Congress unanimous on ISIS genocide of Christians; Pressure mounts on White House

Pressure is mounting on the Obama administration to take action following a unanimous Congressional vote Monday approving a resolution to designate the persecution of Christians and other minorities in the Mid East by the Islamic State as “genocide.”
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U.S.House & Senate Claim Only 45 Employees-Then Sign Up 12,359 on Obamacare Small-Business Exchange

     Both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives certified that they had only 45 employees each in order to sign up for the District of Columbia’s Small Business Exchange. But 12,359 - or 86 percent of the exchange's enrollees - are members of Congress, congressional staff members, and their spouses and dependents, according to an appeal filed with the D.C. Court of Appeals by Judicial Watch.      The public interest law firm announced Monday that it is appealing the February dismissal of its lawsuit challenging congressional participation in the Obamacare exchange even though the D.C. Exchange Act limits enrollment to small companies with 50 or fewer employees.


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Almost $200 Million Donated to Representatives to Pass TPA

Many think our government is for sale. However, by taking a look at the facts below provided by the Open Secrets, it is easy to understand where they are coming from. Looking back at Friday the 12th, the House voted on Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), the controversial bill that gives power to the executive branch to negotiate treaties. TPA limit’s Congress’ ability to better a trade deal by subjecting members of Congress to 90 days of reviewing the trade agreement, prohibiting any amendments on the implementing legislation, and giving them an up or down vote. TPA passed with a mere 219-211 vote with only 218 needed to pass. The real shocker comes from the amount of money each Representative received for a yes vote. In total, $197,869,145 was given to Representatives for a yes vote where as $23,065,231 was given in opposition.


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Conservatives Blame GOP Leaders For Not Stopping ‘Fundamental Transformation of America’

Republicans are not keeping the campaign promise they made to voters in 2014 to halt President Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America,” conservative and Tea Party leaders charged in an open letter to Congress on Monday. On April 28, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) cited fast-track trade legislation and a bill requiring congressional review of the administration’s nuclear deal with Iran as the major accomplishments of the GOP-led 114^th Congress so far.


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Obama and Congress reach deal over Iran nuclear talks

The US Congress will have a say on a nuclear deal with Iran, under a new agreement reached with the White House.
President Barack Obama withdrew his opposition to a bipartisan bill that was unanimously passed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The bill means the administration must immediately send text of a final deal to Congress.


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Congress CAN pull financial rug from under Obama's immigration amnesty: Republicans given boost

Republican civil war broke out after Obama's Nov. 20 'amnesty' speech over whether the GOP can stop the White House from issuing green cards and work permits Congress's official fact-checkers now say the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill can legally pull the plug At issue is whether immigration authorities can do whatever they want with fees they collect from immigrants, both legal and illegal One congressional aide proposed a hypothetical situation where the Department of the Interior diverted National Parks entrance fees to give 'tap-dance lessons to grizzly bears' 'If we could stop that, we can stop this,' the staffer insisted...

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Obamacare Reg Treats Congress That Spent $3.5 Trillion as a ‘Small Business’

An Obamacare regulation issued by the Office of Personnel Management in October treats the U.S. Congress—which employs more than 11,000 staffers and which spent $4,329,000,000 on its own operations and $3,454,253,000,000 to fund the full government in fiscal 2013--as a “small business.”

OPM did this so that the Treasury can pay federal subsidies of up to $11,378 per year to help members of the House and Senate and their staff buy health-insurance plans in the Obamacare “Small Business Health Options Program” (SHOP) Marketplace set up for “small employers” in Washington, D.C.

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Ben Carson: Congress Must "Surgically Excise" Obamacare

Renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson says Congress must "use the purse strings" it controls to kill Obamacare, surgically excising it from the rest of the federal budget. ✧ "Congress has a lot of power. They have powers to propose laws, to make laws. They have the ability to decouple the healthcare bill from the rest of the budget. They can do that," Carson told "The Steve Malzberg Show" Friday on Newsmax TV. ✧ "This is what they should be doing so the president doesn't have a political football to throw around. They need to go on offensive here; don't just always sit around and play defense. You'll never win the game that way. ... Use the purse strings to kill it," he said.

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The Demise of Legitimate Political Authority

Some forty years ago, in his groundbreaking study, Twilight of Authority, sociologist Robert Nisbet observed a disturbing trend in American culture. As respect for authority had declined among the population, he wrote, members of that population became increasingly willing to accept and actually applaud an increasingly powerful, albeit less legitimate, government

 The notion of true authority, Nisbet wrote, assumes the strength of two essential social qualities—hierarchy, and privacy. Yet both are fading before our eyes. For Nisbet, the egalitarian agenda of the elites—especially the liberal intelligentsia—is a driving engine of social collapse. It crushes a rich, varied, and multidimensional culture featuring an ­array of localities, organizations, institutions, and voluntary associations. The collapse produces a paltry pancake of “equality of result”—a result both fed and enforced by an ever more powerful government.

Read more at Crisis Magazine

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Brent Bozell calls out GOP leadership on Fiscal Cliff

ForAmerica's Brent Bozell writes the Republican Leadership of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate challenging them on putting tax raises on the table.  The question he asks is, "If you now claim a tax increase on small business is the correct course of action, were you lying all along when you claimed this tax increase would decimate the economy?" See full letter at ForAmerica... Read More......

Red State: Only in Washington

By Daniel Horowitz
For those of us who are not schooled in the ways of Washington, here is a glimpse into the duplicity of the “budget savings” as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations. Read all about it at Red State... Read More......

Congress Must Fight Back Against Obama’s Unconstitutional Recess Appointments

WASHINGTON POST, 1/5/2012 by Edwin Meese III and Todd Gaziano, Obama’s recess appointments are unconstitutional

President Obama’s attempt to unilaterally appoint three people to seats on the National Labor Relations Board and Richard Cordray to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (after the Senate blocked action on his nomination) is more than an unconstitutional attempt to circumvent the Senate’s advise-and-consent role. It is a breathtaking violation of the separation of powers and the duty of comity that the executive owes to Congress. [...] If Congress does not resist, the injury is not just to its branch but ultimately to the people. James Madison made clear that the separation of powers was not to protect government officials’ power for their sake but as a vital check on behalf of individual liberty. To prevent future tyrannical usurpations of power, Congress must act to redress this serious threat to our liberty. Read more at Washington Post...

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Obama’s Jobs Speech: The Audacity of Weakness

Obama ham-handedly tries to bigfoot Boehner, and gets kneecapped.

I can’t remember a more stunning rebuke of a president by a congressional leader than House speaker John Boehner’s refusal to agree to Pres. Barack Obama’s demand — er, request — that he summon a joint session of Congress to hear the president’s latest speech on the economy at 8 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, September 7.

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Congress stands its ground

By George F. Will
Between 6 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. Sunday, the nation began a constitutional course-correction. The current occupant’s vanity and naivete — a dangerous amalgam — are causing the modern presidency to buckle beneath the weight of its pretenses. And Congress is reasserting its responsibilities. Read more at the Washington Post...

(Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) Read More......

Democrats may drag feet on 'unsustainable' budget for 2011

POLITICO, 4/12/2010 - Congress is poised to miss its April 15 deadline for finishing next year’s budget without even considering a draft in either chamber. ∴ Unlike citizens’ tax-filing deadline, Congress’s mid-April benchmark is nonbinding. And members seem to be in no rush to get the process going. ∴ Indeed, some Democratic insiders suspect that leaders will skip the budget process altogether this year — a way to avoid the political unpleasantness of voting on spending, deficits and taxes in an election year — or simply go through a few of the motions, without any real effort to complete the work. Read more at Politico... Read More......

WH to Congress: Energy-only bill would be ‘unfortunate’

THE HILL/E2 Wire, 4/6/2010 by Ben Geman - White House climate czar Carol Browner said Tuesday that the Obama administration is urging Senate lawmakers not to proceed with an “energy only” bill that shelves limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Read more at The Hill's energy & environment blog... Read More......

Profound words to share with Congress

(Hat tip: Stella Guenther via email) Here's a short profound paragraph that might make a good letter/email to blitz Congress with:

"You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it." --Adrian Rogers, 1931-2005

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Calling on Congress to stop the debt tsunami

WASHINGTON POST, 12/18/2009 by David S. Broder (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - The 34 names are familiar to anyone who has followed economic policy in Washington for the past generation, one-third of them former chairmen or members of key committees of Congress, seven of them former directors of the White House Office of Management and Budget, two of them former comptroller generals of the United States, seven of them former directors of the Congressional Budget Office, and one of them -- Paul Volcker -- a former chairman of the Federal Reserve System and now an adviser to President Obama. ∴ Both political parties are well represented in their number. But they came together this week as signatories of a nonpartisan manifesto, essentially a stark warning to the president and Congress and a plea for action on behalf of the next generation. Read more at the Washington Post...

John recommends reading the Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform warning. Red Ink Rising: A Call to Action to Stem the Mounting Federal Debt Read More......

Hiatt: Shirking cost control

WASHINGTON POST, 10/26/2009 by Fred Hiatt - The "public option" is dangerous not for what it might do but for what it allows the politicians not to do. ∴ From the start, the Obama administration has said that health-care reform has to make health care both more accessible and less costly . If Congress does the first without the second -- guarantees a new entitlement without controlling costs -- it will bankrupt us, because health-care costs are rising faster than the overall economy is growing. ∴ So far, though, that seems to be where Congress is headed, for two reasons: First, no one knows for sure how to control costs; and, second, the reforms that are likeliest to work are politically unpalatable. Read more at Washington Post... Read More......

Can Obama and Congress Order You to Buy Broccoli?

TOWNHALL.COM, 10/21/2009 by Terry Jeffrey - Can President Barack Obama and Congress enact legislation that orders Americans to buy broccoli? If so, where did they get that authority? What provision in the Constitution empowers the federal government to order an individual to buy a product he does not want? Read more at Townhall.com... Read More......