Saturday, July 26, 2014

House GOP Billion-Dollar Border Plan "Cover-Your-Butt Legislation"

by JASmius

Why is it only John Fleming seems to understand the political dynamics of this situation?:

A proposal by House Republicans to slash President Barack Obama's emergency aid request to address the illegal immigrant crisis is nothing more than "cover-your-butt legislation," Representative John Fleming told Newsmax.

"It appears to me that it is an attempt to tell our constituents that we did the best we could," the Louisiana-4 Republican said Friday "The problem is that we leave an opening for the Senate to add some really bad things to it and then send it right back to us."

Precisely.  By even putting up a legislative ante, no matter what the details of what's in it, you're conceding, as a propaganda matter, the White House's position and thereby letting Barack Obama off the hook.  This "border crisis" is his creation, in conspiracy with Central American and Mexican leaders, to forcibly impose the results of the "comprehensive immigration reform" that House Republicans wouldn't give him.  Congress had not a "smidgeon" to do with it, much less congressional Pachyderms.  Responding to O's call for almost four billion smackers to subsidize his illegal amnesty at all is to belatedly endorse it and the way he brought it about.

And that's before Harry (G)Reid guts the House version and replaces it with the wildly different, and more expensive, Senate version.  Surely House 'Pubbies should, after almost four years, recognize the dynamic of "controversial" legislation when facing a Donk Senate and White House by now.  The House version will be DOA in the upper chamber, and may expire in the Capitol Rotunda.  The House GOP will be expected to use the $2.7 billion Senate version as their "compromise" starting point, and what would come out the other end of the conference committee alimentary tract would be a bill in the $2.3-2.5 billion range with most, if not all, of the White House's priorities and maybe a token, empty gesture related to easing the deportation process that O will never carry out.  House Tea Partiers will balk and either the "compromise" bill will be voted down - creating the desired media frame-up of "extreme, racist Republican obstructionists" who "want to let these children all die," thus creating back-door justification and public sympathy for O's illegal, unconstitutional border-erasing actions - or Speaker Boehner will pass it with Democrat and RINO votes, triggering precisely the grassroots rebellion that he averted by killing Schumer-Rubio in the first place.

Have I left anything out?  Well, it's not like Pete Sessions would know:

Texas-32 Representative Pete Sessions, chairman of the House Rules Committee, described the proposal as Republicans "putting together our ideas on moving forward to address this issue. Not to solve the problem, but to address the issue.

"What the Republican Conference is putting together is a group of action items — legislation and including appropriations — that will allow this conference to work with the president, with the Senate, to solve the problem at hand."

No, Mr. Chairman, what the Republican Conference is putting together is a group of action items that will, you believe, enable your conference to look like and be seen as "working with the president, with the Senate, to solve the problem at hand."  A visual you seem to think will benefit your conference, despite the fact that the American people are against the Regime/Democrat position on this crisis by a 4.5 to 1 margin.  Maybe that big a polling disparity doesn't hold under the "it's for the children" BS fusillade and fades back to the recent historical public opposition to illegal immigration of 2 to 1.  That's still....2 to 1.  A blowout by any remotely reasonable measure.

And then there's the little matter of Obama and Reid and his minions not seeing any "problem" other than waiting for the public's notoriously short attention span to quickly forget about the border crisis like it has every other Obama scandal.  Astonishing as it is to have to point this out yet again, point it out I must: They don't want to genuinely solve the problem at hand.  And now they have what they've wanted all along: amnesty and an open border as a fait accompli.  Or, to put it even more bluntly, they've won.  The only way to make King Hussein and Dirty Harry and the rest of that Democrat filth pay a political price for it is to not "work with them" but instead stand with the 82% of the American people that have been standing with your conference.

Representative Fleming gets the last word:

Fleming said he will not support any funding request — despite the amount.

"While it's exclusively Obama's problem — created by him, a man-made disaster — we're now going to join hands and accept responsibility for it," he said, referring to the crisis. "We're throwing him a lifeline.

"We're doing it at a time when the American people are very upset with the president for causing this and not really engaging on solving it."

Regardless of what the Republicans approve, neither Obama nor the Senate would support it, the three-term congressman said.

"The president is not going to sign this into law, because it actually does just the reverse of what he's actively doing now. The only value of this law is messaging purposes.

"Call it 'feel-good legislation.' Call it 'messaging legislation.' Call it 'cover-your-butt legislation,' " he said. "Although it has some things in it that are attractive, we all know that it's counter to what the president has done and wants to do.

"He can unilaterally undo what he has done — and we wouldn't have to pass anything."

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