Tag Archives: Senate GOP

national news

'Delusional wing' of GOP stalls DHS funding

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Disgraceful.

That’s the only word I can think of to describe what’s happened today in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A majority of the House rejected a plan to keep the Department of Homeland Security functioning for the next three weeks.

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/234175-house-bill-fails

The Senate had approved a bill to fund the agency until September. Senators had agreed to strip out provisions aimed at stopping President Obama’s executive order on illegal immigrations, which House and Senate TEA party members detest passionately.

So House, given a chance to keep DHS operating — and protecting our borders against the bad guys — went along with what Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., called the “delusional wing” of the GOP. It stopped the funding measure.

This is no way to run a government. It’s no way to take the reins of power, which Republicans did when they took command of the Senate in January. The GOP now controls both legislative chambers and this is the result they’ve produced on the first big showdown of the new congressional session.

House Speaker John Boehner has lost control of the body he’s supposed to lead.

The House of Representatives, early in this new era, has disgraced itself.

 

national news, political news

Preposterous plan saves DHS, for now

Roger Daltrey sang it loudly at the end of The Who classic, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!”

Republicans had vowed to govern better than Democrats did when they took over both congressional chambers at the beginning of the year. That vow is in jeopardy.

Why? The House of Representatives, which the GOP has controlled since 2011, is going to fund the Department of Homeland Security — but only until March 19. Then the House and Senate will have deal once again with imminent closure because of Republican anger over an executive action taken by President Obama to deal with illegal immigration.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/harry-reid-nancy-pelosi-shutdown-homeland-security-115538.html?hp=lc1_4

Congress appears ready to avoid a shutdown at the end of today. The GOP-run Senate wants to approve a funding measure that doesn’t include a provision to strip the executive order of its authority. The GOP-run House, though, isn’t ready to swill that Kool-Aid.

What a terrible way to run the government. A Band-Aid here and there. Then we return to the same crisis mode that sends everyone’s blood pressure through the ceiling.

Obama sought to delay deportation of 5 million illegal immigrants. Congress didn’t like that the president acted alone, even though his predecessors have done so on the same issue over the years.

Republicans are so intent on stopping the deportation order that they’re threatening to de-fund the very agency, the Department of Homeland Security, that is charged with protecting the nation against bad guys trying to sneak into the country.

What kind of governance is that?

The new boss is no better than the old boss.

Ridiculous.

 

national news, political news

Is Ted Cruz anti-NASA?

Ted Cruz worked tirelessly in 2013 to shut the federal government down, shuttering agencies throughout the vast federal bureaucracy for 16 days.

One of them was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Well, talk about bad karma.

The freshman Texas Republican senator is going to chair a subcommittee with oversight of NASA.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/12/ted-cruz-nasa_n_6456270.html?

This will be fun to watch. It might be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s way of placating the TEA party wing of the GOP, of which The Cruz Missile is one of the team co-captains.

Cruz will chair the subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness. The chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will be Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.

It’s going to be a new day in the Senate for the next two years, maybe longer.

Cruz isn’t known to be friendly to science, let alone to NASA. His insistence on shutting the government down to make some kind of political point likely didn’t go over well with the dedicated employees at the space agency.

He’s also shown a bit of nerve in blaming the Obama administration for cutting funds for NASA, suggesting that the president is de-emphasizing space travel.

I’m going to reserve judgment on the young senator’s stewardship of this panel. I’ll need to await some actual legislation that passes before his eyes for review.

Suffice to say that I am not hopeful for a good result.

 

national news

ICE gets new director

Sarah Saldana has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate as head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, aka ICE.

Wow. That was a close a call that never should have been that close.

In that curious game of political gamesmanship on Capitol Hill, Senate Republicans who once sang Saldana’s praises turned on a dime against her nomination. Why is that? Well, it seems they didn’t like her support of President Obama’s executive order delaying deportation of millions of illegal immigrants.

OK, so let’s consider that for a moment.

Saldana was deemed supremely qualified to lead this critical national security agency prior to the executive action. NPR this morning had a report of how the GOP tide turned against her instantly as she backed Obama’s decision. One of her supporters-turned-foes happened to be Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

So, the Republicans wanted her to in effect turn against the policies of the president who appointed her.

What in the name of God’s green Earth did they expect from this presidential appointee? Is this person going to spit in the face of the man who selected her to lead the effort to protect our borders? Of course not!

Yet the GOP caucus in the Senate all but demanded it of her.

All the while, Senate and House Republicans keep harping — correctly, I should add — that the nation needs to do all it can to prevent illegal immigrants from streaming into our country.

Do they want the president to appoint an ICE director or don’t they?

Well, we now have one.

As someone noted this morning on National Public Radio, the job Saldana is about to assume is arguably the most difficult job in the federal government.

If she was a stellar choice prior to her backing the president on immigration, then she remains a stellar choice today.

Let’s get to work, ICE Director Saldana.

 

 

national news, political news

Impeachment for show only?

A thought occurs to me now that impeachment of the president has returned to the arena.

Just suppose the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is actually is so blindly stupid that it actually impeaches President Obama for exercising his constitutional right of executive authority and tinkers with immigration reform.

Now, let us now suppose that the Republican-run U.S. Senate gets articles of impeachment and puts the president on bleeping trial for it.

The next Senate is going to have a maximum of 54 GOP members, depending on the outcome of the runoff race in Louisiana set for December. It takes 67 votes to convict a president of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and remove him from office.

Does anyone in their right mind think Republicans are going to persuade 13 Democratic senators to engage in this ridiculous charade?

The thought then boils down to this: The impeachment talk, should it ever come to pass, is meant to put an asterisk next to Barack Obama’s name. The members of Congress who detest him and the policies that got him elected twice to the presidency simply want the word “impeached” next to his name. They want his obituary, when it is finally written, to contain the “I-word.” They want his presidency scarred for life with the notion that the House of Representatives trumped up a phony “crime” upon which to impeach the 44th president of the United States.

Well, the last time the GOP tried that — in 1998 against Bill Clinton — it fell flat on its face. President Clinton walked out of the White House in January 2001 with his standing intact and he has emerged as arguably the nation’s premier political leader.

That won’t matter to the current crop of congressional “leaders” who are insisting that Barack Obama keep his mitts off any executive orders regarding immigration.

House Speaker John Boehner declared not long ago that impeachment won’t happen while he’s the Man of the House. Yet his GOP caucus has been strengthened and made even more strident in the wake of the 2014 mid-term election.

We’ll get to see how much clout he can wield if the nimrod wing of his party starts getting a bit too feisty.

 

 

Uncategorized

Senate GOP demonstrates its petulance

U.S. Senate Republicans angry over Democrats’ changing of the rules regarding filibusters have decided to let their Democratic “friends” do all the work of the Senate just before the start of the Christmas recess.

That’ll teach those Democrats, by golly.

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/193622-lawmakers-anxious-to-get-home-as-senate-deadlocked-over-nominees

Plans call for GOP senators to be absent over the weekend, except for perhaps one senator who can raise any objections over procedural matters. However, when it comes time to vote on President Obama’s nominees for various executive positions or judgeships, Democrats — who control a majority of the Senate — are on their own.

Seems that Republicans are still steamed over Democrats’ change of the cloture rule that used to require 60 votes to end a filibuster, which Republicans had employed regularly over Obama nominations. The new rule now enables senators to curtail a filibuster with just 51 votes.

Democrats and independents who vote with them number 55 in the Senate. Should be smooth sailing for nominations that had been blocked, right? Not exactly.

Republicans are banking on Democrats having difficulty rounding up 51 senators, which they would to have a quorum in the chamber.

It’s Republicans’ hope, then, that they can block these nominations from going through just by taking leave of the Senate.

It will fall on Democratic Senate leaders to ensure they have enough votes to do the business to which Americans elected them to do. One of their duties is to confirm presidential appointments of qualified individuals to key executive and judicial branch positions.

Such petulance is quite unbecoming.

Merry Christmas, Senate Republicans.