I have some personal business I have to attend to this afternoon, so this will be somewhat brief. There have been several House Republicans who have complained that the Democrats are forcing them to vote on President Trump’s border emergency declaration without giving them time to read the resolution. On Monday, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who serves as the ranking member of the House Committee on Rules, went on National Public Radio and said he’s concerned about “the haste with which the majority is pushing this disapproval resolution through. We’ve had no time to review the bill and no committee has held a hearing or marked it up.”
Here’s the language of the resolution, as provided by Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii.
Resolved (Senate and House) in Congress assembled, That, pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622), the national emergency declared by the finding of the President on February 15, 2019, in Proclamation 9844 (84 Fed. Reg. 4949) is hereby terminated.
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) February 26, 2019
Yes, it fits in a tweet.
In truth, Sen. Schatz cheated a little with those parentheses. Here’s the full text:
JOINT RESOLUTION
Relating to a national emergency declared by the President on February 15, 2019.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, that, pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622), the national emergency declared by the finding of the President on February 15, 2019, in Proclamation 9844 (84 Fed. Reg. 4949) is hereby terminated.
So, how long did it take you to read that? Do you think they need to hold a hearing so a committee can mark it up?
The Republicans treat people like they are morons because they believe we are all morons. If you want more proof, look over at what happened Tuesday in the Senate:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested on the Senate floor Tuesday morning that Democrats were to blame for a recent case of substantial election fraud in North Carolina that benefited a GOP House candidate…
…“We were hit with left-wing talking points insisting that voter fraud wasn’t real. Never happens, they said. Well, that fraud just didn’t happen, that modest efforts to ensure that voters who are who they say they are and are voting in the proper place were really some sinister right-wing plot to prevent people from voting,” McConnell said. “So now, as you might expect, now that an incident of very real voter fraud has become national news and the Republican candidate seems ― seems ― to have benefited, these long-standing Democratic talking points have been really quiet.”
It doesn’t get any more disingenuous than that. The fraud in North Carolina was perpetrated on the voters, not by them. Republican operatives took Democrats’ absentee ballots and threw them in the trash. In other cases, they promised to fill them out for the voters and then checked the boxes for Republican candidates.
There is no depth the modern GOP won’t plumb in their pursuit of an advantage.
