Jim Bratten
Two legislative failures in a row – first the $1.1 trillion 2017 budget (spending package), then the health insurance Obamacare Rework passed in the House. The Card Table Party remains unchanged; a dedicated cartel of status quo careerists.
Democrats once again threatened a government shut-down, but Republicans didn’t get “rolled” as some pundits claim. They never even considered fighting the shut-down nemesis. The assault on the common sense message by American voters on November 8, 2016 was by coalition.
Bipartisan betrayal gave Democrats the spending growth they wanted and Speaker Paul Ryan’s Obamacare maintenance plan kept its major foundations firmly in place. Government still controls your health insurance: what, when, where, and price. There were no floor fights to defend constitutional principle and no stand for individual liberty; just plenty of unread, undebated legislation that increased spending and kept health insurance from free market control. No improvement is expected in the Senate.
A sampling of what Ryan’s Spending Bill (Obama’s 2017 budget) gave us in 1,665 pages (and why 103 Republicans voted against the massive budget bill):
• A $296 million bailout for Puerto Rico’s red-ink Medicaid program
• Full funding for Obamacare • Continued funding for sanctuary cities
• Full funding for the National Endowment for the Arts
• Funding for Planned Parenthood
• $3 billion for “refugee assistance”
• $990 million for the Food for Peace initiative in Africa
• Double the number of low-skilled foreign workers allowed under H-2B visas
• NO funding for a border wall or deportation operations and…
• NO cuts to the EPA, HHS, or wasteful “green energy” programs.
An increase of $21 billion to rebuild an Obama-decimated military was one of the few highlights. This budget was also an opportunity to hand activist federal judges a clear defunding warning, but Republicans had no desire to defend the Constitution and the separation of powers it demands.
“This was written before Trump was inaugurated,” Republicans excused. “It’s Obama’s last budget and it will get us through September. Then we can assemble the first ‘official Trump budget’ for 2018.”
“Obama’s last budget” was not sacrosanct, nor untouchable. It could have been scrapped. Some say this was only the second time a newly-elected president could have changed the proposed budget of his predecessor. The Card Table Party folded.
They now control the Congress and the White House but one wouldn’t know it. Largely due to the passage of Obamacare, Democrats lost the 2016 contest and over 1,200 elected offices at all levels of government since 2010, but still have the upper hand in “the swamp.” Democrats keep getting their way because the Republican majority is reluctant to engage the Trump (winning) agenda. They defer to the losers.
What does it matter if Democrats lose elections, when they control legislation? Americans voted against failed Democrat policies and “nation transformation.” They voted for the enforcement of law; saving the country, not growing government; repealing Obamacare’s destructive control over one-sixth of the U.S. Economy; and against bill-writing by donors and K Street lobbyists instead of an elected Congress.
Democrats were not stopped on this budget or Obamacare; they won. Republicans lost – again. This is not “winning.”
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