This November, besides getting rid of Barry “Almighty”, by the grace of God, we’re apparently going to have some work to do in reminding some of our Republican members of Congress why it is , exactly, that they are there. Because so far I've not been very impressed with our less than stellar leadership, viewing it as not doing such a bang up job. In the House, where we actually have a majority, Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy, have fallen far short of expectations. For me the final straw came on Thursday when the Republican-majority House of Representatives passed a $1.047 trillion bill funding the federal government through March 2013. That little piece of legislation will permit funding for Planned Parenthood and Obamacare, including the regulation that took effect on Aug. 1 that will require virtually all health plans in the United States to cover, without fees or co-pay, sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortions. The vote was 329-91, and the bill now goes to the Senate next week where the Democrat majority is expected to approve it.
What this bill does, and what makes very little sense to me, is to fund the government for six months into the new fiscal year and for almost five months after the November elections. Congress once again turned to the favored stop-gap process after failing to pass any of the 12 appropriation bills necessary to fund day-to-day government operations. The Catholic bishops of the United States have unanimously declared the Obamacare sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation an "unjust and illegal mandate" that violates the right to free exercise of religion not only of Catholic institutions but also of Catholic business owners and workers. The bill, yet another continuing resolution (CR), does not prohibit funding for either Obamacare programs or Planned Parenthood. Nor does it stop the government from enforcing regulations, such as the mandate from the Health and Human Services Department that nearly all health insurance plans provide contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs free of charge. So what's changed since when "Botox" Nancy was in charge?
John Boehner, our 'Speaker Without A Spine', who apparently feels the need to go along to get along, supports the CR as do the other less than impressive members of the GOP leadership. Boehner, earlier this year described the health insurance mandate as an “unambiguous attack on religious freedom in our country” and a violation of the First Amendment protecting the free exercise of religion. And yet, this bill sails through the House. This ,most recent CR does prohibit the government from initiating any new programs or using the $1.047 trillion in the bill to carry out any programs or functions it was not engaged in during fiscal year 2012. And the resolution extends for six months the federal pay freeze enacted in FY 2012 and the welfare reform legislation enacted in 1996. Further, while the bill does prohibit grant programs that spend their allocations all at once--block and other types of grant programs--from doing so with the money allocated in this bill, it does allow the government to continue executing the functions under Obamacare that it was carrying out last year and that Congress had funded.
And, interestingly enough, what the bill does not do is to prohibit funding of Planned Parenthood, that wonderful little organization which serves essentially as nothing more the nation's largest functioning abortion factory. I find it appalling that according to its 2009-2010 annual report, Planned Parenthood received more than $480 million in taxpayer money from the federal government; and according to its own little fact sheet, Planned Parenthood performed a staggering 329,455 abortions in 2010 alone. And the bill represents a slight increase in spending over fiscal year 2012--about $4 billion--keeping to the spending cap outlined in the Budget Control Act of 2011. But it's still $4 billion that we don't have. The CR is a product of a deal announced in July between "Spineless" John Boehner and "Dingy" Harry Reid to extend federal spending past both the November election and the following lame-duck session of Congress. I simply don't understand this overwhelming need that our guys have for wanting to bend over in front of the Democrats.
Believe me when I say there is nothing that I want more than the defeat of Barack Hussein Obama. But, what this most recent budget 'compromise' vote proves to me is that we still have much work to do in our own party as well. I was very disappointed to that our candidate for vice president voted for this bill. It just don't seem to go along with a lot of what he says about our rabid spending And it's actions such as this that tell people that it doesn't matter who they vote for, that one party seems to be just as corrupt as the other. And I suppose I can't really fault someone for thinking that way. In terms of this coming election, there must be a very clear, even stark, difference presented in demonstrating how the two parties wish to conduct the nation's business. We must show that we are determined to live within our means. There is a budget process very clearly outlined in our Constitution, and yet for 4 years now we've never had actual federal budget. The Republicans must be able to convince voters that we, unlike the Democrats, are the party of fiscal responsibility.
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