Tag: Senate

There is no fourth branch of the federal government

There is no fourth branch of the federal government

The US Constitution defines three separate (and supposedly equal) branches of government:

  • Executive
  • Legislative
  • Judicial

Unfortunately, today we have a fourth branch of government:

  • Administrative (or maybe called the Regulatory branch)

How did this happen?

The founders probably could not have anticipated this happening. In the day and age of the writing of the US Constitution, it was not anticipated that regulations would need to be created that were so specific that the Congressmen themselves could not write the words (or at least with the help of some assistants).

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First thoughts on the day after election

First thoughts on the day after election

The massive mid-term election of 2010 is now over. My phone won’t ring 25 times today with some computer imploring me to vote for one candidate over another. The signs that are all along the streets in my town can come down (hopefully the candidates come out and clean up their mess). Life can now go back to some sort of normal.

The Republicans evidently picked up approximately 60 seats in the House of Representatives. They also made major increases in the Senate and that house appears to be split nearly 50/50 (the exact count probably won’t be known for a couple days as Alaska will probably take a while to count due to the write-in candidate).

What does this election mean? Does it mean that the 2-year era of liberalism is over? Does it mean that conservatism is the rule of the day? Does it mean that Barack Hussein Obama will lose in 2 years? Does it mean that the Republicans have a mandate to go ultra-conservative? Does it mean that the poor and down-trodden will need to look for their medicine in the trash cans of the homes of the wealthy? Does it mean that I have to give up drinking coffee and now drink tea?

What I am 100% confident in is that it doesn’t mean any of the above! It doesn’t mean that BHO is done. It doesn’t mean that all of healthcare should just go to the wealthiest. It doesn’t mean that we should now savage the environment.

I don’t think that the newly elected Republicans have a mandate at all except for the mandate to do a good job and figure out the best way to solve each individual problem regardless of party direction.

I think it means that Americans want a government that works. We want it to work rather slowly and deliberately. We want politicians that don’t act like politicians but rather act like leaders. We want compromise to be the rule of the day. We want our leaders to read, understand, and thoughtfully debate the bills that are before them. We don’t want to find out about what is in the bill after it is turned into law – we want our leaders to know what is in the bill before they make it a law.

We don’t want stagnation. If Boehner drives the government to a stall the way that Gingrich did, that would be a mistake.

Most of all, I think Americans don’t want to deal with the federal government. We don’t want our lives to be tied up with governing. Life is hard enough with births, jobs, bills, lousy bosses, teenagers, sickness, and death – we don’t want to worry about the feds as well. I think most Americans would be perfectly happy if government would just get out of our lives with the exception of keeping us safe, making sure the infrastructure works, and helping out with the truly disadvantaged. We will pay a reasonable tax for that as long as we think it is well managed.

I raise my coffee cup in a salute to the Tea Party activists for energizing America in making their point. That point, I believe, is that we want our legislators to pay attention to us, don’t tax us to death, and spend what you need but make sure what you buy is needed. 2 years ago, pundits were saying that the Republican party was dead, now the pundits need to say, “Listen to your constituents if you want to keep your job.” 

There is no such thing as a mandate to do radical things. Extremism is a bad position no matter which side of the scale you are on.

If the grown men and women in the federal government can’t get along better than a bunch of nursery school kids, then we will take away their ball and send a new bunch of children to Washington in 2 years.

Is this a Constitutional crisis of epic proportions?

Is this a Constitutional crisis of epic proportions?

I don’t know about you but I remember my federal government classes in high school (and grade school for that matter).  I even remember a cute little commercial by School House Rocks talking about how a bill becomes a law. Under the U.S. Constitution a bill has to pass both the House and Senate to become law. Until this week, that is, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to merely “deem” that the House has passed the Senate health-care bill and then send it to President Barack Hussein Obama to sign anyway.

Under the “reconciliation” process, the House is supposed to approve the Senate’s Christmas Eve bill and then use “sidecar” amendments to fix the things it doesn’t like. Those amendments would then go to the Senate under rules that would let Democrats pass them while avoiding the ordinary 60-vote threshold for passing major legislation. This alone is an abuse of traditional Senate process but is not truly unconstitutional as it is only Senate “rules” and not constitutional law.

But Pelosi fears she lacks the votes in the House to pass an identical Senate bill, even with the promise of these reconciliation fixes. House Members hate the thought of going on record voting for Harry Reid’s Cornhusker kickback and other special-interest bribes that Reid added to get this mess through the Senate, as well as the new tax on high-cost insurance plans that Big Labor hates.

So at the request of Pelosi, New York Democrat Louise Slaughter, the chair of the House Rules Committee, may insert what’s known as a “self-executing rule.”  Under this procedural ruse, the House would then vote only once on the reconciliation corrections, but not on the underlying Senate bill. If those reconciliation corrections pass, the self-executing rule would say that the Senate bill is presumptively approved by the House—even without a formal up-or-down vote on the actual words of the Senate bill.

Democrats would then send the Senate bill to President Obama for his signature even as they claimed to oppose the same Senate bill. They would be declaring themselves to be for and against the Senate bill in the same vote. Even John Kerry never went that far with his Iraq war flip-flops!

This two-votes-in-one gambit is a brazen affront to the plain language of the Constitution, which is intended to require democratic accountability. Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution says that in order for a “Bill” to “become a Law,” it “shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate.” This is why the House and Senate typically have a conference committee to work out differences in what each body passes.

If Congress can now decide that the House can vote for one bill and the Senate can vote for another, and the final result can be some arbitrary hybrid, then we have abandoned one of Madison’s core checks and balances. As long as one party is in power in both houses and the Executive branch then legislation can simply be rammed through by the party leadership.

We have entered a political wonderland, where the rules are whatever Democrats say they are. Mrs. Pelosi and the White House are resorting to these abuses because their bill is so unpopular that a majority even of their own party doesn’t want to vote for it. Fence-sitting Members are being threatened with primary challengers, a withdrawal of union support and of course ostracism.

Democrats are, literally, consuming their own majority for the sake of imposing new taxes, regulations and entitlements that the public has roundly rejected but that they believe will be the crowning achievement of the welfare state. They are also leaving behind a procedural bloody trail that will fuel public fury and make such a vast change of law seem illegitimate to millions of Americans.

The concoction has become so toxic that even Mrs. Pelosi isn’t bothering to defend the merits anymore, saying instead last week that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” Or rather, “deeming” to have passed it.

Healthcare for illegals

Healthcare for illegals

First, let me be clear, I think that Rep. Wilson of South Carolina should be censured for his outburst while President Barack Hussein Obama was speaking in a joint session of Congress. He reminds of irresponsible brats such as Kanye West. Public outbursts while the President is speaking are simply unacceptable in any format and definitely not allowed in a joint session of Congress.

I do think that it is interesting that the rude outburst occurred due to a statement from BHO regarding healthcare for illegal aliens. There is a reasonable argument that BHO, while perhaps not lying, was not telling the complete truth. Check out this interesting video below and then read the rest of my comments.

 

Now I see that the Democrats in the Senate would like to toughen up the loopholes to prevent illegal aliens from getting taxpayer supplied insurance. I don’t get it, BHO says that this can’t happen but now a few days later there is an amendment that prevents this thing that can’t happen.  Makes me think that BHO was bending the truth a bit and probably knew it.

Of course the solution that the Senate is currently thinking about is to use Social Security numbers.  Seems reasonable.  SS numbers have become the defacto national identity card that we need. I have ranted on this before, if we would just have national identity cards then we would control much of the illegal problem that we have.

Below are a few clips from a recent article in the Wall Street Journal:

A key Democratic senator said Friday that lawmakers planned to toughen provisions in a health bill to prevent illegal immigrants from enjoying benefits, in a Democratic response to concerns by some Republicans.

Members of the Senate Finance Committee met Friday, and Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) said they wanted to use Social Security numbers to ensure that illegal immigrants weren’t eligible for subsidies envisioned as part of a plan to expand health coverage.

President Obama’s health-reform proposal has sparked heated debate over whether the plan benefits illegal immigrants, as demonstrated by Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie” outburst. WSJ’s Elizabeth Williamson breaks down the details of the proposed new government-run insurance plan.

Still up in the air is whether illegal immigrants would be banned from participating in federally regulated insurance “exchanges” under Democrats’ health bills, even if the immigrants were willing to use their own money to buy policies. On Friday, a coalition of three dozen faith-based groups wrote to Congress to express anger at the proposed ban.

I agree until I disagree – Senator John Kerry

I agree until I disagree – Senator John Kerry

We are all familiar with the famous quote by Senator Kerry: “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”  Now it seems that Mr. Kerry has had another opportunity to change his mind.  He is now in favor of Governors of States to appoint an individual to fill an open Senate seat. 

Four or five years ago, Senator Kerry was concerned that his seat would be open if the USA would have been foolish enough to vote this weak-spine individual to the office of the President of the United States.  At that time, he supported Senator Kennedy’s successful efforts to change Massachusetts state law regarding the filling of Senate seats.

I do not live in Massachusetts.  I have no vote there and my opinion on their local politics should have little weight.  However, aren’t the good residents of Massachusetts tired of flip-flop Kerry?  Please remove him from our national agony and get him out of office.  Surely, there is another good Democrat that your beautiful and important state can find.

The following Wall Street Journal opinion actually describes this the best.  It is short, so despite my best efforts, I have been unable to edit this opinion and still retain its message.  I apologize to the Wall Street Journal for borrowing their content in entirety as it is not my typical technique.

John Kerry, the former junior Senator from Massachusetts, was back in Boston Wednesday, urging the state legislature to change the law governing U.S. Senate vacancies. The seat held by Edward Kennedy from 1962 until his death last month is to be filled in a January special election. Mr. Kerry, echoing a letter Kennedy wrote not long before he died, asked lawmakers to enact legislation allowing Governor Deval Patrick to appoint a Senator to serve in the interim.

“What Ted proposed is a plan that is hardly radical,” Mr. Kerry declared in his prepared testimony. “It’s hardly even unprecedented, even in Massachusetts.” That’s for sure. The law in the Bay State provided for interim appointment by the Governor as recently as 2004. That, of course, was the year that Mr. Kerry won the Democratic nomination for President. Just in case he won, the state legislature changed the law to strip the Governor of this power. That change also came at Senator Kennedy’s urging.

What changed in the ensuing five years? In 2004, the Governor, Mitt Romney, was a Republican. Mr. Patrick is a Democrat. So are the overwhelming number of state lawmakers, who overrode Mr. Romney’s veto. Raw partisan advantage explains why Mr. Kerry, like his departed colleague, was for the 2004 change before he was against it.

RIP Ted Kennedy

RIP Ted Kennedy

While I didn’t always agree with Senator Kennedy’s positions on certain issues, there is no question that the man was always trying to advance the care of his fellow man. The “liberal lion of the Senate” spent decades in public service but always lived in the shadow of his older “over achieving” brothers, Joseph, John, and Robert who all died at a young age and due to tragic circumstances.

There will be a variety of obituaries on the Senator, so I am not going to link to any individual one.  Just do a search on Google News if you want to read more.