Every week on Monday morning , the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question:How Do You feel About The 'Cromnibus' Spending Bill? What Does it Signify Politically?
The Independent Sentinel : I will take the last part of the question first. It signifies that the Republicans aren't willing to accept the results of the last election. It's a Boehner sell-out.
I don't want to say too much until I see what the new congress does. If they do nothing, it's time for a third party. They're trying to shove Jeb Bush on us and have decided that he, Romney and Christie are our only presidential choices for 2016.
The bill funds the unconstitutional amnesty, Obamacare, EPA regulations, abortions, et cetera. The bargaining chip is the DHS. What are they going to do? Tell Barack Obama no amnesty or they will stop funding the Border Patrol?
The Noisy Room : Richard A. Viguerie is absolutely right when he calls most of the Republican leadership 'boneless wonders.' And as Senator Rand Paul correctly labeled the Cromnibus, it is an 'abomination of a bill,' and it passed narrowly thanks to the betrayal of John Boehner.
Boehner lied himself silly as he did exactly what I predicted he would do; he claimed that the Republicans didn't dare shut down the government and had to pass the Cromnibus to find out what was in it, a la Pelosi. He also claimed the good in the bill outweighed the bad. So many lies in such a short time. He went all the way with Obama, knowing that the President would kick him out of bed in the morning. Conservatives were Grubered by Boehner and the other Progressive RINOs who wanted everythingpassed; they also gave Obama *ALL* he asked for and oh, so much more.
Every Republican who voted for the Cromnibus must be targeted in primaries and gotten rid of. They are cancerous to the Republic; they are Progressives on the Right side of the aisle and are every bit as much a danger to our country as the Progressive Liberals are. Every one of these Republicans
owns this. They weren't 'forced' into anything. They chose this because of money and power. It's as simple as that.
The implications basically include that unless there is a thunderous turn around, the Republican Party is done. A third party will rise over this betrayal. Conservatives have had enough of the lying RINOs and
being manipulated. My hope is that Sarah Palin will run in 2016 with Ted Cruz at her side, or Ted Cruz and Mike Lee or Alan West. It is the only chance left for the Republican Party as it now stands.
One last minute rider in particular, a provision that would effectively raise the amount that high net-worth donors can contribute to political party committees from $97,250 to $777,600, was an egregious slap in the
face to the Tea Party and conservatives. It basically ensures that fat cats are the only ones who can afford to run and it is a blatant attempt to shut out Tea Party candidates.
The rider would give the Republican and Democrat Party establishments huge advantages in battles with primary challengers to incumbents.
The bill will obviously pass and it is the exact antithesis of what America wants. But this is not a new political alignment. Warren is a die-hard socialist - the bill wasn't Progressive enough for her. Conservatives want the polar opposite on this.
Are the Republicans so deaf, dumb and clueless that they can't battle corrupt Democrats even when they control the House and the Senate? Or are they just as corrupt as the Progressive Liberals? Both is the answer.
Just more arrogant elitist bull crap, slapping each other on the back, wallowing in their greed for power and money. they feel as though the party will never end. But walking on the wild side always has a price
and Americans won't take this much longer. The RINOs are going to find themselves on the wrong dance card after waking with a major hangover and the realization that the tab has come due and Obama doesn't love them in the morning. Suckers. All the back room deals, lies and manipulations just simply delay the demise of the Republican Party. But an accounting is coming and soon.
Boehner's dirty deals with Obama have increased spending by $3.8 Trillion in 3.8 years. It's just flat out criminal what they are doing to this nation. It is suicide and they know it and just can't seem to care evidently. The arrogance of Boehner and his cronies is stunning. He wouldn't work with conservatives at all on the Cromnibus.
As Sarah Palin says, this bill stinks to high heaven. RINO season is now officially open. Lock and load. More on this in my article, 'Boehner Betrays His Conservative Base by Passing the Cromnibus and It Stinks to High Heaven.'
This is what it has come to, one party, the Progressive Party. Where Boehner and the RINOs identify more with Obama and the Liberals than conservatives, the Tea Party and America in general. Let America eat cake. Never mind the smell.
JoshuaPundit : There are several things I take away from this.
First off,this has all the appearance of a political coup d'etat.The chief leverage congress always has against a president is the power of the purse. That leverage has now essentially been lost for the incoming Republican congress until September of 2015.
It would have been quite easy to simply pass a basic continuing resolution (which is all cromnibus is) which funded everything and made no major changes that lasted until, say January 30th, when the new congress would have been seated. That would have made political and tactical sense,and Majority Leader Reid could not have held it up nor could the president have vetoed it without sustaining major political damage as the cause of a government shut down for no reason.
So why wasn't it done that way? Instead,the Republican leadership stuck in changes that could almost have been made to order for the upcoming Democrat class warfare campaign (even though they actually benefit Democrats far more, which is why Harry Reid let them go through) and essentially neutered themselves and the incoming Republican dominated congress. Not only that,but the confab in the senate gave Elizabeth Warren a major boost in her public profile, especially among the Professional Left.
The way this was done made no sense politically or tactically, but it was so important that Speaker Boehner and his whip Rep. McCarthy were actually willing to blatantly lie to a number of House members to get them to vote in favor of a procedural rule without which cromnibus could not have come to a vote,something that is going to further split the GOP caucus, weaken the whip and do serious damage to Boehner'as credibility, whatever was left of it.
The only possible side benefit for Boehner and the Republican leadership was to damage the conservative branch of the Republican caucus, but that also makes no real sense because it weakens them to no purpose and divides the caucus.Many of the new electees are not necessarily associated with the Tea Party, but they're also not stupid. They will look at this and realize that Boehner, McCarthy and new senate majority Leader Mitch McConnell are not to be trusted.
That Boehner was willing to go to these lengths convinces me of something I’ve suspected for a long time…that President substantial Obama has something on John Boehner (and likely others).
Boehner wasn't paid off, he’s paying off. And by the way, this also explains this president's aggressive and combative stance after the debacle of the midterms, something unique in modern history. He obviously knew something.
Remember, we’re dealing with the sort of Chicago pol who got elected to the Senate by judge shopping to get his opponent Jack Ryan’s sealed divorce records made public so Ryan was forced to quit his campaign to protect his child.
You might also remember how the White House found out about General Petraeus’s affair months before it came out and got him to lie about Benghazi – before they released the info publicly anyway to discredit him and get him to resign. He changed his story on Benghazi afterwards but no one took him seriously after that.
With the resources Barack Obama commands as president, there’s no limit to what he might have tucked away on various people. And I think we also have ample evidece of his lack of scruples and what some might think of as simple decency.
The Republicans may dominate congress, but with compromised leadership, nothing much is going to get done. That is something that is going to have to change, and quickly.
GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD: Here's what Rush Limbaugh had to say about the latest developments:
Where do we stand on this thing now? It's a legitimate question because the way this has been reported is that it's a done deal. It's a done deal because the House voted for the rule and then voted for the whole thing and it's done and it's considered a rubber stamp in the Senate and so it's done. But it isn't yet, is the thing. The media's reporting that it's done, but it's really not, and all eyes are focused on Elizabeth Warren. And the question is, can she stop it?
Now, everything I mentioned in the previous hour's true. Obama and Steny Hoyer and Biden, these guys are all helping Boehner, all the Democrats are doing everything they can to help Boehner, or did do everything they could to help Boehner get the votes that he needed in the House. It was the strangest thing. So now, the attention shifts focus to the Senate, and the question there is, "Can Democrats in the Senate still scuttle this thing?" And the answer is yes. They could still scuttle the deal, but they can't do it alone. And there's the rub.
They're going to need some help from Republicans if the Senate is to stop this from happening. Now, what we're talking about is the $1.1 trillion, it's called the omnibus spending or cromnibus, and some people have even given to calling it the crimenibus because they think it's an outrage the way it's happening. It really is a piece of legislation that is in stark, in-your-face opposition to the people who voted this past November.
The American people want no part of this, or very little of it. The Washington establishment doesn't care, and a lot of people are fuming, and rightfully feeling that, well, what, did the election not matter? And I'll tell you, the answer to that question is a question a lot of people don't want to hear the answer to.
So here's where we are. A little help from Fox News. They've had some analysts looking at this trying to figure out where it goes from here. Now, last night, both the House and the Senate passed a two-day continuing resolution to keep the government running and avoid a partial shutdown. The House also passed the omnibus, this $1.1 trillion spending bill that funds the remaining nine and a half months of the government's fiscal year through September 30th.
Now, stop there for a moment. A lot of people think that's asinine. The Republicans just won a landslide election. Why do a bill that funds the government for the rest of this fiscal year, which basically takes a year away from Republicans and the power they have over the budget next year and the year after the Republicans won the show and run the budget if they want to, albeit with Obama. So why punt one of those two years, which is what's happened by going for the omnibus to fund it all the way through.
The Republican establishment's answer to that, "Well, you know, we need to fund the government and then take care of that because the president will present his budget in February for 2016 and that's where we'll fight." And a bunch of us frankly are getting real tired of the Republicans saying let's go ahead and let this happen now and in a couple of months that's when we'll kick butt. They never kick butt, is the problem.
So what happened is, the House passes the omnibus bill that funds the remaining nine and a half months of the federal fiscal year, but funding immigration programs for just three months, which will allow Republicans to try to roll back Obama's executive amnesty after the Senate is in Republicans' hands.
Now, the House's move punted the ball over to the Senate for final passage and then Obama's signature. But that's not as easy as it seems with Elizabeth Warren lurking in the weeds. The Senate convened at ten o'clock this morning but had to first finish the National Defense Authorization Act, and time will run out on that bill sometime this afternoon. Until the must-pass military measure is finished, Harry Reid cannot file cloture to move to the vote on the spending package, and he needs 60 votes for it. They can't get to it 'til this afternoon, 'til they finish this military funding thing, which is a mass requirement.
If Elizabeth Warren, Fauxcahontas, and liberal senators get enough help from conservative Republicans opposed to the bill for other reasons, they could prevent it from advancing.
They have to find 41 votes to stop it. And finding 41 votes for what would essentially be a government shutdown is what the media think is impossible to do, because nobody wants to shut down the government.
Nobody wants to get blamed for shutting down the government. So if the bill is stopped, the end result's a government shutdown, and that is the big obstacle that's in the way, the abject fear of that. Now, it is reported that both conservatives and liberals have some additional options even after the thing passes, if it does. For example, a single senator, or a small group, could insist on using all 30 hours of debate time, which would pass the two-day emergency funding plan that was approved last night. Remember, it's only just two days that they gave them.
Finding 41 votes is a tough thing because that's a government shut down. But even at that, there's still some other things they could do, like insist on full-fledged 30 hours of debate, which would then cause the current two-day spending measure to expire. That would force leaders to go back to the House for yet another emergency patch, if you will, say of another 48 hours to fund the government. You see how ridiculous this is getting? And another vote in the House would give conservatives, who they say they were lied to by House leaders into backing the emergency bill, a chance to redo their vote.
This takes us back to the Santa impersonator and Marlin Stutzman, who openly claims he was lied to about this. Just to refresh your memory, Stutzman was promised if he voted for the continuing resolution, the rule, not the ACR, but for the procedural vote, if he voted for the rule, that they would pull the omnibus and enact a 30-day continuing resolution to get the Republicans in power in both the House and the Senate and then start working on the omnibus, and they lied to him. They didn't pull the omnibus.
So, again, if they get back to the House, if they have to go back to the House for another 48-hour emergency funding patch, that would give these conservatives who say they were lied to by House leaders into backing the emergency bill on the grounds that the bill was dead and buried, and with the shutdown threat revived, liberals and conservatives alike could make some additional demands, or at least use the time to try to find 51 Senators to vote against the final package.
Now, it must be said that while on paper this sounds like it could all shake out, the odds of it happening are said to be very unlikely. But the procedure provides some sticking points to bedevil the establishment, also some unhappy votes for ideological purists. The Senate could avoid this whole mess by invoking unanimous consent to vote on the big spending bill this afternoon. But if one Senator objects, then the whole decision is rejected, and that would mean that the Elizabeth Warren wing and the Republican rebels alike would all have to cave to some degree.
So this is an outline of what would have to happen to once again scuttle it or put some roadblocks up, and everybody involved thinks that all of this is really, really unlikely to happen. But it could still. A lot depends on Elizabeth Warren and just how big a flag she wants to plant on this. So we'll just sit back and casually observe and see what happens. But the smart money is that it's going to happen with no controversy whatsoever, that it's practically already a fait accompli. "Is there still a way of stopping it?" But, again, the smart money says it's not very likely.
Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason:Unfortunately, the bill will pass. Another voluminous spending bill no one has read. It appears we still have a ways to go to convince our “trusted servants” we will not stand for this continued confiscatory theft of our hard earned tax dollars. The efforts of conservatives delivered the Senate to the Republicans and increased their numbers in the House this past November, but apparently it is business as usual. There has been no effort whatsoever to shrink the size of government. Regulations continue to take more money out of our pockets and into the hands of the government. The GOP has essentially given away nearly a year of control over the purse strings, half of the time they will have control of both houses of Congress.
Hopefully during the next two years many more Americans will wake up and realize their earnings and personal wealth are not growing as they continue to pay more for essentials such as food, energy, and gas and have less left over for discretionary spending. We cannot continue on this path. The debt has surpassed $18 Trillion dollars with no attempt being made to cut spending.
2016 will be a major turning point for America. It will be up to We the People to decide whether we continue along this path towards a progressive America, or take our country back from the political and elite class and restore our country to government of the people, by the people and for the people.
The Glittering Eye :The continuing resolution omnibus spending bill, waggishly nicknamed "CRomnibus", is about what you'd expect from one of its kind. Neither party is happy with it and the more ideological you are the less happy you're likely to be. That's the way things get done in a representative democracy, particularly one as large as ours.
The question boils down to whether you think we're better off with a crummy budget than none at all. I think that on balance we are. Isn't this the first budget that the Senate has actually voted into law? That's something of an accomplishment in its own right. I guess elections do have consequences.
I would prefer that these huge, opaque omnibus spending bills be abolished in favor of bills that were about a single matter and a single appropriation. That won't happen without a constitutional amendment forcing it. It's just too hard to get graft into a simple, short bill on a single subject.
Relevant-it's often attributed to Bismark but it was apparently first said by John Godfrey Saxe: if you like law or sausages you should never watch either one being made.
Well, there you have it.
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