Thread: What election? Republicans have already handed Congress to the Democrats Daniel Horo

What election? Republicans have already handed Congress to the Democrats

Daniel Horowitz · September 14, 2018

SunnySideUp | Shutterstock

We hear a lot of talk about Russians interfering with the 2016 election results, but really, Republicans did the job for them.

What if I had told you during the 2016 elections that Republicans would pass a short-term budget bill funding the government and all its vices in a way that is absolutely indistinguishable from a bill Democrats would pass, merge it with a long-term bill funding the worst aspects of immigration, abortion, everything we hate about the Department of Education and Obamacare, massively increase spending, and then pair it with a bill funding the troops? What if I had told you we were about to lose the next election as severely as the 1974 “Watergate” election because Republicans were busy accomplishing the other side’s goals?
It’s bad enough that the Senate passed a “minibus” funding the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and Education, attached to defense spending. It’s bad enough that Republicans planned on passing a stopgap continuing resolution (CR) locking in last year’s spending increase through December 7 without addressing the border crisis. Now they have introduced a final bill merging the two.
With every budget bill, Republicans find a way to up the ante on their perfidy and give Democrats more than they could get when they were in control. In 2015, when Republicans didn’t even control the veto pen, Chuck Schumer expressed shock that the GOP Senate gave away the farm. “If you would’ve told me this year that we’d be standing here celebrating the passage of an omnibus bill, with no poison pill riders, at higher [spending] levels above sequesters than even the president requested, I wouldn’t have believed it, but here we are,” said the Democrat senator in December 2015. “Almost anything the Republican leadership in the Senate achieved this year, they achieved on Democratic terms. … Democrats had an amazingly good year.”

And here we are today, with Republicans in control of the White House as well, and spending is several hundred billion dollars more.
A Republican Party that was committed to its platform would have passed a stand-alone defense and homeland security bill long ago with conservative priorities. Instead, Republicans sabotaged conservatives by holding defense spending hostage for a Democrat bill that fully funds the asylum invasion but not border security.
The HHS-Labor-Education component appropriates $178 billion for fiscal year 2019, $10.7 billion more than Trump requested. HHS would receive a 2.6 percent increase over the current record levels I decried in the March bill for fiscal year 2018. The bill also contains $286 million for Title X abortion funding, as well as $100 million for Obama’s “teen pregnancy prevention program.” They also removed a provision from the House version allowing adoption agencies the discretion not to place children in homes without a father and mother.
Rather than barring HHS from settling phony “unaccompanied” minors fueling the MS-13 and drug crisis, the bill requires HHS to “develop a strategy” for “reunifying” the invaders who self-separate from their kids to empower the drug cartels and endanger our country. We now have a Congress of, by, and for foreign invaders. It’s surreal. Out of 25 ideas that I proposed to protect Americans from the emergency of illegal immigration and all its cascading effects – from gangs and drugs to identity theft, crime, and the strain on schools – not a single conservative provision was put into the bill.

The increase in spending was totally gratuitous, because agencies were already scrambling to binge-spend an extra $140 billion they never anticipated at the start of the last fiscal year. Republicans agreed to massively increase spending halfway through the fiscal year in February and March after agencies already budgeted for much less.
With just 11 months of data from this fiscal year, we now know the deficit is $900 billion, already $233 billion more than the 12 months of fiscal year 2017. And remember, last year, which was the first year of full GOP control, already saw a $128 billion increase in spending over Obama’s final year. You will hear the media blame the tax cuts for most of the deficit, but the reality is that, for August, revenues were down $7 billion compared to August 2017, while outlays were up $100 billion! Interest on the debt is soaring. This is simply astounding given the condition of the economy.
Think about this for a moment. Could you imagine going back to 1996, when even moderate Republicans thought government was too big and our social values were decrepit? We would now give anything to go back to those levels of spending and policy values on health care and education. The Department of Education now costs $71 billion in discretionary spending alone, compared to $24 billion in 1996. HHS was $33 billion compared to $90.3 billion today, in discretionary spending alone. Back in 1996, the total cost of HHS, including the entitlement and welfare programs, was $333 billion. Now it’s well over $1.2 trillion.
That was when the entire federal budget was $1.5 trillion; now it’s $4.2 trillion. That was when we passed welfare reform. That was when we passed a massive immigration enforcement bill. And yes, that was without controlling the White House.
Now we have all three branches, and yet the Republicans are light-years to the left of Democrats of the ’90s.

At its core, this is the mentality that GOP voters despised when they voted for Trump, yet he has signed every budget betrayal and has declined to threaten a veto of this bill every day, even though he promised he’d never get owned in another budget bill and saw this coming a mile away.

At some point, phony conservative organizations and commentators need to step out of the soap opera and ask the question: All this for what? Perhaps a Watergate-style loss in November – all so we can die on left-wing policy hills – is what it will take for conservatives in this industry to finally wake up and reassert control over this party or start and new one. American citizens or legal immigrants who aren’t on the dole, don’t plan on getting a sex change operation or abortion, just want a fair chance in a free market, and want safety from external threats just don’t matter to either party. Faced with the current disquiet and a lack of alternatives, many voters will simply choose the party that is currently out of power to lodge their protest, even though Democrats are really in power in all but name only.

https://www.conservativereview.com/n...the-democrats/

Now we have all three branches, and yet the Republicans are light-years to the left of Democrats of the ’90s.

Excellent article and a great description of what is really happening.

I wish there was a way every Republican in Congress could read this article by Daniel Horowitz, but it is clear the vast majority of Republicans are only listening to Soros, Soros groups, big banks, and the US Chamber of Commerce.

That was when the entire federal budget was $1.5 trillion; now it’s $4.2 trillion. That was when we passed welfare reform. That was when we passed a massive immigration enforcement bill.

Yes, Republicans passed welfare reform and a massive immigration enforcement bill. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, neither one worked. Need better plans, better bills, that actually work and aren't countermanded and undercut by other policies. By 1996, NAFTA was in full force, resulting in massive job loss in the manufacturing sector that due to the multiplier effect of manufacturing jobs results in massive job losses and depressed wages throughout the entire economy. NAFTA led to other free trade type agreements and free trade policies with other countries that have cost Americans tens of millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of earnings and wealth in the years that followed.

There's not been much new coverage about the budgets last year or this year, but this I know. You can't solve the welfare and worker age entitlement problem, until you solve the economic problem that causes it. We can't solve that problem in a lasting manner without fixing the trade issues responsible for it. Trump is doing that, it takes time, it's tedious, it's hard and complicated, but he's doing it and he's doing it on his own by himself with a small team of officials who understand this, like Wilbur Ross, Peter Navarro, Robert Lighthizer and even Larry Kudlow is on board. What these five men are doing for our country is historic and when they finish, our economy will be so strong and in such a lasting manner that new good lasting secure jobs will be created at good wages with benefits and much of the wealth lost will be transferred back into the United States for the benefit of all Americans.

As that happens, we will see welfare usage reduced in due course and that is the time to give it a little push with some new restrictions when people actually have options for good jobs. I believe that is the strategy in play now. We have a long ways to go, and that takes time and patience. Trump is pushing this as hard and as fast as possible. A new trade agreement with Mexico is almost finished, then Canada, tariffs are already in play across the board on steel and aluminum, $250 billion of goods with China are now subject to tariffs, with another $267 billion subject to tariffs around the corner. A new deal with South Korea has been finished or nearly so and one is in the works with Japan and the EU and many others.

We will also see welfare and worker age entitlement spending reduced when we solve both the illegal immigration and excess legal immigration problems. Solving these problems will not only reduce federal spending, but at the same time, eliminate the now enormous expenditures by states and local governments on illegal aliens and their offspring.

Trump ran on 15% tax rates for corporations and businesses, he did that for a reason, because that is the rate that would bring most of our businesses and offshore money home. At 21%, Ryan's number, it helps some, but not quite enough. It's still a lot better than 35%, but it's really just equal to many foreign countries, when it needs to be much lower to do what we want done. Maybe next year, he can get it down to 15% for all businesses or maybe even push the FairTax legislation, which is my preference.

The HHS-Labor-Education component appropriates $178 billion for fiscal year 2019, $10.7 billion more than Trump requested. HHS would receive a 2.6 percent increase over the current record levels I decried in the March bill for fiscal year 2018. The bill also contains $286 million for Title X abortion funding, as well as $100 million for Obama’s “teen pregnancy prevention program.” They also removed a provision from the House version allowing adoption agencies the discretion not to place children in homes without a father and mother.

The Title X is not abortion funding, it's grants to clinics for birth-control and abortion counseling services and referrals for poor women. I have no problem with teen pregnancy prevention programs, not sure what they do, assume it's education, counseling, and perhaps birth control, but this is important, seems to me, we don't want children having children. I have no problem with single parent adoptions, Laura Ingraham who is definitely a conservative, has adopted 3 children as a single parent, 2 from Russia and 1 from Guatemala.

We need much more to be done on immigration issues, especially illegal immigration due to the invasion and massive numbers of illegal aliens already in the country, I think well over 30 million of them with more pouring in every day. A lot of different steps have been tried, couldn't get the votes in Congress, and many executives actions have been stopped by the courts. We need more votes in Congress, these usually come from Republicans, so if Republicans can do well in November and win the mid-terms, then next year could be a good year for solving this problem. If Republicans don't do well in the mid-terms, then this issue will see no solutions at all except for what the President can figure out how to do on his own authority with existing resources. Even then, courts will be engaged by the DemoQuacks through lawsuits to try and stop him, as we've already seen done.

Keep the Trump Train Rollin' Rollin' Rollin. Vote Republican in 2018!! Next to your vote for Trump for President in 2016, this vote in November will be the next most crucial vote of your life-time.

Originally Posted by ALIPAC

I wish there was a way every Republican in Congress could read this article by Daniel Horowitz, but it is clear the vast majority of Republicans are only listening to Soros, Soros groups, big banks, and the US Chamber of Commerce.

That's right and that is why it probably won't make a tinker's damn how many Republicans we have in the U.S. Congress. Unfortunately, just any ole Republican won't do! We need more Republicans like those in the Freedom Caucus, not those being funded by the Chamber of Commerce and other such organizations. Unfortunately, we have too many that support the goals of the Chamber of Commerce, other pro-business groups, and many labor unions that support more foreign labor, comprehensive immigration reform (amnesty), open border policies, etc., etc.

Remember, these amnesty/foreign labor supporters are Republicans too (just to name a few):

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ)
Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA)
Rep. David Valadao (R-CA)
Rep. David Nunez (R-CA)
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA)
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)
Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO)
Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO)
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL)
Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL)
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI)
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

That's not all the Republicans that have come out in support of amnesty, but it's enough to make my point!

Originally Posted by MW

just any ole Republican won't do!

Agree! and we have to let them know that.

When I answered my doorbell recently, I saw a tee-shirt with the face of my Republican Rep. and a young lady with a card in her hand. Before she could get 6 words out of her mouth, I let her know, I would not be voting for, because of his amnesty vote, and quickly closed the door slightly too hard.

We have to stop rewarding their destructive behavior.

Both parties are are paid huge corporate bribes to support illegals so don't expect them to fight illegals.

Thing is trump doesn't need more immigration laws. He could make all the illegals self-deport by enforcing the law as it is.