The GOP House Assumes Its Leadership Role by Separating Illegal Immigrant Amnesty Battle from the Budget

The US media has been on a government shutdown watch, hoping, it seems, that House Speaker John Boehner would "once again" not be able to control his GOP caucus, allowing the "extreme right wing tea party members" - as the media likes to pejoratively call about 100 House members whose election and re-election must surely mean they represent a majority of those who vote in their districts. That would have led once again to making the Republican Party look like the party of pain and uncertainty for Americans. It would never occur to the liberal media and its commentators either to explain the cause or fix the blame for the 2013 shutdown - which, by the way, led to very little pain, unless we count the Obama administration's attempt to close the World War II Memorial to veteran tourist groups, which a few veterans and GOP members of Congress got righted in a few minutes, anyway. However, we remember that the cause of the October 2013 shutdown was a federal budget fight by the House to defund or delay Obamacare by attaching the resolution to the budget bill that it sent to the Senate, which removed the resolution -- this went through several passes between the Republican House and Democratic Senate. The House also passed many continuing resolutions to fund the rest of the government and prevent a shutdown during the dispute, but Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid refused to consider them. And then President Obama got the brilliant idea to refuse to sign any budget bill unless it was accompanied by a bill to increase the federal debt ceiling, something the House wanted to debate separately. SO...there was a 2013 shutdown. It taught the GOP House caucus that trying to carry out the wishes of the American people - a majority of whom both then and now disapprove of Obamacare - in the face of a Democrat Senate and President was impossible. So the GOP set out to campaign for a GOP Senate majority in the 2014 midterm elections. It worked. Because America agrees with the House about Obamacare, and also about the direction in which America should be moving. ~~~~~ Now, shift to December 2014. America has elected a House with an historically high Republican majority, as well as electing enough GOP Senators to give the Republican Party control of the Senate, too, in January. And, realizing that he is a Democrat President who will face a solidly Republican Congress in January, Barack Obama decided to act like the midterms never happened. Instead of trying to do business through compromise, President Obama sgned executive orders to grant amnesty to up to 6 million illegal immigrants -- an idea that is opposed by more that 70% of Americans, as well as being an act that is very likely an unconstitutional use of presidential power. ~~~~~ And, it's budget time again. So, the liberal media once more began telling America that those baddies - the "extreme right wing tea party members" - re-elected in the November midterms - must surely again force Speaker Boehner to attach a resolution refusing to fund Obama's amnesty orders to the current budget bill. And, since the Senate is still Democrat during this lameduck session, the result would most certainly be a government shutdown, reasoned the media, proving once and for all that the Republican Party is the party of pain and uncertainty for Americans. ~~~~~ But a funny thing happened on the way to the House budget bill. It did, indeed, vote on Thursday to knock down President Obama's executive action to grant amnesty to as many as 6 million illegal immigrants because, as Florida GOP Representative Ted Yoho told Newsmax yesterday -- "enough is enough....The Constitution is something we need to abide by, or what in the heck are we here for?" He introduced the legislation on November 20, the day Obama announced his unilateral actions, saying : "If he wants to legislate with a pen, send all the Congress home,....My goal is to take his ink out of his pen." On a 219 to 197 vote, the House voted Thursday to block the immigration orders Obama announced last month that would delay deportations for, and grant work permits to, millions of illegals. BUT, there is a big difference this time. Alhough the vote was a protest against illegal immigrant amnesty, it was not attached to the budget bill. The vote allowed House Republicans to show their outrage over Obama's orders without jeopardizing a spending bill now under negotiation between the House and Senate that would keep the government running after next week. "It is symbolic," Yoho acknowledged to Newsmax : "It's a symbolic move that passed the House - the People's House - that says that they want the President to abide by the Constitution. If we are a land that honors the rule of law, and if that rule of law is the Constitution, and that Constitution signifies freedom around the world, should we not all work to preserve that? I think, symbolically, it probably speaks more than a bill," he said. SO, no 2014 government shutdown, which House Speaker John Boehner and other party leaders have promised to avoid. As for the House anti-amnesty bill, once more Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid predictably doesn't plan to take it up. The White House said the President would veto the measure if it reached his desk. Speaker Boehner said Thursday's vote "made clear that we are rejecting his unilateral actions," especially since "the President thumbed his nose at the American people with his actions on immigration." Representative Tom Price, who will chair the House Budget Committee in the new Congress cited the bill's effort at White House accountability : "So long as the President and his allies in Congress continue to put their executive amnesty ahead of fidelity to the rule of law, we must and we will continue to seek to hold the administration accountable." Boehner and other House leaders incorporated Yoho's bill into a two-part strategy to give conservative Republicans a voice ahead of next week's spending bill vote. Republicans will revisit the Department of Homeland Security amnesty issue early next year when Republicans control Congress. ~~~~~ Dear readers, what a difference a year makes. In 2013, unable to influence Harry Reid or President Obama, the House Republicans lost a battle over Obamacare funding - a battle that they saw as their only way of speaking out as the People's House for something the People opposed. But, now, the GOP knows that in less than a month they will control Congress and can confront President Obama directly over his unpopular actions -- Obamacare, amnesty, a weak foreign policy being carried out through the military but without congressional approval, and all the other long-running items, such as IRS harassment of conservatives and Benghazi. The House passage of the Yoho anti-amnesty bill is a shot across the bows for the President and his White House. It is a warning. It is also a promise that the days of hiding behind a divided Congress are over for Obama and Company.