Posts

GOP Splits Over Obama’s Immigration Offer

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller The high-stakes overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws faces a little-noticed obstacle — the reluctance of many GOP legislators to accept the political trade offered by President Barack Obama and his fellow progressives.

“We’re split all over the place,” Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks told The Daily Caller.

It’s a fight that combines Obama’s progressives with chicken processors and software moguls, pitting them against about 200 GOP legislators, who are looking for ways to not anger any employers, or any of their donors or all-important voters.

Democrats pushing the Senate’s complex bill would quickly earn boost their voting bloc to the tune of 11 million amnestied illegals, plus 22 million new immigrants that would be welcomed by 2023. The potential gain for GOP legislators? They could provide their business allies with immediate access to the 33 million immigrant workers and customers, plus up to two million temporary guest-workers per year.

But most GOP legislators are balking at the trade, partly because the GOP’s own voters strongly oppose the import of more workers during an extended recession.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP-Leadership-Backed CR Funds Reg Forcing Christians to Act Against Faith

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: APThe continuing resolution Congress approved last night with the help of the Republican leaders in both the House and Senate funds and permits implementation of an Obamacare regulation that forces Christians to act against their faith by forcing them to buy and/or provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs and devices.

An earlier version of the CR that the Republican-controlled House passed on Sept. 29 had included language that would have at least “delayed” the regulation’s impact on religious liberty until Jan. 1, 2015.

That language said that until then the administration could not force employers, insurers or individuals to buy or provide insurance coverage for an item or service if they had “moral or religious objections” to it.

However, the Republican House leadership only stood by that position for one day. In the version of the CR they pushed through the House on Sept. 30, they removed the one-year “delay” in forcing Christians to act against their faith.

The final CR permits the administration to begin forcing Christians to act against their faith as soon as they have to buy or provide an Obamacare-compliant insurance plan.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Senate GOP’s Surrender

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: National Review House Republicans had a joke in the mid-1990s that the Democrats were their opponents, but the Senate was the enemy. Today’s House Republicans are beginning to develop the same sentiment — but this time, it’s not a joke.

When Representative Paul Ryan last week used the pages of the Wall Street Journal to suggest a way out of the shutdown/debt-ceiling morass, conservatives complained that Ryan’s column did not even mention Obamacare. Yet now Ryan himself, less than a week after some conservatives accused him of sandbagging their efforts, is complaining that Senate Republicans are sandbagging his own compromise proposal just as it seemed to be gaining traction.

Conservatives were right about Ryan, and Ryan is right about the Senate. The Senate’s apostasy, though, appears substantially worse.

At least Ryan’s proposal aimed to accomplish conservative goals: long-term savings, entitlement reform, new limits on the coddling of federal employees, and a simplified tax code with lower corporate rates. Its deliberate refusal to include even the slightest nick in Obamacare’s edifice provided evidence that Ryan is far from averse to disappointing conservatives — but at least he could claim to be keeping his eye on the long-term goal of greater fiscal responsibility.

Nothing like that can be said about the Senate plan whose details began to emerge on Saturday. It would essentially forfeit all leverage associated with both the debt ceiling and the annual appropriations process by providing a largely “clean” spending resolution through March while raising the debt ceiling enough to last through January. The only “concession” it would extract from the Left would be a two-year delay — not even a repeal but merely a delay — in the medical-device tax. The full repeal of this tax already enjoys majority support in both houses of Congress, and Barack Obama has indicated it is not central to his health-insurance Leviathan.

Read more from this story HERE.

Boehner says Obama Rejected GOP Plan to End Shutdown as Negotiations Shift to Senate

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty Images By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAILY MAIL REPORTER.

House Speaker John Boehner today told fellow Republicans that his talks with President Barack Obama have stalled.

‘The Senate needs to hold tough,’ Representative Greg Walden said Boehner told House GOP lawmakers. ‘The president now isn’t negotiating with us.’

Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government in exchange for a budget negotiating process.

Attention now turns to the Senate, where a bipartisan group of Senators are working on a separate plan to reopen the government.

Word of the negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and the top Republican, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, emerged as the Senate, as expected, rejected a Democratic effort to raise the government’s borrowing limit through next year.

Read more from this story HERE.

______________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: APFocus on Senate after Obama rejects House plan

By JAKE SHERMAN, JOHN BRESNAHAN and BURGESS EVERETT.

Speaker John Boehner told House Republicans Saturday morning that his efforts to strike a deal with President Barack Obama are at a standstill.

There is no agreement, Boehner said in a room in the Capitol Saturday, and there are no negotiations between House Republicans and the White House, since Obama rejected the speaker’s effort to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks and reopen government while setting up a budget negotiating process.

With that, a familiar dynamic has resurfaced 12 days into the government shutdown and five days before Treasury says the nation runs out of borrowing authority: The pendulum has swung back to Senate Republicans, who now look more likely to cut a deal with Obama to end the first government shutdown since 1996, and avoid the first default on U.S. debt in history.

After the news that talks between Boehner and Obama have broken down, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) emerged on the floor to emphasize that the nation’s eyes are firmly fixed on the chamber.

Read more from this story HERE.

House GOP Blinks: Will Lift Debt and Reopen Government (+video)

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters House Republicans have sent the White House a revised proposal to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks, as well as reopen government through December 15th, which was their original spending proposal before the partial shutdown. The revised GOP plan reflects the demands Obama made in a meeting with House GOP Leaders on Thursday. It also reflects the unwillingness of the DC GOP to face a fiscal showdown with Democrats.

Aside from reopening the government and agreeing to raise America’s debt over the current $16.7 trillion limit, the Republicans made several other concession to President Obama and the Democrats. One such example is that Obamacare would receive funding. The Republicans would get to take out a portion of the president’s signature legislation, but the law would substantially remain intact. The AP reports:

Under a proposal she and other GOP senators have been developing, a medical device tax that helps finance the health care law would be repealed, and millions of individuals eligible for subsidies to purchase health insurance under the program would be subject to stronger income verification.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Meets with Obama: Deal or No Deal?

/1 Comment/in , /by

By Fox News.

Republican lawmakers scrambled back to the drawing board late Thursday to modify their plan for a short-term increase in the debt ceiling, after President Obama apparently pushed back on the proposal during a high-stakes White House meeting.

The meeting broke up with no deal announced, despite optimism earlier in the day that the two sides might agree. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid also cast doubt on House Speaker John Boehner’s plan. The day ended like it began, with Americans still unsure when the partial government shutdown will end, and the financial markets still uncertain as to whether the country might miss next week’s deadline to raise the debt ceiling.

Nevertheless, both sides claimed to be working together, describing the initial meeting as positive as they worked toward a possible agreement.

A statement from House Republicans said Obama and GOP leaders agreed to continue talking “throughout the night.”

Another key meeting, between Obama and Senate Republicans, is scheduled for Friday morning.

Read more from this story HERE.

_________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICOBarack Obama to GOP: ‘What’s it going to take?’

By JAKE SHERMAN, BURGESS EVERETT and JOHN BRESNAHAN.

President Barack Obama and House Republicans clashed in a meeting Thursday afternoon over how soon the government can be reopened, even as the GOP offered to lift the debt limit for six weeks, according to sources familiar with the session.

House Republicans told Obama at the White House that they could reopen the federal government by early next week if the president and Senate Democrats agree to their debt-ceiling proposal. After the debt ceiling is lifted, a House GOP aide said they would seek some additional concessions in a government funding bill.

Obama repeatedly pressed House Republicans to open the government, asking them “what’s it going to take to” end the shutdown, those sources said. He questioned why the government should remain closed if both sides agreed to engage in good-faith negotiations on the budget, according to a Democratic source briefed on the meeting.

The meeting was described by both sides as cordial but inconclusive. Obama acknowledged to Republicans that notable progress had been made. Sources described the meeting without attribution, because the meeting was private.

Aides will continue the discussion through the night to see if they could find common ground on how to move forward on the debt limit and government funding. The short-term debt hike — which was originally proposed at the closed GOP meeting Thursday — did not include plans to reopen the government.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sowell: Inarticulate Republicans

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: National Review If the continued existence of mathematics depended on the ability of the Republicans to defend the proposition that two plus two equals four, it would probably mean the end of mathematics and of all the things that require mathematics.

The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, epitomized what has been wrong with the Republicans for decades when he emerged from a White House meeting last Wednesday, went over to the assembled microphones, briefly expressed his disgust with the Democrats’ intransigence, and walked on away.

We are in the midst of a national crisis, immediately affecting millions of Americans and potentially affecting the kind of country this will become if Obamacare goes into effect — and yet, with multiple television-network cameras focused on Speaker Boehner as he emerged from the White House, he couldn’t be bothered to prepare a statement that would help clarify a confused situation, full of fallacies and lies.

Boehner is not unique in having a blind spot when it comes to recognizing the importance of articulation and the need to put some serious time and effort into presenting your case in a way that people outside the Beltway would understand. On the contrary, he has been all too typical of Republican leaders in recent decades.

Read more from this story HERE.

Democrats say House Vote for Back Pay Shows GOP Wants Government to Stay Closed

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERSThe Republican-led House passed a bill Saturday to give thousands of furloughed federal workers back pay when the government reopens, but Democrats promptly characterized it as a signal the GOP doesn’t want the partial shutdown to end.

“Now we’re saying to federal employees: We’re going to pay you when this is all over with,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said minutes after the 407-to-0 House vote. “But right now, you just stay home … watch TV, play chess, whatever you’re going to do, because we won’t let you work.”

The Senate is expected to OK it as well but adjourned Saturday without a vote. The Democrat-controlled chamber will not scheduled a vote until at least Monday afternoon, when members return to Washington.

The back-and-forth comes on the fifth day of the partial government shutdown and marks the second straight weekend that members of Congress are on Capitol Hill trying to agree on a spending bill to end the saga.

At the same time, House Democrats extended Reid’s talking point while also adding that both sides have agreed to spending levels for a temporary funding bill to end the partial shutdown, so House Republicans should drop their effort to defund or delay ObamaCare and vote this weekend to fully re-open the government.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama to GOP: ‘If You’re Being Disrespected, It’s Because of That Attitude You’ve Got’ (+video)

/36 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP/Charles Dharapak

Photo Credit: AP/Charles Dharapak

President Obama lectured Republicans about their “attitude” problem on Thursday, telling an audience in suburban Maryland that Republican “extremists” are the only thing standing in the way of a “yes-or-no vote” on a continuing resolution to fund the federal government.

He quoted a House Republican as refusing to be “disrespected” by failing to “get something” out of the CR vote.

“If you’re being disrespected, it’s because of that attitude you’ve got — that you deserve to get something for doing your job,” Obama said. “Everybody here just does their job.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Ted Cruz Might Just Have Won the Future for the GOP

/9 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: The Washington Post

Photo Credit: The Washington Post

Make no mistake about it: the “extended speech” by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had absolutely nothing to do with defunding the Affordable Care Act—or even delaying it for one go*da** day.

As the long list of Senate Republicans who declined to back a full-blown, fill-your-hands-you-son-of-a-bitch filibuster over Obamacare could tell you, it’s a done deal that the president’s consistently unpopular health-care law is going forward even if the government shuts down. Come next week, the enrollment period is going to start, and come January 1, 2014, the plan will kick into gear despite every reason to believe it will be a clusterfudge of epic proportions.

So what exactly was Cruz doing up there, hogging the limelight on C-SPAN’s low-wattage webstream for a couple of hours, if he wasn’t serious about stopping Obamacare? He was playing his part in a pretty goddamned brilliant strategy to win the future not for himself but for the Republican Party.

Cruz and his fellow Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) are the best-known of the gaggle of legislators that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) denounced as “wacko birds” earlier this year. “It’s always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone,” sputtered McCain in the wake of Paul’s immensely popular and influential filibuster, which called much-needed attention to the Obama administration’s glib attitude toward civil liberties and executive branch overreach.

Read more from this story HERE.