Yesterday Speaker of the House Boehner negotiated a trillion-dollar government funding bill in the form of a continuing resolution (CR) omnibus bill. It is over 1600 pages in length and is to be voted on Thursday. The time frame is another violation of Boehner’s 2012 pledge to give House members three days to digest bills (we won’t address the idea of even pretending to digest a 1600 page bill). Now, a la former Speaker Pelosi, House members are admonished by Speaker Boehner that they will just have to find out what is in the bill after they pass it.
The CR is another stop-gap to fund government operations (not that they would actually stop), this time until September. It contains funding for the departments involved in implementing Obama’s executive orders regarding immigration “only” until the end of February of 2015. That restriction is supposed to allow the newly minted Republican Senate majority to take their seats and then come to grips with Obama’s unconstitutional immigration directives.
In the meantime, Republicans who after all are already in charge of the House and, under the Constitution, in charge of originating spending bills, are going to pay for unconstitutional things for just a little bit. But Obama trusts that his actions will essentially be sustained as there will not be the political fortitude to take back what he has bestowed (see related reading later in this post). We fear Obama is right.
Here is the immediate concern:
Because of the size and political diversity of the House, before legislation comes to the floor for “debate” and voting, a “rule” must be approved setting forth conditions for debate and amendments regarding the legislation so that the process does not drag on endlessly. Killing the rule essentially kills the underlying legislation.
As Erick Erickson writing at RedState explains:
Often, members of congress will vote in favor of the rule to get legislation to the floor of the House of Representatives, but then vote against the legislation itself. They enable the legislation to get to the floor, but are often promised that once the legislation gets to the floor, there will be enough votes from the other party to pass it that these members can vote no . . .
The House Republicans are going to do this with amnesty. They have loaded up a piece of legislation that is almost two thousand pages long. The legislation will spend a trillion dollars and will fund President Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty. There are most likely not enough Republican votes to pass it because it betrays Republican principles.
But Rep. John Boehner and Rep. Nancy Pelosi have enough Democrats on board to pass it that it does not matter.
What does matter is the rule. Democrats will not support the rule. The minority party never does. The question becomes whether there are enough Republican votes for the rule. If your Republican congressman votes for the rule, that congressman is enabling passage of a continuing resolution that spends massive amounts of money and pays for President Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty.
Call your congressman today and tell him to oppose not just the continuing resolution, but the rule as well . . .
Here is the message we sent earlier today to Congressmen Tom Latham and Steve King. We encourage readers to contact them with the same or similar message. We are focused on Republicans because Iowa’s current Democrat members Loebsack and Braley can be expected to oppose the “rule” as a matter of course.
Please oppose the rule to bring the over 1600 page trillion-dollar continuing resolution funding bill to the floor without a proscription on any money being used to implement Obama’s unconstitutional executive decrees.
Republican leadership made favored changes to government operations within the bill but left out restrictions on Obama’s unconstitutional executive actions regarding immigration, a key driving force to Republican victories last month.
As it is now the legislation will fund President Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty actions for nearly three months. Actions he will implement aggressively.
Do your duty. Protect the Constitution now when it can be.
To do so via e-mail contact Latham at http://latham.house.gov/contact/
Congressman Steve King’s office can be reached by phone* : 202.225.4426
Fax: 202.225.3193
Still other Congressman can be reached via our Legislative Links in the page bar above.
If the implementation is not stopped there may be no going back . . .
Stephen Dinan at Washington Times writes:
Obama immigration chief says amnesty designed to cement illegals place in society
The man who will oversee President Obama’s new temporary amnesty said Tuesday that part of the reason for the program was to get the illegal immigrants working on the books, making it economically impossible for them ever to be deported by a future president.
Leon Rodriguez, speaking during a town hall meeting with his employees at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said illegal immigrants shouldn’t fear coming forward to report for the program because the order Mr. Obama issued last month will cement their place in society.
“If this program does what we want it to do, you will now have literally millions of people who will be working on the books, paying taxes, being productive. You cannot so easily by fiat now remove those people from the economy,” said Mr. Rodriguez, who took over as agency director earlier this year.
His comments came the same day that Mr. Obama, speaking in Tennessee, also said he doubted any future administration would want to repeal his policy for fear of running afoul of voters.
Rodriguez’ implication that Obama’s action results in net tax payers is incredible. The incentive for them to work “on the books” is to pay more taxes? The incentive for employers to employ them as such is to incur payroll taxes in conjunction with them? They are already breaking the law by not doing that now, where is the incentive? The real incentive for the illegals is still more benefits, which they become eligible for as a result of the executive orders.
Who says they have to pay taxes in order to get benefits? Few will pay enough taxes to cover them anyway. If they were high income net tax payers, trust us, they would already be on the books for many reasons. Furthermore they are already established as willing to work in the “shadows.” Smaller “shadow” employers have an incentive to continue to pay them as such or, perhaps more likely, hire new border jumpers to replace them, thus increasing the dependence on taxpayer largess of the ones that are “amnestied” under Obama’s executive orders.
Large employers who otherwise were too vulnerable to scrutiny to hire illegals are pushing this because they will be able to hire these now legal low cost laborers under special favorable conditions that would not apply to their hiring of U.S. citizens. The full tab is picked up by other taxpayers — medical care, education, various other welfare benefits.
The economic model suggested by Rodriguez is simply unsustainable, his arguments are nonsense at best.
Obama’s actions are a reward for past and current illegal activity including fraud and identity theft (too often among the lesser crimes). It is egregious offense to the rule of law and fairness to those immigrants who play by the rules. It tells prospective immigrants: why wait, jump the fence, stay off the books for awhile, your time will come. Obama’s actions sustain those who elbow out law abiding non-citizen immigrants for jobs, not to mention American citizens, and those who are waiting for a visa and abiding by the rules. The phony economics notwithstanding, the unconstitutional action cannot be sustained. Funding it for one minute is contra the Republican case that Obama’s action are illegal.
Flash to Obama’s fellow travelers — you cannot have a viable welfare state and no disincentives to jumping the border. Flash to Republicans — you can not have a sovereign country much less a constitutional republic and permit Obama’s actions.
* Iowa Congressman Steve King’s Website does not allow constituents who use a zip code from outside his district to use the convenient contact form. That is objectionable to us for a couple of reasons. One: the legislative system is such that, for example, the good congressman’s actions in committee affect what other House members can do for their in-district constituents. Two: he asks for support from outside the district for what he does to help the country. While we recommend phoning, there does seem to be a simple way around the e-mail restriction. Substitute an in-district zip code such as 51201 / 51031 / 51101 / 51012 / 51355 (or others) while still using your actual name address, phone and e-mail.
R Mall
As I wrote my congressperson: I and 7 other people I know, regret having voted for Republicans in the mid-terms…not that they would ever vote Democrat. However, Congressperson, if you vote for this CR and support Boehner for Speaker, there are at least 8 votes you can forget!