House Plans "Show Vote" On Obama's Amnesty | Dems Finally Admitting Faults In Obamacare?

Today in Washington, D.C. - Dec. 3, 2014
President Obama is set to nominate Ashton Carter as his fourth Secretary of Defense. Carter is a physicist and served as former Deputy Secretary of Defense working with acquisitions of weapons systems.

The Senate reconvened at 9:30 AM today and resumed consideration of the nomination of Charlotte Burrows to be a Member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

At 10 AM, the Senate held a series of 5 roll call votes: voting 93-2 to confirm the Burrows nomination, 53-43 to confirm David Lopez to be General Counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 65-31 to invoke cloture on the nomination of David Hale to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Kentucky, 60-36 to invoke cloture on the nomination of Mark Kearney to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and 67-28 to invoke cloture on the nomination of Gerald Pappert, also to be a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

At 5:30 PM, 5 more votes are scheduled: on confirmation of the Hale, Kearney, and Pappert nominations and then on cloture on the nominations of Franklin Orr to be Under Secretary for Science in the Department of Energy and Joseph Hezir to be the Energy Department CFO.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 68-28 to confirm Nani Coloretti to be Deputy Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 53-44 to confirm Robert Adler to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Senators also voted 57-39 to invoke cloture on the Burrows nomination and 54-43 to invoke cloture on the Lopez nomination.

The House reconvened at 10 AM today. The House is expected to consider the following bills today:
H.R. 5769 — "To authorize appropriations for the Coast Guard for fiscal year 2015, and for other purposes."
H.R. 5771 - "To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend certain expiring provisions and make technical corrections, and for other purposes."
H.R. 647 - "To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide for the tax treatment of ABLE accounts established under State programs for the care of family members with disabilities, and for other purposes."

Yesterday the House passed the following bills:
S. 2040 (414-0) — "To exchange trust and fee land to resolve land disputes created by the realignment of the Blackfoot River along the boundary of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, and for other purposes."
H.R. 5739 (420-0) — "To amend the Social Security Act to provide for the termination of social security benefits for individuals who participated in Nazi persecution, and for other purposes."
H.R. 5714 (Voice Vote) — "To permit commercial applicators of pesticides to create, retain, submit, and convey pesticide application-related records, reports, data, and other information in electronic form."
H.R. 5471 (Voice Vote) — "To amend the Commodity Exchange Act and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to specify how clearing requirements apply to certain affiliate transactions, and for other purposes."
H.R. 5050 (418-0) — "To repeal the Act of May 31, 1918, and for other purposes."
H.R. 4569 (Voice Vote) — "To require the Securities and Exchange Commission to make certain improvements to form 10-K and regulation S-K, and for other purposes."
H.R. 4329 (Voice Vote) — "To reauthorize the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996, and for other purposes."
H.R. 4200 (Voice Vote) — "To amend the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 to prevent duplicative regulation of advisers of small business investment companies."
H.R. 3572 (410-7) — "To revise the boundaries of certain John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System units in North Carolina."
H.R. 3240 (422-0) — "To instruct the Comptroller General of the United States to study the impact of Regulation D, and for other purposes."
H.R. 2790 (Voice Vote) — "To authorize private nonprofit organizations to administer permanent housing rental assistance provided through the Continuum of Care Program under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, and for other purposes."
H.R. 2366 (418-3) — "To require the Secretary of the Treasury to mint coins in commemoration of the centennial of World War I."

Last night, Speaker commererated the lighting of the 2014 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree, an 88-foot tall white spruce from Minnesota’s Chippewa National Forest.

Thank you Sen. Jeff Sessions! Yesterday Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee and a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, spoke for the majority of Legal American citizens in his response to the current plan being floated in the House of Representatives regarding the President’s unconstitutional amnesty. Hes said:

“The Chairman of the Republican Party made a promise to America on executive amnesty: ‘We can’t allow it to happen and we won’t let it happen… everything we can do to stop it we will.’

"Unfortunately, the plan now being circulated in the House fails to meet that test. The executive amnesty language is substantially weaker than the language the House adopted this summer, and does not reject the central tenets of the President’s plan: work permits, Social Security, and Medicare to 5 million illegal immigrants—reducing wages, jobs, and benefits for Americans.

"Congress considered and rejected these changes to immigration law in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2014. The President’s action erases the laws Congress has passed in order to implement laws Congress has refused to pass.

"Now the President demands Congress fund his imperial decree and declare its own irrelevance.

"That is why Congress must respond to the President’s unlawful action by funding the government but not funding illegal amnesty. This is a perfectly sound and routine application of congressional authority. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reports that last year’s omnibus spending bill included 16 such funding restrictions on fee-based programs.

"Such a plan would put the focus where it belongs: on Senate Democrats. They are the ones who should be made to choose sides — save Obama’s amnesty or save Americans’ jobs and borders.

"Polling shows voters believe that Americans should get preference for available jobs by almost a 10-1 margin. Republicans should not be timid or apologetic, but mount a bold defense of struggling Americans.

"Billions of dollars and countless hours have been spent advocating immigration policies that help everyone but the actual citizens of this country. Who will be their voice, if not us?”

Russ Vought, Vice President, Heritage Action for America also responded to tomorrows proposed action by the House Republican leadership asking people to immediately contact their representatives. Statement follows: "House Republicans are planning to give up their only leverage over Barack Obama and Harry Reid. They want to pass a long-term spending bill that doesn't defund the President's executive amnesty. Instead, they are planning a show vote tomorrow against Obama's amnesty, and then promising to fight anew next year. This course of action is unacceptable. If they're not willing to fight now, experience tells us they won't ever be.

"The only leverage Republicans have over Reid and Obama right now is to restrict funds from being used to implement Obama's amnesty. Remember, the American people just spoke loud and clear on this issue through the midterm elections.

"Even the media sees the current plan as a useless gambit, describing it as a way to give "GOP lawmakers an outlet to vent some of their frustrations" with Obama's amnesty. It does nothing to block his unilateral, unlawful changes which include granting quasi-legal status, work permits and Social Security numbers to those who are in the country illegally.

"How can you tell this is a show vote? Harry Reid supports it!

"The House needs to respond now, not next year. Americans expect real action, not a show vote. Conservatives in Congress must use the power of the purse to block President Obama's executive actions–actions which are opposed even by some in his own party."

In the meantime, Senate Democrats seem to be in a reflective mood following last month’s election, with a number offering more candid assessments of their unpopular health care law than they have in the past.

Last week, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the third ranking Senate Democrat, expressed regret that Democrats mishandled the health care law, ignoring the problems of the economy in favor of passing a giant bill. “Unfortunately,” he said, “Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them. . . . We took their mandate and put all our focus on the wrong problem -- health care reform.”

Today, though, there are Democrats discussing their problems with the law and its implementation.

The Washington Post notes an interview former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had with USA Today. Asked about how she feels about responsibility for the failures of Healthcare.gov last year, Sebelius said, “I think that I was the CEO of a big company with an important rollout and Healthcare.gov was something that had been promised to work smoothly, to work like you were buying an airline ticket using your app on your computer. Instead it worked like buying an airline ticket using your fax machine.”

In other words, Sebelius is admitting that the troubled website never lived up to the president’s promises about how it would work. Of course, Republicans had warned that setting up such a massive technological undertaking would be difficult, especially for the government, but those warnings were dismissed by Democrats eager to pass the bill.

Meanwhile,The Hill reports, “Sen. Tom Harkin, one of the co-authors of the Affordable Care Act, now thinks Democrats may have been better off not passing it at all and holding out for a better bill. The Iowa Democrat who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, laments the complexity of legislation the Senate passed five years ago. He wonders in hindsight whether the law was made overly complicated to satisfy the political concerns of a few Democratic centrists who have since left Congress.

“‘We had the power to do it in a way that would have simplified healthcare, made it more efficient and made it less costly and we didn’t do it,’ Harkin told The Hill. ‘So I look back and say we should have either done it the correct way or not done anything at all. What we did is we muddled through and we got a system that is complex, convoluted, needs probably some corrections and still rewards the insurance companies extensively,’ he added. . . .

“Harkin, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, says in retrospect the Democratic-controlled Senate and House should have enacted a single-payer healthcare system or a public option to give the uninsured access to government-run health plans that compete with private insurance companies.”

And here is Harkin admitting that Obamacare is a complicated mess, with a maze of regulations and rules that have resulted in a system that’s even more confusing for consumers and employers. He’s also upset that Democrats didn’t go even further in their takeover of health care. Although given his concern about the complexity of Obamacare, it’s odd that he thinks even more government control, regulation, and management would somehow make things better.

Almost 5 years later, a few Democrats are finally admitting to some of the things that Republicans warned about Obamacare as the president and congressional Democrats jammed the law through Congress. Republicans said that the focus in 2009 and 2010 should have been on the economy, as Sen. Schumer now says. Republicans warned that the task of setting up the health care exchanges was a massive technological undertaking that was likely to result in problems and which the government was unlikely to be able to deliver smoothly. Former Sec. Sebelius is now admitting that indeed it did not work smoothly. Finally, Republicans warned that Obamacare was a complex, bureaucratic mess that would make the health care system more complicated and more expensive. And even Sen. Harkin now agrees on the fact that the law is “complex [and] convoluted.”

How long will it take for Democrats to agree with what Americans have known from the beginning about Obamacare? It’s a poorly written law that has raised premiums, raised costs, caused people to lose their insurance, failed to live up to the lofty promises made by President Obama and other proponents, and has made the health care system more complex rather than more efficient and responsive.

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