Winning Republican strategies for 2015

Since the recent failure of the Republican attempt to defund President Obama’s executive immigration amnesty, much has been written, most of if it unflattering, about the future of the Republican Party. Many on the Tea Party right doubt the “backbone” of the Republican leadership and question their commitment to opposing President Obama’s policies.

What these critics do not provide is an answer to how the Republicans can overcome the Democratic filibuster that derailed the attempt to defund the amnesty. The problem was not “lack of backbone” on the part of the Republican leadership. The problem was mathematics. The Republicans lacked the 60 votes required by Senate procedural rules to end a filibuster.

The Republicans have a majority in both houses of Congress, but the majority is only meaningful if conservatives understand that it is a limited majority. Voters vested control of the Senate and House of Representatives with the Republicans, but they did not issue them a carte blanche to impose a conservative agenda.

The Republican majority is limited in two important ways. First, Senate rules require 60 votes for cloture to end debate on a bill. The Republicans have only 54 votes so it is axiomatic that a cloture vote will require at least six Democrats. Second, the Republicans are limited by President Obama’s veto. Even if a bill passes both houses of Congress, the president can veto it. Congress can override a presidential veto, but this requires 67 votes in the Senate and 288 in the House. Democratic votes (13 in the Senate and 41 in the House) would be required. To avoid wasting two years of a majority, Republicans need to take these limitations to heart and adapt a strategy to defeat them.

The first step is in casting aside unworkable strategies of the past. Defunding is a dead idea that should not be considered in the future. As with any other legislation, the idea is unworkable without a bipartisan majority. If Republicans have the votes to defund something, it would be better to simply repeal it outright.

Shutting the government down as a consequence of the House’s “power of the purse” has also proved unsuccessful in the past. A government shutdown is useful only as leverage if Democrats want to keep the government open. With a president who relishes the idea of using a shutdown to pummel Republicans, the strategy of a shutdown is pointless masochism. Republican leaders have quite sensibly rejected this course.

A successful Republican strategy will require one thing above all: a bipartisan majority. No conservative legislation can become law without Democratic votes. Republicans must peel off at least six Democratic senators for cloture and 13 to override Obama’s veto. This is a mathematical and constitutional fact. The question is how to do so.

The answer is to learn from the Democrats themselves. The Democrats in Congress have been successful because they stay united and split the Republicans over divisive issues like immigration. Republicans should ask themselves what issues can be used to divide the Democrats.

One such issue is the medical device tax imposed by Obamacare. This very unpopular tax is imposed on the manufacturers of such items as prosthetic limbs and pacemakers. It threatens thousands of American jobs as well as hurting the sick and disabled. There is bipartisan support for a repeal of the medical device tax, if not for Obamacare in its entirety.

If Republicans bring a repeal of the medical device tax to vote in Congress, Democrats would be forced to choose between voting to tax the sick or deserting to the Republican side. If the vote passes, Obama must allow it or publicly defend a veto. In either case, a vote to sustain the tax would be fodder for campaign ads by Republican challengers.

A second method for creating a bipartisan majority is to sweeten the pot with a compromise. Bill Clinton famously said that the Constitution could be subtitled “let’s make a deal.” If Republicans want to pass their agenda, they must induce the Democrats to vote with them, rather than simply expecting them to bow down before superior numbers.

One area where such a concession could be made is on the minimum wage. The minimum wage is an issue where the public supports the Democratic position. Recent polling has found strong support for raising the minimum wage, even in red states. In the 2014 elections, voters in four states that sent Republicans to the Senate enacted increases to their state minimum wages.

Trading a modest increase in the federal minimum wage for Democratic votes on Republican bills is a compromise that would defuse a popular Democratic issue while, at the same time, helping to advance conservative policies. The Republicans should not give in to a sharp increase in the minimum wage to $10 or $15 per hour, but a modest increase to the $8 to $9 range could be phased in over time.
Numerous studies, including one that looks at unemployment during the Great Recession, have shown that raising the minimum wage hurts low-skilled workers, but the economic effects of a modest increase to the minimum wage would be negligible. Thirty states already have minimum wages that are higher than the federal minimum wage according to the National Conference on State Legislatures. At least 14 states have already enacted or scheduled minimum wages that are $9.00 per hour or higher. Further, a 2013 study of minimum wage earners by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that only 4.3 percent of workers earn the minimum wage. An increase to the minimum wage would affect few workers in a small number of states.

Negative effects on the economy could be further minimized by incorporating a separate minimum wage for teenagers. The BLS study reports that only three percent of workers over age 25 earn the minimum wage, compared with 20 percent of teenagers. Instituting a lower minimum wage for teens would protect their ability to find entry-level, part-time jobs.

For Obama’s executive immigration amnesty, the contentious issue that led to the almost-shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, there is the low-yield nuclear option. In the Wall St. Journal, Curt Levey, a constitutional attorney with the Committee for Justice, called on Republicans to block Mr. Obama’s judicial nominees until he reneges on his executive action.

Blocking Obama’s appointees has many advantages that defunding lacked. First, it is possible. The Democrats cannot block the Republicans from blocking confirmations. There is no cloture or veto of a blocked confirmation. This strategy negates the two weapons that the Democrats hold.

Second, blocking confirmations is a win-win for Republicans. The optimal outcome would be that Obama reverses his executive action, which would be tantamount to surrender. If he stands firm, however, his nominees will never be seated as judges. This means that there will be more judicial openings for the next president, hopefully a Republican, to fill.

Finally, the potential for blowback is small. With a government shutdown, Republicans always take a hit in public opinion and lose support. That’s why Democrats try to goad them into that course of action. Blocking nominees is much lower profile and would not be noticed by most Americans. There would be no closed offices or parks and no furloughed workers to show on television. Lawyers who cannot get appointed to cushy jobs in federal courts are not sympathetic figures.

Many critics of the Republicans ask, “What was the point of winning the election?” if the Republicans can’t enact their agenda. The election gave the Republicans an advantage; it did not give them the ability to dictate terms to the Democrats.

The Republicans can use their majority over the next two years to further the conservative agenda and roll back pieces of Obama’s legacy, but to do so they must adopt realistic strategies that play to their strengths and work around those of the Democrats. Winning Republican strategies divide the Democrats, not themselves.

 

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Why the Republicans couldn’t defund DHS

It’s not lack of principles, stupid!

The failure of the Republican majority in Congress to defund President Obama’s executive amnesty this week has once again engendered bitterness among some conservatives toward the party’s leadership. Accusations that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell caved to Obama’s pressure are widespread, but the true cause of the failure to can be found within Senate traditions and the Constitution itself. The Constitution may also provide the ultimate solution to Obama’s executive overreach.

Because the authors of the Constitution distrusted a strong central government, they made it difficult to enact new laws. Because the framers worried that the majority might tyrannize a minority, they gave the president veto power over laws passed by Congress and the courts the right to strike down laws judged to be unconstitutional. Democratic filibusters must also be considered by Republican leaders, but it is the presidential veto that holds the greatest threat to the Republican agenda.

Cloture, filibusters, and vetoes! Oh, my!

Under the Constitution, the House and Senate pass bills with a simple majority vote, but the Senate has traditionally allowed unlimited debate before a vote. The strategy of a filibuster, a prolonged speech to prevent a vote, has long been used by minority senators to prevent those in the majority from passing legislation. Filibusters no longer require longwinded speechmaking. Under current Senate rules, to end debate on a bill, senators must first vote for cloture. According to the Senate website, the cloture rule was intended to give senators a means to overcome filibusters and dates back to the Woodrow Wilson Administration. Originally, the rule required a two-thirds vote to end debate on bill, but this was changed to three-fifths, 60 votes, in 1975. A filibuster is now merely the inability of the majority party to get enough votes for cloture.

What the cloture rule means to conservatives now is that, since Republicans hold 54 Senate seats, they will need at least six Democratic votes to invoke cloture and bring bills to a vote. If the Democrats remain united, they can deny the Republicans the ability to bring their agenda to a Senate vote, in which case it can never become law. This was the case with the attempt to defund DHS.

Bills that are passed by both the House and Senate face another constitutional hurdle before becoming law. According to the Constitution, bills passed by Congress then go to the president where they can become law in one of two ways. First, the president can sign the bill and it immediately becomes law. Second, the president can do nothing and the bill will become law in 10 days as long as Congress remains in session.

The president can also reject, or veto, the bill. For a regular veto, the president sends the bill back to Congress with a message describing why the bill was vetoed, as in President Obama’s veto of the Keystone pipeline. More rare is the pocket veto. If Congress adjourns before the 10 days is up and the president fails to sign the bill, the bill never becomes law.

The drive to override

Congress can override a presidential veto. When the president returns the bill to Congress, the bill can still be passed without the president’s approval. Overriding a veto requires a two-thirds vote of the members present. A bill that is subject to a pocket veto simply dies and cannot be overridden. It must be debated and passed again by the next Congress.

In the current Congress, overriding a veto would be difficult in spite of the historic Republican majority. Assuming all congressmen were present, a two-thirds majority would require 67 Senate votes and 288 House votes. This means that 13 Democratic senators and 41 Democratic representatives would have to vote against the president even if all Republicans were united. The Congressional Research Service reports that between 1789 and 2004 only 106 of 1,484 regular vetoes were successfully overridden, a seven percent success rate.

Most of President Obama’s signature pieces of legislation were passed in his first two years when the Democrats held control of both houses of Congress, but Democrats in 2009 through 2010 also had an important advantage that today’s Republicans lack: a president who would sign their legislation into law. As Republicans try to roll back Obamacare and other Obama-era legislation, they have the opposite situation, a president who will viciously wield the veto pen to preserve his legacy. Barring a major break between the Democrats in Congress and President Obama, it is unlikely that any presidential vetoes will be overridden.

Flank attacks

Two strategies have been floated by Republicans to outflank the Democratic obstruction. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) recently called on Republican leaders to invoke the “nuclear option” and totally eliminate the filibuster. In 2013, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) changed the rules to eliminate the filibuster for the confirmation of presidential appointments. According to the Washington Post, the filibuster still stands for bills, but not for votes on presidential nominees.

Eliminating the filibuster would allow Republicans to pass the bill in the Senate, but the plan has two major flaws. First, the larger hurdle, President Obama’s veto, would remain so any successes would be short-lived. Second, the Republicans will one day need the filibuster themselves since it is unlikely that any Senate majority will ever be permanent.

A second strategy would be to use a budget reconciliation, the tool used by Harry Reid to pass Obamacare, to pass conservative legislation. As former New Hampshire senator Judd Gregg explained in the Wall St. Journal, a budget reconciliation requires only 51 votes but the circumstances where it can be used are extremely limited. Additionally, the final budget bill would still be subject to a presidential veto.

The Keystone model for success

Sheer numbers and constitutional processes make it unlikely that a direct frontal assault against President Obama will work. A more likely strategy is for the Republicans in Congress to seek areas where they can find common ground with moderate Democrats as they did with the Keystone pipeline. Winning even a few Democratic votes would force Obama to either use his veto or allow the bill to become law, putting pressure squarely on the president.

While it is possible – or even likely – that President Obama will veto a bipartisan bill, doing so would change the dynamic in Washington. Since Republicans took control of the House in 2011, the Democrats have derided them as obstructionists who do nothing more than say “no.” When President Obama uses his veto power or Senate Democrats use the filibuster, it will be the president who is obstructing the will of the people.

The Republicans made a massive strategic blunder in the battle over DHS funding when House Republicans chose not to focus solely on President Obama’s illegal amnesty, a tactic that might have won some Democratic allies. Instead, the Wall St. Journal notes that the bill included several amendments to repeal Mr. Obama’s less controversial moves on immigration going all the way back to 2011. As a result, the Democrats were united and a few Republicans even voted against the bill.

The last line of defense

Further, as Karl Rove notes, the decision of a Texas federal court judge blocking Obama’s amnesty removed the need to defund the DHS in the first place. The courts have at least temporarily stopped Obama’s executive action where Congress could not. The possibility remains that the injunction will be made permanent and the president will suffer an embarrassing legal defeat.

Although the courts have been weakened by the appointment of judicial activists to the bench, including four to the Supreme Court, the judicial power to declare Obama’s actions unconstitutional is the best hope. The potential threat to Obama’s agenda may be why a Rasmussen poll recently found that 43 percent of Democrats feel that Obama should be able to ignore the courts.

While the election has not given Republicans a carte blanche to impose their policies and reverse Obama’s, it has given them a far stronger hand than they previously held. Republicans must decide whether to squander this advantage on a pointless and unwinnable fight or whether to build a bipartisan majority that can actually accomplish the work of the people.

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America’s most underrated politician

 

John Boehner “don’t get no respect” from conservatives

John Boehner is not going to win any popularity contests among conservatives. The Republican speaker of the House is much maligned among his own party and has even been the target of several unsuccessful coup attempts by Tea Party factions, including the one last week. In spite of his unpopularity on the right, Boehner has done much to stymie President Obama’s agenda and to make the 2014 Republican sweep possible. In spite of his accomplishments, most members of his own party would not vote for Boehner as speaker according to an EMC Research poll released on January 2. Boehner is truly the most underrated man in American politics today.

The road to speaker

John Boehner has served Ohio in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1991. In February 2006, he replaced Tom DeLay (R-TX) as majority leader. After the Democrats won control of the House in the 2006 elections, Boehner served as minority leader, a position he held until 2010 when victorious Republicans unanimously elected him speaker.

Even though Republicans gave Obama and the Democrats “a shellacking” in 2010, the party was still at a terrible disadvantage. The GOP controlled only half of one of the three branches of government. Democrats still held the presidency and a majority in the U.S. Senate. The Republican majority in the House gave conservatives just enough power to block the liberal agenda, but not enough to enact their own policies.

Boehner’s war on spending

Republican control of the House came too late to stop landmark Democratic bills such as the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial reform, but the GOP did score important victories under Boehner. The website of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) includes a list of bills that were blocked by Republicans. These include the DREAM Act, the DISCLOSE Act , the Paycheck Fairness Act, a millionaire tax, federal firearms background checks, increased taxes for companies relocating outside the U.S. and subsidies to keep federal student loans below market rates. Additionally, Republicans also blocked an internet sales tax and a bill that would have gutted the First Amendment by allowing Congress to regulate spending on federal elections.

Boehner and the House Republicans began to fight Obama’s out-of-control spending as soon as they reached Washington. In 2011, Democratic spending had almost reached the debt ceiling specified by law. The battle that raged over raising the debt ceiling culminated in the Budget Control Act of 2011, a compromise bill that raised the debt limit in exchange for spending cuts and the creation of a “super committee” on deficit reduction. While Republicans did raise the debt limit, that outcome was never in doubt because it was necessary to preserve the “full faith and credit” of the United States. It was a victory for Republicans in the sense that they exacted meaningful cuts without corresponding tax increases from the Democrats.

The spending victory was also due to another Boehner victory, that of the fiscal cliff and the sequester. For those who don’t recall, the fiscal cliff was the large number of tax increases scheduled to automatically go into effect at the end of 2012 as the low Bush-era tax rates expired. The tax increases coincided with automatic spending cuts that hearkened back to the Budget Control Act of 2011. When President Obama ignored the recommendations of the super committee in favor of pursuing tax increases, automatic spending cuts were scheduled to go into effect across the board.

In spite of having lost the presidential election, Republicans in Congress stood firm under Boehner. In a last minute deal, the GOP was able to prevent income tax rates from increasing for the majority of Americans, a compromise endorsed by Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform. The deal also postponed the sequester and permanently fixed the Alternative Minimum Tax, a previously ever present threat to middle class taxpayers, but resulted in a number of other tax increases. Elections have consequences and the Republicans simply did not have the numbers to force a better deal.

Two months later, everyone once again expected Boehner to cave in on the sequester negotiations. Republicans hoped to avoid defense cuts, while Democrats opposed entitlement cuts and pushed for tax increases. In the end, there was no agreement and the budget cuts went into effect across-the-board. Much to everyone’s surprise, the sequester was scarcely noticed by most Americans. What they did notice was the government shutdown a few months later.

The defund disaster

As the implementation of ObamaCare approached in October 2013, a faction of the Republican Party proposed an attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act. As opponents of the plan noted at the time, the defund attempt was unlikely to succeed because ObamaCare was already funded and the Republicans did not have the votes to overcome the Democratic majority in the Senate. Nevertheless, with a large number of Republicans in favor of trying to defund the ACA, Boehner and the rest of the party went along as well.

The attempt was disastrous. The government was shut down at the same time that ObamaCare enrollments started and the exchange websites crashed. Because of the shutdown, the focus was on the Obama’s negotiations with Republicans rather than on the website catastrophe. For 16 days in October 2013, Republican poll ratings were in freefall. Boehner attempted to negotiate with Obama during the shutdown, but with Obama enjoying the Republican self-destruction, no agreement was reached. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Majority Leader Harry Reidn (D-NV) finally reached a deal to end the shutdown. This deal was passed with mostly Democratic support and has rightly been called a Republican surrender. The alternative to surrender, however, was the destruction of the Republican Party. For Republicans, the best thing that can be said about the deal that ended the shutdown is that it kept the sequester, the only real leverage against Obama that the Republicans had, in place.

The sequester also survived a late 2013 budget deal brokered by Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Patty Murray (D-WA). This deal kept the sequestration in place while Republicans held the line against Democratic calls for more taxes.

From hero to zero

Less than a year after the failed attempt to defund Obamacare, Boehner and other conservatives were campaigning hard for the midterm elections. Boehner campaigned hard for Republican candidates around the country and raised $100 million for the party according to USA Today. Boehner’s own PAC doled out $1.3 million to dozens of Republicans according to campaign finance data from Open Secrets. The 2014 Republican landslide was due many people, but John Boehner deserves much credit for his hard work in recruiting candidates and his tireless campaigning. The resulting Republican majority, the largest since 1928, would not have been possible with an ineffective Republican leader in the House.

As 2014 drew to a close, Boehner was again criticized for the passage of the so-called “cromnibus,” a compromise bill to fund the government through the remainder of the fiscal year. While many conservatives were angry about the bill, few proposed viable alternatives. Also, as U.S. News pointed out, the bill was hardly a sellout to the Democrats. Republicans gained many concessions, including cuts to the budgets of the EPA and IRS, no new funding for Obamacare, and a prohibition on the transfer to Guantanamo Bay detainees to U.S. courts. Nevertheless, for many conservatives, any credit that Boehner had earned with the election victory was lost in the cromnibus deal. This led to the recent coup attempt by a small number of Republicans.

The next two years

In the end, cuts to federal spending may be Boehner’s biggest triumph. According to Congressional Budget Office figures, federal spending has fallen each year since 2011 when Republicans assumed control of the House. The budget deficit has fallen by nearly 70 percent in that time. As Michael Medved recently pointed out on his radio show, the last time that federal spending declined in three consecutive years was under President Calvin Coolidge.

In the new session, the House has already approved construction of the Keystone pipeline and passed a bill restoring the 40-hour work week. These bills will now go to the Senate where, with Mitch McConnell in charge, they will probably pass and go to the president’s desk.

As Boehner shifts from defense to offense, it is likely that many of his critics will be surprised. With a record of strong accomplishments from a weak position, the man that Ralph Benko of Forbes called “the worst thing to happen to progressives since” the fall of the Soviet Union, will be a much more capable foe of Obama and the Democrats when allied with Mitch McConnell’s Senate. The alliance is likely to produce results that cannot be ignored.

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Cromnibus compromise shows GOP is ready for primetime

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cromnibus

While some conservatives have denounced the passage of the “cromnibus,” a combination of the abbreviation for “continuing resolution” and omnibus, the passage of the annual appropriations bill is a good thing for the Republican Party and the country. It shows that most Republicans are serious about governing, and that they can work with Democrats to find common ground for the good of the country. Since the new Republican congressional class has not yet taken office, the cromnibus compromise should be viewed as the last hurrah of Harry Reid’s (D-NV) Democratic Senate rather than a bill that sets the tone on policy for the incoming Republican majority.

Déjà vu all over again

Many conservatives opposed the cromnibus because they saw it as an opportunity to defund President Obama’s executive amnesty. Others wanted to begin the process of cutting government spending after the huge success in this year’s elections. The problem with these strategies is the same problem that led to the defeat of the Obamacare defunding attempt; Harry Reid’s Senate will not pass such a bill.

A showdown over the cromnibus would have had the same result as the disastrous attempt to defund Obamacare last year. The government shutdown that resulted from the defunding attempt was overwhelmingly blamed on Republicans and it cost the party dearly in terms of approval ratings. The Republican success in November was not due to their role in the shutdown; it was in spite of it. The Democratic collapse on issues ranging from Obamacare to the economy to foreign policy was the driver for the midterm elections.

The fact that another government shutdown would have been a bad idea for Republicans is underscored by two facts. First, the combative Republican candidates who challenged GOP incumbents in primaries lost. In several cases, they lost by slim margins, but Republican voters clearly rejected the shut-it-down, take-no-prisoners mentality of the Senate Conservatives Fund. Second, a Gallup poll from just before the election confirms that American voters want their congressional representatives to get things done, not stand in the way. A McClatchy-Marist poll released December 16 found that 70 percent of voters want the parties to compromise. Only 26 percent favor a stand that might lead to a government shutdown.

Bitter pills for Democrats

The cromnibus may not have been popular with conservatives, but that doesn’t mean that the Republicans didn’t gain from it. The American Spectator noted that “Republicans came out on top” in the negotiations. Provisions in the bill that conservatives should applaud include:

· Higher limits on political donations, a roll back of campaign finance reform laws

· Repeal of some Dodd-Frank restrictions on banks

· Exemption of farm ponds and irrigation ditches from EPA regulation under the Clean Water Act

· Repeal of EPA regulations that count cattle farts as greenhouse gases

· Extension of the federal moratorium on internet taxes

· Delay of enforcement of federal light bulb restrictions

· Ban on use of tax money to bail out insurance companies for Obamacare losses

· A $346 million dollar cut to the IRS budget

· Relaxation of the school lunch standards favored by Michelle Obama

Laying groundwork for the amnesty battle

Some conservatives have complained about the fact that the cromnibus extends most of the government funding through the end of the fiscal year in September, but this criticism is misplaced as well. Federal budgets, normally an annual matter, have rarely been passed in the Obama era. Funding the government through the end of the year will give lawmakers time to properly address and negotiate the 2016 budget, rather than spending their first few months dealing with matters that should have been handled last year.
The budget for the Department of Homeland Security is the exception. The budget for the DHS, the agency tasked with implementing President Obama’s executive amnesty, is only funded through February according to Forbes’ analysis of the bill. The DHS budget will be where the battle over Obama’s actions takes place early next year. Republicans will have the advantage of a majority in both houses of Congress at that point.

No Cruz control

The cromnibus vote gives an indication of the ability of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell to assemble a working bipartisan majority on at least some issues. This will allow some of the more independent Republicans to defect on certain issues - perhaps immigration, for instance – without killing the entire bill.

Cobbling together a majority will be even easier in the next term because the incoming GOP freshmen are unlikely to join the rogue faction led by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT). The Washington Examiner reported in November that the new senators had broad support from the various factions of the Republican Party and called them “political hybrids,” while Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the incoming majority leader, said, “The vast majority of them don’t feel they were sent to Washington to just fight all the time.” The Tea Party conservatives, most of who lost in the primaries, would have been much more likely to follow Cruz’s lead.

The cromnibus has also shown that when Cruz and company split from the rest of the Republicans, Democrats may be willing to cross the aisle. As Obama’s agenda becomes less popular, more and more Democrats may be willing to go their separate ways from the president. This was evident in the cromnibus votes as Elizabeth Warren, the progressive left’s new standard bearer, led a faction to oppose the compromise supported by President Obama.

Meeting in the middle

Even if Cruz and his allies stand with the rest of the GOP, it will be necessary to court disaffected and vulnerable Democrats. As the Republicans advance their agenda, it is likely that President Obama will veto much of their legislation. The new Republican caucus can pass bills, but falls short of the 67 votes needed to override a presidential veto. Compromise with Democrats will be necessary to enact many major reforms, including but not limited to repealing and replacing Obamacare.

The biggest boon to the Republican Party may be that the cromnibus shows that the party is mature enough to build a bipartisan majority that can get things done. In the House, a majority of Democrats opposed the bill although a many voted in favor. In the Senate, the bill passed with a majority of both parties. This was in spite of strong opposition from both the Cruz and Warren wings of their respective parties. In essence, the two parties met in the middle to form a workable consensus.

As long as the Republicans are able to work with moderate Democrats to find a consensus, they will be able to advance at least part of their agenda. While repealing Obamacare is probably not in the cards, repealing particularly odious part of it, such as the medical device tax and the individual mandate, might be. There are many examples of such low-hanging fruit where Republicans and Democrats can find common ground for the good of the country. Showing that Congress can function again will, in turn, help Republicans in 2016.

 

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Conservative immigration reform is best answer to Obama

When President Obama announced his unilateral version of immigration reform last week, he had several goals. The most obvious goal was to divide and demoralize the Republican Party in the wake of its overwhelming victory in the midterm elections. Just as important and ambitious, Obama hoped to strike a stake through the heart of a burgeoning movement among minorities to vote for Republicans.

The effect of Obama’s first goal is plain to see. Republicans are angry, but split over how to respond to Obama’s amnesty. Some conservatives are calling for a repeat of the disastrous government shutdowns of the past while others are once again calling for the president’s impeachment. The Republican leadership will have a difficult time reigning in the various factions of the party and presenting a coordinated and effective response.

President Obama’s second goal is an attempt to shore up minority voting blocs, in particular Hispanics, which have traditionally supported Democrats. More than a third of Hispanic voters cast their ballots for Republicans according to an Examiner analysis of exit polls from the 2014 midterms. In an era where the country is evenly divided, such a defection makes it almost impossible for Democrats to win. The president hopes that the Latinos will be sufficiently grateful for the amnesty to vote Democrat in the future. An over-the-top Republican reaction that could be portrayed as racist would also benefit future Democratic candidates as well as put Republicans on the defensive before the new Congress is even seated.

The Republican response to the president’s gambit should be in two phases. First, the Republicans should take a strong, principled stand against Obama’s executive action and explain to the country why his action is unconstitutional. Second, rather than just saying no, Republicans must present the country with a viable alternative.

The first phase, Republican resistance, should point out that the president does not have the authority to legislate his own immigration laws. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is already doing this by publicizing the 22 times that President Obama denied that he had the authority take unilateral action on immigration.

A Fact Check analysis of polls, points out that most Americans support immigration reform, but oppose the president’s unilateral version of it. Unfortunately, during the current lame duck session of Congress in which Democrats still hold a Senate majority, there is little that they can do to resist. With another funding crisis for the federal government looming in December, President Obama’s obvious and transparent plan is to goad Republicans into a repeat of last year’s disastrous government shutdown. Rather than walking into the president’s trap, the GOP should wait until January when they will have the upper hand.

When the Republicans take control of the Senate in January, there will be many more tools at their disposal to combat President Obama’s executive overreach. First and most obvious, Republicans will control the budgeting process. The Republican House can pass a budget that does not fund the president’s amnesty programs, but which keeps other parts of the federal government operating. This would put President Obama in the position of having to veto the budget and risk a government shutdown or accepting a defeat. While the 2013 shutdown was blamed on Republicans, the blame in this case would rest solely with the president, who would also be defending an unpopular position.

Second, the Republicans could refuse to confirm any of President Obama’s appointees until the president backs down. Unlike a government shutdown, few Americans would feel any effects of a halt to Senate confirmations. There would be no stories of closed parks, halts to government checks, or layoffs of federal employees. The Obama Administration itself would bear the brunt of the confirmation boycott.

Third, the GOP can file another lawsuit against President Obama. The Constitution gives Congress the power to make laws while the president is tasked with enforcing the laws Congress passes. While the president does have some limited discretion in enforcing laws, he does not have the authority to “adopt a general policy that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities” according to a Justice Department memo cited by The Volokh Conspiracy. Congress could sue to have the president enforce the laws as they are written. The downside to this strategy is that unless the Supreme Court agrees to expedited handling of the case, President Obama might be out of office before it is resolved.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Republicans have to come up with an alternative to the president’s action. There is an old saying that the best revenge is living well, but, in this case, the best revenge may be passing a conservative immigration reform bill. This is especially true if the bill can garner enough Democratic support to override an Obama veto.

A majority of Americans realize that the current immigration system is broken and in need of overhaul. In addition to unprotected borders, there is no system to track immigrants or visitors who enter the country but overstay visas. There is also no reliable way for employers to verify immigration status of their employees, even though Pew Research estimates that more than five percent of American workers are illegal immigrants. The legal process can take decades for immigrants who follow the law. Highly skilled workers who could benefit the U.S. economy are turned away to work for foreign competitors while unskilled laborers stream across the border.

It will not be enough to simply roll back President Obama’s executive action. The immigration problem and Democratic attempts to use it to divide the country will persist until there is meaningful reform. The Republicans must put forth a reform of their own to fill the vacuum. In addition to the border security measures favored by conservatives, reform must include a fair method of dealing with the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country. Most polls indicate that a majority of Americans favor a path to legality, although not necessarily a path to citizenship or amnesty.

A major problem for Republican leaders is convincing the anti-immigration members of their own party to support reform ideas that are popular with the rest of the country. The far-right members of the GOP scuttled immigration reform under President Bush and last year under President Obama. In so doing, they set the stage for the president’s unilateral amnesty. To these Republicans, any immigration reform is seen as amnesty and any Republican advocates for such reforms are denounced as RINOs. Republican leaders will have to work with leaders of the anti-reform caucus, notably Ted Cruz, in order to pass such a bill. President Obama is undoubtedly counting on such opposition from the right to put the Republicans between a rock and a hard place.

To pacify the right, immigration reform should definitely include strong border security provisions, but it must address the other problems with the current system as well. The carrot for illegals should be a tough but fair way of handling those already in the country if they come out of the shadows. The stick would be strong workplace enforcement and stiffer penalties for future illegal aliens. The legal immigration system should be streamlined to encourage prospective Americans to follow the law.

President Obama’s executive strategy is a desperate attempt to divide Republicans while raising the morale of the Democratic base after a humiliating defeat. If Republicans can wait until January and rein in their anti-immigration reform faction, they have a good chance of beating the president at his own game. The stakes are high. President Obama’s actions are an unprecedented attempt to circumvent Congress and the democratic progress that do not bode well for the future of the United States if left unchecked.

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