Friday, December 05, 2014

House GOP Passes Toothless Anti-Amnesty Resolution

by JASmius



Remember that old adage, "Fortune favors the bold"?

Some of us didn't:

The House of Representatives voted to slap down President Barack Obama's executive action to help as many as six million illegal immigrants because "enough is enough," Representative Ted Yoho told Newsmax on Thursday.

Sounds good so far.


"The Constitution is something we need to abide by, or what in the heck are we here for?" asked the Florida-3 Republican. He introduced the legislation on November 20th, the day Obama announced his unilateral actions.

Absolutely right, Ted.


"If he wants to legislate with a pen, send all the Congress home," Yoho said. "My goal is to take his ink out of his pen."

Great!  How do you plan to do that?

On a 219-197 vote, the House voted Thursday to block the immigration orders Obama announced last month that would delay deportations for and grant work permits to millions of illegals.

You're not answering my question.


Though the vote seemed like a token protest that would not go any further, it allowed House Republicans to vent their outrage over Obama's orders without jeopardizing a spending bill under negotiation between the House and Senate that would keep the government running after next week.

If you're all (or almost all) "outraged," why don't you actually do something about it - or try to, at the very least?  Starting with scrapping that year-long continuing resolution, replacing it with one that expires in January, and attaching amnesty-defunding stipulations to it?

Any stalemate over the financing bill could lead to a shutdown, which House Speaker John Boehner and other party leaders are seeking to avoid. Some Republicans wanted to attach the immigration language to the omnibus legislation, which could ignite a standoff with Senate Democrats.

Ah.  Well, what would be wrong with that?  If the Democrats, who got slaughtered on November 4th in large part because of Barack Obama's amnesty drive and this past summer's border crisis, want to double down on that by shutting down the government over something on which they are fiercely opposed by 75%-80% of the voters, I say let them.  "Bring...it....on!"  My guess is they would fold like a K-Mart deck chair eventually, once it became clear that you and your colleagues were "in it to win it."

You see, Congressman Yoho (AndABottleOfRum), you yourself pointed out the stakes.  As much as this is about amnesty and the GOP being destroyed electorally by a tsunami of poor migrants, it's also about whether the Constitutional crisis that should be being triggered by The One's unprecedented usurpation of Article I, Section 1 is actually going to materialize.  "The Constitution is something we need to abide by, or what in the heck are we here for?"  Were those not your words?  And yet you aren't willing to actually use the legislative powers (most especially of the purse) the Constitution provides to Congress to actually, as opposed to merely symbolically, block the dictator and take back the legislative power he's grabbed.  With November 4th's reinforcements already on their way, no less.

So tell me, Congressman (AvastYeHardies) Yoho, just exactly what are all of you there for?

"I think, symbolically, it probably speaks more than a bill," he said.

Oh, it speaks, alright, Ted.  But it doesn't say what you think it says.

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