Last updated on April 12th, 2018 at 02:28 pm
In August 2012, tea partier Steve King (R-IA) told an audience he would “introduce one all-encompassing bill to repeal everything Obama has signed into law.” King was not just intent on deleting the Affordable Care Act and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus) out of existence, but everything the President supported to erase the President’s agenda from the history books. Republicans lust for a veritable reset to reassert what they perceive as legitimate and legal American governance (white Republican dominance). Although King never followed through on his threat, there has been an ongoing Republican crusade to eradicate any legislative accomplish this President supported since the Koch brothers took control of the House after the 2010 midterms.
By now, only comatose Americans are unaware that Republicans lied through their collective teeth throughout the 2010 campaign that their entire focus would be creating jobs or governing for the people. Instead they immediately voted to repeal the President’s health law, railed against the stimulus, decried financial reform, attacked women’s rights, became fervent job killers, and violated one of their most solemn pledges to the American people. In their phony “Pledge to America” of 2010, Republicans swore they would put an abrupt end to packing must-pass government funding legislation with esoteric provisions for special interests that had nothing whatsoever to do with funding the government. That solemn oath, like their pledge to create jobs, has been regularly violated as long as they have controlled the House and at least on Republican admitted that was the case in the so-called CRomnibus funding bill.
The Republican, Bill Flores (R-TX), said it is true that Republican leadership certainly broke their 2010 Pledge to America in the CRomnibus, but he justified violating the people’s trust because an African American man is President. The prominent Republican said, like Mormon’s who justify lying if it is for the lord, that it is worth breaking an oath to the American people if the ends justify the means.
According to Flores, deleting legislation the President signed justifies breaking the Pledge to America. Flores did not vote for the CRomnibus because “an unlawful (Black) President” issued the same executive orders as white Republican presidents. In the “Pledge,” it says, “We will end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with ‘must-pass’ legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.” However, breaking the pledge is the price Republicans are more than willing to pay to undo President Obama’s agenda; starting with legislation that passed during the two years that Democrats controlled the White House and both branches of Congress after the 2008 election.
“Of course it is a violation,” Flores said. “But it’s one of the byproducts of having to clean up really bad legislation (legislation Wall Street and the Kochs hate) and it’s really one of the few ways we can have to delete bad policy. The ends justified the means; I hate to say that, but yes.” Flores is still a liar; he does not hate to say it and he knows it. The only thing remarkable about anything Flores says is that he admitted Republicans are liars in a public forum even though it is common knowledge the dirty lying liars only raison d’être is eradicating anything President Obama signed into law during his first two years in office, or has supported since then.
For example, Republicans began their votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act immediately on taking control of the House in 2011 and have attempted to insert riders in other budgets and legislation to defund the health law. The rider to give Wall Street free reign to decimate the economy again with phony derivatives is a result of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation that Republicans have tried to eliminate since taking control of the House. This time, they may have succeeded with the valuable assistance of 57 Democrats whose fealty is not to the people. One wonders how those Democrats, many who voted for Dodd-Frank, sleep at night knowing they are complicit in deleting a law they likely helped pass.
While most Democrats actually stood strong with President Obama’s efforts to address climate change by blocking a Koch rider restricting the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, 57 of them voted for the Koch brothers’ cuts to the EPA’s budget. Republicans have done their due diligence to block the President’s environmental efforts over the past six years and boasted they slashed the EPA budget by 21% since the brothers bought the House in 2010. Apparently 57 Democrats want some of the Koch credit now and going forward. The Kochs have bigger aspirations in the next session of Congress as evidenced by the rider they attached prohibiting enforcement of the Clean Water Act; a bill 57 Democrats voted for.
Republicans are still incensed at the President for pushing to end Bush-era tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, and because they cannot reinstate the insane tax cuts unilaterally, the Kochs and Grover Norquist directed them to make more drastic cuts to the IRS enforcement budget. Because the President has criticized the Supreme Court’s Citizen United ruling, Republican inserted a rider eliminating the IRS’s authority to investigate, enforce compliance, or reject applications of 501(c) social welfare campaign organizations with “conservative” in their name.
Because President Obama has not allowed Israel set American Middle East policy, Republicans included a rider acknowledging Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu’s authority by cutting all assistance to the Palestinian Authority if members of United Nations, or any of its agencies, dared to make it a member. Netanyahu has already made it abundantly clear that President Obama is not acquiescing to Israel’s supremacy, or recognizing that Israel controls American Middle East assistance. Republicans gave that authority to Israel based on its authority to decide which nation is allowed membership into the world organization. It is just another means to eliminate the President’s record on Middle East policy because he does not acknowledge that Israel controls who receives American assistance.
Republicans even added a rider in the CRomnibus to keep the phony “Benghazi” scandal going throughout the rest of the President’s tenure in the White House. The rider prohibits any assistance to Libya until Republicans are satisfied that the country is cooperating with criminal Darrel Issa’s investigation into the attack on the U.S. consulate. This is despite the House already putting any scandalous machinations, cover ups, or wrongdoing by the Obama Administration or former Sec of State Hillary Clinton to rest.
To show how serious, and petty, the Republican effort to delete anything this President accomplished, they put a rider in an appropriations budget banning the President from transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the United States or elsewhere. They also prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars to fund Obama Administration executive branch portraits. They even dealt a blow to First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch standards by giving red state school districts authority to allow students to eat unhealthy school lunches.
The CRomnibus, on its own, although not an ideal budget according to President Obama or any reasonable American, is likely as good as it can be considering Republicans control the House. However, those Koch brother and Wall Street riders, all esoteric to funding the government, are a direct assault on President Obama’s agenda and an attempt to eliminate anything he has signed, supported, or accomplished since he has been President.
Now that the Senate passed the CRomnibus, Americans can rest easy Republicans cannot shutter the government for a little over nine months, but they have taken a big step toward deleting this President’s accomplishments. It is a big step they could not have made without the valuable assistance of 57 Democrats who are obviously more terrified of crossing the Koch brothers than supporting their party’s President and for that they deserve the same outrage decent Americans have for dirty lying racist Republicans.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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