House votes for $1.1T Omnibus Bill – Virginia delegation divided

The House of Representatives passed a government funding bill last evening to continue funding the government with an additional $1.1 trillion AND, according to several notable conservatives, funds executive action on amnesty for illegal immigrants.

If you were to look at the bill itself, you’d have no idea that was the subject of debate:

To require the Secretary of the Interior to assemble a team of technical, policy, and financial experts to address the energy needs of the insular areas of the United States and the Freely Associated States through the development of energy action plans aimed at promoting access to affordable, reliable energy, including increasing use of indigenous clean-energy resources, and for other purposes.

Yeah…okay.

And, given that this 1600-page bill was purportedly plopped down in front of legislators a mere 48 hours before the vote, it’s highly unlikely most of it was read.

Such is the nature of politics in Washington.

And it’s exactly why you have some members of the delegation voting ‘no’ on this spending plan and some voting ‘yes’ – namely because there is a lack of transparency and simplicity to proposed legislation. Regardless of party.

The Virginia delegation is very much divided. You had Democrats Moran and Connolly favoring the bill, while Scott opposed it. You had Republicans Forbes, Goodlatte, Rigell and Wolf voting ‘yes’, while Brat, Griffith, Hurt, and Wittman voted against the bill.

And everyone had different reasons for their actions.

Here are a few:

While Scott realizes that the bill funds crucial defense spending for his district, he finds it doesn’t properly address banking and campaign finance concerns:

“I could not in good conscience vote for a bill that includes a provision that will allow banks to speculate with taxpayer insured funds – some of the very same activity that contributed to the 2008 Financial Crisis and that Congress voted in 2010 to limit when we passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act. At the same time it includes another provision that further erodes our nation’s campaign finance laws by increasing the maximum amount of money wealthy individuals can contribute to a political party. So in one hand these individuals can speculate with taxpayer insured funds and in the other donate any proceeds from such speculation to their political benefactors. That is just too much of an insult to the legislative process.”

Brat was dismayed over executive amnesty:

“Without the amendment that my House colleagues and I proposed yesterday, this omnibus bill allows funding for President Obama’s unconstitutional executive amnesty for approximately five million illegal immigrants….

“I cannot vote to allow an agency of this government to commit an act that the president and the House leadership on both sides have previously agreed is illegal. Allowing the funding of executive amnesty, even just until the end of February, allows the program to be implemented and amnesty to be enacted.”

Hurt was appalled at the lack of transparency:

At a time when so many of my constituents are gravely concerned about our staggering $18 trillion debt and about the President’s repeated unconstitutional use of executive authority to spend taxpayer dollars in a manner inconsistent with the law, it is more important than ever that we have a full and robust debate on these issues. Sadly, when Congress fails to live up to these constitutional obligations, many of our constituents conclude that Washington simply does not care about the legacy we leave for our children and grandchildren – indeed a country poorer in every way. For these reasons, I was unable to support the government spending omnibus today.”

On the positive side of things, Rigell views this as an opportunity to keep the government trucking along through September of next year – when the legislature is fully in Republican control and the GOP can then do something about it:

“The goals of defunding his immigration executive order and maintaining a strong national defense are best advanced by voting FOR full appropriations for the federal government with exception of the Department of Homeland Security. A short term funding bill for that agency places a Congress fully controlled by Republicans in the strongest position to properly address this executive order without a painful government shutdown that would jeopardize our troops’ salaries and veterans’ care, and harm our national economy.”

The bottom-line is that this latest funding measure shows everything that is wrong with Washington: the executive branch acts without authority, defense spending is tied to banking regulations, a 1600 page bill gets a 48 hour review and debate measured in minutes, the original bill is about energy and the Department of Interior – yet it becomes crucial for government funding and a debate on immigration, and our government needs more than a trillion dollars just to stay open nine months.

The other thing it shows is that whether a legislator voted ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – it didn’t really matter: There was certainly a way to justify the vote. And there is certainly ample ammunition for political operatives to raise bucket-loads of cash for their pet organizations.

Washington is broken. And, if this bill demonstrates anything, not even the partisans know how to fix it. Or, perhaps, this is just the way they want it?

The bill now goes to the Senate where we can expect a whole new level of grandstanding and theater.

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