By Rick Manning — Just as I was going to write on how the crisis/government shut down threatened federal budgeting by continuing resolution has actually reduced government outlays significantly; the House of Representatives passed legislation without allowing substantive amendments, that continues funding of all of the programs congressional Republicans say they want to repeal or change.
In light of this decision, a few simple questions for those in House leadership come to mind.
How in the heck do you expect anyone to believe you when you say you don’t like ObamaCare when you continue to fund it and won’t even allow a vote to strip away monies for implementation? You cannot. You can vote seven times to deauthorize it in the next 18 months, but when you continue to pay for it, you own it.
You say you want to rein in the EPA’s war on our economy, yet you continue to fund their lawyers, consultants and the implementation of the very regulations that are destroying our nation’s economic competitiveness. Don’t expect those who continue to lose their jobs in coal country due to the EPA’s wrath to feel all warm and cozy over some meaningless resolution of concern passed after you funded the very vampires that sucked away their very way of life.
You claim to be very concerned about the one-sided National Labor Relations Board which has gone so far as to require a senior healthcare provider to hire back SEIU members who deliberately put their patients at risk of death in a labor dispute. Yet, you choose to fund the very staff that has made it their mission to remake our nation’s labor laws in an attempt to effectively coerce workers into unions, just to keep the fading Big Labor Democratic Party funding coffers full.
And finally, you claim that you will provide a backstop against Obama’s dramatic regulatory excesses, which he brazenly put on display during his State of the Union address, when he told the world that if Congress doesn’t bend to his will on “climate change,” he will act unilaterally regardless of congressional wishes. Yet, you handed away your only real lever in the very power struggle between the branches of government that our founders envisioned as a primary protector of freedom.
Under the U.S. Constitution, the House of Representatives has only one true check against an avaricious Executive branch — the power of the purse — and when the House chose to pass the proposed continuing resolution funding the Obama agenda, they effectively have taken that power off the table.
The unwillingness of the House to push their constitutional prerogatives to force Executive branch changes, makes one wonder if they are serious, and if not, why they even ran for office in the first place?
This piece originally appeared in The Hill and has been revised by the author to reflect legislative actions that have subsequently occurred. Rick Manning (@rmanning957) is the Vice President of Public Policy and Communications for Americans for Limited Government.
