Tag Archives: House of Representatives

GOP men vs. GOP women on abortion

The men who run the Republican Party caucus on Capitol Hill are facing a determined foe.

They happen to be the women who comprise the rank and file of GOP legislators.

The battleground? It’s abortion. Men of the GOP? You’re in for a fight.

You go, ladies.

Abortion dissenters face backlash

Female Republican House members are rising up against anti-abortion legislation that would stop abortions at the 20-week mark of a pregnancy. The legislation contains language about rape and suggests that even women who become pregnant as a result of a savage sexual assault must carry the pregnancy to full term. The provision in the bill required that women who are raped had to report the incident to police to be exempted from the 20-week rule. Some Republican moderate women said as many as 70 percent of rapes go unreported by women.

This is what happens when men — who know not a single thing about some of these intensely personal issues — make laws affecting women.

Congress intended to pass this legislation out on the 42nd anniversary of the historic Roe vs. Wade decision in the Supreme Court that stated the Constitution protects a woman’s right to end a pregnancy.

Conservatives are angry over the GOP moderates’ torpedoing of the legislation. Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, said the women will be “held accountable.”

Baloney.

They’ve acted responsibly and their voices need to be heard on this issue that only they understand.

 

Boehner will keep speaker's gavel, however …

John Boehner is going to be re-elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Ohio Republican, though, is going to pay a price. Or, more to the point, rank-and-file Americans are going to pay the price.

It will be because the challenge to Boehner’s speakership is coming from the far right wing of the speaker’s Republican Party caucus in the House. And those clowns are going to pressure Boehner to keep tacking to the rightist fringe of the GOP.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/john-boehner-speaker-vote-2015-113984.html?hp=l2_3

Bank on it.

The question for some of us — including me — is whether Boehner will rediscover the backbone he has shown in resisting TEA party pressure to do foolish and destructive things, such as shut down the government over disputes with President Obama.

Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas and Ted Yoho of Florida have decided to run for speaker. The vote will occur Tuesday. Gohmert is a goofball. I can’t speak to Yoho, other than I know he’s a TEA party guy, just like Gohmert.

Boehner has said categorically that impeachment of the president is off the table as long as he’s speaker. Gohmert says quite the opposite. Is Yoho on board with the Gohmert view? Yeah, probably.

This dynamic reminds me of what might happen here in Texas, with a new governor about to take office. He’ll have a lieutenant governor who’ll push him to the right with the threat of a challenge from within the GOP when the governor’s office is up for election in 2018. I hope Gov. Greg Abbott can fend off the pressure that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is going to apply.

I wish the same for Boehner once he is re-elected speaker in a House that will be even more Republican than the previous one.

And as the GOP takes command of the Senate, we’ll all get to see if the new brand of Republican lawmakers can actually govern, as in can they present legislation to the president that he actually can sign into law.

I am not feeling good about the prospects.

 

Bring on the State of the Union

House Speaker John Boehner has put an end to one of the more idiotic notions to come from the TEA party wing of the GOP in, oh, maybe ever.

The speaker officially invited President Obama on Friday to deliver the State of the Union speech on Jan. 20. It’s in keeping with congressional custom, which says the speaker invites the president into the House chamber to speak to a joint session of Congress — and the nation — about (yep!) the State of the Union.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/19/john-boehner-obama-state-of-the-union_n_6354448.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

A minor tempest popped up a few weeks ago when some TEA party advocates in Congress actually suggested — apparently in all seriousness — that Boehner ban the president from making his speech. Don’t extend the invitation, Mr. Speaker, they said, because we want to punish the president for issuing that executive order that saves 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation.

That’ll teach him, isn’t that right, Mr. Speaker?

Well, Boehner didn’t listen. Good for him.

The president will deliver the State of the Union speech. He’ll lay out his agenda for the next two years. Democrats will clap; Republicans will (mostly) sit on their hands. That’s the way it goes at these events, no matter the party to which the president belongs.

 

Thornberry to head armed forces panel

It’s official: Mac Thornberry is going to become the next chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.

They’re cheering at three key locations in Thornberry’s sprawling 13th Congressional District in Texas: at the Bell/Textron and the Pantex operations in Amarillo and at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls.

Thornberry’s constituency includes those enormously important operations.

Here’s the question: Is the veteran Texas Panhandle congressman going to protect these operations from possible budget cuts at the expense of other equally important defense-related projects?

I pose the question because for the two decades Thornberry has served in Congress, he’s been ensconced comfortably and quietly on the back bench. He hasn’t made much noise about the work he does on behalf of those projects. He does so quietly and with little fanfare.

Now, though, he assumes a high-profile role as chairman of one the House’s most visible committees. He’s become the go-to guy on armed services issues. The pressure is going to be on the congressman to deliver the goods back home while listening with a fair and impartial ear to the needs of his colleagues’ districts elsewhere. There might even be colleagues on his committee who’ll be sure to push hard for spending in their districts. With limited money — relatively speaking — to go around, the House panel is going to have to husband its resources carefully.

How is Chairman Thornberry going to respond to those pressures with the eyes of the nation fixed on how he conducts himself and how he runs this congressional committee?

Good luck, Mr. Chairman.

 

Go for it, Mr. President

Congress had a chance to act on the border crisis in Texas and other states bordering Mexico.

It didn’t.

Now it appears President Obama is going — get ready for it — to take executive action to at least put an immediate, if temporary, fix on the crisis.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/08/texas-businessmen-obama-executive-action-on-immigration-appears-imminent/

Holy cow! Will the Congress sue him over that one, too?

I rather doubt it. Indeed, the speaker of the House of Representatives — which did pass a version of a bill to deal with the problem — has invited the president to use his power to act.

He surely should, given that Congress choked on the issue.

I’m no longer going to refer to this as an “immigration” crisis. It clearly is a “refugee” matter, given that the young people who have flooded to the country are fleeing repression, corruption, enslavement, even death. Those individuals are refugees by anyone’s definition.

They should be treated as refugees, not criminals, which is how many in Congress and around the country continue to view them.

What’s the president going to do — reportedly — to solve this issue by himself?

Obama met with some Texas business executives to discuss the problem, according to the San Antonio Express-News. They indicate that the president is looking at all legal options available to him. “The businessmen said they voiced their support for expanding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which pushes back deportations of young immigrants who aren’t legally in the country,” the Express-News reported on its blog.

So, does the president take action where the legislative branch has failed so far? Absolutely. Will the House of Reps take issue on this action, should it come, by adding it to its list of gripes against the president?

Pardon me while I laugh.

Impeachment talk makes me crazy

All this impeachment poppycock is making me nuts.

Some goofball right-wing members of Congress — not to mention a few bystanders perched in the political peanut gallery — are saying the House of Representatives needs to impeach President Barack Obama.

For what, you say? I don’t know exactly. For issuing executive orders in keeping with his constitutional authority? For the flood of illegal immigrants who are coming into the country, as if the president himself could order it stopped? For tweaking the Affordable Care Act after it became law?

The right-wing loons contend he’s broken laws. They haven’t cited specific laws — because he hasn’t broken any law.

Many of us have lived through two impeachable events involving presidents.

* The first one occurred in the early 1970s. President Nixon’s re-election campaign hired a team of goons to break into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex. When word got out that they were captured, Nixon then ordered the FBI to block the investigation. Then that became known and all hell broke loose.

The House Judiciary Committee and a select committee of senators conducted hearings. The Judiciary Committee then approved articles of impeachment. Nixon resigned in August 1974 rather than face certain impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate.

* Then came the episode involving President Clinton. A special prosecutor was hired by Congress to examine the Whitewater real estate dealings allegedly involving President and Mrs. Clinton. The prosecutor then began snooping around allegations that Clinton fooled around with a young White House intern. A federal grand jury asked Clinton about it. He lied when he denied any involvement with the woman. Oops. You can’t perjure yourself. The House impeached him on those grounds, but the Senate acquitted him.

Two specific incidents resulted in a near impeachment and the real thing.

The stuff involving President Obama? It’s all political hucksterism, meant to inflame the Republican base, get ’em riled up.

Sure, the president has made mistakes. Has any president skated through office without blundering here and there? Of course not.

Do these blunders require an impeachment? No.

To his credit, House Speaker John Boehner says he disagrees with the impeachment yammering.

Good. Now he needs to take the tea party yahoos within his caucus who keep fomenting this nonsense to the woodshed.

New majority leader sleeps on office couch

Recently, I read where the newly elected majority leader of the House of Representatives crashes on a couch in his Washington, D.C. office.

Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., does that — he says — so he can be available to fly home frequently to stay in touch with his constituents.

Just for the record, I’ve commented before on this practice. I long have considered it more of a stunt than anything else.

I still believe that’s the case.

Many members of Congress have professed to do such a thing as a way to be, oh, more “real” to the people they represent back home. My question always is this: Who among a member of Congress’s constituents does that kind of thing?

I keep trying to figure out how living out of a proverbial suitcase in Washington, D.C. makes one more in touch with the home folks than if he or she rents a cheap apartment, hangs his clothes up in a closet, pays some rent and then flies home when it’s convenient.

I wrote a column about that once long ago. I poked a little fun at U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., for living like that. Of course, that was when he was married and was before he took off on that infamous and trumped-up “hike along the Appalachian Trail” when he in fact was in Argentina canoodling with his girlfriend.

A better example of living like your constituents is to move your family to D.C., enroll the kids in school, rent or buy a home and act like a regular family.

This business of sleeping on an office couch makes for snappy campaign-ad fodder that, I suppose, appeals to someone out there.

Me? I prefer my congressman to live like a normal human being.

Brat vs. Trammell

David Brat vs. Jack Trammell will become, I guarantee, the most watched contest for the U.S. House of Representatives in this election cycle.

It’s not because either of them has a sparkling political resume. Or that they’ve made huge names for themselves in their shared occupation. It’s because one of them, Brat, knocked off one of the most powerful members of Congress in the Republican Party primary this past week in the most stunning upset in anyone’s memory. In doing so, Brat has leveled the playing field significantly for Trammell, his Democratic opponent this fall, to possibly win a seat in the Virginia congressional district that has been thought to be strongly Republican.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/2014-virginia-election-jack-trammell-eric-cantor-107855.html?hp=f2

This one’s going to be a mind-blower.

Brat and Trammell are professors at a college I’d never heard of before this past week. Brat teaches economics, Trammell teaches sociology at Randolph-Macon College. You haven’t heard of it, either? I didn’t think so.

I’m sure it’s a fine school.

Back to Brat and Trammell.

Brat’s victory was a stunner. He was outspent by a gazillion to one by lame-duck House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. The turnout for the GOP primary was dismal, which suited Brat just fine. His supporters were the more dedicated bunch, which always bodes well for a low-turnout election.

He campaigned essentially on a single issue: immigration reform. He’s against it. Cantor was for some version of reform. Brat accused Cantor of favoring “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants. The label stuck to Cantor like Velcro.

Trammell? I know nothing about the guy, except that he’s as much of a political novice as Brat.

He is a last-minute candidate. Democrats were without a chance if Cantor had won. He didn’t. Now they think they’ve got a puncher’s chance against Brat. But as Politico.com reports, Trammell’s gone into a “lockdown” since the GOP primary. I reckon he’s starting to assemble something resembling a campaign strategy for the 7th Congressional District of Virginia.

He’d better roll something impressive. The eyes of the nation will be upon both of these guys.

Clinton goes big league

Of all the things Hillary Rodham Clinton said tonight in her TV interview with Diane Sawyer, the most surprising statement came in response to a question about the Sept. 11, 2012 fire fight at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Sawyer asked about the criticism then-Secretary of State Clinton has gotten over her handling of that tragic event and whether it might dissuade her from running for president in 2016. Her answer?

“Actually, it’s more of a reason to run, because I do not believe our great country should be playing minor league ball,” Clinton said, according to a transcript. “We ought to be in the majors.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/hillary-clinton-bowe-benghazi-107626.html?hp=l3

Well. There you have it.

For an hour, Clinton sounded for all the world like a probable candidate for president of the United States in two years. She was coy when she needed to be, evasive at other times during the interview, occasionally candid.

The Benghazi statement, though, caught me by surprise. I guess I shouldn’t have been, but the strength of her answer suggests to me that she clearly is leaning toward another national campaign.

Benghazi has been kicked all over the political football field. The House of Representatives is going to convene a select committee soon to conduct more hearings on the event in which four men, including our ambassador to Libya, were killed by militants who stormed the consulate.

What have all the previous hearings accomplished, other than to suggest that there’s no “there, there” in the search for some kind of politically fatal wound that would bring down a Hillary Clinton presidential candidacy? Nothing.

Clinton’s point tonight is that Congress needs to focus on oh, job creation, infrastructure improvements, world peace and other things vastly more relevant than trying to find some way to lay blame for what everyone in the world knows was a tragedy.

The nation already has implemented changes to improve embassy security around the world. It already has mourned the deaths of those brave American diplomats and staffers. Isn’t that sufficient? I guess not.

Later this year, we’ll get to watch Congress re-plow much of the ground it’s already turned over.

What’s more, we’ll also are even more likely to see Hillary Rodham Clinton run for president of the United States.

Boehner showing other side

I’m beginning to think more kindly of U.S. House Speaker John Boehner.

The Ohio Republican has taken to criticizing members of his own party, particularly the more stubborn among them who refuse to move legislation forward for a number of reasons that might have little to do with the merits of whatever they’re considering.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/raul-labrador-john-boehner-immigration-106033.html?ml=po_r

Boehner recently mocked House Republicans for refusing to vote on immigration reform. He did so in a kind of a playful way, which reportedly did sit well with many GOP lawmakers.

Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, was one of them not amused by the speaker’s tone. “I was disappointed with Speaker Boehner’s comments, and I think they will make it harder – not easier – to pass immigration reform,” Labrador said. “The vast majority of House Republicans are pro-immigration reform, and we have been working hard to achieve it.”

Boehner’s remarks were couched in a kind of silly tone in which he said of GOP members of Congress, “Ohhhh, this is too hard.”

Boehner, as near as I can tell, is one of those dreaded “establishment Republicans” who thinks government actually can do some good for Americans. He wants to move immigration reform forward but he’s been fighting tooth and nail with the tea party wing of his House caucus who just won’t budge. Some chatter in Washington is suggesting that Boehner may be growing so weary of the constant intra-party battle that he might surrender the speakership at the end of the year. Others say he’s committed to leading the House if members will allow it.

Whatever happens, the speaker is showing another — and I believe more likable — side of himself in this ongoing fight with the tea party wing of Congress.