Obama and Jarrett Seizing Power of the Purse From Congress

Due to Obama’s hardline “no-negotiations” stance, Republicans have been forced to negotiate with themselves notes Seton Motley at PJ Media:

We are into Week Three of the 17% federal government slowdown.  (If 83% of the nearly $4-trillion-a-year Leviathan is still open, it isn’t a shutdown.)

There is so little (to no) damage done by this, President Barack Obama has been creating as much artificial pain as possible.  Often illegally – and routinely absurdly.  His ridiculous attempted closures of open-air monuments andopen oceans have cost the National Park Service $76 million a day – in addition to being capricious and obnoxious.

Before we even got to to the slowdown, House Republicans passed a bill funding every nook and cranny of the gi-normous government save for the incredibly effective and popular ObamaCare – the Democrats wouldn’t budge.

On both the slowdown and the debt ceiling, the President has throughout flatly stated “I will not negotiate.”

If the guys and gals on the other side of the aisle won’t sit down at the other side of the negotiating table – that’s their failing, not yours.  Negotiation isn’t a one-way street.  Republicans – having no one else with whom to negotiate – have for weeks been one-way-street negotiating with themselves.

According to author, Ed Klein, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett orchestrated Obama’s strategies in the government shutdown.

The New York Post reported that Ms. Jarrett held several late-night sessions with Mr. Obama at his residence and from there came the strategy of “no negotiation,” Mr. Klein believes.

The latest on the debt ceiling negotiations via The National Journal show outmaneuvered Republicans with no cards left to play. Beaten and humiliated they are.

Speaker John Boehner is considering letting the House take the initial vote Wednesday on a Senate-prepared bill to lift the debt ceiling and restart funding for the shuttered federal government–apparently even if House conservatives object.

If they do object, it would mean Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her House Democrats could become critical to its passage.

***

According to the aide, Boehner and the House would act first on Wednesday on a bill put together overnight in the Senate, will extend the debt limit until Feb. 7, and include a continuing resolution until Jan. 15, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

Needless to say, this is the unconditional surrender Chi(town)Coms Obama and Jarrett played hardball to achieve.   House Republicans are throwing in the towel.

Erick Erickson writes at Red State:

They’ll merge their ideas with Mitch McConnell’s ideas. The result will be a funded government, raised debt ceiling, and nothing done with Obamacare.

Throughout this fight, Harry Reid has outsmarted Mitch McConnell. Repeatedly, Reid used the Senate’s rules to toss aside numerous proposals from the House while McConnell looked on not knowing how to fight back.

Reid knows how to beat McConnell. If Reid fights hard, McConnell backs down and tries to blame others. McConnell’s lieutenants attack Ted Cruz so “the Leader” can deflect from his own legislative impotence. And he continually is one step behind Reid in his knowledge of how to use the Senate’s complicated rules to win a fight.

You will see no defunding of Obamacare because Republicans are giving up.

You will see no delaying of the individual mandate, even though the Obama Administration cannot fix the website. Republicans have given up this.

The deal would also include a Dec. 15 deadline for a budget conference report, as well as an anti-fraud provision designed to verify income for those who receive subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

Actually – you will see a delaying of the individual mandate. But it will come later – and it will be Obama’s idea. He is a Chicago thug who is hellbent on riding over his political enemies. He doesn’t just want to beat them – he wants to humiliate them – the country be damned. But yeah – it will have to be delayed. Their damn website doesn’t work and nobody knows when it will be fixed. So Obama will be a hero and delay the individual mandate on his own terms.

Mark Levin argues that what Obama is doing is seizing the power of the purse from Congress and taking away their ability to control funding in the government.

In essence, this has been a coup by the Executive to limit the power of all other branches so that there are no checks and balances. Obama will set spending levels and veto any bills that fall short of his demands as he threatens to single handedly push the nation into a default.

Big Government: CONGRESSMAN: ‘CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS’ IF GOP CAVES ON DEBT CEILING:

GOP lawmaker says that if his party’s leadership gives in to Obama, they will have forever altered the checks and balances of the U.S. federal government.

On the House floor on Monday, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) argued that President Barack Obama’s activities during the government shutdown over Obamacare are a sign to him that Obama would act nefariously to attack the full faith and credit of the United States of America by taking the country into a default in a debt ceiling crisis if the president does not get everything he wants in negotiations.

“Given the ruthless and vindictive way the shutdown has been handled, I now believe that this president would willfully act to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States unless the Congress acquiesces to all of his demands, at least as long as he sees political advantage in doing so,” McClintock said in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. “If the Republicans acquiesce, immediate crisis will quickly vanish, credit markets will calm and public life will return to other matters. But a fundamental element of our Constitution will have been destroyed. The power of the purse will have shifted from the representatives of the people to the executive. The executive bureaucracies will be freed to churn out ever more outlandish regulations with no effective congressional review or check through the purse. A perilous era will have begun in which the president sets spending levels and vetoes any bill falling short of his demands. Whenever a deadline approaches, one house can simply refuse to negotiate with the other until Congress is faced with the Hobson’s choice of a shutdown or a default. The nation’s spending will again dangerously accelerate. The deficit will rapidly widen. And the economic prosperity of the nation will continue to slowly bleed away.”

Here’s McClintock’s full speech on the House floor, yesterday.

Text of McClintock’s speech is here.

SEE ALSO: 

The Hayride: FANTASTIC: Rep. Tom McClintock On The Debt Limit And The Constitution :

This summarizes a good deal of what we’ve been saying here at the Hayride for a while now. Namely, that a sovereign default as a result of hitting the debt limit would not only be a choice by the Obama administration, but an unconstitutional choice and an impeachable offense. McClintock doesn’t use the word impeachment, but he sure does a good job of explaining what this country faces. Particularly his assessment of where the GOP went wrong in its assumptions by choosing to fight on Obamacare…