11/20/14, "Republicans Can Defund Obama’s Executive Order, They Just Don’t Want To," The Federalist, Sean Davis
"President Barack Obama’s executive order on immigration hasn’t even been issued yet, and already congressional Republicans are desperately trying to come up with reasons why they’re powerless to do anything about it.
Here’s what the House Appropriations Committee spokesman told The Hill earlier today:
It would be “impossible to defund President Obama’s executive order through a government spending bill, House Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Hing said Thursday.That is absolute nonsense. The notion that Congress can turn on a money spigot but is banned from turning it off is nonsense. And the worst part is that it’s willful nonsense. There is simply no law whatsoever that says that the House is only allowed to X and Y but not Z on an appropriations bill.
Congress doesn’t provide funding to U.S. Citizenship and Immgiration Services (CIS), the agency responsible for issuing work permits and green cards. Instead, the agency is funded through fees.
“We cannot, literally cannot, defund that agency in an appropriations bill because we don’t appropriate that agency. That agency is entirely-fee funded,” Hing told reporters.
“As of right now, our understanding is the primary agency responsible for implementing any type of executive order is CIS and we don’t fund CIS. There are no appropriated dollars,” she added.
Now why would (GOP) appropriators be so invested in pushing something completely false about the Congressional power of the purse? Easy. They don’t want another defund/shutdown fight. I get that. I understand that a lot of Republicans think the 2013 shutdown seriously hurt the long-term interests of the party. I don’t agree with it, but I understand that concern. But what’s happening right now is that rather than just saying, “We don’t want another defund/shutdown fight,” appropriators are dishonestly pretending that even if they wanted one, it’s impossible. Which is balderdash.
The excuse they’re trying to make is that because the USCIS, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, is funded primarily by mandatory, rather than discretionary spending, that they have no way to whack it with an annual appropriations bill. USCIS is funded by fees it collects, the argument goes, and since those fees aren’t subject to annual appropriations, Congress can’t monkey with them in an annual appropriations bill.
It’s a clever little argument. Completely wrong, but clever. What these appropriators want you to believe is that “not subject to annual appropriations” and “cannot be changed via an appropriations bill” are synonymous. They’re not.
They’re correct that USCIS spending is funded primarily by fees collected by the agency, and that the spending is mandatory, rather than discretionary. That means that USCIS does not need annual authorizations to use those fees to offset expenses. This is actually written into the 1882 law establishing the fees and the authority of the federal government to spend them:
The only thing that differentiates mandatory and discretionary spending is how often each must be re-authorized. Every single dollar spent by the federal government must be first appropriated by Congress. Just because some spending is not subject to annual appropriation doesn’t mean it’s not subject to appropriation at all. Congress can’t block Obama’s executive order by shutting down the government, but it most certainly can defund it by law.
Congress adds riders and prohibitions to appropriations bills all the time. Why? Because it can. That’s kind of the whole purpose of Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution:
No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law[.]And from that power of the purse come the most powerful words in federal law: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no funds shall be appropriated or otherwise made available for ______.”
That’s it. That’s literally all it takes. It doesn’t matter if the spending is mandatory or discretionary, good or bad, wasteful or essential; when that sentence becomes law, it nukes whatever spending it touches up until the point at which that sentence is repealed or superseded by a future law.
Republicans can add defunding language to any bill whenever they so choose. The issue is not that they can’t use the power of the purse to block Obama’s lawless power grab. The issue is that they don’t want to. The real shame is that they can’t even be honest about that." via Lucianne.
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More on absolute power of defunding that GOP won't use: The House of Representatives has unilateral power to defund any spending it wishes to. In the case of ObamaCare, the GOP House simply has had no desire to defund it, opts not to use its power.
"The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of the government. They, in a word, hold the power of the purse."...And there's no such thing as "mandatory spending:"
8/30/13, "Founders made defunding 'the most complete and effectual weapon'," Washington Examiner, Mark Tapscott, Executive Editor
"It's not often that I've had the opportunity or inclination to take up my pen in recent months, owing to the Washington Examiner's transformation earlier this year from daily print newspaper to online media. I do so now only out of concern about a persistent myth that is heard daily in the Obamacare debate.
That myth is that Congress cannot repeal or otherwise change "mandatory spending," and therefore Obamacare cannot be defunded via a continuing resolution, as proposed by Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
People on all sides of the "defund, delay or repeal Obamacare" issue have solid arguments, and this column isn't about whether one or the other side ought to prevail in that discussion.
What this column most certainly is about, however, is that the Congress can repeal, increase, reduce or otherwise modify any "mandatory spending" measure at any time. In fact, James Madison, the "father of the Constitution," made it clear in Federalist #58 that the Founders specifically gave the House of Representatives the power of the purse with the expectation that it would on occasion use that power to stop unwise acts by the Senate or either of the other two branches.
I was reminded of this today by J. Christian Adams, who briefly alludes to Madison in a Washington Times column. Madison's observations about the House of Representatives make it absolutely clear that there is no such thing as "mandatory spending" that cannot be changed as Congress, and in particular at the insistence of the lower chamber.
First, Madison points to the superiority of the House over the Senate with regard to funding issues, noting that "notwithstanding the equal authority which will subsist between the two houses on all legislative subjects except the originating of money bills" and praising the "continual triumph of the British House of Commons over the other branches of the government whenever the engine of a money bill has been employed."
In other words, the prospect of the House standing firm and refusing to fund something favored by the Senate and the president was understood by the Founders to be a very real possibility because they had seen just such a conflict stretching over many decades in Parliament.
But Madison didn't just acknowledge the similarity of fiscal power between the House of Representatives and the House of Commons, he praised the singular exercise of the power of the purse as "the most complete and effectual weapon" available under the Constitution to any of the three branches of the federal government.
Madison's point here bears serious, deliberative study by anybody who has an interest in the Obamacare debate:
"The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of the government. They, in a word, hold the power of the purse — that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitition, an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seemed to wish, all of the overgrown perogatives of the other branches of the government.
"This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and saluatory measure."
From his glowing description of how the House of Commons expanded its power as a result of its exercise of the power of the purse, Madison clearly anticipated that the House of Representatives would use its power of the purse to similar effect. And not merely on occasion but regularly and over a long period of time.
So were Madison here to advise us, he would say that not only can Congress do whatever it chooses to do with funding for any federal activity, Obamacare not excepted, the House of Representatives can, if it chooses to stand firm, properly refuse to fund any federal activity because that is exactly what the Founders expected the House of Representatives to do.
And one more observation: It is well to remember that the U.S. Constitution established a legislative supremacy federal government. The three branches are co-equal only as long as Congress chooses to allow them to be. And it is to the House of Representatives that the Constitution gives "the most complete and effectual weapon"
in any contest with any other part of the government. Some folks don't like it that way, but that's the way it is.
"Mark Tapscott is executive editor of The Washington Examiner."
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Those polls after the so-called shutdown:
Standing ovations for Ted Cruz:
12 minute and 8 minute standing ovations for Ted on his return to Texas in Oct. 2013, Arlington and San Antonio:
10/22/13, “U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz brings crusade to Tarrant County,” Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Anna M. Tinsley, Arlington
“U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz received a hero’s welcome during a swing through Tarrant County on Tuesday as he continued to drum up support for his battle to end the country’s new healthcare program.
Denounced by top leaders in his own party for what they called a “fool’s errand” and by Democrats for bringing the economy close to collapse, a crowd of more than 1,000 at the Arlington Music Hall gave him a more than 12-minute standing ovation that included whistles, applause and chants of “Thank you, Ted,” “Cruz” and “USA.”"...
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10/20/13, "Senator Cruz returns to Texas welcome after shutdown battle," Reuters, San Antonio, Jim Forsyth
"Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a favorite of the conservative Tea
Party movement, returned home to a rousing welcome in Texas on Saturday
after his attempt to derail Obamacare with a shutdown of the federal
government led to sharp criticism of his tactics as reckless and futile.
Cruz was greeted with an eight-minute standing ovation in an appearance organized by the Texas Federation of Republican Women. People in attendance, many of them wearing red to show their support for keeping Texas a conservative-leaning state, lined up to greet him."...
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Comment: In Nov. 2010 we gave the GOP House a huge majority in order to make it easy for them to defund ObamaCare but the GOP wasn't interested. A standalone up or down vote to defund ObamaCare has never been brought to the floor of the House since Boehner has been Speaker. The many charade ObamaCare votes the House supposedly took either involved "repeal" which they can't do unilaterally, or one or more other measures were included along with defunding language.
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