Sen. Jeff Sessions: Omnibus a ‘Betrayal’, Increases Foreign Workers, Fully Funds Obama Immigration Agenda

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by CAROLINE MAY16 Dec 201544

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

80%

slammed the immigration implications of the year-end spending bill Wednesday, saying the omnibus represents a “betrayal” of voters that fully funds President Obama’s immigration agenda while also increasing the number of low-skilled foreign guest workers allowed.

“The more than 2,000 page year-end funding bill contains a dramatic change to federal immigration law that would increase by as much as four-fold the number of low-wage foreign workers provided to employers under the controversial H-2B visa program, beyond what is currently allowed,” Sessions said in a statement.

The foreign nationals who enter the U.S. on H-2B visas come for low-skilled nonagricultural jobs and work in hotels, construction, landscaping and the like, jobs, Sessions argued, that millions of Americans would like to have.

“At a time of record immigration – with a full 83 percent of the electorate wanting immigration frozen or reduced – the GOP-led Congress is about to deliver Obama a four-fold increase to one of the most controversial foreign worker programs.  The result?  Higher unemployment and lower wages for Americans,” Sessions continued.

He further quoted the Economic Policy Institute’s conclusion that “wages were stagnant or declining for workers in all of the top 15 H-2B occupations between 2004 and 2014,” and that unemployment increased in all but 15 H-2B occupations between those same years. Further, he quoted EPI, “Flat and declining wages coupled with such high unemployment rates over such a long period of time suggest a loose labor market—an over-supply of workers rather than an under-supply.’”

The provision to vastly increase the number of H-2B visas was included in the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill released in the early morning hours of Wednesday. The House is slated to vote on he bill Friday.

According to Sessions, the American people elected Republicans to the majority in Congress in 2014 as a rejection of the Obama administration’s immigration policies.

“That loyalty has been repaid with betrayal,” he said.

In addition to the increase in H-2B visa allowances, Sessions pointed to the lack of conditions placed on the President’s request for increased refugee admissions, meaning Obama could bring in as many refugees — who are immediately eligible for welfare once admitted— as he desires.

”This will ensure that at least 170,000 green card, refugee and asylum approvals are issued to migrants from Muslim countries over just the next 12 months,” Sessions said.

The Alabama lawmaker continued, recalling that in his capacity as the chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, he send a list of proposals for the omnibus to appropriators intended to “improve immigration enforcement and block presidential lawlessness.” While those proposals were not included, funding for Obama’s refugee effort was.

“The bill also funds sanctuary cities, allows the President to continue issuing visas to countries that refuse to repatriate violent criminal aliens, and funds the President’s ongoing lawless immigration actions – including his unimpeded 2012 executive amnesty for alien youth,” Sessions argued.

Sessions added, “As feared, the effect is to fund the President’s entire immigration agenda.”

He concluded by highlighting the recent frustration Republican voters have voiced, saying that “GOP voters are in open rebellion” because of this bill.

”They have come to believe that their party’s elites are not only uninterested in defending their interests but – as with this legislation, and fast-tracking the President’s international trade pact – openly hostile to them,” he said. ”This legislation represents a further disenfranchisement of the American voter.”

AMERICA IN COMPLETE FREEFALL THXS PAUL RYAN

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

by STEPHEN K. BANNON & JULIA HAHN16 Dec 2015Washington D.C.3953

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) 58%

Paul Ryan’s first major legislative achievement is a total and complete sell-out of the American people masquerading as an appropriations bill.

Too harsh, you say? Let the programs, the spending, and the implications speak for themselves.

(1) Ryan’s Omnibus Fully Funds DACA

Though much of the public attention has surrounded the President’s 2014 executive amnesty, the President’s 2012 amnesty quietly continues to churn out work permits and federal benefits for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens. Paul Ryan’s bill funds entirely this 2012 executive amnesty for “DREAMers”—or illegal immigrants who came to the country as minors.

Specifically, Division F of Ryan’s omnibus bill contains no language that would prohibit the use of funds to continue the President’s unconstitutional program. Obama’s executive action, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), has granted around 700,000 illegal aliens with work permits, as well as the ability to receive tax credits and federal entitlement programs. A recent GAO report documented how this illegal amnesty program for alien youth is, in large part, responsible for the illegal alien minor surge on our southern border.

In 2013, Paul Ryan said that it is his job as a U.S. lawmaker to put himself in the shoes of “the DREAMer who is waiting” and work to find legislative solutions to his or her problems.

(2) Ryan’s Omnibus Funds Sanctuary Cities

Five months ago, 32-year-old Kate Steinle was bleeding to death in her father’s arms. She was gunned down in broad daylight by a five-time deported criminal alien whose presence in the country was the direct result of San Francisco’s refusal to comply with U.S. immigration law—yet Paul Ryan’s omnibus rewards these lawless Sanctuary Cities with federal grants. Division B Title II of Ryan’s omnibus funds various grant programs for the Department of Justice (pages 167, 168, and 169) and contains no language that would restrict the provision of such grants to sanctuary jurisdictions.

In a Congressional hearing, Steinle’s father demanded Congressional action and recalled his daughter’s dying words: “Help me, Dad.”

(3) Ryan’s Omnibus Funds All Refugee Programs

Despite broad support amongst Republican lawmakers for a proposal introduced by

Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX)

64%

 to halt all refugee resettlement, Ryan’s appropriations bill will fund President Obama’s refugee resettlement operation and will allow for the admission of tens of thousands of refugees with access to federal benefits. Division H Title II of Ryan’s bill contains appropriations of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and contains no language that would restrict the program. Nor are there any restrictions for the program in Division K of Ryan’s bill, which provides funding for the Department of State, which oversees refugee admissions.

Ryan is not one of the 84 cosponsors of Babin’s bill to halt the refugee operation, and he recently told Sean Hannity that he does not support halting resettlement because, “We’re a compassionate country. The refugees laws are important laws.” Similarly, this outcome represents a legislative win for 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)

79%

, who told Sean Hannity he’d “hate to use” Congress’s power of the purse to deny funding for Obama’s resettlement operation. 

(4) Ryan’s Omnibus Funds All of the Mideast Immigration Programs That Have Been Exploited by Terrorists in Recent Years 

Although multiple immigrant and visa programs in recent years have been exploited by terrorists (such as the F-1 “student” visa, the K-1 “fiancée” visa, and our green card and refugee programs), Ryan’s proposal does nothing to limit admissions from jihadist-prone regions. As Senators Shelby and Sessions of Alabama noted in a joint statement: “The omnibus would put the U.S. on a path to approve admission for hundreds of thousands of migrants from a broad range of countries with jihadists movements over the next 12 months, on top of all the other autopilot annual immigration.”

(5) Ryan’s Omnibus Funds Illegal Alien Resettlement

On page 917 of Ryan’s omnibus a section titled “Refugee and Entrant Assistance” funds the President’s resettlement of illegal immigrant border crossers.

(6) Ryan’s Omnibus Funds the Release of Criminal Aliens

Senior legislative aides tell Breitbart News that Ryan’s bill does not do anything to change the enforcement priorities that Jeh Johnson established a little over a year ago that would shield entire categories of criminal aliens from immigration law, nor does it include language recommended by Sessions and Shelby to “deny the expenditure of funds to issue visas to countries that refuse to repatriate criminal aliens.”

(7) Ryan’s Omnibus Quadruples H-2B Foreign Worker Visas 

Despite Ryan’s pledge not to move an immigration compromise with President Obama, tucked 700 pages into Ryan’s spending bill is language that would resuscitate and expand a controversial provision of the Schumer-Rubio Gang of Eight plan to increase the H-2B visa program.

The provision “would quadruple the number of H-2B visas for unskilled guest workers, for a total of more than 250,000,” writes immigration attorney Ian Smith. The Americans who fill these jobs are typically “society’s most vulnerable — including single women, the disabled, the elderly, minorities, teenagers, students, and first-generation immigrants,”  Smith explains.

A recent BuzzFeed exposé revealed how this program allows businesses to discriminate against American workers and “deliberately den[y] jobs to American workers so they can hire foreign workers on H-2 visas instead.” As one GOP aide told Breitbart News, “This provision is a knife in the heart of the working class, and African Americans.”

(8) Ryan’s Omnibus Funds Tax Credits for Illegal Aliens

Ryan’s bill preserves the expansion of the President’s expiring child tax credits without any accompanying language to prevent illegal aliens from receiving those tax credits. While Sen. Sessions attempted to include language in the bill that would prevent illegal immigrants from receiving tax credits, his recommendation was rejected.

(9) Ryan’s Omnibus Locks-In Huge Spending Increases

The bill funds the Obama-Boehner budget deal, which eliminated spending caps, and will increase both defense and non-defense spending next year by $25 billion more each.

(10) Ryan’s Omnibus Fails to Allocate Funds to Complete the 700-Mile Double-Layer Border Fence That Congress Promised the American People

Nearly a decade ago with the passage of the 2006 Secure Fence Act, the American people were promised a 700-mile double-layer border fence. However, funding for the fence was later gutted and, as a result, its construction was never completed. Despite heightened media focus over the past six months about Americans’ desire for this barrier to illegal entry, Ryan’s bill does not require that funds be allocated to finish the construction of the 700-mile double-layer fence.

A vote could occur as early as Thursday after midnight, giving lawmakers and the public only one full business day to review the 2,242 page package. The Ryan-Pelosi package represents nothing short of a complete and total betrayal of the American people.

Yet Ryan’s omnibus serves a second and equally chilling purpose. By locking in the President’s refugee, immigration, and spending priorities, Ryan’s bill is designed to keep these fights out of Congress by getting them off the table for good. Delivering Obama these wins–and pushing these issues beyond the purview of Congress–will suppress public attention to the issues and, in so doing, will boost the candidacy of the Republican establishment’s preferred presidential contenders, who favor President Obama’s immigration agenda.

What may prove most discouraging of all to Americans is that recent reports reveal that conservatives in the so-called House Freedom Caucus are praising Ryan even as he permanently locks in these irreversible and anti-American immigration policies.According to Politico, the House Freedom Caucus will “give Ryan a pass” even as he funds disastrous policies that prioritize the interests of foreign nationals and global corporatists above the needs of the American people whom lawmakers are supposed to represent.

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Big Government, Immigration, Obama, Paul Ryan

Obamacare, Horse Tracks, NASCAR, Loans, FUNDED

Tax deal doles out year-end goodies for NASCAR tracks, racehorses, college students

www.washingtontimes.com

Paul Ryan wrote the agreement with Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee.

"Millions of working families with children will not find themselves suddenly taxed into poverty. Millions of college students won't have the rug pulled out from under them when the tuition bill arrives. Charities can confidently plan and expand the good work they do. And small business and enterprises on the forefront of innovation now have the economic certainty they deserve," Mr. Wyden said.

Tax breaks on everything from racehorses and film productions to NASCAR racetracks to college tuitions and teachers' out-of-pocket classroom expenses are covered in the massive deal.

Also included is a permanent extension of the research and development tax credit, created by Congress in the early 1980s as a temporary boost to the slumping economy. It's been extended 16 different times, but the new bill writes it into the tax code for good.

And the agreement unravels one of the key tax increases in Obamacare, in a move budget watchdogs had long warned against, saying it would make the massive health overhaul a bad deal for taxpayers.

That provision is the so-called "Cadillac Tax," a 2.3 percent excise tax levied on high-value health plans. The tax was expected to particularly strike at the generous plans unions sometimes negotiated for their members in lieu of pay hikes.

Mr. Obama had fought for the tax, saying it was an important incentive to try to control exploding costs in the health care market, but Democrats in Congress, prodded by their union allies, linked arms with the GOP to impose a two-year delay on the Cadillac Tax, which was to go into effect in 2016.

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Here is the link.
PAUL RYAN TRILLION DOLLAR BABY http://www.sickbias.com/2015/12/paul-ryan-trillion-dollar-baby.html

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1730413297194596&id=1461608194075109

PAUL RYAN TRILLION DOLLAR BABY

If John Boehner Made the Spending Deal Paul Ryan Just Did, Conservatives Would’ve Called for His Head

www.slate.com

House Speaker Paul Ryan talks to reporters following the weekly House GOP Conference meeting at the Capitol on Dec. 16, 2015, in Washington.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When Paul Ryan was handed the speaker’s gavel in late October, he pledged to restore normal order to the People’s House and eliminate the sort of backroom deals that rank-and-file members complain are shoved down their throats at the 11th hour. So, late Tuesday night, Ryan unveiled a few thousand pages of consequential tax, spending, and regulatory legislation costing roughly $2 trillion and gave Congress and the public two whole days to review everything.

Jim Newell is a Slate staff writer.

To be fair to Ryan, the buzzer-beating legislating has more to do with the workload and deadlines John Boehner left him than anything he did wrong. The agreement Ryan reached with fellow congressional negotiators also looks much like one Boehner would have reached: Each side scores some points, but Republican congressional majorities again will fail to deliver a high-profile, base-pumping, ideological victory over some nefarious aspect of the “Obama agenda” on which conservatives had drawn a red line. Will this land Ryan in the same hot water that eventually cooked Boehner? He’ll get a pass, for now.

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The two towering paper stacks are the 2016 omnibus appropriations package, which funds the government through next September, and a “tax-extenders” bill that, well, extends (and in many cases makes permanent) a bunch of tax breaks that were set to expire. Though they will be voted on separately, they were negotiated together. The omnibus is more favorable to Democrats, and the tax extenders are more favorable to Republicans.

Considered as a whole, an overriding theme is that everyone gets a lot of money but neither side hammers home that big-ticket ideological victory. In other words, it’s a compromise, something Democrats usually accept as part of the process while Republicans scream bloody murder.

Republicans’ major “get” in the omnibus is a lift on the longtime ban of crude oil exports. That’s a big deal. But since it’s such a big deal, Democrats dangled it to win all sorts of other concessions of their own (even if these were mainly concessions to the status quo). In terms of energy and the environment, Democrats won multiyear extensions of critical tax credits for solar and wind energy production. They successfully nixed a rider that would have blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed “waters of the United States” rule that would expand its jurisdiction against polluters under the Clean Water Act. Riders blocking proposed regulations of power plants were cut out. The U.S. government’s contributions to the international Green Climate Fund will continue, a crucial component of the Paris climate agreement.

Somehow the financial services industry, which owns the United States Congress,came up on the losing end too. A provision that would designate fewer financial institutions as “systemically important” (and thus subject to greater oversight under Dodd-Frank) was dropped. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will maintain its independence from congressional appropriations—i.e., Republicans who want to defund it. Another rider that would have blocked a proposed Labor Department rule better aligning financial advisers with their clients’ interests was cut.

The Zadroga Act, a health care and compensation fund for 9/11 first responders and nearby workers, will be reauthorized until 2090, a hilarious year to settle on but one that effectively means permanent. Jon Stewart is an effective lobbyist.

Conservatives also lost on their most well-publicized demands that have dominated cable news.Language restricting Syrian and Iraqi refugee resettlement, defunding Planned Parenthood, or blocking President Obama’s executive actions on immigration will not be included. (The Senate will, however, take up the stand-alone Syrian and Iraqi refugee bill that passed the House with a veto-proof majority. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has said that it will not fare nearly as well there.) Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s annual chip-away at campaign finance regulations, which this year would have blown up the McCain-Feingold fundraising coordination caps between parties and campaigns, did not make it through. (This was an interesting fight, in which Democrats joined up with Tea Party conservatives who don’t want to enhance the power of party committees.)

Meanwhile, over in tax-extenders land, Republicans made all sorts of business tax breaks permanent without any new way to pay for them, so, hooray! This roughly $600 billion package of treats includes permanent extensions of the research-and-development tax credit and other depreciation credits. Democrats got extensions of certain tax credits from the 2009 stimulus. Both got to chip away at funding for the Affordable Care Act, by delaying implementation of the so-called Cadillac tax on high-cost health plans (this one was technically tacked onto the omnibus, not the tax package) and the medical device tax. This half of the deal will be a big, fat budget-buster, and it will pass with mostly Republican votes.

Both packages, and the way in which they were negotiated, look … an awful lot like the packages that Boehner would have negotiated and the way in which he would have negotiated them. Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus, who have said at various points that they would not vote for a spending bill that funded either Planned Parenthood or Syrian and Iraqi refugee resettlement, are sticking to their word. Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, does not expect his group to support to omnibus and doesn’t even expect that many rank-and-file Republicans to support it either. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, among the more vocal Freedom Caucus members, also predicted that a majority of Republicans would vote against the $1.1 trillion appropriations package that he’s calling the “Boehner legacy bill.”

In other words, Ryan will have to pass the omnibus with the same organic governing coalition of mostly Democrats and some Republicans that Boehner himself used to pass most necessary legislation. That’s a violation of the so-called Hastert rule in which a speaker has pledged to only call up legislation that has support of a majority of the majority party. Ryanassured conservatives that he would abide by this rule if they supported his bid. On his first big funding bill, Ryan will just … not follow the rule that he said he would follow.

That’s great news for America but might be awful news for Ryan in the long run. He’ll get a pass for a number of reasons this time: He’s finishing a process Boehner initiated; he’s offering Republicans a mammoth tax-break package in exchange; and most importantly, Freedom Caucus members would embarrass themselves if they started talking about how Paul Ryan is a failure and must be overthrown this early in his tenure. Perhaps his fetching newmanly man-beard also played some sort of hypnotic role on the House Republican Conference.

This appropriations package will expire near the end of the 2016 election, so Congress may pass a continuing resolution then to kick the major political fights past the campaign. Ryan’s next real tests on must-pass legislation should come when there’s a new president. Until then, he can enjoy the honeymoon.

A Philosophical Argument Against Global Warming

Global Warming has been thoroughly discredited over the years by rational thinking people, failed predictions by alarmists, and the obvious abuse of the findings of the government backed scientists to further attempt to empower the very politicians paying them.

But that doesn't stop Youtube celebrity, Derek of Vertasium from making a compelling argument:

Derek does a better job than most communists at spreading this propaganda, and for that, I commend him. The problem with global warming is that it is being used by politicians as a tool and/or weapon to expand the power of the ruling class, and further cripple individual freedom and free market capitalism. This causes a system of corruption where government grants are awarded to scientists that can produce statistics, graphs, and other propaganda, or be a spokesman for the advocacy of crippling regulations enforced by abusive bureaucrats to combat a problem that only exists at a future date based on the predictions of man-made computer models. I've been on Earth 40 years. Its not getting warmer. I remember very hot summer days in the 1980's. I also remember some of the coldest winters in the past 5 years. I know that is not a scientific analysis. It is merely anecdotal. But where is it getting hotter? How? Show me old pictures of beaches where the water level was lower 50, 75, or 100 years earlier. Surely something like that exists. Stop telling me the sea levels are rising with a graph. I don't believe you. You have serious credibility problems. I know the 20 and under crowd can easily fall for this, but I am not. Sorry.

The reaction of the global warming alarmists are always the same and I don't fault it:
"Our scientists outnumber yours."
"Our scientific evidence beats yours."

First of all, science is not democracy where the more popular opinions win. Anyone that ever tried to bully you into agreeing with their findings or results based on words like "consensus" and "6x more papers predicting warming than cooling" don't understand real science. I can argue the second statement, and have many times before along with many others. A simple Google search will give you lots of credible scientific refutations of the science the alarmists are peddling.

But that's not what I want to do anymore. Instead, I will give a PHILOSOPHICAL argument against global warming:

The thing I like about the philosophical argument against the global warming alarmists is that it can be used even if you concede that global warming could possibly be a reality, effectively eliminating the need to get into a back and forth exchange over science, data, computer models, etc.

The questionable evidence conjured up to show a tiny sliver of a possibility that global warming might be real, and even more precarious evidence that shows it might be man made, isn't compelling enough to overcome the fact that its credibility can be called into question due to the political ramifications which leave it wide open for corruption. And given the history of the devastating results of communism on humanity in world history, I think its wiser to err on the side of caution by allowing free market capitalism reign in the face of the tiny possibility that it may cause the temperature of the globe to rise a few degrees in the next 10,000 years, than to scourge humanity with communism. In other words, given the choice of subjecting my great-great-great grandchildren to a world half a degree hotter than mine, or communism, I'll choose freedom, liberty, and capitalism every time. At least in my world, they will be able to have the means and technology to live in such a world. In yours, it will look like transplanting 1989 Soviet Union on to the Saharan Desert.

 You can't forget that climate change scientists all say that government intervention is required. All the leftist politicians are seizing on this.

"Never let a good crisis go to waste" - Rham Emanuel

The only reason politicians keep screaming about global warming is to seize on the opportunity to implement socialist policies that give more power to those in charge. If you read Marxist papers and websites, they will tell you that "Socialism is the road necessary to gradually implement Communism." Therefore it is always a slippery slope, and a slope too many people want to jump on at the expense of liberty, rights, and the free market capitalism that has risen humanity out of thousands of years of destitution.

This is not a false dichotomy. You give politicians the power to do whatever they think is necessary to combat something we have yet to detect with our own senses (including our own eyes!), and you have sold your freedom to the Communists. The same ideology that has produced Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and others who have used communism to justify the mass murders of up to 100 million people.

To that I say HELL NO!

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