Friday, November 07, 2014

POST-ELECTION STRATEGY


Post-election euphoria on the part of the victors is normal. Euphoria, however, is not governance.

What are the realities of the American political situation once the new Congress takes office in January?

Let's talk specifics — feasible specifics.

There is not enough of a majority in Congress to override the Presidential veto. Furthermore, one-branch governance, which Obama has employed, is unconstitutional; that same principle of unconstitutionality also applies to the legislative branch.

Any GOP opposition to Obama's policies has been portrayed by the Obama Administration and has caused a perception of the GOP as "The Party of No."

Turn the tables. Make the Obama Administration "The Party of No."

Perceptions aren't the whole ball of wax, either. WE THE PEOPLE have spoken via the ballot box, and this Congress was elected to get something done.

A few ideas as to what can be done (George F. Will, Washington Post):
● Abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB is empowered to “declare,” with no legislative guidance or institutional inhibitions, that certain business practices are “abusive.” It also embodies progressivism’s authoritarianism by being, unlike any entity Congress has created since 1789, untethered from all oversight mechanisms...

● Repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board....Under this constitutional travesty, an executive-branch agency makes laws unless the legislative branch enacts alternative means of achieving the executive agency’s aim. The Affordable Care Act stipulates that no measure for the abolition of the board can be introduced before 2017 or after Feb. 1, 2017, and must be enacted by Aug. 15 of that year. So, one Congress presumed to bind all subsequent Congresses in order to achieve progressivism’s consistent aim — abolishing limited government by emancipating presidents from restraint by the separation of powers....

● Repeal the Affordable Care Act’s tax on medical devices. This $29 billion blow to an industry that provides more than 400,000 jobs is levied not on firms’ profits but on gross revenues, and it comes on top of the federal (the developed world’s highest) corporate income tax, plus state and local taxes. Enough Democrats support repeal that a presidential veto might be overridden.

● Improve energy, economic and environmental conditions by authorizing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

● Mandate completion of the nuclear waste repository in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The signature achievement of Harry Reid’s waning career has been blocking this project, on which approximately $15 billion has been spent. So, rather than nuclear waste being safely stored in the mountain’s 40 miles of tunnels 1,000 feet underground atop 1,000 feet of rock, more than 160 million Americans live within 75 miles of one or more of the 121 locations where 70,000 tons of waste are stored.

● Pass the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act. It would require that any regulation with at least a $100 million annual impact on the economy — there are approximately 200 of them in the pipeline — be approved without amendments by a joint resolution of Congress and signed by the president.
Read the entire essay HERE.

In my view, the impractical should not be attempted so often by the GOP that the GOP is perceived as "The Party of No."

Turn the tables.  Make the Obama Administration "The Party of No."

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