Posts Tagged ‘Paul Ryan’

The Amnesty That Refused To Die

Thursday, June 14th, 2018

Like a dog returning to its own vomit, Republican congressional leaders just can’t stay away from illegal alien amnesty. Evidently because they love creating new Democratic voters, ignoring the rule of law and depressing their base.

A leaked draft of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) amnesty deal could lead to the “biggest” amnesty for illegal aliens in United States history, experts tell Breitbart News.

Ryan’s immigration deal would go beyond giving amnesty to only the nearly 800,000 illegal aliens who are enrolled in the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

According to a leaked draft of the amnesty deal, obtained by Breitbart News, Ryan’s plan would allow the entire “DACA population” to be eligible for amnesty so long as they meet low educational, work and criminal requirements, prompting the amnesty to explode in size.

A draft of the leaked GOP amnesty deal

That DACA population could include the nearly 3.5 million DACA-enrolled and DACA-eligible illegal aliens, and even more illegal aliens who arrive in the U.S. to fraudulently obtain the amnesty.

NumbersUSA Governmental Affairs Director Rosemary Jenks told Breitbart News that Ryan’s amnesty will — at the least — allow 1.8 million illegal aliens to stay in the U.S.

“This has the potential to turn into the biggest amnesty we’ve ever had,” Jenks said.

The leaked amnesty deal reveals that Ryan and the Republican establishment may even be considering going beyond giving amnesty to DACA illegal aliens.

A second amnesty is included in the leaked draft, one that would allow the children of temporary foreign guest workers and “anyone who has a ‘contingent nonimmigrant status’” to apply for the amnesty.

How about “No”? Does “No” work for you? How about “Hell No!”?

What needs to be done is:

  • Increased border enforcement
  • Implement E-Verify
  • Build the wall
  • All that needs to be done before any sort of amnesty is even considered.

    Why is this message so hard for congressional Republicans to understand?

    Paul Ryan Retires

    Thursday, April 12th, 2018

    Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has announced he’s retiring at the end of his term.

    Being Speaker of the House of Representatives is a thankless job in the modern era, akin to herding 435 cats, about half of which hate you. It’s a difficult job, which is why I’m going to refrain from throwing the “Swamp Creature! RINO!” labels hurled at Ryan for not getting enough conservative legislature through the house. But there is this undeniable fact: In 1995, Newt Gingrich had 230 Republicans in the House, a narrow Republican Senate majority, and a Democrat in the White House, and got far more conservative legislature passed as Speaker than Paul Ryan has with 241 Republicans in the House, a narrow Republican Senate majority, and a Republican in the White House.

    The unwillingness of the modern Republican Party to play hardball (like refusing to pass a debt limit hike unless linked with a complete repeal of ObamaCare) has crippled the ability of the party to make legislative gains commensurate with their majority status. It is hard to tell at this remove whether Ryan’s speakership is a cause, or a symptom, of that failure of nerve.

    If I had to bet, I would guess that Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise would be the most likely choice to replace Ryan as Speaker of the House (assuming Republicans retain control in November), based less on my deep understanding of House interpersonal dynamics than the fact that he literally took a bullet for the team.

    LinkSwarm for March 16, 2018

    Friday, March 16th, 2018

    Last week I had to put Jigsaw, my loyal dog of 13+ years, to sleep due to cancer. He was a good boy and I miss him very, very much, but life goes on.

    Anyway, I hope you’re having a better week…

  • Democrats want to end ICE. Because illegal aliens do the jobs Americans won’t do: voting for Democrats.
  • The shoe drops: “Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was charged with ‘massive fraud’ by the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday, a downbeat coda to a once high-flying Silicon Valley start-up that promised to revolutionize the blood analysis process.” Snip. “She will pay a $500,000 penalty, be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years, and return 18.9 million shares she amassed during the alleged fraud. Holmes also cedes her voting control of the company she founded in 2003 at the age of 19 after dropping out of Stanford University in order to pursue her start-up.” Remember when Holmes was held up as the poster child for a bold new wave of female Silicon Valley CEO’s? Pepperidge Farm remembers…
  • Hey, want to guess who Theranos hired to blunt investigative journalism into its fraudulent business practices? Would you believe Fusion GPS?
  • Kurt Schlichter embraces the magic power of not caring.
  • Did Paul Ryan’s superpac help elect Democrat Conor Lamb?
  • Fascinating talk on CIA operational security failures due to telephone metadata.
  • Inside the twisted mind of a a teenage school shooter.
  • Muslim murdered in Houston. So why are the media ignoring the story? Because the killer was an illegal alien.
  • Toys R Us goes tits-up.
  • How Amazon terrifies other companies.
  • Trump Administration blocks Qualcomm-Broadcom merger on national security grounds. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Shout Factory buys the rights to Roger Corman’s New Horizons back catalog. Among other things, it means that MST3K will be able to automatically get the rights to any of those for future episodes…
  • The Nightmare Before St. Patrick’s Day.
  • Chuck Norris programmer jokes.
  • “Wat ho, goatee’d man? Thy skinnee jenes hath byrn’d my corneyas.”
  • LinkSwarm for December 15, 2017

    Friday, December 15th, 2017

    Another week, another abbreviated LinkSwarm. I’m running out of year and a variety of tasks (including work) keep crowding more extensive blogging out.

  • Gallup poll shows support for decreasing immigration holding steady. (Hat tip: Mickey Kaus’ Twitter feed.)
  • More on that same poll (also via Kaus):

    An overwhelming majority of Hispanics opposes increasing immigration, but their position is entirely unrepresented in the Democratic party. It seems possible that the Democrats will throw away a winnable Senate seat in Alabama because they have nominated a pro-abortion extremist against a Republican who has been credibly accused of sexual assault and ephebophilia (probably better that you don’t look that up).

    Even ten years ago, Democrats were willing to nominate candidates who were culturally conservative (or at least willing to pretend to be culturally conservative) in order to replace conservative Republicans with somewhat-more-liberal Democrats. What changed?

    The first thing was the alleged coming of the “emerging Democratic majority,” which was supposed to be brought about by demographic change and a larger nonwhite share of the electorate. This Democratic majority has been a little late in arriving, but that isn’t the only important part of the story.

    Many liberal whites wanted to be rid of the culturally conservative, economically liberal, working-class white voters whom Democrats had courted in the previous decade. Upper-middle-class whites were embarrassed by these people. After all these centuries of white privilege, they never managed to get into a good school—or even a state college—and now they were making demands about trade and immigration.

    One of the themes that emerges from Shattered (a chronicle of the Clinton campaign) is that the Clinton operation didn’t want to make a strong play for working-class white voters in swing states. The Clintonites thought these voters were disposable. It was left to Barack Obama to point out that he had done better than Clinton in many heavily working-class white areas, because he had done those voters the courtesy of treating them as though they were as important as any other American.

  • Paul Ryan to retire?
  • Little appreciated is the fact that Ryan is also an expert fundraiser.
  • Former Massachusetts Democratic state senator Brian A. Joyce arrested on 113 counts, including “mail fraud, theft of federal funds, money laundering, scheme to defraud the IRS, 20 counts of extortion, seven counts of money laundering, and conspiracy to impair the functions of the IRS.” How did he do all that? He’s a coffee achiever! (Seriously. Read the story.)
  • The hard-left sorts over at Counterpunch are not at all impressed with the myriad serial flavors of liberal Trump Derangement Syndrome:

    This initial post-election propaganda was understandably somewhat awkward, as the plan had been to be able to celebrate the “Triumph of Love over the Forces of Hate,” and the demise of the latest Hitlerian bogeyman. But this was the risk the ruling classes took when they chose to go ahead and Hitlerize Trump, which they wouldn’t have done if they’d thought for a moment that he had a chance of actually winning the election. That’s the tricky thing about Hitlerizing people. You need to be able to kill them, eventually. If you don’t, when they turn out not to be Hitler, your narrative kind of falls apart, and the people you’ve fear-mongered into a frenzy of frothing, self-righteous fake-Hitler-hatred end up feeling like a bunch of dupes who’ll believe anything the government tells them. This is why, normally, you only Hitlerize foreign despots you can kill with impunity. This is Hitlerization 101 stuff, which the ruling classes ignored in this case, which the left poor liberals terrified that Trump was actually going to start building Trump-branded death camps and rounding up the Jews.

    Fortunately, just in the nick of time, the ruling classes and their media mouthpieces rolled out the Russian Propaganda story. The Washington Post (whose owner’s multimillion dollar deal with the CIA, of course, has absolutely no effect on the quality of its professional journalism) led the charge with this McCarthyite smear job, legitimizing the baseless allegations of some random website and a think tank staffed by charlatans like this “Russia expert,”who appears not to speak a word of Russian or have any other “Russia expert” credentials, but is available both for television and Senate Intelligence Committee appearances. Numerous similar smear piecesfollowed. Liberals breathed a big sigh of relief … that Hitler business had been getting kind of scary. How long can you go, after all, with Hitler stumbling around the White House before somebody has to go in there and shoot him?

    In any event, by January, the media were playing down the Hitler stuff and going balls-out on the “Russiagate” story. According to The Washington Post (which, let’s remember, is a serious newspaper, as opposed to a propaganda organ of the so-called US “Intelligence Community”), not only had the Russians “hacked” the election, but they had hacked the Vermont power grid! Editorialists at The New York Times were declaring that Trump “had been appointed by Putin,” and that the USA was now “at war” with Russia. This was also around the time when liberals first learned of the Trump-Russia Dossier, which detailed how Putin was blackmailing Trump with a video the FSB had shot of Trump and a bunch of Russian hookers peeing on a bed in a Moscow hotel in which Obama had allegedly slept.

    This nonsense was reported completely straight-faced, and thus liberals were forced to take it seriously. Imagine the cognitive dissonance they suffered. It was like that scene in 1984 when the Party abruptly switches enemies, and the war with Eurasia becomes the war with Eastasia. Suddenly, Trump wasn’t Hitler anymore. Now he was a Russian sleeper agent who Putin had been blackmailing into destroying democracy with this incriminating “golden showers” video. Putin had presumably been “running” Trump since Trump’s visit to Russia in 2013 to hobnob with “Russia-linked” Russian businessmen and attend the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. During the ensuing partying, Trump must have gotten loaded on Diet Coke and gotten carried away with those Russian hookers. Now, Putin had him by the short hairs and was forcing him to staff his Manchurian cabinet with corporate CEOs and Goldman Sachs guys, who probably had also been videotaped by the FSB in Moscow hotels paying hookers to pee on furniture, or performing whatever other type of seditious, perverted kink they were into.

    Before the poor liberals had time to process this, the ruling classes launched “the Resistance.” You remember the Pussyhat People, don’t you? And the global corporate PR campaign which accompanied their historic “Womens’ March” on Washington? Do you remember liberals like Michael Moore shrieking for the feds to arrest Donald Trump? Or publications like The New York Times, Salon, and many others, and even State Satirist Stephen Colbertaccusing Trump and anyone who supported him of treason … a crime, let’s recall, that is punishable by death? Do you remember folks like William Kristol and Rob “the Meathead” Reiner demanding that the “deep state” launch a coup against Trump to rescue America from the Russian infiltrators?

    Ironically, the roll-out of this “Russiagate” hysteria was so successful that it peaked too soon, and prematurely backlashed all over itself. By March, when Trump had not been arrested, nor otherwise removed from office, liberals, who by that time the corporate media had teased into an incoherent, throbbing state of anticipation were … well, rather disappointed. By April, they were exhibiting all the hallmark symptoms of clinical psychosis. This mental breakdown was due to the fact that the media pundits and government spooks who had been telling them that Trump was Hitler, and then a Russian sleeper agent, were now telling them that he wasn’t so bad, because he’d pointlessly bombed a Syrian airstrip, and dropped a $314 million Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb on some alleged “terrorist caves” in Afghanistan.

  • Intelligence Leaks Reveal Erdogan Regime Arming Criminal Turkish Gangs in Germany.” He’s just a barer of light and joy all around… (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Where was that explosion on the “Arab Street” all those “experts” warned us about if President Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel?
  • Sweden has an antisemitism problem, but refuses to admit it’s a result of its Muslim refugee problem.
  • Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001. Is it working? Mostly. But it’s not a cure-all. Interesting piece.
  • How Jennifer Rubin turned into Dana Milbank. (Hat tip: Dr. Milton Wolfe’s Twitter feed.)
  • Police: “This man is a rapist!” Judge: “Were you just going to ignore the 40,000 texts from the alleged victim asking for sex?”
  • Senior Hamas leader arrested. Good.
  • Did a Long island woman launder money to the Islamic State using Bitcoin? (Hat tip: Director Blue.) (And let me apologize for ruining your previously Bitcoin-free LinkSwarm…)
  • More on the Wisconsin John Doe Witch Hunt.
  • Everyone’s favorite Tweeter, Texas Supreme Court justice Don Willett, was confirmed to the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Congrats, Justice Willett!
  • As was former Texas Solicitor General James Ho.
  • With Ho’s appointment, President Donald Trump broke broke the all-time record for first year judicial appointments.
  • This week’s winning pervert in the Sexual Harassment Sweepstakes is… senior Disney music executive Jon Heely. Now I feel even more conflicted about Devo 2.0.
  • Seven woman have now accused 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alex Kozinski of sexual harassment.
  • Speaking of sexual abuse, I really hope these horrific “blind” sexual abuse allegations against unnamed Hollywood celebrities are untrue. If not, life in prison for the perpetrators is too good for them…
  • Russia has a new stealth fighter, the Su-57. Too bad for them its engines won’t be ready until 2027… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • (screamingheadline)RUSSIA TROLLS BOUGHT ADS BEFORE BREXIT!!!! (in small type) All of 97¢ worth. And Slashdot thought this was worth a entire post.
  • “Net Neutrality” scrapped, Slashdot hit hardest:

  • The top-ranked restaurant in London, The Shed at Dulwich, is so exclusive it doesn’t exist. (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • Rep. Steve Scalise Returns to the House Floor

    Saturday, September 30th, 2017

    It’s a “got nothing” day, so enjoy this short video of Rep. Steve Scalise (Republican-Louisiana) returning to the House floor three months after being shot by a crazed Democrat.

    He gets a long standing ovation from the entire House. For once, no one took a knee…

    Debt Limit Deal: Maybe Not Completely Awful?

    Tuesday, September 12th, 2017

    There has been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the debt deal President Donald Trump made with congressional Democratic leaders that pushes U.S. debt over the $20 trillion mark.

    Is it a bad deal? From my perspective, almost certainly. Debt is an existential threat to the Republic, and I believe that we should reduce spending by eliminating vast swathes of federal government programs (Federal housing sibsidies? End them. Department of Education? Eliminate it. Agribusiness subsides? End them all. Etc.) until the budget is balanced. Then you wouldn’t have to worry about hitting the debt limit at all.

    Sadly, my position seems to be a decidedly minority one in D.C. Since politics is the art of the possible, it’s better to ask: How bad is President Trump’s deal among the constellation of actual debt limit deal possibilities?

    The answer seems to be: Still not great, but maybe not as bad as first impressions.

    It’s possible that President Trump went for the deal because he had no choice, as Republican congressional leadership was woefully unprepared on the issue:

    With much of the Washington Republican establishment still grumbling about President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this week to strike a deal with Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, one prominent member of the House Freedom Caucus took to the Sunday Talk Shows to deliver what sounded like the faction’s official response to the week’s events.

    In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan struck a delicate balance: criticizing the consequences of the president’s decision without impugning the man himself.

    Jordan explained that while the Trump-Schumer-Pelosi deal wouldn’t be “good for the American taxpayer” the president can be excused for agreeing to it because Republicans in Congress failed to provide him with a suitable alternative.

    And just like that, a member of the House’s most intransigent, conservative faction – the group that almost singlehandedly crushed the Trump administration’s health-care ambitions – turning the blame for Trump’s debt-ceiling can-kicking, and the powerful leverage that Democrats gained because of it, back on the president’s favorite opponents: Congressional Republicans.

    Here’s Jordan:

    I don’t think this was a good deal for the American taxpayer. We didn’t go anything to address the underlying $20 trillion debt but frankly what options did the president have in front of him? The first time the Republican conference talked about the debt ceiling was Sunday morning. And the Freedom Caucus had called for, nine and a half weeks ago, we said ‘don’t leave town until you have a plan on the debt ceiling’ and instead we went home for the longest August recess in a decade, longer even than in elections years.

    Indeed, the deal House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted was actually worse for conservatives:

    Trump on Wednesday agreed to the proposal of House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to increase the national-debt limit for three months, and attach that to emergency aid for victims of Hurricane Harvey. But just days earlier, conservatives had been wringing their hands in fear that Schumer would turn the debt ceiling into the Democrats’ newest set of brass knuckles.

    If not for the high-profile urgency of, in essence, stapling the debt limit to Harvey assistance, the pressing need to re-charge Uncle Sam’s credit card would have given Schumer a fresh way to beat up Republicans. Absent Harvey, Schumer and his band of toughs would have kidnapped the debt limit in exchange for something else, perhaps “DACA or death!” Instead, the debt-limit increase slid through, behind Harvey’s shield, with no last-minute hostage drama.

    Trump rejected the offer of House speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) to extend the debt limit for 18 months, past the 2018 mid-term elections. This would have removed federal borrowing from the list of issues on which the GOP could have run next year. Obama hiked the national debt from $10.6 trillion to $19.9 trillion — a staggering 87.8 percent. That mess, and how to escape it, would have been a worthy GOP issue. Ryan and McConnell largely would have obviated that opportunity.

    Ryan and McConnell’s 18-month proposal also would have deprived Republicans of a priceless “must pass” vehicle to which they could append items that Senate Democrats dislike. The GOP similarly handed Obama multiple long-term debt-limit extensions that prevented Republicans from sending him short-term debt-limit measures that he would have had to sign, notwithstanding amendments that rankled him. Republicans should not deploy the debt limit every month, in order to corner Schumer and Senate Democrats. But mothballing this weapon until spring 2019 smacks of unilateral disarmament.

    From all reports, Ryan and McConnell were ready to drop-kick the debt-limit 18 months down the road, in return for . . . nothing. Even worse, as conservatives correctly complain, they did not tie the debt-limit boost to any structural reforms, such as a cap on federal spending as a share of GDP, adoption of the brilliant Penny Plan (which would balance the budget by cutting total spending by 1 percent every year for eight years), a private-sector audit of every federal department and sub-cabinet agency, or even converting Washington’s books from cash-basis to accrual accounting. Ryan and McConnell promised 18 months of borrowing and spending on autopilot. Trump properly rejected such fiscal brain death.

    Now, in three months, fiscal conservatives can and should append reformist language to the next debt-limit increase. Ryan/McConnell would have denied them that opportunity until nearly two Easters hence.

    If Schumer wanted to demand “DACA or death!” I would have seen how he likes death: no debt limit vote, cut spending until the budget is balanced, and let Schumer explain why it was necessary for welfare recipients to lose their checks so Democrats could amnesty more illegal aliens.

    Like I said, mine seems to be a minority viewpoint.

    There are also reports that the deal is written in such a way that McConell might get the last laugh:

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wrote in some “extraordinary” provisions to the debt ceiling bill that could mean there won’t be another debt ceiling fight in 2017 after all, he revealed on “The New Washington” podcast Monday.

    McConnell insisted, in the face of Democrats’ objections, that the bill be written to preserve the Treasury’s ability to extend federal borrowing power by moving money around within government accounts. In layman’s terms, that means the Republicans can work around the December debt limit deadline and push that issue into 2018.

    All this is just rearranging deck chairs on the Debtanic as long as the driving motivation for current congressional leadership is avoiding bad poll numbers rather than actual conservative governance. But short of a debt deal that includes spine replacement surgery for congressional leadership, there seems precious little chance of congress fulfilling any of the myriad conservative promises they made when Obama occupied the White House.

    Did Trump Actually Want RyanCare to Pass?

    Monday, March 27th, 2017

    Yesterday House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the ObamaCare “repeal” bill from consideration. This was not surprising, in that the Republican base hated the bill even more than Democrats did, mainly because it was an awful bill. Voters elected Republicans who promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, not embrace and extend it.

    Let’s face it: A firm grasp of health care policy specifics and a deep understand of the many nuances of federalism are not among Trump’s demonstrated virtues. But he would have had to be very tone-deaf indeed not to notice the discord RyanCare engendered in the Republican ranks.

    The media is spinning this as a terrible defeat for President Trump, because of course they are, and because he publicly supported the bill. And Trump did give every indications that he would have signed the bill or proclaimed it both a win and a campaign promised fulfilled had it passed. But I didn’t see the sort of push and focus from Trump indicating that this very major piece of legislation was even his top priority thus far, much less the make-or-break bill of his presidency.

    Read this phone interview Trump had with Robert Costa of the Washington Post just hours after the bill was pulled.

    efore I could ask a question, Trump plunged into his explanation of the politics of deciding to call off a vote on a bill he had been touting.

    The Democrats, he said, were to blame.

    “We couldn’t get one Democratic vote, and we were a little bit shy, very little, but it was still a little bit shy, so we pulled it,” Trump said.

    Trump said he would not put the bill on the floor in the coming weeks. He is willing to wait and watch the current law continue and, in his view, encounter problems. And he believes that Democrats will eventually want to work with him on some kind of legislative fix to Obamacare, although he did not say when that would be.

    “As you know, I’ve been saying for years that the best thing is to let Obamacare explode and then go make a deal with the Democrats and have one unified deal. And they will come to us; we won’t have to come to them,” he said. “After Obamacare explodes.”

    “The beauty,” Trump continued, “is that they own Obamacare. So when it explodes, they come to us, and we make one beautiful deal for the people.

    Spin? Sure. But it does sound like he already has his talking points warmed up and ready to go. Democrats killed the bill. Not one of them was willing to vote for it. ObamaCare’s failures are (still) on their head. Someday soon Democrats will come to us begging for a deal

    Maybe passing RyanCare was actually Trump’s plan A. But maybe having it fail, and sticking the failure on Democrats (rather than the House Freedom Caucus) was always a very close plan B.

    As Scott Adams has noted time and again, Trump appears to view almost everything through a persuading and deal-making lens. RyanCare wasn’t a failure, it was just an opening bid in a much longer negotiation. (Ann Althouse has similar thoughts.)

    The question then becomes: Does the next ObamaCare repeal effort actually end ObamaCare and moves us back toward federalism, or does Trump cut a deal with Democrats to try to pass some sort of move to even more socialized medicine? The later seems unlikely, since a Republican-controlled House and Senate would never pass it and Democrats hate President Trump far too much on an irrationally visceral level to work with him. (Which is ironic, given that he seemed the most liberal Republican candidate when he joined the field in Presidential field in 2015).

    For mainstream media pundits spinning this as a crippling loss for Trump: I tend to doubt it. A bill that wasn’t passed in March 2017 isn’t going to be much on the minds of voters in November 2018. Now Trump need not worry about fracturing Republicans over a flawed ObamaCare bill and can move on to other priorities.

    ObamaCare Repeal: The Dam Breaks

    Thursday, March 23rd, 2017

    After a couple of weeks of President Trump and GOP House leadership insisting “Nope, this is it! Kiss this pig or it’s nothing!” and conservatives replying “Die in a fire!” it looks like the GOP establishment has finally gotten the message.

    First came this news from Senator Mike Lee:

    Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said on Wednesday that the Senate parliamentarian has told him that it may be possible for Republicans to push harder on repealing Obamacare’s regulations than the current House bill, which contradicts the assertion by House leadership that the legislation goes after Obamacare as aggressively as possible under Senate rules.

    “What I understood her to be saying is that there’s no reason why an Obamacare repeal bill necessarily could not have provisions repealing the health insurance regulations.”

    Now Speaker Paul Ryan, the pig’s primary pimp, has relented as well:

    In a last-minute bid to woo conservatives ahead of a high-stakes vote on Thursday on repealing and replacing Obamacare, House leaders are considering gutting more Obamacare regulations.

    The news comes as President Trump and White House officials are in talks with House conservatives over changes that can win over holdouts and secure enough votes to move the bill to the Senate.

    Among the many arguments conservatives have made against the House healthcare bill, one of the most significant is that it leaves too many costly regulations in place and thus fails to address long-standing criticisms of Obamacare — that it limits choices and drives premiums higher than they otherwise would be.
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    Previously, House leaders have argued that the regulations could not be nixed, because doing so would blow up the bill in the Senate, where Republicans will have to pass the measure under restrictive rules to enable it to clear with a simple majority.

    But a House leadership aide told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that Republicans received new information from the Senate, indicating that axing the regulations would not automatically doom the bill from being considered on an expedited basis.

    House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office is now more open to nixing the regulations, known as “essential health benefits.” Under Obamacare, all insurance policies must include ten categories of benefits, such as maternity care and preventive coverage, that make policies more comprehensive but also make it costlier for individuals who would prefer cheaper plans with fewer benefits.

    You know what would be a great bill? One that completely repealed ObamaCare. You know, the way every Republican House and Senate member running for election since 2010 has promised.

    The Trump Administration can also gut Obamacare without any help from congress:

    Within the bill there are 2,500 references to “the Secretary”. 700 times the Secretary “shall” do something, 200 times the Secretary “may” do something, and 139 occasions when the “Secretary determines” what should be done.

    These “shall” and “may” determinations cover things like what type of insurance coverage Americans are required to have, how insurance networks and exchanges are organized, how grant money is doled out, what the “essential health benefits” that every insurance policy must cover are.

    Suppose the new Secretary determines that Americans “shall” only be required to have catastrophic insurance? Or no insurance at all? What if the “essential health benefits” are left to the discretion of the purchaser of the insurance policy? What if the Secretary “determines” that there will be no insurance mandates or penalties? Or that insurance “may” be sold across state lines?

    The Secretary also has discretion over “pilot programs” and “demonstration projects” for controlling costs. These include wellness plans, information technology, quality measures, and national payment for Medicaid. Perhaps throw in tort reform and a rollback of many of the many more onerous regulations strangling the medical profession. The Secretary “may” implement these reforms.

    In reality, the Secretary has the statutory power to infect Obamacare with the cancer of repeal and replace, metastasizing into so many aspects of the law that what emerges is a shadow of the original bill. Repeal and replace from within.

    The downside to this approach is that any future Democratic administration could restore all the Obamacare nightmare taxes and regulations at will.

    Still, there’s no reason Republicans can’t pursue a two-track approach: Gut it administratively while also working on a full legislative repeal.

    Both approaches are far superior to the original “embrace and extend” ObamaCare bill Republican leadership originally tried to cram down representative’s throats….

    Paul Ryan Reelected Speaker

    Tuesday, January 3rd, 2017

    Rep. Paul Ryan has been reelected Speaker of the House:

    As expected, Republican Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin on Tuesday was elected speaker of the House for the 2017-2018 congressional term. The final vote was 239-189, with five lawmakers not voting for either Ryan or Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

    There were issues with Ryan’s speakership (as there were with all his Republican predecessors), but with Republicans in control of all three branches of government, Ryan should be able to implement vastly more of the Republican agenda than they did under Obama. Ryan needs to enable Trump when he’s acting to implement conservative policies, and provide a check on him when he isn’t.

    First order of business: Repealing ObamaCare. Second order: Junking as much of the remaining cruft of the Obama Administration as possible. Third order: Securing the border and staying the hell away from the siren song of “comprehensive immigration reform” that so many establishment Republicans still harbor a suicidal longing for.

    There’s a hundred other things that need attending to (including doing something about the budget deficit), but the damage of the Obama years will not be undone overnight…

    The Reviews Are In! Ryan-Murray Is Budget-Busting Garbage!

    Thursday, December 12th, 2013

    Conservatives have taken a good, close look at the details of the Ryan-Murray budget agreement, and are unanimous in their judgment: It stinks!

  • “House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has now accomplished the astonishing task of pushing House Republicans substantially to the left of the Senate GOP. His budget deal, announced Tuesday night, was achieved by shutting conservative Senate Republicans out of negotiations, by resorting to the old trick of spending now while claiming savings later, by ignoring a symbolically important budgetary red line, and by treating as Democratic “concessions” things to which even Democratic budgeteers already had agreed.”
  • “With liberal Senator Patty Murray, Congressman Ryan wants to raise spending today on the promise that Congress will restrain itself ten years from now (or whenever the benchmark will be). It’s a return to pre-sequestration Washington — spending increases today in exchange for promises of spending cuts later.”
  • “How can leadership credibly promise spending cuts later, after agreeing to a plan that rolls back the sequestration savings promised two debt increases ago?
  • Ted Cruz: “”The new budget deal moves in the wrong direction: it spends more, taxes more, and allows continued funding for Obamacare… this proposal undoes the sequester’s modest reforms and pushes us two steps back, deeper into debt.”
  • Sen. Mike Lee: “Rather than enacting reforms to make government more efficient, the budget deal makes more government more expensive. Sequestration is far from ideal, but at least it forced Congress get serious about excessive spending. This deal cuts into the modest gains taxpayers have won since 2011, by trading concrete spending reductions over the next two years for theoretical spending cuts a decade from now.”
  • Paul Ryan has given birth to a pile of garbage. The fact that it’s a relatively small pile of garbage is beside the point, since it will still stink up the place. Republican House and Senate members should haul it out to the curb.