The trillion dollar plus Omnibus bill being eased through Congress is stuffed with all sorts of provisions which, if debated individually, would cause an uproar.
Senator Jeff Sessions focused in on immigration provisions and funding for the Obama agenda:
Power Line has analysis:
With Republicans in control of both House and Senate, the backroom omnibus spending bill that was unveiled yesterday should have been an opportunity to advance the conservative agenda across a very broad front. No doubt there are a few good aspects to the bill. But, as Paul noted earlier, it strikes a blow against education and against the Constitution by expanding funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.Even worse are the bill’s provisions on immigration. The American people overwhelmingly oppose adding still more immigration on top of our already-unprecedented levels, but their views don’t seem to matter. The omnibus bill lends credence to the widespread belief that the vicious attack on American workers and American wages represented by out-of-control immigration is the result of a bipartisan conspiracy.
Remember the 72-hour rule — no mega bills until they were online for 72 hours to give the public a chance to weigh in? Hah:
Keep in mind: Republicans railed against Democrats for years when they held the majority, accusing them of posting thousands of pages of bills late at night and then jamming them to passage just after sunrise. Republicans aimed to do things differently if they secured the majority in 2010. One commitment was bills would appear “online for at least three days before coming up for a vote in the House of Representatives.”Sometimes, these things happened when the GOP won the majority. Sometimes they didn’t. And when they didn’t, various Republican members howled….But the GOP supposedly missed its mark with the 1:30 a.m. business, right?Not really. A closer inspection of the House’s “parts of three days rule” reveals that the regulation “does not apply to messages between the Houses.”What’s that? It’s simple. The House passes a bill. The Senate approves the same bill, perhaps with changes. But that piece of legislation isn’t quite synched-up yet between the bodies. Thus, lawmakers may have to “ping pong” the bill between each chamber until there’s alignment. And, according to House rules, this type of bill doesn’t have to sit around for even parts of three days before lawmakers summon the measure for a debate and vote.Republicans engineered the omnibus spending bill and the tax package as “messages between houses.” They extracted text from old bills sitting around and dumped in new language. As messages between houses, the legislation was exempt from the layover.Kind-of-sort-of-three days. But not really.
This will infuriate people, and rightly so. It’s the type of thing that fuels a primary electorate which is pushing anti-establishment candidates to the lead.
Jeb Bush complained that Donald Trump is a chaos candidate. And he probably would claim the same about Ted Cruz.
Breaking news — given how the Republican leadership acts, voters may view what the establishment calls “chaos” as the better alternative.
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