By DEXTER DUGGAN
As the Republican-majority Congress struggled to produce a federal budget, a fiery former conservative GOP congressman said in an interview that any appropriations bill sent over to Barack Obama for his signature should have a rider denying funding for Planned Parenthood.
Because Obama has promised to veto any such bill, this would keep a damaging focus on the Democrat president’s pro-abortion extremism, former southern California Cong. Robert Dornan told The Wanderer in a September 20 interview.
Dornan characterized major-media reporters as Obama’s “2,000 PR people.”
“When you make the president veto a bill, it forces his PR people at the networks . . . to discuss the issue at hand,” having to explain that Obama chose to deprive government agencies of funding to operate rather than stop the flow of tax money to the abortion giant, Dornan said.
When the president issues a veto, he has to go on the record and make a statement explaining his action, the former congressman said. “He then is exposed as the anti-life zealot that he is.”
The rider against PP funding should be on “every single bill” of appropriations, including for the Department of Justice, Treasury and the Interior, and military construction, he said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, and House Speaker John Boehner, of Ohio, don’t understand how to use the news cycle against Obama, Dornan said. “The Republican Party under Boehner and McConnell, they don’t know how to drive the news and pin this guy down, disgracing himself.”
If Congress hadn’t finished its budget work by the September 30 deadline, a short-term continuing resolution could keep the government running until a longer-term spending bill is agreed on.
Although timorous GOP leadership often is quoted about fearing being held responsible by public opinion for a “shutdown,” much of the government would continue running anyway as deemed necessary.
Dornan began the interview by saying, “I cannot conceive of how fast McConnell and Boehner are going down in everyone’s eyes. . . . The cowardice is skull-cracking.”
Instead of cultivating a fearful attitude, Republicans should have a focus that “Americans would absolutely blame the president” for the problem, he said.
People might see parking lots in national parks closed — an obvious way intentionally to inconvenience the public — but Social Security checks wouldn’t stop, and the military wouldn’t be taken off duty.
On another topic, Dornan noted that about 100 House Democrats used to cast pro-life votes, but the number has dropped to only a few, making that party pretty solidly for the Culture of Death.
One reason is that some Democrat politicians became Republicans, Dornan said. In addition, when some more-conservative Democrats retired, “the Democrat money groups replaced (them) with liberals.” Also, some more-conservative Democrats lost primary elections, he said.
On September 20 the Washington Examiner reported unrest in GOP ranks against the Republican leadership.
“As a government shutdown looms, conservative dissatisfaction with the Republican leadership’s inability to tackle the debt, permanently defund Planned Parenthood, and mishandling of the Iran deal seems to have only grown in the past several days,” it said.
“‘Leadership has often said they are going to fight tooth and nail, but then they lose their teeth, they lose their nails,’ Rep. Dave Brat, the freshman Republican from Virginia who defeated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the 2014 GOP primary, wrote in a Facebook post,” the Examiner reported.
“‘Giving up before we even start to fight isn’t the way we solve our nation’s most important problems,’ wrote Brat.”
On September 18 The Hill national political news site reported frustration by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, regarding trying to work with the Senate.
Many Americans have grown tired of hearing that some conservative or pro-life measure has failed in the 100-member Senate because it couldn’t get 60 votes for a filibuster-proof margin, which is well in excess of the 51-vote majority that should be needed.
Noting that 60 votes has become the standard for approving legislation, McCarthy was quoted, “You know what? That’s not in the Constitution. That’s a rule.”
The rule could be changed by McConnell, for the good of the nation as well as the GOP, but McConnell doesn’t want to.
The Hill said: “Conservatives in the House have been pressing. . . . McConnell . . . to use the ‘nuclear option’ to change the Senate rules and end filibusters for legislation. McConnell, a staunch defender of Senate tradition, has rejected taking that step.”
Fifty-seven House Republicans recently sent McConnell a letter saying, “The super-majority now required to advance legislation is 60 votes, which is not serving our country well,” The Hill said.
This has led to the legislatively grotesque situation that, for instance, Planned Parenthood doesn’t receive money through the upper chamber because 51 senators have voted to appropriate it, but because 60 senators can’t be found to vote against it.
Now there’s a trick that manipulative Democrat political candidates might want to try, if they possibly could figure out a strategy to enact it. They wouldn’t have to win a majority of votes to be elected to office. They’d just waltz into office unless a super-majority of voters said no.
The September 20 Examiner story said Republican Rand Paul, Kentucky’s junior U.S. senator and presidential candidate, attacked GOP congressional leaders “for abdicating their role” and allowing Obama to grab more power.
“Republicans are ‘in charge in the House and the Senate, but the excuse you’re told every day is we don’t have enough votes, (because) we can’t get to 60 (votes) and so we can’t defund Planned Parenthood,’ Paul said at a Michigan GOP conference,” the Examiner reported.
The news site said that Michigan GOP Cong. Justin Amash recently wrote for The American Conservative: “As the elites see it, the American people are their subjects, and a benevolent privileged few — standing above the law — must watch over the rest of society. . . . Wherever government power has proliferated, societies have become poorer, crueler, and less productive.”
The Hill reported September 22 that the Senate was scheduled for a government-funding vote September 24, the day this issue of The Wanderer goes to press and Pope Francis speaks to a joint session of Congress.
The Senate GOP leadership attitude seemed to be that it expects failure because the minority Democrats will insist on funding PP, followed by a short-term continuing resolution that includes funding PP.
Rand Paul “argued that the federal budget should be broken up and voted on piecemeal, so that controversial items such as funding for Planned Parenthood would require 60 votes to pass,” The Hill reported, quoting Paul:
“I won’t vote for anything that’s got Planned Parenthood money in it, and I won’t for a (continuing resolution) because it’s a continuation of the problem. I’m not voting for any CR because it’s bad government.”
The Power Of The Purse
In a September 23 statement, the Senate Conservatives Action super PAC group said McConnell “will stage a ‘show vote’ on a bill that defunds Planned Parenthood, which the Democrats will block. But instead of standing his ground, Sen. McConnell will immediately abandon the effort and begin working with the Democrats to pass a short-term continuing resolution that funds Planned Parenthood. . . .
“The short-term CR will also fund executive amnesty, sanctuary cities, Obamacare, and the Iran nuclear deal because Sen. McConnell refuses to keep his promise to use the power of the purse to stop the president’s agenda,” the conservative group said.
Meanwhile, LifeSiteNews reported on September 22: “The Senate Appropriations Committee today approved a Continuing Resolution that would fund the government through December 11 — but which would deprive Planned Parenthood of government revenue for one year, unless its facilities met strict criteria.”
The resolution “states that no government funds will go to ‘Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc. and its affiliates’ unless their facilities ‘will not perform, and will not provide any funds to any other entity that performs, an abortion during such period’,” the news service said, adding that the measure includes exceptions for abortion for rape, incest, or saving the life of the mother.
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