What the New Republican Majority Congress Must Not Do

I have seen near countless articles and editorials, is there a difference between the news and editorials any more, making every sort of suggestions for what the Republicans must do to make their majority count for something and be successful. What was a constant for virtually every suggestion of what they must do was how almost none of it would get passed the White House Obama veto. As President Obama once warned that he has a pen and a phone could also imply that he could veto legislation passed by the Republican Congress and then phone them to come pick up their worthless pieces of paper. So, with the veto pen and the insulting phone call in mind I thought suggesting what the Republicans should avoid if they desire to be successful in the ensuing Congress over the remaining two years of the Obama Presidency. Where they should pass certain principled legislation initially which defines their principles but not waste months doing so, they should also repeat this procedure in the summer leading up to the 2016 elections to augment a candidate for President that hopefully can excite the Republican voters across their spectrum and can express the core conservative and constitutional principles in a manner similar to President Reagan but also able to use social media to good advantage.

The Republicans must not fall for the media mantra that what voters demanded from the new Congress was for them to reach across the aisle and work with the Democrats and President Obama as a great number of their voters wanted no such thing, something I learned about through personal and close up observation and a listening tour in Oklahoma which ended about one year ago. They should not make attempts to modify the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obama Care, and also should not spend great amounts of time repealing it as having President Obama veto one single protest legislation repealing Obama Care should suffice. The electorate did not send their representatives and Senators to Washington to waste time playing political games; they sent them to relay a message, no further damage to their nation and the future in which their children and grandchildren will live. The one message the Republican voters want delivered is no automatic and immediate amnesty by Presidential edict even if it requires cutting funding for the entirety of the Immigrations and Naturalizations Department. The people want the budget to be carefully crafted and the wasteful spending reduced as much as can be accomplished. This means no omnibus spending bills or full budget bills which leave discretional spending by the administration. If that requires passing tens or hundreds of individual pieces of legislation funding each department and even each program individually even if it takes the vast majority of their efforts in order to prevent monies from being diverted to places and programs they were not intended to finance. The people want the spending trimmed down by any means necessary. Do not worry about what the media accuses you of being as their name calling will not affect your voters if you treat their desires with respect and do their bidding.

The people who sent many of you to Congress do not want any compromise immigration reform, especially if it includes amnesty. They do not want another immigration legislation which grants a path to citizenship in the immediate and a future sealing of the border and completing the double fence as such legislation in the past never did build the fence or seal the border. Immigration reform means sealing the border and building the fence the entire length of the borders, northern and southern as either border can be used by those who desire to harm us just as easily as the other. The Democrats will be doing everything in their power to force the amnesty to come first but that must be resisted. Now that you are controlling both houses you can refuse to permit adding riders and amendments to legislation which are unassociated with the subject of the legislation or simply add little treats for the home districts as the people you presumably serve do not benefit or desire these little favors which have become part of business as usual and waste billions upon billions of dollars every year. Whatever you decide to do, do not pass any legislation which is more than two or three pages unless entirely unavoidable due to the complexity of the subject such as a manned mission to Mars or a moon base. Your constituents will be very unforgiving of any legislation which is hundreds of pages, let alone thousands of pages in length and are, as Nancy Pelosi once stated, that we have to pass it to see what is in it. Know that there are many amongst your supporters who will read every last page and then write notes, articles, comments and convers on social media and across many places on the internet and you will hear their disgust loudly when they replace you at their earliest convenience. Ask those Republicans who lost primaries and thus never got to seek reelection, they understand.

The voters who elected you are sick of deficit spending and expect that you will not spend more than the government takes in from taxes and other various fees, licenses, fines and whatever. Even if this means that there must be some cuts in services or programs, then so be it. They want jobs, economic growth and fewer regulations which strangle economic growth. Many may not understand the mechanics of the interactions between the government actions and economic matters but they do understand unemployment, low growth and the other effects such things have on their lives and that they can detect whenever they balance their checkbook account. They really do not want excuses for why you had to enact certain legislation in order to make compromises with the Democrats and get other items passed with Democratic help. They remember how the Democrats acted completely unilaterally and passed Obama Care without a single Republican vote and see no reason for compromise now that the Republicans control Congress. Do not repeal the nuclear option that Harry Reid put in place so that any Presidential appointment could be ratified by simply majority in order to freeze out any Republican dissent, turnabout is fair play. You were not sent to Washington to be invited to all the Georgetown parties and other social functions, nor were you sent to get along with the other side, you were sent to Washington to ruin President Obama’s last two years and ending his reign of terror over the United States as well as its people and allies. You were sent to Washington to send a message and prove that the Republicans have finally learned from their past mistakes and are prepared to return to their roots and basics and are able to resist any influences and pressures from the Democrats, the media or the lobbyists and NGOs who are paid to persuade you to forfeit the trust of your constituents and instead serve their moneyed interests. Feel free to also not do any of these things and ignore all the warnings if you choose and enjoy your one term for as long as it lasts. The new face of the most active elements of the Republican Party are done with business as usual or go along to get along politicking and will continue to seek new faces until they get the representation they desire. The choices are yours to make for now but eventually the final decision over whether you are returned to Washington is that of your constituents and the one disadvantage you have is as a Republican you must win the minds more so than the hearts of your constituency and that constituency are high information voters, a phrase used by talk radio personalities to describe their listeners and these are also your voters. If your get nothing more from this article than those who sent you to Washington are awake, politically savvy and watching your every vote and will hold you to account for every vote should you betray their trust and cross their red lines, and they will use the nuclear option on your candidacy should you cross their red lines as they are not like the President, they mean what they say and vote what they believe. You have been warned and if you are aware, then it should be easy for you to understand the situation and act accordingly or else it has been nice knowing you and hope you enjoy your next day job.

Beyond the Cusp

Return of the Furloughed Government Employees

Yesterday was the first day where the previously furloughed government employees were to return to their jobs. Hopefully they have everything back to their normal efficient levels and things are returning to normal, a word not often used to describe government. For the vast majority of us we had not seen any real change to our routines or lives resulting from the government shutdown other than the breathless reporting of the supposed great calamity that was the government shutdown. With everything presumably back to its normal levels of proficiency we can now take stock of what was accomplished and whether the entire mess was worth going through. I know we are all relieved that part of the Congressional agreement to return the furloughed workers to their positions was that they would receive their normal pay to cover the entirety of the missed work. It must be so nice to get a paid vacation which does not use up any of your leave time but then that is probably a benefit only found in government jobs.

 

Well, the one glaring result from the shutdown is that president Obama can claim a complete victory having routed those who wished to delay Obama Care from taking effect or for delaying the implementation of some of the parts of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act such as the medical device tax. On virtually everything which were credited as being parts of the “Tea Party” faction’s demands were a complete and total failure. Senator Cruz got some free publicity though most of it was used to paint him in a bad light claiming he was grandstanding and was not going to accomplish anything with his antics. This proved to be an accurate prediction. Then there was the claim that the government shutdown cost the economy as much as twenty-four-billion dollars. If this is an accurate statement then it signals something very wrong with our economic health. If our economy is dependent on government expenditures to the tune of approaching ten billion dollars each week then the economy has become too dependent on government and the government is providing too great a fraction of the total GDP. The problem that will prove even more shocking will come once Obama Care has been fully implemented and produced its intended result, a single payer, government run health care system.

 

The health care system currently makes up approximately seventeen percent of GDP. Whenever something is transferred from predominantly private sector into a government run program the price tag usually at least doubles and often will triple in cost. If we take the average of a two and one half percent increase in medical health care costs we would find that government run health care would consume near to or over forty-two-and-a-half percent of GDP. This indicates that once Obama Care has attained its goal of bringing into being a single payer government health care system that the government will easily be responsible for well over half of the United States entire GDP. Such a situation will guarantee deficit spending forever going into the future. The only other choice would be for government to stop or severely cut spending in other areas in order to bring government spending back into an affordable range where such spending is comfortably below fifty percent of GDP. As the European nations have experienced the first place where budgets get slashed to the point that the affected department no longer can operate at the same level as in the past and becomes a shadow of itself is the military which is why, for the large part, the European nations no longer have a military force of any consequence. The British who once ruled the seas now have a coastal navy which is capable of protecting the coastal seas of the British Isles and little more. The same type of problems persist in the rest of the European nations military forces which are but a shell of their former selves. There are those who will claim that this is a good thing but their tune will change if a major war should start in the Middle East and spill over into Europe.

 

The one item which applied to this shutdown that is identical to every other shutdown in memory was that the press gave the Democrats a complete pass on any responsibility for the shutdown heaping every ounce of blame on the Republicans. No, I am not going to point to the numerous times that President Obama pronounced that he would not negotiate with the Republicans until they gave in on everything concerning Obama Care and raising the debt ceiling. I am simply going to point out for there to be a political conflict there need to be two sides who disagree and hold to their position waiting for the other to blink. There was sufficient intransigence to be spread around to both sides, the Democrats and the Republicans. The major difference between the two parties was that the Democrats had strict unity where nobody strayed from the Party’s talking points and they stayed marshalled with their goal in mind while the Republicans spent almost as much time disparaging each other and criticizing their own as they spent on their accusations against the Democrats. The Republican Party displayed that as a party they are in a fight over what it is they stand for while the Democrats showed that they stand together willing to take directions from a structured hierarchy of which the Republicans show a complete lack. The moral of the shutdown is that the Party which has the greater organizational discipline and can marshal their members into a singular unified front is the party which will win out in the end. This is why the Republican efforts were doomed from the very start and the Democrats could simply refuse to compromise assured that their unity would win the day.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Challenge President Obama and Change the Entire Budget Battle

A single undeniable truth that can be said about the budget battle is that the Republicans are getting the worst end of the blame. It stands to reason as the Republicans decided to pick their fight over Obama Care (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) by defunding it specifically in this continuing resolution knowing that they would be facing opposition from President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid and the majority of the mainstream press. The blame falling on the Republicans for any budget battle has a long-standing history and it does not matter which political party holds the different position, the Republicans are always the ones who are shutting down the government and denying services to the population. The only break the Republicans have received was due to the overreach by the Obama Administration who sought to go to ridiculous extremes to make their point. When the Administration gave the orders to the numerous separate Cabinet Departments to shutter everything and anything they possibly could close in order to inconvenience the most number of people, they perhaps should have said within reason instead of everything and anything possible. When the Park Service cordoned off the World War II Memorial which sits in an open area which had to have barricades erected and guards placed to enforce the no trespass the monument is closed order, they perhaps chose badly. The Republican legislators gained a photo-op as they came down from Capitol Hill and removed a few barricades and opened the memorial allowing a number of World War II veterans, who were all elderly making the scene that much more poignant, to visit. The same became the case when some news services reported that the very same Park Service had barricaded the parking lot at Mount Vernon. This was made to appear even worse as Mount Vernon is run by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association who also own the parking lot which is serviced by the Park Service making their closure appear as exactly what it was, a spiteful move done purely to hurt as many people as possible over the government shutdown. Despite these few examples, you cannot tune in to a news broadcast without hearing at least three and as many as uncountable references to the Republican shutdown of the government as if the Democrats are clean of any blame for the impasse.

 

The Republicans in the House of Representatives, the branch of the Federal Government tasked exclusively with initially formulating the budget and the place where all financial outlays must begin although these items must then pass the Senate and the President, could change the entire fight over Obama Care and instead make the battle over the fact that they are doing something which would be revolutionary for the years of the Obama Presidency, passing an actual and real budget and ending this deceitful practice of running the government by passing Continuing Resolutions every few months. Ever since President Obama first took the oath of office the United States Federal Government has failed to pass a single budget. There are some advantages and opposing disadvantages to running the Federal Government, or any government, by passing Continuing Resolutions every few months in place of formulating an actual budget for the entire year. Should you wish to be able to increase spending radically more than usual then the Continuing Resolutions is your ticket while passing an annual budget restricts the increase in spending. The reason for this is when you have to stick to an annual budget the increase is measurable and can be debated while with the Continuing Resolutions you can increase spending with each resolution which even if the exact same percentage is the rate of increase, the fact that these increases are being applied compounding their effect, this actually has the effect of increasing the spending by a greater amount. For example, if you increased a department’s budget 10% and say their budget had been $1,000,000; then their budget for the next year will be $1,000,000. If instead you passed a Continuing Resolution every three months with each employing the same 10% increase, a quarterly budgeting, then you would take the budget for the first quarter which would be $250,000 and increase it to $275,000. When you get to the second quarter the 10% is applied to the budgeted amount after the last increase so you apply the 10% to $275,000 resulting in $302,500. At the third quarter you apply the 10% to the $302,500 which yields $332,750 and in the final quarter you apply the 10% to $332,750 yielding $366,025. When you add the spending up you have $275,000 + $302,500 + $332,750 + $366,025 resulting in an annual budget totaling $1,276,275 which is $176,275 more than if you had made an annual budget. That is almost triple the increase in spending just by passing four Continuing Resolution instead of one annual budget.

 

Of Course when passing these Continuing Resolution there will always be the crisis, real or manufactured, that requires an extra amount to be put into a budget which simply compounds and makes for even higher increases in spending. An example of such is the current debate over funding for Food Stamps where the Democrats wish to increase the spending by 25% more than the Republican desire though the Republicans are still offering to give the Food Stamp Program a healthy increase. Of course the news is reporting that the Republicans are attempting to cut Food Stamps by 25%, the exact difference between the increases proposed by both parties. When you are convicted by those who give the public their news of decreasing or cutting funding whenever you offer to increase spending by less than the other party you will constantly be portrayed dishonestly as being Scrooge before the ghostly visitations.

 

If the Republicans took a novel route and came up with a budget that would extend through the entirety of the fiscal year they could argue that they were only being responsible and proposing an annual budget like anybody else does when it comes to spending. They could point to the fact that even when President Obama had a solid opposition proof majority in both Houses of Congress that the Democrats still refused to pass an actual annual budget choosing instead to utilize numerous Continuing Resolutions in order to allow for massive increases in spending made with smaller steps which together added up and produced a record deficit beyond any previous Presidential budget, even double that produced by President George W. Bush who according to President Obama spent beyond all reason. They could further advise that they were proposing that Obama Care be financed on an as needed basis so that the public could be informed of the actual costs used to implement this untested venture into government assured medical care. They could press the fact that they also desired some changes chiefly among them that if those who President Obama granted a one year exemption are not to be held to their obligations under Obama Care then the American people should also be given the same one year exemption from their obligations under Obama Care. The concept is a simple one learned by most of us in our youth, if it is good for the goose, it is good for the gander. America has always been based on equality as well as freedom and liberty. We have equal opportunity, equal application of the law, except when some are exempted from Obama Care, we have equal responsibility and we have equal representation in governance. Exempting those few favored sectors of our society from their equal obligations under Obama Care while it is being applied in its entirety on the people simply because they do not have the cadre of lobbyists, lawyers and influence peddlers to argue and pressure those in power to give them favors is against everything America was founded upon. To punish the individual while catering to big business, unions and others who wield political clout is an abomination and this is the wrong that the Republicans need to stress when they have any opportunity to get their message out. Of course it would help if all of the Republicans actually were supporting the people instead of their political pals in Washington. That is another problem with the attempt to equalize the application of Obama Care, too many in Washington simply support anything which further empowers Washington and tough luck to the people back home. Hopefully the people will have a message for those who so callously disregard the wellbeing of their constituents.

 

Beyond the Cusp