‘Flat-out lie’: Cruz calls McConnell a liar on Senate floor

An extraordinary scene unfolded on the Senate floor Friday as Republican Sen. Ted Cruz bluntly accused Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying and said he's running the Senate like his Democratic predecessor. 

The charges from the Texas senator and GOP presidential candidate were a rare departure from the Senate's usual staid decorum, even for a politician famous for his fiery speeches. 

At issue were assurances Cruz claimed McConnell, R-Ky., had given that there was no deal to allow a vote to renew the federal Export-Import Bank -- a little-known federal agency that has become a rallying cry for conservatives. Cruz rose to deliver his remarks moments after McConnell had lined up a vote on the bank. 

"It saddens me to say this. I sat in my office, I told my staff the majority leader looked me in the eye and looked 54 Republicans in the eye. I cannot believe he would tell a flat-out lie, and I voted based on those assurances that he made to each and every one of us," Cruz said. 

"What we just saw today was an absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again, was a simple lie." 

Reports had emerged earlier this year that McConnell privately pledged a vote on the Ex-Im Bank, in exchange for winning support on President Obama's trade agenda. Cruz says he was assured at the time there was no deal. 

Via: Fox News

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The Export-Import Bank Needs To Stay Dead.

The Export-Import Bank is dead. Let’s keep it that way.

This hoary relic of the Great Depression has been plagued with corruption and fraud. Its lending practices primarily benefit a handful of wealthy American mega-corporations and, far too often, unsavory interests abroad.

Ex-Im’s charter expired on June 30, but special interests continue to press Congress to revive it. Lawmakers wishing to keep this monument to crony capitalism dead and buried can draw some valuable “how-to” lessons from past successful efforts to resist wasteful special-interest pleadings.

In 1988 Congress established the BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) Commission to close unnecessary and expensive military bases. For years, successive administrations had treated basing decisions as political bonbons, keeping certain bases open for their friends, while closing others.

Congressmen and senators were unwilling to bear the weight of making rational closure decisions themselves. Voting to close a base in one’s home state carried severe political risk. And if politicians in one state voted to close a base in another state, the congressmen and senators from that state would likely return the favor.

Local economies often grow dependent on military bases. So even if keeping a base open was fiscally irresponsible (from a federal perspective) and wholly unnecessary for the nation’s security, the parochial interests of constituents usually trumped national interests for congressmen and senators.

Enter, the BRAC process. It allowed lawmakers to escape voting on individual base closures. Instead, they would cast a single, up-or-down vote on a package of closures recommended by non-political and military experts. With this arrangement, members could reassure their constituents that they were acting in the best interest of the nation, not targeting a hometown base for closure.

Creating the BRAC Commissions process required strong congressional leadership, the same type of leadership that is desperately needed now to fight the favoritism and cronyism that pervades Washington.

Lawmakers should also look back to how they were finally able to ban “earmarks” four years ago. “Earmarking” was the appropriations practice that allowed members of congress to “bring home the bacon” by directing federal funds to friends and supporters back home. Over 70 percent of Americans believed earmarks were wasteful and should be discontinued. Privately, many members of congress agreed. But when a public vote was taken in the Senate in 2010, the proposed ban on earmarks failed 39 – 56.

Via: Daily Signal

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Mitch McConnell Outsourcing Everything, Including His Job

No, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) didn’t officially resign from the Senate.  He will still engage in all legislative activities that advance Obama’s agenda, such as Obamatrade, the highway trust fund bailout, Export-Import Bank, and reauthorizing No Child Left Behind.  But he did publicly outsource the last vestige of constitutional checks on the two unelected branches of government.  So what is the purpose of serving in the legislative branch of government other than to enrich your friends with pay-for-play favors? 

We already know that McConnell doesn’t believe in the congressional power of the purse under any circumstance – no matter how unlawful and harmful this Administration grows in its final two years.  Now he is surrendering every remaining legislative check on the Judiciary as well, and worse, he is openly welcoming the extremists in the Judicial Branch to serve as judge, jury, and executioner over religious liberty.  

McConnell builds up the straw-man option of a constitutional amendment only to knock it down by observing that it will never pass.

McConnell is one of those GOP leaders who would successfully secure the support of credulous and ineffective social conservatives groups for years by saying he was for traditional values.  Yet over the past decade he has remained stone silent in the face of the most unconstitutional assaults on natural law and religious liberty, including the assault on federalism, when his own hand-picked judge illegally tossed out his state’s marriage law. A law, which passed with the support of 75% of the people.  Now he is emphatically saying that the lawless Supreme Court decision, which is precluded by the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and precedent from several recent court cases, is the “law of the land.” He told Politico that they are out of legislative options and that it’s time to move on, presumably, to more important things…like reauthorizing No Child Left Behind.   

McConnell builds up the straw-man option of a constitutional amendment only to knock it down by observing that it will never pass.  But he refuses to even recognize the Article III powers that Congress has to strip the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction over these issues and to completely regulate and remake the lower courts.  These are initiatives that can pass with a GOP president the same way he plans to pass his K Street agenda.

But it gets worse.

While offering a parsimonious recognition of the need to protect religious liberty, McConnell outsources our most inherent founding rights to…you guessed it…the very same courts that don’t believe in them and are even ripping replicas of the Ten Commandments from state capitals as we speak.

“There’s the possibility of legislation, but I think most of this is going to be in the courts.” With these words, McConnell has just granted the courts the authority to regulate the very foundational inherent rights we celebrate this year in marking the 239^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. 

Sadly, this is nothing new.  McConnell refused to nullify the D.C. anti-religious liberty laws, which he could have done with a simple-majority vote.  Yet, he says his hands are tied in responding to last week’s bloodless revolution.

Via: Conservative Review

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[COMMENTARY] Export-Import Bank needs resurrecting by Congress by U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-McAllen

U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-McAllen

The Export-Import Bank charter expired this week due to continued dysfunction and the misplaced priorities of the Republican majority in control of Congress who often sound like a broken record with their constant refrain of being the business-friendly party. Inexplicably, they just let the music stop on a crucial export financing source supporting home-grown businesses and their employees working hard to export American-made goods overseas.

For the first time since it was created 81 years ago, the Ex-Im Bank charter was allowed to expire at midnight on July 1. Inaction by Congress to renew he charter leaves thousands of small businesses without resources they need to export commodities to international customers. Continued inaction would be devastating to small exporters and entrepreneurs, in particular, who are looking to grow their businesses. The bank is particularly important because it gives them an edge by leveling the playing field between small firms and their larger counterparts. In fact, nearly 90 percent of the Ex-Im Bank’s transactions in 2013 were for American small businesses.

Still, congressional Republicans allowed their extreme, ideological-driven wing to adjourn without taking action, even though the Bank is a resounding market-driven success — sustaining 1.5 million jobs since 2007 at no cost to taxpayers, supporting hundreds of thousands of American manufacturing jobs and always enjoying the support of a bipartisan majority of Congress.

That was up until now.

Congress’ failing to renew the bank’s charter not only endangers small business financing but also surrenders jobs in the United States to our foreign competitors. With more than $34 billion in exports lost this year alone, tens of thousands of workers engaged in the exporting business could be laid off and thousands of exporters — mostly small business owners — including 730 in Texas, would incur a substantial financial loss, as will the suppliers who make or grow the products being exported.

In fact, Dr. Zhao Changhui, chief risk analyst for the Export-Import Bank of China, recently told a business forum in China that while he would regret the possible demise of the bank’s U.S. counterpart, it would help China’s competitiveness: “With respect to competition in strategy and policies between the U.S. and China, this is a good thing (for China),” he said.

But Republicans have dedicated their majority to a partisan, ideological agenda to the detriment of common sense and hard-working Americans who are in need of bigger paychecks and better jobs. In response, Democrats have advocated legislation to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank’s charter four times in recent months but were blocked each time by House Republicans.

Via: The Monitor

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