The Senate Meets Reality
Just when the Czar is looking for a way to discuss a topic, Operative BJ sends him a note on the very thing.
| O Mighty One! This lowly one was listening to a post-game review of Obama’s press conference from a college-age person, and this (or something like it) is what he heard: “Like, Obama – he’s sooooo cool! It’s like he knows, like, everything and all. He knows, like, what me and my boyfriend were, like, thinking! He even said that he heard us! And we didn’t even vote!!!” I am confused, O Great One! It seems that these young and inexperienced man-children and woman-children believe that the child-king Obama is looking out for their best interests even when they don’t tell him what they want. They believe that the child-king Obama is one of them. They may be more correct than they know. It appears that the child-king Obama is exactly that: a child who has taken on the powers of a king. And, just as a child who is in danger of losing the game, he has threatened to take his ball and go home. He made that clear several times in his post-election press conference. It’s almost as if he was daring the Republicans to send him something he wouldn’t sign. Well, maybe not “almost”: he did dare them to send him bills he would veto. Fine. Let’s play that game and use the child-king Obama’s rules. This one thinks that McConnell’s best strategy as the Senate majority leader is to work with the House, using regular order, to pass bills that make sense for the country – and to ignore the PPACA for the present. There are other more pressing items on the agenda. The PPACA – “Obamacare” – will eventually become undone on its own. It will go down under the weight of its own unrealistic ambitions and possibly some “friendly” SCOTUS decisions over the next year or two. Or due to the usurious and unaffordable rate increases that are being announced for this year’s enrollment period. Or due to a broken website (which still isn’t working right – even a year later!). Or to any other number of reasons that are built-in problems with this law. Sure, pass bills to “fix” the PPACA, but don’t pay a lot of attention to them when they’re vetoed. Allow the general public to see those vetoes and become disenchanted with the PPACA on their own – which is already happening – and they’ll demand changes that Obama won’t be able to ignore. Even the remaining Democrats (or those who caucus with them) will beg him to fix it or find themselves – the Democrats – become irrelevant and unwanted due to their support for a bill that has become an albatross around their necks. How many Democrats ran – and won – based on their support for it? Q.E.D. Instead, the GOP-led Congress should concentrate on:
There’s enough here to keep a congress – both houses – busy for a full term. Pass bills that make sense. Pass bills that may, in some cases, be fully bipartisan. Pass bills the empower the people over the government. And keep unrelated attachments or amendments to a minimum – or eliminate them completely (“earmarks” are unproductive and can be used to “poison” a good bill and make it unpalatable). Pass bills. Then, dare Obama to veto them. If he signs them, the country will be better off – and the country will know that a Republican-led Congress is anything but obstructionist. If he vetoes them, the country will be better off as well, because it will finally become clear that Obama and the Democrats – in the form of Reid – were the true obstructionists. |
Well, the Czar appears to have very good news for you. What the Senate does in a given term is very much controlled by the Chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, who in 2015 will be Senator Mike Lee (R-UT). Earlier today, Sen. Lee laid out his strategy for not only what the Senate will be doing in 2015, but how they will actually be doing it. The list is a near-perfect blend of Tea Party demands of what to do, tempered by Establishment cautions of how to do it.
You can read it at The Federalist, and we urge you to do so. Yes, it’s lengthy, but it nails pretty much all of your ideas.
His first strategy is to rebuild trust in Congress. Not merely get the approval numbers up, but to stop doing the stupid antics we have seen for the last 8 years: no more sequesters, no more cliff crises, no more unread bills being passed. By doing this, he reasons, you instantly create the transparency that disappeared in 2006.
Second, he wants to curtail cronyism, and not by mere protest bills, but by passing measures that help big and small businesses alike. He admits some big business bills need to get passed—like Keystone XL—but there are a lot of examples that help all businesses—like killing any idea of bailing out Obamacare insurance companies. And he’s smart enough to acknowledge that this item alone will be the biggest test of the GOP’s mettle. If they can do it, the GOP will be heroes. If they fail, they confirm the worst suspicions the public has about Republicans.
Third, he wants to pass a budget. Not just a good budget, but one that eliminates the deficit in 10 years, doesn’t raise taxes, and repeals Obamacare.
Fourth, he has a plan to reduce spending in a totally new way that the Czar really likes. Not just “cut spending,” because he correctly assumes this never works. Rather, he wants a more Coolidge-like approach of forcing government agencies to reduce their own spending needs by fixing their problems. If you want your agency to get money, you need to clean it up first. If your agency can prove its value, you get money. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t get funded. Wow.
Finally, he wants to take every Senate committee and reorient it along conservative lines. Committees shall be led by people who seek to improve education, not expand it. Or who want to update entitlements, not expand or “reform” them into the same problem later. Every committee should be showing the voters that conservative ideas work really well when given a chance.
The Czar’s favorite line of all? Sen. Lee asks:
In 20 years, will we need, say, a Government Printing Office or Internal Revenue Service in anything like their current forms? If disruptive innovations continue to personalize and localize the economy, will centralized, monolithic bureaucracies be the right instruments to regulate it? Or is government just as badly in need of some disruptive innovations that would enable market forces, public desires, and longstanding constitutional principles to once again show us the way and make our institutions more accountable?
Really, read the whole darn thing. Conservatives, and a large number of libertarians, really like Senator Lee, and if this piece reveals how he truly thinks—and he’s been pretty consistent—then we can see some truly amazing things.
And yes, he discusses how the Senate will need to handle a President who intends to exercise his veto power because he’s a petulant brat.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.