Take Note: Complete List Of The 87 Republican Congressmen And 27 Republican Senators Who Voted To Fund ObamaCare

(CNSNews.com) - Eighty-seven Republicans in the House and 27 in the Senate joined with President Barack Obama on Wednesday evening to enact a continuing resolution that funds the government, including the implementation of Obamacare.

No congressional Democrats voted against the CR.

The vote in the House was 285-144, with the 285 in the majority including 87 Republicans and 198 Democrats. All 144 opponents were Republicans. One Republican and two Democrats did not vote on the measure.

In the Senate, the final vote was 81-18. The 81 senators who voted for the CR included all 54 Democrats and 27 Republicans. All 18 opponents were Republicans. Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma did not vote.

In the House, the majority of Republicans voted against their own party leadership. House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R.-Va.), Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R.-Calif.) and Republican Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R.-Wash.) all joined with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) and 197 other House Democrats to vote for the CR that funded Obamacare. Two House Democrats and one House Republican did not vote on the measure.

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan voted with the majority of House Republicans in opposition to the CR that funds Obamacare.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a key architect of the CR that funds Obamacare, led the 27 Republicans who joined with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in voting for it.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential nominee, also voted for the CR that funds Obamacare.

Via: Pat Dollard

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Rep. Brown Blames House for Shutdown: ‘Don’t Confuse Nobody With The Facts’

(CNSNews.com) -  “Let’s don’t confuse nobody with the facts,” Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) said during a congressional committee hearing where she made it clear that she blames the House for the government shutdown.

Rep. Brown made the comments during an Oct. 9 House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs hearing on the impact the shutdown is having on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

“Let me be clear, I keep hearing the Senate, the Senate, I put the responsibility straight here with the House. We could pass a clean CR and you would not be sitting here,” Brown told Veterans Affairs Secretary Gen. Eric Shinseki.

“I don’t blame the Senate,” Brown continued, “I thank God for the Senate. The bad politics of this House - and at some point let’s don’t confuse nobody with the facts," she added.

Via: CNS News

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Harry Reid: ‘I would like the debt ceiling to be for 20 years’

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid isn’t letting the government shutdown stop him from playing jester.

“How long would you like the [continuing resolution] to be and how long would you like the debt limit?” a reporter asked Reid at a press conference Saturday afternoon.

“I would like the debt ceiling to be for 20 years and I’d like the CR to be for 10 years,” Reid replied, apparently in jest. “A CR with our numbers, of course.”

Via: Daily Caller

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House CR Forks Over $174,000 for Late Senator’s Wife

There are many things House Republicans liked about the government continuing resolution. It defunds Obamacare, locks in the sequester spending cuts and keeps the government running.

But there’s one provision tucked into the CR that may anger constituents back home: Among the various sections of the House-passed CR are 28 words that would pay $174,000 to the widow of the late Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J.

“Sec. 134. Notwithstanding any other provision of this joint resolution, there is appropriated for payment to Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg, widow of Frank R. Lautenberg, late a Senator from New Jersey, $174,000.”

The death gratuity — a long-practiced, little-known, unofficial perk of office — has been a staple of congressional deaths. A Congressional Research Service report on members who die in office says:

“…it has been the typical practice of the House to provide a death gratuity equal to the member’s annual salary, payable to the deceased member’s widow or widower, or children either in the annual legislative branch appropriations act or a measure providing supplemental funds for the legislative branch. By statute, a death gratuity is considered a gift.”

Before Lautenberg’s death, he was No. 8 on Roll Call’s 50 Richest Members of Congress with a net worth of at least $56.8 million.

That raises a question for the government watchdogs at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: ”Why is the government throwing money at a multimillionaire?”

In a post on CREW’s website, Daniel Schuman says the situation is “even more galling” when you think about the choice it represents.

“Congress just voted to cut food stamps for poor children,” Schuman says, referring to the nutrition bill passed in the House on Thursday. “The self-serving attitude that the death gratuity embodies places members of Congress above the public they are elected to serve. The last place this giveaway belongs is in legislation intended to contain only the essential measures to keep the government open.”

Via: Roll Call

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Why a Defund-ObamaCare Strategy Would Succeed

We are less than one and a half weeks from the Showdown at the CR (Continuing Resolution) Corral, and establishment politicians, of both parties, are panicking.  The latest turn of the screw came last week, when opposition from 43 apparently non-establishment Republicans forced Speaker Boehner to cancel a vote on a CR because that CR would have continued to fund Obamacare.

Fox News Senior Political Analyst Brit Hume concisely captured one source of GOP panic over the weekend, on Fox News Sunday:

[T]he axiom in Washington that when the government shuts down, it doesn't matter who causes it, Republicans get blamed, is still in effect.  This is a very risky proposition.

So it would seem, as pundits -- again, of both parties -- agree that President Obama and the Democrats not only would accept, but actually would welcome a so-called government shutdown -- hoping to ride the public's anticipated anger all the way to a takeover of the House in 2014:

I think [President Obama's] gamble is to take back the House in 2014, which is why I think he may want a shutdown, [Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul] Gigot said on ABC's This Week panel.  Because that's the way he can blame it on the Republicans, blame any economic fallout on the House Republicans, and say, 'You've got to give me the majority for the next two years.'

Via: American Thinker

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TEA PARTY PATRIOTS LEADER: BEWARE OF BACKROOM LAST-MINUTE OBAMACARE FUNDING DEAL

Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin warned conservatives on Sunday evening that they should be wary of a potential move from House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to fund Obamacare in a Continuing Resolution (CR) at the last minute as the fiscal year is ending.

“I think that when we are dealing with people who have continually and repeatedly made backroom deals and voted under the cover of darkness over and over and over and over, that we have to expect that that’s what they’re going to do again,” Martin said in an appearance on Breitbart News Sunday with Stephen K. Bannon on Sunday night. “We must watch and keep the pressure on and do everything that we can to make sure that does not happen.”

Technically, unless Cantor abruptly ends a long-planned scheduled recess week as he has publicly suggested he might, there are only five working days for the House left in September before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. At that time, Congress needs to pass a new CR and the president needs to sign it or the government will shut down. 

“On Tuesday when the House of Representatives gets back in [from the weekend], they’re going to have to make a decision very quickly,” Martin said. “There are only five legislative days left. They have this week from Tuesday to Friday. They’re out next week. And then they have one more day before we hit October 1, and October 1 is when our new fiscal year starts for government.”

Last week, Cantor tried to allow a House vote defunding ObamaCare but written in a manner that would allow the Senate to quickly restore the funding for the president’s healthcare law, according to a document obtained by Breitbart News. However, within 24 hours of a Tea Party Patriots Exempt America rally on Capitol Hill, Cantor withdrew the proposal.

Via: Breitbart

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The Defund-Obamacare Civil War

A handful of conservative Republicans walked into a meeting with Majority Leader Eric Cantor Monday night anticipating a discussion — an effort to find consensus.

What they got instead was a perfunctory heads-up about his plan for the upcoming fight over the “continuing resolution,” or CR, a bill to continue funding the government when the current appropriations run out. Under Cantor’s plan, the House would pass two different bills, a standard CR and a measure to defund Obamacare. Through parliamentary wizardry, though, the House would keep the Senate from voting on the CR bill until it had also voted on the Obamacare measure.

The meeting was part of what has been a difficult rollout for the Virginia Republican’s proposal, which is facing significant opposition from conservatives who would like to push harder to defund or delay Obamacare. The vote on the measures, planned for today or tomorrow, could easily go down in flames.

First, influential conservative outside groups such as the Club for Growth trashed the plan. Then, Senator Mike Lee, the original architect of the use-the-CR-to-defund-Obamacare strategy, ripped Cantor’s idea as a “face-saving” gimmick that added insult to the injury of abandoning the grassroots’ calls for a do-or-die fight on Obamacare. “It is not a plan to defund Obamacare — it’s a plan to facilitate the passage of a CR in a way that allows people to claim that they’re defunding Obamacare without actually doing so,” Lee told me.

Via: National Review Online

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The Latest on the Dog and Pony CR Plan (Continuing Resolution)

Today, Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced his new dog and pony CR plan to the House Republican Conference.  They will ensure that the Senate sends a clean CR without defunding Obamacare to the president’s desk.  The catch is that the House will vote to defund Obamacare in the CR, thereby saving members from an embarrassing vote, while splitting off the defund rider when the bill heads to the Senate.  The Senate will be able to vote down the defund bill separately and then send a clean CR straight to the President.

So when will they fight Obamacare?

The next time!

Yes, they will fight on the next debt ceiling battle later this year, according to NRO’s Jonathan Strong:

“Towards the end, however, he dropped a big piece of news about the House Republican strategy heading into the next fiscal fight — over raising the debt ceiling. To increase the debt ceiling, Cantor said, Republicans will demand a one-year delay to Obamacare.”

As we’ve noted a number of times, this plan is beyond comical:

• Why in the world would anyone believe you are willing to fight on a harder battle, one which raises the false specter of a default, when you are not willing to fight over a plain government funding bill?
• The CR coincides with the implementation date of Obamacare; the debt ceiling fight will be at least a few weeks after implementation begins.
• If Democrats know that you will always blink out of fear of brinkmanship, why would they listen to you and delay Obamacare?  There is no difference between defund or delay if you lack the courage to follow through with the threat.
• Republicans already delayed the debt ceiling fight in January for the explicit purpose of dealing with the CR first.  Now they are reversing the order again.  Who is dumb enough to fall for this chicanery?

Another issue here is that leadership is trying to use the sequester cuts as the shiny object for the CR.  They are saying that the CR will reflect the $967 billion annualized discretionary spending levels set forth in the Budget Control Act along with the sequester.  There are two problems with this shiny object, aside for the fact that some random discretionary cuts are inconsequential when compared to the fight over Obamacare.

Via: Red State

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