How a GOP Senate Majority Could Help

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Dick Morris writes an interesting column about how Republicans could best use a Senate majority, should they win one in the upcoming elections. One area of  focus is on how the GOP could pass a budget that, while slowing down or stopping parts of Obama's agenda, would be unlikely to draw a veto. Morris lists the following possibilities:

  • Use the Immigration and Customs Enforcement appropriation to overturn Obama's executive order, expected right after Election Day, to end deportations;
  • Use the Health and Human Services line to defund the Independent Payment Advisory Board, dubbed the "death panel" by Sarah Palin;
  • Repeal the medical device tax;
  • Require release of IRS emails by appending a requirement to the budget for that wayward agency;
  • Stop the Federal Election Commission from regulating Internet blogs;
  • Block the Federal Communications Commission from its attempts at Internet regulation. [link dropped]
Some of these, like a repeal of the innovation-destroying medical device tax, look like unequivocal wins. Others, like blocking the FEC from regulating blogs, look more like temporary solutions to problems that will come roaring back without further action in the future. (And I frankly don't see how defunding the "death panels" is anything other than a dubious, symbolic win: Any scheme of government payment for anything will ultimately call for limits to spending, so that threat will simply arise in another form unless ObamaCare is repealed.)

Morris and others, like Thomas Sowell, have commented before on other ways a GOP Senate majority could thwart the President, such as by killing bad treaties or preventing particularly bad judicial appointments. As I elaborated then, I regard a GOP win as a holding action at best. That said, it could be a crucial one, and I support voting for such a majority.

-- CAV

4 comments:

Vigilis said...

"...on other ways a GOP Senate majority could thwart the President, such as by killing bad treaties or preventing particularly bad judicial appointments."

Gus, the GOP has demonstrated time and time again that it is no longer an opposition party, but subject to the identically exactl pressures of over 16,000 K-Street lobbyists as the Democratich Party.

Essentially our elected "representative" congress has become a single national league comprised of only two teams battling for the privilege of enriching themselves through bundlers of campaign contributions --- the lobbyists.

There is only one peaceful solution to this increasing corruption of our constitutional federal government. Stop electing so many lawyers whose end careers are profoundly influenced by the ridiculously disproportionate influence of a single profession, the profession that oversees the "regulation" of the undeniable lawyer-political complex:
http://vigilisa.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html




Gus Van Horn said...

Vigilis,

As you know by now, I dispute your attribution of our nation's problems to an overabundance of lawyers (or any other profession).

Public officials are elected by people, too many wanting handouts or favors at the expense of others and blind or evasive of the fact that those chickens will eventually come home to roost.

You are right that, in the sense that we have two big-government parties, that the GOP and the Democrats are indistinguishable in many respects. But they aren't indistinguishable in all respects and can be played off one another to a degree until a strong political opposition can be built. But you are wrong about (corrupt or opportunistic) attorneys being the cause of the problem. The fact that so many are attracted to politics is a symptom of the fact that the law, long ago in many cases, became about taking advantage of some, rather than protecting all.

Gus

Vigilis said...

I get you opinion, Gus. But, how does your said opinion comport with the wisdom of Ayn Rand? What, if anything specific did your guru express regard to your curious respect for members of the bar? And, do you. like myself have family kinship with the vainted profession? It is time readers knew such answers, my fellow.

Gus Van Horn said...

Vigilis,

If you really "get" my arguments, you would see: (a) that I have no more regard or disregard for attorneys than I do members of any other legitimate profession; and (b) that the answer to the question you ask is completely irrelevant to the arguments I make.

Gus