is myopic at this stage. With what is essentially an expressed signal of capitulation, letting the Democrat Senate determine things to save their asses, we doubt Ryan will have the fortitude to resist fixes that allow Obamacare to chug along . . . relentlessly increasing the governments roll and destroying the doctor patient relationship.
More from The Hill: Ryan said that some progress has been made with Murray, but fundamental disagreements remain over entitlement reform, taxes and whether a deal would cut the deficit below the current path.
Ryan said if they can’t get a deal, Congress will keep funding at current levels “if need be to avoid a government shutdown.”
So Mr. Ryan, having given up what should be a hold card, what requires Ms Murray to accede to any limitation or any of your preferences . . . your good wishes? What is to stop her from larding up the resolution? You (and Mitch McConnell) have essentially said that you will deliver the votes to sustain what Patty Murray has the temerity to insist on because you will not “shut down the government.”
R Mall
