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Defunding Obamacare Already Sees Success

Photo Credit: WNDBy Garth Kant

Whether the GOP should press for debilitating cuts to Obamacare – and risk a government shutdown – is the talk of Capitol Hill, but a most important point may be getting lost in the chatter: The strategy is already working.

A discussion with the “House Doctor” indicates the strategy to defund Obamacare is already largely in effect and has scored some significant victories.

Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, is uniquely qualified to assess Obamacare after spending nearly three decades practicing medicine in North Texas, serving as co-chair of the Congressional Health Caucus and authoring the WND book “Doctor in the House” with its prescriptions for more efficient and less expensive health care.

Burgess told WND, “In the last continuing resolution, there was a billion dollars cut out of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. There was well over $300 million cut out of the Treasury Department budget for implementation of activities regarding the Affordable Care Act. So, those were some serious sideswipes.”

The doctor-turned-lawmaker said GOP efforts to limit the implementation of Obamacare are already seeing results. Read more from this story HERE.

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Government shutdown looms over ObamaCare

By Alexander Bolton. ObamaCare is at the center of a rapidly escalating fight that threatens to shut the government down this fall.

Senate Republicans, including two members of the leadership, are coalescing around a proposal to block any government funding resolution that includes money for the implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

But such a move is a nonstarter for President Obama and congressional Democrats. Republicans have tried this maneuver in Obama’s first term, only to back off later to the chagrin of Tea Party leaders.

This time, GOP lawmakers are emboldened by problems plaguing the administration’s ObamaCare implementation. But that zeal could put Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a tough spot. Both leaders have downplayed previous talk of shuttering the government.

In the House, 64 Republicans have signed onto a letter pressing Boehner not to bring any legislation funding ObamaCare to the floor. Read more from this story HERE.

Charles Krauthammer Takes On Sally Kohn: Detroit is Not A GOP Failure, ‘It’s Been Run by The Democrats for 60 Years’ (+video)

Photo Credit: YouTubeBy Jason Howerton. Charles Krauthammer hit back at liberal pundit Sally Kohn after she claimed conservatives will “try to use Detroit falsely as an example to push more austerity.” Kohn’s comments fall in line with those of a number of liberal and progressive commentators who are seemingly attempting to pin Detroit’s collapse on GOP policies, despite the fact that the city has been run by Democrats and progressives for decades.

That’s the point that Krauthammer hammered home.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: ReutersDetroit bankruptcy raises concerns about other US cites under huge retiree debt

By Fox News. The recent bankruptcy filing in Detroit is raising red flags about other major U.S. cities also dealing with billions in under-funded retiree benefits, prompting the question — who might be next?

Just last week, Chicago’s credit rating was downgraded as a result of its $19 billion in under-funded pension liabilities.

Moody’s Investors Service called the liabilities “very large and growing” and warned that Chicago, the country’s third-largest city, faces a “tremendous strain’’ in trying to meet future funding requirements and public safety demands.

A similar scenario, though decades in the making, largely doomed Detroit, whose average police response time has grown to more than 50 minutes.

And like Michigan, which appears in no position to bail out Detroit, Illinois is dealing with its own $97 billion pension shortfall. Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Allows NSA, Syria Debate

Photo Credit: APA long-delayed Pentagon appropriations bill is heading to the floor after the House Rules Committee voted Monday night to allow a structured debate including amendments related to NSA surveillance at home and the flow of military aid overseas in the Mideast.

Altogether, 100 amendments are promised consideration, but those affecting the NSA — funded in the bill — and military aid to anti-government forces in Syria are clearly the most sensitive politically for the Republican leadership.

Indeed, conservatives led by Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) had threatened to defeat the rule if votes were not permitted on a bipartisan proposal to narrow the ability of the NSA to collect private call records and metadata on telephone customers in the U.S.

“It’s not a partisan issue. It’s something that cuts across the entire political spectrum,” Amash told the Rules panel. And he argued that the amendment seeks only to rein in the NSA’s “blanket authority” under the PATRIOT Act to collect records and the metadata.

Read more from this story HERE.

Potential Primary Challenger to McConnell Courting Conservative Groups

Photo Credit: APKentucky investment executive Matt Bevin has met with some of the nation’s top conservative groups ahead of an expected GOP primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, sources told POLITICO.

Bevin, a partner in the Louisville-based hedge fund Waycross Partners, has not publicly confirmed that he will run against McConnell. But an entity dubbed “Matt Bevin for Senate” has reserved airtime in multiple Kentucky TV markets starting this week, and spokespeople for Bevin and McConnell traded on-record barbs last Friday.

In the run-up to his anticipated campaign, Bevin has spoken with leaders of at least three national right-leaning advocacy groups: the widely feared Club for Growth, the Jim DeMint-founded Senate Conservatives Fund and the Madison Project, a small-government group chaired by former Kansas Rep. Jim Ryun.

Those organizations aren’t yet commenting on Bevin, given that he hasn’t declared his campaign.

While the all-but-announced McConnell challenger is believed to be wealthy enough to commit some personal resources to the race, it’s not clear whether he can – or will – fully self-fund a campaign. A key test of his viability may be whether conservative outside groups are willing to give him back-up on the airwaves.

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP House Leadership Abandons Defense of Marriage

Photo Credit: APThe Republican leaders in the House of Representatives are no longer planning to defend traditional marriage at the federal level.

By their own admission in a case challenging the definition of “spouse” as applied to veterans’ benefits, lawyers for the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, or BLAG, controlled by House Republicans, announced Thursday they will “no longer defend” the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, in federal court.

Documents hosted by BuzzFeed in the case of McLaughlin v. Panetta reveal GOP House attorneys essentially believe the Supreme Court has settled the issue.

“The Windsor decision necessarily resolves the issue of DOMA Section 3′s constitutionality in this case,” BLAG attorneys wrote. “While the question of whether 38 U.S.C. § 101(3), (31) is constitutional remains open, the House has determined, in light of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Windsor, that it no longer will defend that statute.

“Accordingly,” the lawyers filed, “the House now seeks leave to withdraw as a party defendant.”

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Address: Permanently Delay ‘Massive, Burdensome’ Obamacare for Everybody (+video)

Obamacare should be permanently delayed for everybody, not just for businesses, because it is “so massive, burdensome, bureaucratic and confusing that it’s collapsing under its own weight,” Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi said in Saturday’s GOP weekly address.

Enzi pointed out that in 2009, he warned that President Barack Obama and Democrats were moving ahead with a healthcare reform plan that would cost all Americans for generations to come, and said his predictions are now coming true.

“All across the country health insurance rates are skyrocketing,” the Wyoming Republican said. “Employees are losing coverage through their employers. Families are struggling to cope with higher costs and less choice. Businesses aren’t hiring full-time employees.”

He said nobody likes to be right when their predictions come true in ways that are harmful, but “it’s time to admit that this partisan experiment in government-run health care is failing.”

When the Obama administration pulled back on the employer mandate, delaying it by an extra year, it had to admit that one of the key pieces of the law isn’t working.

Read more from this story HERE.

Tom Marino, GOP Congressman, Floats Idea Of Filing Criminal Charges Against Obama

Photo Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll CallRep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) revealed in a Thursday interview that he is exploring avenues by which members of Congress could try to pursue criminal charges against President Barack Obama.

Earlier this month, the Obama administration announced a delay in the implementation of an Affordable Care Act provision that will require businesses employing more than 50 people to provide them with health insurance. The delay, which puts off the requirement until 2015, drew much criticism from the GOP. The Treasury Department has since released a letter defending the decision as a means of providing “transition relief” for companies.

To say that Marino is critical of the decision may be an understatement. During an interview on local Scranton, Pa., station “94.3 The Talker,” the congressman slammed both the president for allegedly taking illegal action and Attorney General Eric Holder for failing to do anything about it.

“If the chief law enforcer of the country [Holder] will not enforce the law,” said Marino, “and the president decides to break the law because he doesn’t like it, there has to be another mechanism by which we in Congress can … see if there are criminal charges we can file.”

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Immigration Plan Devised by Communist Party

Photo Credit: WNDThe U.S. Senate’s “Gang of Eight” immigration-reform plan, as well as a strikingly similar plan now being backed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and a bi-partisan House “Gang,” both offer the “roadmap to citizenship” originally conceived and carefully developed by members of the Communist Party USA working within the Democratic Party and the radical left activist network for the purpose of using amnestied illegals to build a “permanent progressive majority.”

That is the inescapable conclusion readers will draw after reading the forthcoming book by acclaimed researcher and blogger Trevor Loudon, titled “The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress.” Although not yet published, Loudon agreed to allow readers to preview one chapter, titled “Latino Immigrants: Tools to Ensure a ‘Governing Coalition’ for the Left.”

In the book, Loudon exhaustively documents the Left’s longtime agenda regarding illegal aliens and how its activists have gone about implementing it. He provides irrefutable proof that the entire immigration-reform movement was the brainchild of American communists and that their goal has long been to establish unchallengeable political supremacy.

According to Loudon, the Communist Party USA has influenced U.S. policy toward illegals since at least the 1960s. He traces the history, showing how communists and communist-founded organizations slowly built the movement from the ground up. While other groups certainly joined the effort, the communists were always at the center.

For example, he tells the story of CPUSA member Bert Corona, the “Communist Father of the ‘Immigrants Rights’ movement.” In 1964, Corona, Cesar Chavez and future Democratic Socialists of America member Dolores Huerta forced Congress to end the guest worker “Bracero” program. Later, Corona sought ways to address “problems confronting Mexicans in the United States who had no visas or citizenship documents” – in other words, illegal aliens – including “how to defend persons detained by immigration authorities and how to help immigrants acquire disability and unemployment insurance and welfare.”

Along the way, Corona founded and/or led numerous organizations, such as the Mexican American Political Association, or MAPA, Centro de Action Social Autonoma, or CASA, and La Hermandad Mexicana Nacional (the National Mexican Brotherhood), all influential in the “immigrant rights” movement. The Communist Party still has strong influence in MAPA, which acts as a king-maker for Democratic Party candidates in the Los Angeles area.

Antonio Villaraigosa, former Los Angeles mayor and 2012 chairman of the Democratic National Convention, got his start with CASA. He was also a former member of the Communist Venceremos Brigades and worked with the Brigades in Cuba. As mayor of Los Angeles, he was “the most pro-illegal immigrant mayor the city has ever seen.”

Lorenzo Torrez, a long-time organizer of the Arizona Communist Party, paved the way for Communist-backed Congressmen Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva to win congressional seats in Arizona. He organized opposition to Southwestern states attempting to prevent illegal immigration and also helped change voting patterns across the entire region.

Loudon’s book identifies many influential communist and socialist politicians holding positions of influence in Congress and state and local governing bodies. For example, Rep. Judy Chu, D.-Calif., writes Loudon, has “a thirty-year history with the now defunct pro-China Communist Workers Party (CWP) and its surviving networks.” Chu is an advocate for “progressive” immigration reform and was a co-sponsor of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill introduced by Rep. Luis Gutierrez in 2010. In 2012, Chu served as co-chair of President Obama’s reelection campaign.

Today’s Communist Party USA cites the current amnesty effort as its top legislative priority. Its official position is virtually indistinguishable from that of the Democratic Party:

As Congress begins to draft legislation, immigrant rights groups and the labor movement including the AFL-CIO and its constituent organizations, SEIU, Change to Win, and many faith-based groups are mobilizing for comprehensive immigration reform with legalization, a path to citizenship and workers’ rights …

This legislative and political battle is also at the top of the agenda of the Communist Party USA and Young Communist League. Our program includes stopping deportations now as legislation is being adopted, and calling for legalization with a clear and speedy road map to citizenship for all 11 million. Future workers who come should have the same opportunity.

But it was left to Eliseo Medina to let the cat out of the bag. Medina, writes Loudon, “is both the country’s most influential ‘immigration reform’ activist and a Marxist. He is an Honorary Chair of Democratic Socialists of America”:

Medina learned voting strategies from Fred Ross, a Saul Alinsky-trained activist and the brains behind Cesar Chavez. Ross was to eventually have an impact on the national stage. Fred Ross conceived the voter outreach strategy that not only elected Communist Party affiliate Ed Roybal as Los Angeles’ first Latino Council member in 1949, but also laid the groundwork for the Obama campaign’s Latino voter outreach campaign in 2008 …

Medina worked hand in hand with UNITE HERE President John Wilhelm, to change AFL-CIO immigration policy at the 1999 Los Angeles Convention. Then, claiming U.S. immigration policy is “broken and needs to be fixed,” the AFL-CIO on February 16, 2000, called for a new amnesty for millions of undocumented workers and the repeal of the 1986 law that criminalized hiring them …

According to the SEIU website, Medina has played the leading role in uniting Change to Win and AFL-CIO behind the immigration reform movement …

In 2009, Medina said, “We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three? If we have eight million new voters … We will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle …”

Republican support

But why would Republicans get behind such a plan? Some astute political observers advise that when politicians appear to be promoting agendas against their own interest, follow the money. As Center for Immigration Studies Executive Director Mark Krikorian put it, “It’s no surprise that the Republicans supporting this thing are the ones with ties to the Chamber of Commerce, not ordinary voters.”

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and others have also stuffed the Senate bill with special perks for their backers – in Graham’s case, a provision granting more visas to workers for South Carolina’s meat industry. Rubio supposedly sought an amendment to assist Florida’s cruise-ship industry although he insists this is untrue.

But even if big business benefits, the cheap labor advantages are only temporary. Once illegal aliens are fully legalized, businesses will be required to provide just as much in pay and benefits as they pay American workers. In the meantime, however, it is widely assumed those workers will take jobs from American citizens, depress wages and increase unemployment. Moreover, in many key swing states, projected amnesties will swamp the rolls of the unemployed (see table).

Proposed Senate legislation delays full citizenship for 13 years, but if a bill passes, follow-on legislation is expected to accelerate that timeframe.

However, it is not even necessary for illegal aliens to achieve citizenship to significantly impact the vote in key districts. As a recent report for Capital Research Center detailed, Democrats are already employing illegals to boost get-out-the-vote efforts among Hispanics and won a major victory in a local Arizona election in 2011. They hope this strategy will win them key swing states, especially Texas, whose electoral votes will, many calculate, provide guaranteed Democratic presidents for the foreseeable future.

House Speaker John Boehner, R.-Ohio, has made much of his intention to ignore the Senate proposal and “do our own bill.” What the House has come up with, however, is considered by most to be “Rubio Lite.”

Boehner has enlisted former Republican VP candidate Ryan to promote the House plan. Ryan and the Republicans are working with some far-left House Democrats, including Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a former member of the Marxist-Leninist Puerto Rican Socialist Party, and Xavier Becerra, both members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and both longtime amnesty activists.

In an interview following Senate passage of the Gang of Eight bill, Fox News’ Sean Hannity pounded Ryan on the issue of border security:

HANNITY: So, my sources have been telling me, Congressman, that you guys are considering a five-year temporary legal status, and then [if] the border security measure is not met in five years, that that would be revoked.

RYAN: That’s right. That’s right.

HANNITY: I don’t believe that would ever happen.

RYAN: Well, look, they can’t get – what a person would want to have, is they would come out of the shadows, they get put on probation, they pay taxes, pay fines, learning English, learning civics. If they break the terms of their probation, they can be deported. And if the border is not secure by that time, if the verification system is not up and running, they can’t get – not only does that status go away, they can’t legal permanent residence …

So, illegal aliens would be granted legal status immediately, but five years down the road, if the fence still isn’t built and e-verify still isn’t being used, then their legal status would be revoked. Given that the Department of Homeland Security is already allegedly ignoring border security –with immigration and customs agents suing their own agency for failing to enforce the law – many voters place little confidence in political promises of future enforcement.

Boehner has announced a closed-door meeting with the entire Republican caucus, scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday, July 10, to decide the immigration issue, a meeting Politico calls “the most important day for immigration reform.”

Although this meeting was originally requested by Rep. Steve King, R.-Iowa, to air grave concerns shared by many Republicans over this “reform,” it is unclear if this meeting was the House speaker’s answer to King or his own idea. In either case, many fear Boehner will use the meeting as a vehicle to impose the plan as though it were a done deal.

In the meantime, Senate and House opponents have been painstakingly highlighting what they consider to be glaring flaws in these proposals:

Every single border security provision in the Senate bill, including the hire of 20,000 Border Patrol agents, denying amnesty to criminals, building fences and installing surveillance devices, can be waived by the Homeland Security secretary.
Both the House and Senate proposals emphasize the path to citizenship – the centerpiece of communist efforts – while making border security both vague and secondary.

Both bills provide a $5,000 incentive for companies to hire the newly legalized illegal aliens instead of Americans, since the aliens would not be subject to the Obamacare coverage mandate.

Although politicians and the media have settled on the claim that there are 11 million illegal aliens, the actual number may well be closer to 20 million to 30 million. There were 10 million in 1996, a mere 10 years after Reagan’s amnesty, and it is doubtful only one million more have been added in the ensuing 17 years. Since 1990, Border agents have apprehended on average more than 1 million illegal aliens per year, almost all from Mexico.

When the Reagan amnesty became law, the intention was to naturalize only 1.2 million people, but the actual figure turned out to be 2.7 million. Statistics on illegal immigration have longed tended to be underestimated, sometimes vastly so.

Thus, current proposals provide a path to citizenship for as many as 20 to 30 million illegal aliens here now, plus relatives who will be brought in through chain migration and at least 75 percent of those who will come in the future – virtually endless amnesty – while efforts to secure the border are almost certain to be insufficient.

Representatives Steve King, R-Iowa; Louie Gohmert, R-Texas; Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif.; Trey Goudy, R-S.C.; Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.; and others – 70 House members in all – as well as senators Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.; Mike Lee, R-Utah and others have sought to highlight the dangers of this legislation, with Rep. King recently stating:

If the House passed border security and interior security and sent that over to the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to take that up. Chuck Schumer has said that citizenship has to be part of the deal. It’s not going to go to the president’s desk, so why would the House take up anything if there’s no prospect that we’re going to improve the immigration situation, just the prospect that they’re going to jam amnesty on us?

With polls showing more than two-thirds of Americans don’t believe “immigration laws would be enforced in the future if illegal aliens were given amnesty,” it is clear that passage of the current Republican-backed bill may indeed fulfill the agenda of its communist originators – the creation of a permanent Democrat voting majority, guaranteeing permanent control of the United States government by leftist progressives.

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James Simpson is an investigative journalist, businessman and former economist and budget examiner for the White House Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Simpson’s work is published at AIM.org, American Thinker, Breitbart, Capital Research Center, Washington Times, WorldNet Daily and elsewhere. He is also featured in Curtis Bowers’ award winning documentary Agenda: Grinding America Down.

Experts: Both Parties Selling Out American Workers with Amnesty Bill

Photo Credit: WND“Self-preservation has always been regarded as the first law of nature…Those who favor unrestricted immigration care nothing for the people. They are simply desirous of flooding the country with unskilled as well as skilled labor of other lands for the purpose of breaking down American standards.” – Samuel Gompers, founder, American Federation of Labor

The Gang of Eight’s Immigration Reform bill was celebrated by groups as diverse as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, LaRaza, Karl Rove and the new leadership of the AFL-CIO. Some observers say this is an example of real political compromise. Others say this is insider political corruption at its worst.

Sen. Ted Cruz says the alliance is not only suspicious, but “egregious” if the goal is actually economic or humanitarian. He says that buried deep in SB 744 is verbiage that allows the IRS to place a $5,000 fee on any employer who hires a legal African-American, Hispanic, union member, or other legal, disadvantaged applicant:

“I filed an amendment that would have corrected one of the most egregious aspects of the Gang of Eight bill as it intersects with Obamacare legislation, namely a penalty imposed on U.S. employers for hiring U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents. This bill says if an employer hires a citizen or a legal immigrant, the IRS can impose a $5,000 penalty on that employer. But if the employer instead hires someone with RPI [provisional] status [for illegal aliens], that penalty will go away. That is utterly and completely indefensible.

“Nobody in this body wants to see African-American unemployment go up. Nobody wants to see Hispanic unemployment go up, youth unemployment go up, union household unemployment go up, legal immigrant unemployment go up. Yet every one of those will happen if this Gang of Eight bill passes without fixing this problem. If that happens, all 100 members of the U.S. Senate will be accountable to our constituents for explaining why we voted to put a federal penalty on hiring U.S. citizens and hiring legal immigrants. I hope this body will choose to pass my amendment and fix this grave defect in the Gang of Eight legislation,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Citing Abuses, House GOP Wants to Gut IRS’s Budget by One-Quarter (+video)

Photo Credit: Fox NewsHouse Republicans want the IRS to pay for targeting political groups and are pushing legislation that would cut the tax collecting agency’s budget by $3 billion — nearly a quarter of what it received last fiscal year.

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to start “marking up” the spending bill Wednesday.

While it’s unlikely that such a severe cut will pass both congressional chambers, it does give lawmakers another opportunity to verbally punish the agency for unfairly scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

The bill would place additional restrictions on spending at the IRS and prohibit employees from implementing the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act – commonly referred to as ObamaCare. It also bans conferences, the production of videos and curbs what lawmakers see as a number of abuses at the IRS.

Read more from this story HERE.