Opinion Forum

Our New Congress: What Are We Going to Do About It?

January 5th, 2011

“Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country” is not just a touch typing exercise.

This is a bit of a rant but a timely one since our brand spankin’ new Congress will be sworn in today and start work on January 6, 2011 — perhaps with a reading of the United States Constitution, a wholesome but largely symbolic gesture. We elected the new folks and got rid of lots (but not enough) of the old because we wanted them to do something to end the accelerating spiral rush toward a multicultural Hell on which we have been little more than unwilling passengers, required to go along for the ride but not allowed access to the steering wheel or brakes. With a solidly Republican House and a more Republican Senate the new Congress can respond to the old command of “don’t just sit there, do something!” Whether it will remains to be seen.

The new Congress has very powerful tools ready for its use, particularly the new House which holds the strings to our purse; the tools must be used and if the House needs to be reminded with whose purse it has been entrusted, so be it. We have that capability and if we don’t use it then we are willing victims of scam artists of the highest caliber.

There is no ObamaMoney, it all comes via appropriations and they originate in the House. As noted here:

Recent news stories about ObamaCare’s planned implementation should be a clarion call for conservatives to focus their attention on the administrative and bureaucratic arenas with as much or more intensity as they have to defeat ObamaCare in the political and legal arenas.

For starters, I laid out here what I think will be a very effective way for the House to disburse funds from our purse to roll back the most obnoxious parts of the Obama agenda by writing separate and restrictive — important words — appropriations bills for different governmental activities. Even if they didn’t have to originate there, appropriations bills could not be passed without the vote of a majority of the Honorable Members temporarily given seats in the House. They can’t be rejected by the Senate or vetoed by the president without stopping the government, which neither the Senate nor President Obama seems willing to permit.

The best and — as far as I have been able to discover, only — beneficial thing the Congress did during the lame duck session was to defeat efforts to pass an omnivorousbus spending bill to fund federal activities through all of fiscal 2011. Limited funding was provided, but only through March 4, 2011 — two months after the new Congress is seated. After that, the government runs out of our money unless the supply is replenished by the new Congress in a bill originating in the House. Defeat of the omnibus spending bill was good; season’s greetings be upon them. It was probably the best Christmas gift they were able to give the country and I am grateful:

Left-leaning think tanks already disappointed with President Obama’s tax-cut compromise fear its political and economic benefits will be wiped out by budget cuts in the next Congress.

They argue Obama and congressional Democrats will come to regret not moving a yearlong continuing resolution or omnibus bill that would have locked in spending and administration policy for all of fiscal 2011.

Continue reading this article at Pajamas Media »

Articles written by Dan Miller
Tags: appropriations, Congress, Constitution, funding, omnibus, spending, taxes
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

3 Responses to “Our New Congress: What Are We Going to Do About It?”

Tom Carter | January 5th, 2011 at 6:25 pm

I’ll bet the new Congress won’t be substantially better than the last ones going back however long. Let’s remember that our current economic mess got started under the cut-taxes-and-spend policies of Bush and a Republican Congress. They may try to act differently because a lot of the survivors of last November got the dickens scared out of them, but in the end it’s the same system with some new faces.

Look for more partisan bickering and stalemate on many issues. The House may be Republican, but the Senate isn’t. And even if both Houses pass a bill, there’s always that veto pen waiting at the other end of PA Ave.

I agree that we need to give them all another drubbing in 2012 if they don’t radically improve, and I don’t think they will.

Dan Miller | January 5th, 2011 at 6:36 pm

Here is Speaker Boehner’s address to the Congress upon becoming speaker. Here a Pajamas Media article by Roger L. Simon about it. I do have hopes; perhaps they won’t be disappointed.

Talk Radio Interview | Current News World Web Source for News and Information | January 19th, 2011 at 8:00 am

[…] Sweetwater, Texas, about my January 5th article at Pajamas Media and excerpted at Opinion Forum here, entitled “Our New Congress: What Are We Going to Do About […]