Since November’s election, which gave the Democrats the White House and the Senate and the Republicans the House of Representatives, there have been two major pieces of legislation on the floor of the House of Representatives; the first, a big spending and taxing bill, and the second, a big spending bailout bill.  Both times, the Republican-controlled House passed the bills with a very small number of Republicans voting for them. The Republican leaders could have, and should have, refused to bring these bills to the House floor for a vote. In the first of these two big spending bills, the Republican-controlled House also passed the biggest tax increase in some 20 years; Barack Obama’s whopping $620 BILLION tax increase legislation.

When the Tea Party and conservative movements gave control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans in 2010 with a huge pick-up of 63 new seats,   --  after the GOP had lost majority control in 2006 because of their prolific spending  --  and control of the House again with a large majority last November, there was no way conservatives believed that the Republican Party would repay them with two gargantuan back-to-back spending bills. 

After the Republicans and their congressional leaders lost the battle to stave off Barack Obama’s gigantic $620 billion tax increase bill  --  which actually also increased federal spending  --  and after John Boehner nearly lost his bid for reelection as Speaker of the House of Representatives on the first ballot last Thursday, the Republican leadership (most especially Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell,) should be walking on egg shells. 

The conservative base of the Republican Party is infuriated over the way Boehner and McConnell capitulated to Obama.  Other conservatives, at the very least, are disappointed in their leadership, such as it is, during the 112^th Congress. 

The Republican congressional leaders now have to win the three upcoming “fiscal cliff” battles during the next two months or Nancy Pelosi will resume her speakership of the House of Representatives on January 3, 2015:  the debt ceiling fight in late February or early March; the “sequestration” battle in March; and the “budget resolution” confrontation which must be settled by March 27^th.

Barack Obama reached the high point of his 2nd term just 19 days before he is sworn-in for his 2nd term.  The passage of Obama’s $620 billion tax increase bill will be the zenith of his remaining 4 years in office.

Obama will sign nothing of substance into law unless conservatives in the House of Representatives  --  who suffered a temporary setback on the first day of 2013  --  approve of that law. 

Indeed, Speaker John Boehner will not allow any major legislation that conservatives do not approve of to reach the House floor after the fiasco which occurred on the floor of the House of Representatives last night.  In violation of former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert’s rule of not bringing to the House floor any major legislation which does not have a majority of the Republican majority approving of the legislation, Boehner caused the Republicans in the House to suffer a major defeat. 

Boehner managed to get only 85 Republicans to vote for Obama’s $620 billion tax increase bill. An overwhelmingly majority of Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats (172 out of 188 voting Democrats) voted for Obama’s tax increase bill.  It was a stunning defeat for Boehner’s leadership style.   

This writer recently wrote a commentary entitled “Will GOP Leaders Become Bob Michelized?”  Unfortunately, during the past couple of weeks, the answer seems to be in the affirmative.  The headline referred to the former Republican House Minority Leader, Congressman Bob Michel, R-IL, who was perfectly content to position his party in the minority for his entire 14 years as GOP leader in the House of Representatives.  That is, until an upstart Republican Congressman from Georgia, Newt Gingrich, warned Michel that he would challenge him for Republican leader during the next congressional leader elections.  Michel promptly announced that he would not run for reelection in 1994.

Meanwhile, because House Minority Whip Gingrich organized a massive and historic issues-oriented campaign during the election of 1994, including a “Contract with America,” he not only became leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, but Gingrich became Speaker of the House.

The 1994 election provides a beacon of hope for Republicans in Congress.  Voters in the historical mid-term election gave control of the United States House of Representatives to the Republicans for the first time in 40 years.  The last time the Republicans gained control of the House was when Dwight David Eisenhower won his overwhelming victory over Adlai Stevenson in 1952.

Senate Republicans also regained control of the Senate from 1953 to 1955, just as the Republicans in the House did.  While House Republicans were in the political wilderness for the next 40 years, President Ronald Reagan’s two landslides in 1980 and 1984 gave Republicans control of the Senate for six years.

The reason the U.S. Congress was controlled by the Democrats for most of the 40 years prior to the 1994 election can best be personified by the long-time minority  --  emphasis on minority  --  leader, Congressman Bob Michel, a very kind and genial man, but a highly ineffective leader.  Congressman Michel was perfectly content to accept crumbs from the Democrat spending feast.  If the Democrats promised a cut of $1 dollar in federal spending for every $1 tax increase  --  a highly unlikely proposal since they normally wanted more tax increases --  you can bet the spending cuts would not materialize following the tax increases because of decades of weak Republican leadership.

Already! Cops Invading Homes to Seize Guns!

New Flag for U.S.S.A.

Conservatives were delighted with Governor Mitt Romney’s declaration to presidential debate moderator Jim Lehrer on Wednesday night that “I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. Actually, I like you too. But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for us.”  Mr. Lehrer stepped down as anchor of the PBS Newshour on June 6, 2011.

Romney went on to tell Lehrer and Barack Obama  --  who increased the national debt by $5 trillion in under 4 years to an eye-popping $16 trillion  --   and the vast audience watching on television and listening on the radio/Internet that he will cut all kinds of things that are wasteful and which cannot be justified with loans from the Chinese.  After all, subsidies to Big Bird  --  part of the billions of dollars in handouts given to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS)/Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) over the past decades  --  are just the tip of the iceberg of government waste.