{"id":802792,"date":"2020-01-06T12:31:18","date_gmt":"2020-01-06T19:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=376901"},"modified":"2020-01-06T12:31:18","modified_gmt":"2020-01-06T19:31:18","slug":"opinion-morgan-liddick-300-house-bills-arent-so-bipartisan-after-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/opinion-morgan-liddick-300-house-bills-arent-so-bipartisan-after-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Morgan Liddick: 300 House bills aren\u2019t so bipartisan after all"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Let\u2019s put a fib to bed for the new year. Maybe not an out-and-out lie but definitely what the late, great Samuel Clements would have called a \u201cstretcher.\u201d Said fib being the Democratic claim that overturning the result of the 2016 election is not their sole preoccupation, that they are not fixed on this sole objective to the exclusion of all else because \u2014 as Speaker Nancy Pelosi puts it, \u201cWe have 275 bills that are bipartisan on Mitch McConnell\u2019s desk<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Except there aren\u2019t. According to Factcheck.org, Nancy considers a bill bipartisan \u201c\u2026 if it received at least one Republican vote on the House floor or if it has at least one Republican co-sponsor and was passed by voice vote<\/a>.\u201d Which means that of the total, at least five were \u201cbipartisan\u201d in the same way and to the same degree as was the vote against impeaching President Donald Trump. Let\u2019s look at the language of some of these \u201cstuck\u201d bills, courtesy of Congress.gov<\/a> the source for the following textual references. Perhaps we can figure out the real reason they aren\u2019t moving forward.<\/p>\n

HR 1, the \u201cFor the People\u201d act, which spends about 100 pages telling states to loosen voter ID requirements, to stop trying to purge dead people from voter rolls, to follow federal guidelines on the certification, training and actions of election officials, and states the House\u2019s intent to fully restore federal control of state elections through reimplementation of the Voting Rights Act \u2014 among many other things \u2014 is one example of the bills now on McConnell\u2019s desk. And for those who might object that this bill proposes federal actions that intrude on areas specifically reserved to the states by tradition and the Constitution that Democrats claim to revere so, fear not: Democrat sponsor John Sarbanes tells us that the actions proposed are justified through the Constitution\u2019s \u201cGeneral Welfare\u201d clause. It received zero Republican votes.<\/p>\n

At least HR 2722, the \u201cSAFE\u201d act, which proposes to \u201csafeguard American elections\u201d by inserting the Department of Homeland Security deeply into the election process, essentially federalizing electronic voting systems, was more properly based on permissions in Article I, section 4. Perhaps that\u2019s why it received one Republican vote.<\/p>\n

HR 9, \u201cClimate Action Now,\u201d which demands that the president return us to the Paris Climate Accord and proposes crippling alterations to the national economy similar to those in the \u201cGreen New Deal\u201d is, according to the sponsor, predicated on Congressional powers in Article I, section 8, exactly which provision is unnoted. Perhaps Rep. Kathy Castor refers to the suppression of piracy or coining money. It received three Republican votes, as did HR 582, the \u201cRaise the Wage\u201d act, which will increase the cost of labor by raising the minimum wage to $15, add an annual cost-of-living escalator and eliminate exemptions for tipped employees and other categories. It is a windfall for unions, whose wage negotiations usually focus on some multiplier of the minimum wage. Those employees will flourish \u2014 until the automation-based layoffs begin.<\/p>\n

Of the \u201cwaiting\u201d bills, 169 were passed by voice vote, a procedure usually reserved for honorary naming of streets and post offices, commemorations and other such fluff. There were only 114 tabulated votes, and of those, 28 received no more than 17 Republican votes out of more than 190 members. Hardly bipartisan in the normal sense of the term.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s little wonder House Republicans have stayed away from this pile of compost, characterized by the \u201cAmerican Dream and Promise Act,\u201d the \u201cBipartisan Background Check Act\u201d and the \u201cEquality Act.\u201d Here\u2019s a tip, by the way: If one has to put \u201cbipartisan\u201d in the title of a bill, it probably isn\u2019t. In the case of that one, bipartisanship extended to eight Republican votes. Nor is it remarkable that Senate Republicans haven\u2019t bothered to clear this backup. In 2017-18, when Republicans controlled the House, 615 of the 997 bills sent to the Republican Senate died there.<\/p>\n

But prevarication is to be expected. From the \u201cPaycheck Fairness Act\u201d to the \u201cEquality Act\u201d and beyond, these are bills with pretty titles to hide their real intent. They are drawn and put forward for a single purpose: to replace our politically and socially diverse Republic with a centralized, bureaucratized authoritarian state in which our behavior will be regulated by those better suited than we ourselves to the task. In point, it will be led by \u201cThe Vanguard of the Revolution,\u201d or as they call themselves here, the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

Somewhere, Alexander Kerensky is screaming \u201cstop!\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan Liddick\u2019s column \u201cOn Your Right\u201d publishes Tuesdays in the Summit Daily News. Liddick spent 27 years working for the U.S. Foreign Service, primarily living abroad. He also spent 12 years teaching U.S. history and Western civilization at community colleges in Colorado and Texas. He lived in Summit County as recently as 2015. Contact him at <\/em>mcliddick@hotmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s put a fib to bed for the new year. Maybe not an out-and-out lie but definitely what the late, great Samuel Clements would have called a \u201cstretcher.\u201d Said fib being the Democratic claim that overturning the result of the 2016 election is not their sole preoccupation, that they are not fixed on this sole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-802792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-29 08:34:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802792\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}