Stand up and legislate!

By Cathy Keim

Congress headed back to work right after the Labor Day weekend. This will be the last opportunity for the Republican controlled House and Senate to finally find their legs and stand up to President Obama’s out of control executive overreach. Sadly, I do not expect them to even try based on their previous performances.

With the presidential election looming in November, wouldn’t this be a great time for the House to remember that they control the purse strings? If they do not put the money in the budget that they will be approving in September, then they can bring programs to a screeching halt. Their fear of a government shutdown renders them incapable of using the only instrument left to stop a president run amok.

Our national debt is now over $19.5 trillion, but still our Congress cannot find it in themselves to defund anything that the president demands.

Obamacare is collapsing, as it was meant to do from the beginning, to force us into a single-payer national health scheme. Watching the United Kingdom struggle with their broken system should give our leaders the encouragement to stop this, but instead they have funded the demise of our health care.

The Iran deal has been shown to be a disaster with our government trading money for hostages and Iran increasingly ready to harass our Navy ships.

Or how about the president’s giveaway of our internet to China, Russia, and Iran!

Ann Corcoran has released a new video called “Changing America by Changing Its People.” In under five minutes, Ann explains the Refugee Resettlement Program and how it can be stopped. You guessed it! This program that was started by Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy could be halted by defunding it. All the Voluntary Agencies (VOLAGS) that are bringing in the refugees are funded with your tax dollars.

Many of the VOLAGS have religious names, but they are not allowed to speak the name of Christ to the refugees they import. They are on the government payroll as private contractors and thus are prohibited from proselytizing. Why would Christian and Jewish groups bring in thousands of Muslims who are bound by their religion to make every effort to institute sharia law instead of living under our Constitution? People whose religion teaches them to hate Jews and Christians and to subjugate or kill them? I have not been able to come up with a reasonable explanation for that.

Since the Democrats cannot get Americans to willingly agree to their progressive Utopian scheme, then they will overwhelm the current Americans with imported people that they hope to keep voting Democrat forever.

If our Congress would defund some programs, another one that could bear careful scrutiny would be the food stamp program. Once again, Ann Corcoran on her blog Refugee Resettlement Watch pulls together the information that is out there, but that our Congressional watchdogs don’t bother to notice. Baltimore, Maryland gets unflattering attention again for a huge food stamp fraud bust. Buffalo, New York, makes the news with this convenience store operator getting charged with fraud. The local convenience store operators buy the EBT cards from the food stamp recipients for 50% of the face value. Instead of food, the customer gets cash and the owner takes the other 50% to buy items to resell at his store. Sweet deal if you can get it, right?

I do not know if any of the convenience store owners are refugees, but Ann points out that their clientele most likely includes refugees: Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama stated on his website last September that more than 90% of recent Middle Eastern refugees are on food stamps and almost 70% are on cash welfare.

Put these statistics together with this interesting statement:

[T]he Koran encourage Muslims to collect jizya – blood tax – from kafirs, the non-Muslims, and welfare is looked upon as jizya. Collecting money from non-Muslims is considered a legal entitlement since the kafir is not entitled to any land or laws of their own anywhere, meaning their presence on a land or country of their own is a “theft” of “occupation” of what should be Muslim land.

Defrauding the welfare system becomes a type of jihad against the welcoming host country.

The list could go on and on with all the missed opportunities to block an imperial presidency and to recalibrate the separation of powers equation. What better time to grandstand against the president’s failed policies than the last session while the GOP still has control of both houses of Congress? Use every platform available to broadcast the deficiencies of the current administration that would be continued by the next Democrat president. Give speeches, hold hearings, give interviews, and hold the failed policies up to the public view during the entire budget process instead of acquiescing to the agenda and rubber stamping another omnibus spending bill.

Unfortunately, Paul Ryan and the House leadership don’t see the situation like I do. According to The Hill:

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are pushing to extend government funding into early 2017, wary of a massive bipartisan spending deal in the lame-duck. But GOP leaders and House Democrats are already laying the groundwork for a short-term continuing resolution, or CR, that will set up a vote on a catch-all spending bill right before the holidays.

Once again, the GOP will cave, even if it means passing the omnibus bill with Democrat votes just like the last CRomnibus budget vote. And when they cave, they will not show the fortitude to fight to cut the funding for refugee resettlement, or any other item that President Obama desires.

The GOP leadership is already signaling defeat when “Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a senior appropriator and leadership ally, dismissed the Freedom group’s approach, saying it’s backed by Republicans who would rather create ‘some sort of massive showdown crisis.'”

We don’t even try to mount an offense. The House leadership has already begun attacking the conservatives in their own party before the session even opens. The leadership seems to think that the election is going to be a disaster, so they need to do the best deal now. It appears that they have already given up on maintaining control of the Senate and winning the presidency.
It is interesting that Paul Ryan would think that he can get a better deal with a lame duck President Obama rather than Trump or Clinton. Let’s see where Andy Harris goes on this budget vote.

What is particularly galling about this whole sham of not passing budget bills until the last minute so that they can all be rolled into one huge omnibus bill and rammed through is that the American people are being played by their elected representatives. This process of not functioning in order to push through a monstrosity has been perfected by our Congressional leaders as a means to keep the status quo. Since everything keeps being funded at previous levels, nothing ever changes. The American citizen is being played. This is why there is a revolt brewing. There is discontent on every side. The leaders will not be able to keep this scam going forever.