Conservatives Blame GOP Leaders For Not Stopping ‘Fundamental Transformation of America’

(CNSNews.com) –  Republicans are not keeping the campaign promise they made to voters in 2014 to halt President Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America,” conservative and Tea Party leaders charged in an open letter to Congress on Monday.

On April 28, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) cited fast-track trade legislation and a bill requiring congressional review of the administration’s nuclear deal with Iran as the major accomplishments of the GOP-led 114th Congress so far.

Earlier that month, Obama praised what he called “some outbreaks of bipartisanship and common sense in Congress” over Iran and trade. The president also said he was holding bipartisan talks with the Republican leadership on transportation infrastructure issues as well.

“To the extent the majority leader and the president are making nice, I’m happy. We need a lot more consensus in the federal government. There’s partisanship at every turn,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said Monday.

But the 50 conservative leaders who signed the Citizens’ Mandate in January reminded McConnell and the rest of the Republican leadership that voters who gave them a landslide victory last November have much higher expectations for them, such as ending executive branch overreach and restoring the constitutional balance of power.

“The November election was a repudiation of President Obama’s dramatic expansion of government power both through legislative and executive actions,” stated the Citizens’ Mandate, which also has a Facebook page.

The GOP’s clear mandate is to “end Obamacare; stop executive amnesty; hold the executive branch accountable for its abuses of power and its national security failures both foreign and domestic; and put the interests of the United States of America and Americans first.”

However, instead of wielding its power as a co-equal branch of government to stop illegal immigration during the first 132 days they controlled both houses of Congress, Republicans wound up funding Obama’s executive amnesty and jeopardizing national security by failing to address the security risks posed by illegal immigration, the letter pointed out.

Via: CNS News

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Senate fight looms as law allowing NSA to collect Americans’ phone data set to expire

A major supporter of the National Security Agency’s anti-terrorism surveillance program, which allows the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, is pushing for an extension of the program, setting up a battle with critics who argue that Congress must fix the current law or let it expire.

"This has been a very important part of our effort to defend the homeland since 9/11," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday while defending the program in an interview on ABC's “This Week.” "We know that the terrorists overseas are trying to recruit people in our country to commit atrocities in our country."

McConnell, R-Ky., introduced a bill Thursday night that would temporarily renew the expiring provisions of the Patriot Act for two months.

The renewal would buy time for the Senate to debate, specifically, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which authorizes the government to collect personal records without a warrant and has been the target of controversy since NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that it was being used by the NSA to capture and retain millions of Americans’ personal phone records.  

The provisions are currently scheduled to sunset on June 1.

Meanwhile, the House on Wednesday passed the USA Freedom Act, a bipartisan bill lawmakers said would end the NSA’s ability to use Section 215 for that type of data collection. Instead, it would allow private telecom companies to keep the records. Federal law enforcement would have to get a court order proving a link to a specific criminal investigation to collect such phone record data, and must use specific search terms to get permission to pore through the information.

Via: Fox News

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McConnell vows ‘free-wheeling’ Senate under his leadership

Fresh off his resounding Republican primary victory Tuesday night, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Thursday laid out a broad vision of what the Senate would look like under his control.

Bottom line, McConnell, wouldn’t run the way Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., runs it now, the Kentucky Republican told the center-right American Enterprise Institute.

‘A Senate majority under my leadership would break sharply from the practices of the Reid era in favor of a more free-wheeling approach to problem solving,’ McConnell said in a speech. ‘I would work to restore (the Senate’s) traditional role as a place where good ideas are generated, debated and voted upon. We’d fire up the committee process. We’d work longer days and weeks, using the clock to force consensus.’

And McConnell’s money shot: ‘In marked contrast to the Reid era, we would allow an open amendment process – ensuring senators on both sides a chance to weigh in on legislation and alleviating the frustration that inevitably results when they can’t.’

McConnell and Republicans believe the Senate is within their grasp this election year. They need a net gain of six seats in November to gain control of the chamber.

Last November, Reid and the Democratic-controlled Senate changed the chamber’s long-standing rules to strip the Republican minority of its filibuster power to block many presidential nominations, a move that makes it easier to confirmed President Barack Obama’s appointees but increased partisan tensions in an already acrimonious chamber.

Via: McClatchy

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Reid hammered by GOP after claiming all ObamaCare 'horror stories' untrue

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is being hammered by Republican lawmakers after he claimed on the Senate floor that all the ObamaCare "horror stories" being circulated are untrue.

Reid tried to clarify his remarks late Wednesday by saying he was only referring to the “vast majority” of stories featured in ads funded by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group, and not the complaints of everyday Americans. However, he added fuel to the fire by continuing to slam the group’s backers, the Koch brothers, calling them “un-American.” 

Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, in response, said Reid had effectively "attacked the character and integrity of every American who had the courage to share how they're being hurt by the president's health care law." 

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., called Reid's original remarks "astounding and offensive." 

Reid said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor that he believes Americans for Prosperity hires actors in their ads to tell fake stories about canceled policies, higher premiums and ruined lives under ObamaCare.

“There’s plenty of horror stories being told,” Reid said. “All of them are untrue. But they’re being told all over America.” 

It was an apparent reference to, among other instances, an AFP ad that featured a woman with cancer who claimed her health care became unaffordable under the law. Her story was called into question by critics, but she and AFP are standing by the ad. 

Via: Fox News

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The 7 most absurd things Harry Reid said in 2013

As one looks back on the political news of 2013, it would be impossible to ignore all the absurd things Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in the last year.

So sit back, relax and enjoy Reid’s greatest hits.

1. “Why would we want to do that?”

CNN reporter Dana Bash asked Reid why he wouldn’t put his support behind a Republican spending bill that provided funding for National Institutes of Health, which helps children with cancer. Bash inquired of the Senate Majority Leader: If you can help one child who has cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?

“Why would we want to do that?” Reid responded.

2. “Why don’t they get a life and talk about something else?”

During a press conference in September, Reid bashed Republicans for trying to defund Obamacare, accusing them of “playing silly games” and attempting to score “cheap political points.”

“Here’s a President who less than a year ago won an election by five million votes, five million votes,” he told reporters. “Obamacare has been the law for four years. Why don’t they [Republicans] get a life and talk about something else? People deserve better.”

Via: Red Alert Politics

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Budget deal BLOWS THROUGH the mandated sequester spending caps

WASHINGTON — Announcing the budget deal he reached with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday he was thankful Republicans were at least able to keep in place the automatic spending cuts that went into effect across government agencies earlier this year.

“That’s been a top priority for me and my Republican colleagues throughout this debate,” the Senate Minority Leader said on the floor of the Senate, referencing what’s known as the sequester. “And it’s been worth the effort.”

But while the deal freezes in place current spending numbers, the budget deal actually blows through the sequester spending caps that were supposed to go into effect on Oct. 1 — by nearly $20 billion.

Here are the numbers: The Budget Control Act of 2011 created the automatic spending cuts across the government, mandating a discretionary budget in fiscal year 2013 of $986 billion.

On Oct. 1, more sequester cuts were supposed to bring the discretionary budget down to $967 billion for fiscal year 2014.

But the amount of the spending cap in the McConnell-Reid deal for the next three months is frozen temporarily at $986 billion — $19 billion more than the government is supposed to be able to spend this fiscal year.

Defenders of McConnell point out that at least his deal stopped Democrats from completely killing these automatic spending cuts. President Barack Obama and Harry Reid want to do away with them and increase the budget to $1.058 trillion.

The freezing of the spending cuts comes as conservative note that the sequester has actually been successful in reducing government. Wall Street Journal columnist Stephen Moore put it this way in August: “The biggest underreported story out of Washington this year is that the federal budget is shrinking and much more than anyone in either party expected.”

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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Government shutdown: Harry Reid spearheads Democratic strategy

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been the most ardent proponent of President Barack Obama taking a hard line with House Republicans in the latest fiscal crisis engulfing Washington.

And so far, Reid is getting his way.

When the president considered sitting down with the four congressional leaders in the White House ahead of the deadline to avert a government shutdown, Reid privately urged Obama to call off the meeting, according to several people familiar with the situation. Reid believed that it would amount to nothing more than a photo-op that would give the false impression that a serious negotiation was occurring, even warning he wouldn’t attend such a session. Obama scrapped it.

(Government shutdown full coverage)

As Washington barrels forward to the first government shutdown in 17 years on Tuesday, the wily Reid has taken the lead role in pushing a hardball Democratic legislative strategy that can be summed up like this: Make the Republicans cave.

“He’s been the rock … and he’s had our whole caucus behind him,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a close Reid ally who spoke with the majority leader nine times on Saturday afternoon. “Because if we negotiate on a short-term [government funding bill], what are [Republicans] going to do on a long-term bill? What are they going to do on the debt ceiling?”

So far in this fight, the party’s leadership, senior White House officials and the president have been on the same page. They will not let Republicans gut or delay Obamacare — or concede an inch to the GOP despite the ramifications of a shutdown. For now, even Republicans privately concede House Republicans could suffer much of the political backlash for a looming shutdown.

Via: Politico

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