With his actions, Boehner said, Obama “deliberately sabotaged” any chance of comprehensive immigration legislation, and by acting “like a king” he is also “damaging the presidency.”
Once again it’s too little too late for Boehner. Is he just talking tough like usual or will he finally…FINALLY…take some action?
[youtube]http://youtu.be/PLdVDM_b2V4[/youtube]
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) vowed Friday to confront President Obama’s unilateral executive actions to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation, saying the moves were “damaging the presidency” and warning that Congress will not let them stand without a fight.
“The House will, in fact, act,” he said.
…”He created an environment where the members could not trust him, and trying to find a way to work together was virtually impossible, and I had warned the president over and over that his actions were making it impossible for me to do what he wanted me to do,” the speaker said, explaining his inability to even consider smaller pieces of the 2013 Senate-approved legislation that revamped border and immigration laws.
“We have a broken immigration system, and the American people expect us to work together to fix it, and we ought to do it through the democratic process,” he said.
He broke it all down in one sentence:
“you can’t ask the elected representatives of the people to trust you to enforce the law if you’re constantly demonstrated that you can’t be trusted to enforce the law.”
Obama has purposely made it impossible for either side to trust each other for at least a generation. That will be his legacy.
“What did the president do? He pulled the pin on the grenade two weeks after the election,” said Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, a Boehner ally. “I don’t think anybody knows or can predict what happens and the carnage that this creates quite frankly for the legislative process.”
Many people are saying there is nothing that the Republicans can do about this action by the President. That may very well be but I like Ed Morrissey’s ideas:
They can sit on Obama’s appointments for a long while, for one thing, which Democrats will be helpless to stop. More to the issue, they can pass a tough border-security bill as I suggested earlier and force Obama to veto it, and vulnerable Democrats to sustain a veto on a popular component of immigration reform. As the border gets rushed by people looking to take advantage of the situation, Republicans can lay the entire blame on Obama and his half-baked amnesty plan. None of these are perfect, but with control of Congress, the GOP has better options in January than they do right now.
Will Boehner actually act this time? I have my doubts but if there was ever going to be a chance of the man showing some balls this is it.
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They have NO choice but to ACT and for exactly the reason identified. President Obola is acting as an emperor but here in America we have rules!!
Refusing to vote on appointments is sabotaging America for domestic political purposes. We need ambassadors, a surgeon general,etc ….. Well, those who love America do. Those who hate Obama seem perfectly happy to block appointments not on their merits, But to cripple our country
@rewinn:
The republicans have had the congress and the white house different times. What makes you think they will ACTUALLY do anything now that they didn’t do each time they had full control?
MONEY controls congress. As long as we have a campaigning system where politicians need someone else’s money to run, the ones with the money will ALWAYS win, because they give to both parties.
Please list the major accomplishments of the republican party when they had full control of the government. I will admit that the economy does better under a republican government, so that will be number (1), but that is only because the democrats screw it up so badly that the economy is only doing BETTER. It could do much better if BOTH parties would get out of the way.
What else has the republican party done for the country? They don’t even want the American flag to be made ONLY IN AMERICA.
@rewinn: #2
I’m curious if you were saying the same thing about the democratic party when they blocked Bush’s appointments for as long as they did, or have you forgotten about all the appointments they blocked?
Thank you for the polite response. Very few of Bush’s appointments were blocked. Do the numbers.
Also, the reason given for blocking Bush picks were merits; he had a habit of appointing unqualified judges based on ideology. In contrast, most of the blocks today are as bargaining chips in a political battle, unrelated to whether the ambassador or judge can do the job. See the difference?
@smorgabord: as for money, we probably agree that Congress serves money and not the people, and until we do something about it, we are screwed.
However it is not true that our economy does it better with Republicans. Since World War 2, which was an admittedly anomalous situation, our economy always does better with Democrats in charge semicolon the only exception was the Arab oil embargo. The reason is basic economics: since the Democrats are slightly more populist, they tend to put money in the hands of working class people who spend it locally and stimulate the economy. The Republicans are somewhat more corporatist, and corporate profits go abroad worldwide where they do American jobs very little good.
@rewinn: #5
I’m glad you took it the way I meant it. Sometimes I have written something that could be read either way. Emotions don’t show up in text.
First, let me say that I don’t belong to any party, and that I want ALL of the politicians thrown out. I’m tired of voting for someone I don’t want in office, but I want the other candidate even less.
I and many other conservatives have condemned Bush for some of the things he did. Even conservative talk show hosts did. Conservatives are that way. If we don’t like what a politician is doing, we let them know it. Liberals don’t seem to be that way. Try to get a liberal to say even ONE thing that a democrat in office does that they don’t like. It seldom happens. This is why I usually say what I have to say, and if we don’t agree on things, I would rather not continue the conversation. We are not going to agree on obama, so I will leave it with what I think of your king:
@rewinn: #6
I have images of charts that show the economy during the times both parties had full control of the government, and it always does worse under democrats. I didn’t think to include the web link with the images, so I can’t give you a link to them.
And yet they leave for home without a plan
Was Crying Jonnie talking to a mirror?
@Smorgasbord:
This was one of the main ways the the demo-COMMUNIST partie sabotaged the Bush@ admin for the first 8 months of his admin — led chiefly by the TWO PUKES from MA and dingy Harry. The bastards!
@Budvarakbar: #10
I lived in Massachusetts for about one year. I was glad when I left.
Budvarakbar shows exactly how not to have a useful conversation. I believe he was in the first room of the Monty Python scetch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y
@Smorgasbord I do enjoy talking with conservatives who are roughly as polite as I try to be, because there’s no use talking to the same people all the time and, every now and then, we can get things done. In the real world, work gets done regardless of politics.
So rather than argue about, let us say, how the stock market and corporate profits are reaching record heights during the Obama Administration, perhaps it is more useful to focus on the things we are agree are problems, such as a Congress which is basically an auction house, and in which 90% or 95% of Congressional races are pretty much shams since one part or the other has a lock on the district. This doesn’t give voters a real choice.
One approach that looks slightly helpful is Washington State’s “Top Two” Primary. Anyone can run in the primary and state their party “preference”; the two top vote getting get on the general ballot, even if they claim to be from the same party. The result is that voters can have meaningful choices between candidates.
For example, in a pretty conservative part of our state, the top two were Republicans – one an establishment guy and one a tea partier. (the Democrat who ran finished 3rd – and would have had no chance in the general). So now the people of that district had a real choice in the general election: conservative or very conservative. I don’t remember which one won but the point is that the candidates had to work at it, they could not assume victory as some many congresscritter did.
Does this sound like a reform that might produce a congress that acts?
Obama has been disingenuous.
He points out that the senate passed a bill (omitting that the Senate sat on over 300 bills that the House had passed) and acts like the Senate’s one bill gave him some right to act on his own.
Also, as Curt pointed out, Obama has made a policy of not bothering to enforce laws on the books he doesn’t agree with.
How can the House and Senate trust him if they do pass laws?
He picks and chooses which laws he enforces.
Our ICE personnel had been reduced to babysitters before the election.
That surge of children (whose parents were in adjacent rooms for their own reasons) spread our ICE and Border Patrol too thin.
Now, by edict Obama wants to say ”if you’ve been here 5 years….” but he could change that edict to ”if you’ve been here ONE year,” anytime he chooses.
After all, it is simply a personal edict.
The cost to the STATES is very high.*
Obama ignored that and claimed its cost to the FEDERAL gov’t wasn’t very high.
*Let’s take New York, as an example.
New York is required by a 2001 court decision to provide health services to ALL immigrants who are lawfully living in the state.
Obama’s immigration overhaul would make as many as 300,000 undocumented immigrants eligible for New York’s Medicaid program.
Obama’s order forbids undocumented immigrants from receiving federal health care subsidies, New York would have to bear the total cost of the new enrollees.
Therefore New York will be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in NEW costs to taxpayers just for these newly legalized immigrants.
That’s assuming that many now illegals want to jump through Obama’s new hoops (which might, by presidential edict disappear tomorrow.)
@Nanny is simply mistaken to state that Obama refuses to enforce laws.
ALL executives – presidents, governors and mayor – pick-and-choose which laws to enforce rigorously, which to be lax on. Why is this an issue with Obama and not with his predecessors – why is it an issue with Obama and not with the governor of your state?
On immigration, Obama had deported more per year than his predecessors, which means – by your logic – his predecessors refused to enforce immigration laws.
Now if you want to say that Congress won’t pass laws because they don’t trust Obama to enforce the law, then fine – let Congress go home and stop doing anything except cashing their paychecks LOL
You are incorrect, rewinn.
What Obama did, as he does so often, is move the goalposts which define terms.
So, other presidents actually deported people who were FOUND to be in this country illegally.
Obama calls turning away at the border deportation.
IF we added in all those turned away at the border on top of all caught inside the country and deported for all other modern presidents, Obama would lag far behind them.
As to:
That’s what’s called a false dilemma.
There are many other things Congress can do besides either continuing to not trust Obama to enforce laws and going home.
LOL.
Here’s one other option:
There is the option of limiting budgetary options so that all Obama has per each department is an enforcement budget.
IF he behaves and uses that budget to enforce laws he might get more next budget.
Boehner has been a disappointment from the get go. I’ll believe the Republicans will DO something…when I see/hear confirmation of it. Otherwise….frustration ensues.
We are getting to the point where we would have to use a lie detector to get some straight answers and actions from these people …who supposedly ‘represent’ us. smh
@rewinn: #14
First, we need to get rid of the computer voter machines. They are too easily rigged, and George Soros bought a large stake in one company that makes them.
My suggestion on voting is to have the voters chose which of the candidates they want as their first choice, then they mark which one they want second, etc. When the ballots are counted, the one with the least votes is dropped off. The ballots are run through again, and the one with the least votes is dropped off. This is done until there are two candidates left, and the one who gets over 50% wins. It would take longer, but the people get the candidate they want.
I also would like to see the money taken out of campaigning, and go to a debate type system, where the candidates can’t spend any money. The debates would be recorded, and the networks would have to show them at designated times so the general public can view them. The videos could also be downloaded for free.
This would take the money out of campaigning, so that the only people the candidate has to pay back if they win are WE THE PEOPLE. The reason things are the way they are is because the ones with the money give to both parties, so the winners have to do what the donors want, or they don’t get any money for their next election.
@Nanny: Why haven’t the states gotten together and said that they are not going to obey the federal mandates that make them pay for illegals? I would like to see the states decide not to fund the things the politicians want funded for illegals, just because the ones with the donation money want the illegals. It is time for the states to finally say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. They should quit funding the illegals, and let the feds sue them.