Archives for January 2015

Sen. David Vitter (R-Louisiana) is strongly opposed to the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be the next attorney general, saying she has made it clear she is committed to to enforcing what he considers President Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty orders and ignoring the laws on the books.

Vitter is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held confirmation hearings for Lynch on Wednesday.  He says her answers, especially on Obama’s immigration policy, should disqualify her from leading the Justice Department.

“I have a lot of concerns, but the single biggest reason, by far, is President Obama’s unconstitutional executive amnesty and the fact that she’s defending it and would carry it forward,” said Vitter.

During the eight hours of testimony, Lynch made it clear she believes Obama’s unilateral action to confer legal status on some five million people in the country illegally is “reasonable” and is a policy she will defend.  Lynch further stated that it made sense to focus immigration enforcement the most recent illegal arrivals and those who pose a criminal threat .

During his questioning, Vitter sought to convince Lynch that Obama’s action directly conflicts with existing immigration law and was not impressed with her response.

“I thought she came up way short, quite frankly.  I cited the statutes relied on.  One of them makes it clear that any case like this has to be considered on a case by case basis.  And I asked her, ‘Is an action that covers five million illegal aliens really acting case by case?’  She would never address that question directly, I think for a very obvious reason.  That doesn’t pass the smell test,” said Vitter.

Vitter says he also found Lynch strangely unconcerned about how Obama’s change in policy seems to trump current law and greatly diminishes the attorney general’s position when it comes to immigration enforcement.

“I also asked her about her role in this because the statute makes very clear that the attorney general is supposed to be in the middle of this, making these case by case determinations.  The administration’s plan is not to involve the attorney general in any major way.  Again, she didn’t have a direct answer to that,” he said.

Does Vitter see Lynch as a carbon copy of current Attorney General Eric Holder when it comes to partiality toward the Obama administration?  The senator says yes and no.

“I think it would be largely the same.  She wouldn’t be as much of a lightning rod as Eric Holder.  Arguably, that could make her even more dangerous because she would operate under radar more.  But I think in terms of substance and policy and outcome it would be the same,” said Vitter.

Nonetheless, early indications suggest Lynch is probably headed for confirmation.  Two Republicans on the panel, Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) have suggested they are inclined to support the nomination.  Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), who is not on the panel has already indicated his backing for Lynch.  However, Vitter says observers may be surprised by how many votes are cast against Lynch.

“I think lots of members are still making up their minds.  I think you’re going to see a very significant number of no votes.  I’m not predicting we’ll block the confirmation as I would hope we’ll do, but you’re certainly going to see a significant number of no votes,” he said.

Immigration is not only a major issue concerning the Lynch nomination, but the Senate will soon take up the effort to block funding for the president’s unilateral action as well.  Earlier this month, the House of Representatives approved funding for the Department of Homeland Security through end of Fiscal Year 2015 without providing funds for Obama’s orders or the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals program that Obama unilaterally instituted in 2012 to grant legal status to young people brought to the U.S. illegally when they were very young, a group often labeled as “dreamers”.

Sixty votes are needed to pass the bill out of the Senate and on to Obama’s desk.  Vitter knows it will a tough fight.  He praises Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for allowing a full and open debate on this and other issues.  However, the senator will be working to pass the bill in it’s current form.

“Everybody’s going to have their opportunity for amendments.  Folks who want to take some of the language out of the bill can put up an amendment.  I’m going to oppose that.  I strongly support all of the House bill.  We’ll see where we end up at the end of that process.  I hope that we keep the House bill wholly or largely intact and then pass it on to the president,” said Vitter.

Beyond what he considers the ignoring of existing immigration enforcement statutes, Vitter is also fuming that Obama’s actions make life harder for American citizens and legal immigrants to find work.

“It’s not just setting enforcement priorities.  It’s going further.  It’s giving these people a parole, a different legal status for at least three years at a time.  It’s also giving them a work permit, when there’s plenty of statutory law that says they cannot work here in the United States legally,” said Vitter.

Getting to 60 votes will require at least six Democrats to come on board.  Vitter doesn’t know of any that are prepared to buck the president right now but he says their own words in reaction to the president’s actions in November may push a few to join the Republicans.

“This executive amnesty is a big deal.  There were certainly Democrats who stated that they opposed it at the time, who stated that the president overstepped his bounds,” said Vitter.  “How are they going to show that?  How are they going to demonstrate that position?  We’re going to find out in the next few weeks.”

Department of Homeland Security funding is currently set to expire in late February.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are not at all surprised to see Cuba making more demands to normalize relations with the U.S. and they hope the new demands scuttle the whole plan.  They also groan as Hillary Clinton appears to be drawing no serious competition for the Democratic presidential nomination.  And they shake their heads as legal experts predict former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell will see his corruption convictions overturned on appeal.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is pushing a pro-family legislative agenda that he says is a common sense approach to strengthening families and the U.S. economy at the same time.

The proposals range from a renewed push for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution to giving Americans more flexibility at work so they can make family a priority.

Lee outlined his approach earlier this month in a speech at the Heritage Foundation.  His main thesis is that it’s a mistake for conservatives or anybody else to think of family issues as separate from our economic challenges.

“I believe the family is the fundamental building block of society.  Too often, as conservatives, we’ve tended to look at the family exclusively as a social unit that has economic implications.  I think it’s equally important to view it as an economic unit with social implications,” said Lee.

He says Washington needs to recognize that helping American families is good for all of us.

“Everything we need to be doing in Washington should be focused on the family, on making sure that government is at least not harming the family, making sure that the government is not doing anything to discourage marriage and child rearing, not doing anything to single out, target or punish or harm families,” said Lee.

Lee’s agenda takes on many different dimensions but largely seeks to address kitchen table issues.  Right at the top of his list is the need to reduce the cost of a college education.

“I think the best way to bring it down is to look at the way we accredit institutions of higher learning.  If we look to expand the number and nature of entities that are accredited and allowed to participate in federal higher education funding programs, I think we could achieve a state of play in which there’d be more competition.  With more competition, you generally have prices going down instead of perpetually up,” said Lee, who believes accrediting many more online colleges and universities could be a game-changer in reducing the cost of college and the staggering amount of student debt.

For those already in the workforce, Lee wants to see transportation made a priority but in a way that largely takes Washington out of the picture.

“Through my Transportation Empowerment Act, we would help moms and dads get home to their families sooner, allowing them to spend less time in gridlocked traffic by shifting more of the funding over to the states.  We would lower the federal gasoline tax from 18.4 cents per gallon to 3.7 cents per gallon and allow states to collect and spend the differential of 14.7 cents per gallon entirely on their own,” said Lee, who says there are great benefits in this approach.

“When you do it that way, you expand the spending potential of each dollar by 20-30 percent because all of a sudden you don’t have all of these federal regulatory costs that go into this.  We want to connect where people need to work with where they want to live, and that’s what this bill would do,” he said.

Besides a desire to shorten commutes for working parents, Lee is teaming with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on giving parents more freedom in their schedules through the Working Families Flexibility Act.

“What this does is to give the comp time alternative  and makes that available to private sector workers.  Currently, that’s available only for government workers.  If an employer wants to offer comp time  and an employee wants to receive comp time, they don’t have that choice even if they’re both interested in doing that because federal law precludes it.  We think that’s wrong and we think that if it’s OK for government workers, it ought to be just fine for America’s private sector employees as well,” said Lee.

He says that sort of flexibility at work will give parents more opportunities to focus on things more important.

“If someone wants to work an extra hour or two or more one week, they can take that time off the next week if they want to go attend their child’s ballet recital or baseball game,” said Lee.

The teaming of Lee and McConnell on the bill may surprise some who remember the two senators preferring much different strategies during the 2013 showdown over appropriations and Obamacare funding and last month’s drama over the “cromnibus” bill.  Lee says he is thrilled to see McConnell running the Senate and allowing a much more open process on legislation than former Majority Leader Harry Reid ever did.  The senator also says too much is made of a few high-profile disagreements.

“As senators from the same party, we don’t always agree but our areas of agreement far outnumber our areas of disagreement.  This is one of the countless areas in which we agree.  So I’m happy to have his help,” said Lee.

Aside from the family agenda, Lee is also starting a new push for the federal government to handle it’s finances like most families and businesses, by not spending more than it takes in.  He is calling for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.  It’s an idea that fell one vote short in the Senate on two separate occasions in the 1990s.  Lee says it’s something the American people want.

“People want a balanced budget amendment.  They want Congress to have restrictions placed on its ability to spend money, and in particular on its ability to impose economic burdens on future generations of Americans, including Americans who have not yet been born and including others who have been born but are not yet old enough to vote.  It ends up being a form of taxation without representation,” said Lee, who says his proposed amendment is pretty straightforward.

“It would require Congress to use a super majority vote to approve any budget that’s not balanced, to approve any increase on the debt ceiling, in order to raise taxes or in order to spend more than a specific, defined percentage of GDP (18 percent).  We think that if Congress wants to do any of those things, it ought to have to secure a super majority vote in both houses of Congress in order to do it,” said Lee.

A constitutional amendment would require 67 votes in the Senate.  Hi family agenda measures would likely need 60.  Lee says he’s not to the head-counting stage yet but believes his ideas are little more than common sense and should draw wide bipartisan support.

“It’s really hard to argue against these things.  It’s going to be hard for them to argue against allowing private sector employees the same benefits that government workers have, the same opportunity they have to access comp time,” said Lee.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review welcome the news that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is likely to run for president in 2016.  They also rip Indiana GOP Gov. Mike Pence for launching a government-run news service funded by tax dollars.  And they have fun with the news that a drunk government intelligence employee piloted the drone that crashed at the White House.

Approximately 30 conservative House Republicans are launching a new caucus designed to advance the needs of the people over the special interests and do everything possible to help Republicans keep their campaign promises on immigration, Obamacare and more.

The House Freedom Caucus officially launched Monday night.  Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) is one of the founding members.  He says there are multiple reasons why the Freedom Caucus is needed, starting with the need to keep priorities straight in Washington.

“We want a freedom agenda, an agenda that represents the people back home.  I think that’s the main concern that a lot of us have in the House.  Both parties seem to do pretty well representing special interests, but we have very few people representing what the folks back home are really interested in, and that’s what we’re interested in doing,” said Labrador.

He says that mission starts with making good on what GOP candidates vowed to do if given the majority in Congress.

“The most important thing is keeping the promises that we made to our constituents.  You have a lot of members of Congress who say really nice things to get elected.  Then they get back here and they forget those promises because they think their constituents won’t remember every two years.  I think the American people are getting fed up with that and we’re hoping to represent those people who feel that they don’t have a voice here in Washington,” said Labrador.

So what promise comes first on the checklist?  Fighting back against President Obama’s unilateral immigration action that grants legal status to at least five million people in the U.S. illegally.

“Every one of those new senators told their constituents that they were going to fight Obama’s unconstitutional action.  They get elected, they come here to Washington, D.C., and now we’re being told that it’s too difficult to pass anything in the Senate because they only have 54 votes.  Last year, the excuse was that they didn’t have the Senate.  Now that they have the Senate, their excuse is that they only have 54 votes,” said Labrador.

Labrador says recent history proves that a determined Republican Senate majority can get things done, even if it’s dealing with the the president of the opposite party.

“When Bill Clinton was president, you had a small majority in the Senate that passed welfare reform.  We can pass things here in the Senate.  We just need to push the agenda, drive it through the media (and) go to the states of vulnerable Democrats and let them know that their senators are not working to stop the president’s agenda,” he said.

Pushing the Senate to strip funding out of the Homeland Security appropriations bill is the first mission of the House Freedom Caucus.

“We can’t do anything about the president vetoing legislation, but we can do something about passing something in the House and passing something in the Senate that stops the president’s agenda, and moving forward and fighting the president and letting the American people know that this president is willing to shut down the government just so he can take care of five million people that are here illegally in the United States,” said Labrador.

However, Labrador says the caucus has not arrived at a plan of action if the Senate does strip out funding for the Obama immigration action and Obama vetoes the larger bill.

“We haven’t gotten there yet.  We’re going to take every fight one step at a time,” said Labrador.

Beyond immigration, Labrador wants to see the House Freedom Caucus push GOP leaders to pass a full repeal of Obamacare.  He says another critical issue to address is tax reform.

“The fact that you have a bunch of different corporations and special interests that are getting special breaks here in Washington.  You have Republicans that try to defend those special breaks and then you have Democrats that want to get rid of them just so they can raise taxes on the American people.  I think we can use those exemptions to lower taxes on every American,” said Labrador.

For over 40 years, the conservative message on policy and priorities has been articulated through the Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest caucus on Capitol Hill.  Many media reports suggest the creation of the House Freedom Caucus resulted from conservative frustration that the RSC was getting too cozy with GOP leadership.  Labrador says was not the catalyst for the new caucus.

“I’m not sure that anybody thought it wasn’t conservative enough.  We just thought it was too big to be effective.  When you have two-thirds of the conference in a room trying to make a decision on how to move forward on conservative policy, it makes it very difficult to come to a consensus.  It became more of a debating society,” said Labrador.

In what may surprise some on the right, Labrador says leaders of the party and the RSC are welcoming the new group.

“It’s been very positive because one of our main goals is not to surprise leadership.  I think sometimes as conservatives and as members of Congress, we’re not well organized.  I think now by being organized, we’ve let our leadership know which way we want to go.  We’re going to send them signals.  We’re not just going to try to surprise them on the House floor,” said Labrador, who says the ultimate goal is to have a positive relationship with leadership in advancing a conservative agenda.

In addition to Labrador, the founding members of the House Freedom Caucus include Reps. Justin Amash (Mich.), Ron DeSantis (Fla.), John Fleming (La.), Scott Garrett (N.J.), Jim Jordan (Ohio),Mark Meadows (N.C.), Mick Mulvaney (S.C.) and Matt Salmon (Ariz.).  Labrador says there are about 30 total members so far.  He says the size of the caucus is a balancing act and much will be expected of the members.

“It has to be big enough where it makes a difference with the vote.  The group also has to be willing to stick together.  People need to understand when they belong to a group like this (that) we’re going to be making decisions and it’s not about the one individual having his agenda alone being the one heard,” said Labrador.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Andrew Johnson of National Review are pleased to see House GOP leaders pull a border security bill from consideration that conservative critics thought was far from adequate.  They also react to the reports (later denied by the Pentagon) that Bowe Bergdahl is being charged with desertion.  And they have fun with the idea that former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich may run for president in 2016.

Chaos in Yemen is leading to even greater Middle East instability, shines the spotlight of failure on a nation President Obama hailed as a foreign policy success just four months ago and forces an even tougher negotiating position with the Iranians, according to retired U.S. Navy Captain Chuck Nash.

As he laid out his approach to confronting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in September, Obama cited numerous operations targeting terrorists in Yemen as a major success of his effort to take the fight to the terrorists.

“We took out Osama bin Laden and much of al Qaeda’s leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We’ve targeted al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, and recently eliminated the top commander of its affiliate in Somalia,” said Obama.

Nash says that’s looking pretty bad in hindsight.

“It just adds to the overall instability and the mess that the Middle East has become ever since the Arab Spring.  This was the knife in the heart of Yemen, which the president has been holding out as a way of modeling our success post-Arab Spring,” said Nash.

Yemen has a complicated history in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism.  Even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole as it refueled in Yemen, killing 17 Navy personnel.  Since 9/11, the Yemeni government sporadically assisted in the fight against Al Qaeda even as the terror group’s Yemeni chapter, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), grew in size and effectiveness.  The U.S. has conducted numerous drone strikes in Yemen, including the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen who inspired the Ft. Hood massacre, the attempted Christmas Day underwear bombing of an international flight.  Even years after his death, AQAP credit al-Awlaki with planning the deadly Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris earlier this month.

Ali Abdullah Saleh was effectively forced from power during the Arab Spring after losing support from the U.S. and other western nations.  His vice president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, was forced to resign last week as Iranian-backed Houthi rebels stormed much of the capital and forced most of the government to step down.  Nash says while the Houthis are kindred spirits with the Iranians, they are their own group with their own ambitions.

“They’re co-religionists with the Iranians, because they will help just about any Shi’ite group in the region, has backed them, helped them get weapons and we can expect that the Iranians will fully leverage any opening they get with these guys,” said Nash.

Nash believes the greatest potential mischief of the Houthis can be seen on the map.

“It’s a 900-mile coastline It starts up in the Red Sea and then swings around into the Indian Ocean.  It sits astride that Red Sea opening that leads to the Suez Canal.  A tremendous amount of the world’s shipping goes right past Yemen.  As you’ll remember, that’s where the USS Cole was bombed some years ago.  It’s a very choke point country,” said Nash.

Yemen also lies next to Saudi Arabia, which is engaged in economic warfare by tanking the price of oil to fiscally cripple the Iranians.  The Saudis are also transitioning to a new king after Thursday’s death of King Abdullah.

“Now you have the new king in there and he is unwilling to tighten down the oil spigot.  So keeping that oil spigot open is a direct financial threat to the Iranians, to the point that the prime minister of Iran has made threats to the countries [that] he believes are waging economic warfare against Iran,” said Nash.

So how should the instability in Yemen impact the Obama administration’s posture toward Iran and its nuclear program?  Nash says Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry need to take a much tougher line.

“We have enabled our enemies to so accurately judge our position because they know all they have to do is stand firm and we will try to meet them halfway to an unreasonable position, which means our position will become less and less reasonable and closer towards theirs,” said Nash.

Nash says the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had some advice the Obama administration would be wise to accept.

“The Iron Lady was once asked, ‘What do you think is the lesson of the 20th century?’ and Margaret Thatcher said, ‘I would think that the greatest lesson of the 20th century is one cannot appease dictators if one values the lives of the innocent,'” said Nash.

He says the Obama administration is going in the opposite direction.

“We are a country that’s all about freedom.  We’ve been trying to export freedom.  We’re not going to turn countries into Jeffersonian democracies, but we would like to stand for some basic human rights and do things where we can all sleep well and  be comfortable in our own skins at night,” said Nash.

“That’s not what the Iranians are about, that’s not what Al Qaeda is about and that’s not what the Islamic State is about.  They are direct threats to all of humanity.  They have to be dealt with and dealt with sternly.  Weakness just breeds greater problems,” said Nash.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review take note of avowed socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders throwing cold water on Obama’s rosy economic report.  They also sigh as the media froth at the mouth over possible 2016 campaigns by Donald Trump and Sarah Palin – that will never happen.  And they discuss the security concerns after a small drone crashes at the White House.

A leader in the fight to preserve the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is warning Republicans not to abandon the cause after reports suggest the GOP hopes the Supreme Court will help them out of an awkward position later this year.

The renewed concerns from social conservatives comes after a New York Times report suggesting Republican Party officials are thrilled the Supreme Court is taking up the issue this year, suggesting it will be a settled issue by the time 2016 rolls around.  Republicans championed traditional marriage in 2004 and many observers believe George W. Bush owes his victory that year to millions of extra voters showing up to support traditional marriage amendments in key states such as Ohio.

Since then, the GOP has been increasingly less vocal, especially  with millennial generation voters overwhelmingly supporting same-sex marriage.

According to the Times report, even governors who were once staunch defenders of traditional marriage, are waving the white flag.

After losing on the issue in a lower court, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie refused to fight for the existing traditional marriage law, calling it “a settled issue.”

After federal appeals courts sided with same-sex marriage litigants in Wisconsin and Indiana and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeals, the GOP governors of those states also said the fight was essentially over.

“For us, it’s over in Wisconsin,” said Walker.

“People are free to disagree with court decisions, but we are not free to disobey them,” said Pence.

Most recently, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a likely 2016 contender, indicated his position has also changed over the past several years.

“We live in a democracy, and regardless of our disagreements, we have to respect the rule of law,” the Times quoted Bush as saying.

Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver has defended traditional marriage in many states around the country.  He has little regard for politicians who wilted on this issue once the poll numbers started to change.

“I think they’re wrong.  They’re wrong historically, and they deserve no one’s vote for being that kind of person who comes out and makes such a statement as a politician.  Governor Scott Walker, Governor Pence, Governor Chris Christie, former Governor Jeb Bush, they’re wrong,” he said.

Republican Party operatives counter by saying many courts have already spoken, the Supreme Court will rule in June and GOP officials have little choice but to enforce those rulings and move on to other issues.  Staver says great leaders in history have proved that approach to be wrong.

“Abraham Lincoln didn’t say, ‘Well, the Supreme Court spoke on Dred Scott.  I’m personally opposed to slavery, but the courts have spoken so we’re going to continue to impose slavery.’  No, he opposed it.  He advocated that this was wrong.  Thomas Jefferson didn’t say, ‘I don’t like the Libel and Sedition Act.  It violates free speech.  You can’t protest the government under that.  I think that’s wrong, but we’ve got to uphold it.’  No, what did he do?  He completely advocated disobedience,” said Staver.

He says the way prominent Republicans have shifted on the issue show them to be precisely the type of leaders Americans do not want in an even higher office.

“They need to have some guts.  This is an issue that is not some side, tangential issue.  This is a fundamental reshaping of our society.  It is a clash with religious freedom of unprecedented proportion.  And if they don’t get it, they don’t get my vote,” said Staver.

GOP officials dispute that last point, saying the economy and national security are far more pressing issues than the fight over marriage and they believe primary and general election voters do not want to make this a key issue in the 2016 campaign.  Staver thinks Americans are much more upset about the courts taking the power away from states to decide marriage laws than the national party or even polls might suggest.

“I think many primary voters are of that mindset.  They want somebody who will speak truth, who will speak boldly.  The people of this country don’t want these mealy, weak-backed, weak-kneed politicians.  I think they’re frankly sick and tired of the courts deciding these major social issues for them when they know that the courts have no authority to do so,” said Staver.

Staver says social conservatives would strongly prefer to advance their causes through the Republican Party, but he says the party may leave them no choice but  to leave and support someone else.

“I think if the Republican Party or any party ultimately goes off the farm on same-sex marriage that that party is no longer worthy of support.  I think it’s time for another party.  That hasn’t happened with the Republican Party, but certainly it’s happened with some of the Republican candidates.  I think people just need to simply write in different candidates and vote for different candidates that have the backbone,” said Staver.

He believes Republicans still have a chance to get this right.  Social conservatives have been a critical part of the Republican coalition since the rise of Ronald Reagan in 1980.  However, Staver says there are clear limits to that support.

“You can’t compromise on life .  If a candidate doesn’t get that, they don’t get your vote.  And you can’t compromise on the natural created order of marriage as a man and a woman.  If they don’t get those very basic, simple facts, how are you going to get them to figure out where they ought to balance the budget or what they’re going to do if Iran gets a nuclear weapon,” said Staver.

“If they can’t get the basic kindergarten kind of fundamental, foundation values, then how can they get anything else?  They’re not deserving of our time and certainly not of our votes,” he said.

As Democrats try to figure out what went wrong in the 2014 midterm elections, the Capitol Steps eavesdrop on President Obama, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi brainstorming for 2016.  Our guest is Capitol Steps Co-Founder Elaina Newport.