Tag Archives: Paul Ryan

After Amnesty Defeat, Paul Ryan Prepares His Exit, by Joe Guzzardi

Paul Ryan is one of those “mainstream” Republicans who has done nothing to stop the expansion of the government at home and abroad. From Joe Guzzardi at theburningplatform.com:

In a fitting boot out the door, lame duck House Speaker Paul Ryan’s amnesty bill, the one he called a compromise, suffered a humiliating 121-to-301 defeat. To rub salt into Ryan’s wounds, the bill he sponsored with Jeff Denham and Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte received 72 fewer voters than the Secure America’s Future Act that included mandatory E-Verify, a program toxic to Ryan and the donor-dependent GOP contingent.

Ryan’s H.R. 6136 would have amnestied at least 1.8 million illegal immigrants, and rewarded them with lifetime work authorization permits and Social Security numbers, as well as other affirmative benefits. Moreover, no significant chain migration cuts would have been made. A $25 billion fig leaf offer to fund a border wall had no tangible guarantees, and future administrations could have scotched it. Amnesty came first, border security later, if ever. In short, Ryan’s bill would translate into more amnesty, more fraudulent asylum appeals and sharp population growth.

A review of the roll call vote shows the depth of the GOP leadership’s commitment to amnesty, open borders, more jobs for foreign nationals and, correspondingly, lower American employment.

Here’s the rogue’s gallery of Ryan-led “aye” voters: Kevin McCarthy, Majority Leader; Steve Scalise, Majority Whip; Mike McCaul, Homeland Security Committee Chair; Cathy McMorris Rodgers, House Republican Conference Chair; Ways and Means Chair, Kevin Brady; Appropriations Chair, Rodney Frelinghuysen; Financial Services Chair, Jeb Hensarling; House Foreign Affairs Chair, Ed Royce, and Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Chair, Tim Walberg. The list is longer, but the point is made.

These and others in the GOP establishment are in cahoots with the most extreme pro-amnesty, “aye” voting radicals that include California’s Judy Chu, Illinois’ Luis Gutiérrez, and Wisconsin’s Mark Pocan.

But good news: Congress is finding it harder and harder to defend immigration legislation that gives the spoils to the investor class and leaves wage-earning Americans with the bill.

To continue reading: After Amnesty Defeat, Paul Ryan Prepares His Exit

Paul Ryan Pushing Towards Amnesty? The Latest in the Immigration Fight, by Joe Guzzardi

Most people don’t, and haven’t, had time to follow all the ins and outs of immigration policy in Washington. It’s convoluted and complex, and its responsible for our current immigration mess. Joe Guzzardi does a good job of summarizing the current ins and outs. From Guzzardi at theburningplatform.com:

Amnesty spawns illegal immigration, a talking point enforcement advocates repeatedly make. Because the math conclusively proves that amnesty leads to more illegal immigration, the pro-amnesty contingent rarely counters. Here are the statistics: In 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, 2.7 million people were amnestied, including those covered as part of Special Agricultural Worker (SAW) provisions.

Today, the estimated illegal immigrant population is 11 to 12 million, curiously, the same popularly cited statistic for roughly the last 20 years. To be sure, not every illegal immigrant that resided in the U.S. in 1986 applied. Still, it’s safe to assume that the illegal immigrant population has increased by at least five million during the last three decades.

The major reason that illegal immigration grew is that Congress never delivered on its promise to implement interior enforcement and to crack down on employers who hired workers present illegally. And despite widespread congressional insistence back in 1986 that IRCA would be the last amnesty, six others have passed since then, including the 2000 Late Amnesty for 400,000 illegal immigrants who claimed that, for various reasons, they couldn’t participate in IRCA.

Having learned nothing from IRCA’s fallout – that amnesty encourages illegal immigration and that chain migration from previous amnesties continues today – the U.S. House of Representatives is poised to vote on two legalization bills this week, one dramatically better than the other, but neither perfect.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Robert Goodlatte introduced his bill which would codify deferred action for childhood arrivals, end the visa lottery, cancel some chain migration categories, and provide full funding for a border wall. Also, parents of U.S. citizens could only relocate on nonimmigrant visas that would not lead to citizenship, and with evidence of pre-paid health insurance. A downside to Goodlatte’s proposal is that it transfers the 55,000 lottery visas to employment-based categories, already bulging at the seams.

To continue reading: Paul Ryan Pushing Towards Amnesty? The Latest in the Immigration Fight

The Ryancare Route — Winning by Losing? by Patrick J. Buchanan

It’s easier to pull a ten-foot tall weed by hand than it is to get rid of a government program. Obamacare must be gotten rid of and replaced by (hint: it’s not another government program) the free market! Ryancare wasn’t even in field goal range and its defeat was well-deserved. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

Did the Freedom Caucus just pull the Republican Party back off the ledge, before it jumped to its death? A case can be made for that.

Before the American Health Care Act, aka “Ryancare,” was pulled off the House floor Friday, it enjoyed the support — of 17 percent of Americans. Had it passed, it faced an Antietam in the GOP Senate, and probable defeat.

Had it survived there, to be signed by President Trump, it would have meant 14 million Americans losing their health insurance in 2018.

First among the losers would have been white working-class folks who delivered the Rust Belt states to President Trump.

“Victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan,” said JFK.

So, who are the losers here?

First and foremost, Speaker Paul Ryan and House Republicans who, having voted 50 times over seven years to repeal Obamacare, we learned, had no consensus plan ready to replace it.

Moreover, they put a bill on the floor many had not read, and for which they did not have the votes.

More than a defeat, this was a humiliation. For the foreseeable future, a Republican Congress and president will coexist with a health care regime that both loathe but cannot together repeal and replace.

Moreover, this defeat suggests that, given the ideological divide in the GOP, and the unanimous opposition of congressional Democrats, the most impressive GOP majorities since the 1920s may be impotent to enact any major complicated or complex legislation.

Friday’s failure appears to be another milestone in the decline and fall of Congress, which the Constitution, in Article I, fairly anoints as our first branch of government.

To continue reading: The Ryancare Route — Winning by Losing?

 

Hi, GOP: You Are Terrible and Obamacare Jr. Stinks, by Kurt Schlichter

Ann Coulter still has the best Obamacare repeal and replace proposal: repeal Obamacare, let the free market provide medical care and medical insurance, and have the government provide a voucher to anyone who can’t afford the resulting market solution, which will be much cheaper than Obamacare. From Kurt Schlichter on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

When Paul Ryan and his congressional clown car of alleged conservatives surprised us by just sort of dropping Obamacare Jr. on us, I wasn’t surprised to see them trip all over their Guccis during the utterly inept roll out. These nimrods couldn’t effectively communicate to Elizabeth Warren with smoke signals. But even I was shocked at how transcendently crappy their proposed Obamacare replacement is. Let me put it this way: the only thing that steaming pile of failure would be good for is as the key prop in a very specialized, niche German porno film.

Seriously, how many times do we have to tell you? Obamacare must die. Kill it dead – with fire!

When are you going to get it through your wonk spheres that we don’t want a government-led health care system that leaves the people who infest D.C. in charge? We don’t need a “plan” because 85 percent of us already have a plan – it’s called “Taking responsibility for supporting ourselves and our families like damn adults.”

Yeah, we really mean it when we say we want Obamacare gone. DOA. Kaput. Call it over to the mob boss’s house under the pretense that it’s going to be made, then shoot it through the face so its mother can’t give it an open coffin at the funeral.

Are you feelin’ us now?

To continue reading: Hi, GOP: You Are Terrible and Obamacare Jr. Stinks

“It’s A Train Wreck”: Conservative Groups Revolt Against GOP Healthcare Plan, by Tyler Durden

Who knows what will come from the Washington sausage factory known as Obamacare Repeal and Replace? A lot of people don’t like Paul Ryan and company’s first try. They say it’s the wurst (pun intended). From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

As discussed earlier, the Obamacare repeal and replace effort, derisively called by some either “Obamacare Lite”, “RyanCare”, “ObamaCare 2.0″, and even Trumpcare”. is running into major hurdles as prominent consevative groups threaten to derail Trump’s broader economic agenda.

While The Trump administration on Tuesday formally backed the House GOP’s plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare, early hurdles emerged after tea partiers Rand Paul and Mike Lee both said that the proposed plan will not pass because it is too similar to the original healthcare law, while GOP senator Roy Blunt said that the plan as it stands may not be able to get the support needed to pass the Senate. “What I don’t like is, it may not be a plan that gets a majority votes and let’s us move on. Because, we can’t stay where we are with the plan we’ve got now,” Blunt said on KMBZ, as first reported by CNN.

The two are just the tip of the iceberg.

As The Hill writes, outside conservative groups on Tuesday blasted House Republicans’ newly unveiled healthcare proposal, saying it doesn’t live up to the GOP’s promise of fully repealing ObamaCare. Here are some of the more prominent objectors:

The Club for Growth dubbed the proposal “RyanCare” and threatened to record names of Republicans who vote for the bill unless it includes significant changes.

To continue reading: “It’s A Train Wreck”: Conservative Groups Revolt Against GOP Healthcare Plan

Who Promoted Private Ryan? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Today The Wall Street Journal printed a guest piece from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and a Fox News commentator, “Trump Needs Ryan More Than He Knows.” Patrick Buchanan blasts that one to smithereens. From Buchanan at buchanan.org:

Forty-eight hours after Donald Trump wrapped up the Republican nomination with a smashing victory in the Indiana primary, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced that he could not yet support Trump.

In millennial teen-talk, Ryan told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “I’m just not ready to do that at this point. I’m not there right now.”

“[T]he bulk of the burden of unifying the party” falls on Trump, added Ryan. Trump must unify “all wings of the Republican Party, and the conservative movement.” Trump must run a campaign that we can “be proud to support and proud to be a part of.”

Then, maybe, our Hamlet of the House can be persuaded to support the elected nominee of his own party.

Excuse me, but upon what meat has this our Caesar fed?

Ryan is a congressman from Wisconsin. He has never won a statewide election. As number two on Mitt Romney’s ticket, he got waxed by Joe Biden. He was compromise choice as speaker, only after John Boehner went into in his Brer Rabbit “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah” routine.

Who made Ryan the conscience of conservatism?

Who made Ryan keeper of the keys of true Republicanism?

Trump “inherits something … that’s very special to a lot of us,” said Ryan, “the party of Lincoln and Reagan and Jack Kemp.”

But Trump did not “inherit” anything. He won the nomination of the Republican Party in an epic battle in the most wide-open race ever, in which Trump generated the largest turnout and greatest vote totals in the history of Republican primaries.

What is Ryan up to?

He is pandering to the Trump-hating Beltway media and claiming the leadership of a Republican establishment routed and repudiated in the primaries, not only by that half of the party that voted for Trump, but also by that huge slice of the party that voted for Ted Cruz.

The hubris here astonishes. A Republican establishment that has been beaten as badly as Carthage in the Third Punic War is now making demands on Scipio Africanus and the victorious Romans.

This is difficult to absorb.

Someone should instruct Paul Ryan that losers do not make demands. They make requests. They make pleas.

What makes Ryan’s demands more astonishing is that he is the designated chairman of the Republican National Convention, a majority of whose delegates and whose nomination Trump is about to win.

Ryan is saying he is ambivalent over whether he will accept the verdict of the Cleveland convention — of which he is the chairman.

If Ryan holds to his refusal to accept the decision of the Republican majority in the primaries, he should be removed from that role. And if Ryan does not come out of Thursday’s meeting with the Donald, endorsing him, the presumptive nominee should turn to Paul Ryan, and, in two words, tell him, “You’re fired!”

Trump cannot allow the establishment to claw back in the cloakrooms of Capitol Hill what he won on a political battlefield. He cannot allow a discredited establishment to dictate the issues he may run on.

That would be a betrayal of the troops who brought Trump victory after victory in the primaries.

To continue reading: Who Promoted Private Ryan?

Concerns About Paul Ryan Emerging Out of Ted Cruz-Created Contested Convention as Nominee Dominate Wisconsin, by Julia Hahn

The Republicans powers that be are considering suicide. From Julia Hahn at breitbart.com:

In recent weeks, there has been increasing discussion about the possibility that House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) could emerge out of a brokered convention as the Republican nominee if the donor class is successful in denying Donald Trump the requisite 1,237 delegates.

Just as Paul Ryan’s ascension to House Speaker represented a total repudiation of the GOP electorate by GOP lawmakers, Ryan’s selection as the Party’s nominee would similarly represent the donor class’s silencing of voters and voters’ views on immigration, trade, and foreign policy that have transformed the country and its role in the world.

Regardless, many in the “#NeverTrump” movement have indicated that they would support Ryan against the wishes of the Republican electorate that has voted for Trump.

“If we don’t have a nominee who can win on the first ballot, I’m for none of the above,” said former House Speaker John Boehner, who exited the House shortly after teaming up with Ryan to give President Obama expanded trade powers. “I’m for Paul Ryan to be our nominee,” Boehner said.

“If it’s an open convention, it’s very likely [the nominee] would be someone who’s not currently running,” Ryan’s fellow Wisconsinite Governor Scott Walker said last week. Walker’s declaration follows an earlier pronouncement that he would be “just fine” with leaving his state’s Sanctuary Cities in place.

As conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, who has endorsed Donald Trump, warned in January, “After months of waiting for Trump to self-destruct, the Washington-based Republican Establishment has finally found a way to take back control of the party from the outsiders and grassroots. The plan revolves around the newly empowered House Speaker, Paul Ryan.” Schlafly writes that through a brokered convention, “‘dark horse’ Paul Ryan could become our nominee. Such an outcome could destroy the Republican Party and guarantee a Democratic victory by causing disheartened grassroots voters to stay home.”

Currently speaking, it’s mathematically impossible for Ohio Gov. John Kasich to win the majority of delegates walking into the Republican National Convention in July. Similarly, while not mathematically impossible for Cruz to get there, it’s close— he’d need close to 90 percent of the remaining delegates to win a majority walking into the convention. As such, the strategy both are employing is force a contested convention—and wrest the nomination from Trump there. The risk, however, is that at a contested convention—as the now Cruz-backing Walker acknowledged—there’s no guarantee at all on who may emerge as the GOP nominee at that point. It could even be, as Walker said, someone who isn’t currently running: i.e., Paul Ryan.

As Capitol Hill aides have explained, amongst Washington’s GOP political class Ryan is regarded as the “Republican Jesus.”

Indeed, National Review, which helped put the third world migration enthusiast Paul Ryan into the Speaker’s office, seemed to embrace the idea of nudging him into the Oval Office. National Review’s deputy managing editor penned a piece entitled, “Paul Ryan for President!” writing: “One can imagine a case where Trump and Cruz control 60 to 70 percent of the vote between them, and neither one will budge, and no other candidate or boss will consider helping either one. Then it will be time for a respected and inoffensive candidate to offer a contrast to all the strong personalities in the Republican race, and Ryan is nothing if not Mr. Acceptable.”

Following their endorsement of Speaker Ryan, National Review became the heart and soul of the “#NeverTrump” movement, meaning that the organization has effectively abandoned even the pretense of being concerned about migration. As Breitbart has previously reported, not only will Paul Ryan continue to push for massive increases to the already record-breaking pace of migration, but his commitment to large-scale migration means it’s unlikely legislation will pass the House that would reduce immigration growth by curbing visas, which more than 9 in 10 GOP voters want.

To continue reading: Concerns About Paul Ryan Emerging Out of Ted Cruz-Created Contested Convention as Nominee Dominate Wisconsin

 

Meet John Boehner Ryan——The GOP’s Favorite Fiscal Fake Folds Fast, by David Stockman

Remember last year after the Republicans big victory in the congressional races? Remember those poor deluded fools who thought that victory might actually change something in Washington? David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com dispels all illusions:

That didn’t take long. Recall that just two months ago Speaker John Boehner announced he would abruptly resign right in the middle of his term. He said he was tired of taking gaff from conservative backbenchers on account of his serial sell-outs of even tepid House GOP efforts at fiscal discipline.

We greeted Boehner’s announcement with a Bronx cheer: Good riddance to Johnny Lawnchair, the fastest fold on the Potomac!

Supposedly a new era was dawning under his successor Paul Ryan, but not so. The lawnchair is back—-its just got a new occupant.

Now after just 51 days in office Ryan has forced the GOP to walk the plank on what under any honest form of fiscal accounting is a $2.5 trillion addition to the national debt.

Well, make that any form of accounting at all. This whole stinking pile of backroom deals was pushed through so fast that even CBO has not had a chance to fully analyze and score the bill.

In that regard, for the first time in his life, Harry Reid told the truth after this Ryan-Obama midnight special was whisked through the House and Senate. Said the man of legendary forked tongue,

“Sometime in the darkness, the bill was finalized……..no legislation is perfect, but this is good legislation.”

I have said all along the Paul Ryan is a complete fiscal fake. After all, he has spent years braying about the national debt, but never saw a defense program he didn’t want to fund or a bailout that would help his Wisconsin district that he failed to rationalize.

Fiscal conservative? The man voted for the TARP bailout of Wall Street and the bailout of the GM/UAW thieves, too.

To continue reading: The GOP’s Favorite Fiscal Fake Folds Fast 

Paul Ryan Sneaks Massive Surveillance Bill Into $1.1 Trillion Must Pass Spending Legislation, by Michael Krieger

This stinks. From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

On Friday, Congress will vote on a mutated version of security threat sharing legislation that had previously passed through the House and Senate. These earlier versions would have permitted private companies to share with the federal government categories of data related to computer security threat signatures. Companies that did so would also receive legal immunity from liability under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and other privacy laws. Today’s language, renamed the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 (Division N of the omnibus budget bill) mostly assembles the worst parts of the earlier bills to threaten privacy even further.

We have about two days to figure out what this so-called Cybersecurity Act (OmniCISA) means for consumer privacy in the US. That unfortunate timing is thanks to Speaker Paul Ryan’s decision to include language announced at 2am this morning as part of a must-pass spending bill scheduled for a vote Friday.

– From Jennifer Granick’s article: OmniCISA Pits DHS Against the FCC and FTC on User Privacy

I know it’s hard to believe, but yes, Paul Ryan is indeed far worse than John Boehner. The fact that Republican members of Congress chose to make him Speaker of the House tells you all you need to know about the true nature of the GOP and who they really work for (it’s not you). After all, Paul Ryan’s public record speaks for itself. He voted for the banker bailouts as well as the Iraq War. He’s a very well behaved little status quo puppet.

Moving along, what Mr. Ryan just did to intentionally target the 4th Amendment rights of American citizens could be described as treasonous. A move which exemplifies the complete and total disrespect he harbors toward the people he claims to represent. For a bit of context, let’s turn to a post published here last week which unfortunately failed to get much traction titled, Paul Ryan is Aggressively Lobbying to Pass “Frankenstein” CISA Spy Bill Through Congress. In it, we warned:

Republican House speaker Paul Ryan has been leading the charge to push through legislation and reconcile two bills, the Protecting Cyber Networks Act (PCNA) and the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement with the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (Cisa), a controversial bill that passed a Senate vote in October.

The speed with which Ryan is trying to push through a compromise has worried privacy activists. “We’ve just learned that the Intelligence Committees are trying to pull a fast one,” Nathan White, senior legislative manager at digital rights advocate Access, said in a recent email to supporters. “They’ve been negotiating in secret and came up with a Frankenstein bill – that has some of the worst parts from both the House and the Senate versions.”

Now we know why he was in such a rush. Rather than allow a bill with such tremendous implications for privacy and civil liberties to be debated on its own merits, Paul Ryan figured it would be a great idea to add it to a “must pass” 2,000 page, $1.1 trillion Omnibus spending bill, which is precisely what he did Wednesday morning at 2am.

To continue reading: Paul Ryan Sneaks Massive Surveillance Bill Into $1.1 Trillion Must Pass Spending Legislation