House Votes to Restore Constitution

Following up on promises made during last year’s lame duck session, the House voted today to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and to prohibit spending to further President Obama’s illegal orders on immigration. The final vote was 236-191. The original DHS appropriations bill is here; the amendments that prohibit unconstitutional spending are here. The two principal amendments would bar DHS and other federal agencies from spending money to carry out a series of illegal orders by the Obama administration relating to immigration–a classic exercise of the power of the purse.

Predictably, Democrats howled...

The Democrats seem to think that Republicans have a duty to disaggregate spending bills to make it as painless as possible for the Democrats to carry out unpopular filibusters...

Today’s vote lays bare a scandal of the first order. Our Constitution does not give the president the power to enact legislation by decree, or to alter legislation previously passed by Congress. Yet that is precisely what Obama has done, by purporting to change the nation’s immigration laws by executive order...

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Conservative Leaders Draft Mandate For GOP: Stop Obama’s Fundamental Transformation Of America

Conservative movement leaders are unveiling the mandate they say Republicans have heading into this new Congress, after voters gave them a majority in both the House and Senate for the first time during President Obama’s tenure.

The document, obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, details how the conservative leaders expect Republicans in Congress to “stop” Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America,” something they say the American people made clear in the 2014 midterm elections with such resounding GOP victories...

Signers of the mandate document include columnist and former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, New York Times No. 1 bestselling author Brad Thor, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, ConservativeHQ’s Richard Viguerie, Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly, Family Research Council executive vice president and retired Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, Secure America Now president Allen Roth, nationally syndicated radio host of American Family Radio Sandy Rios, Election Law Center’s J. Christian Adams, Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney, Americans for Limited Government’s Rick Manning, author and speaker Tim Daughtry, American Family Association president Tim Wildmon, ForAmerica president David Bozell, and American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, along with scores of other signers.

The major bullet points that the conservative leaders say the citizenry expects of Republicans include: an end to Obama’s “promised ‘Fundamental Transformation’ of the country,” a stop to overreaches by the executive branch, a restoration of “Constitutional balance of power among the three branches of government,” for Republicans to “bring an end to the perennially unpopular Affordable Care Act,” to stop “the President’s Executive Amnesty initiatives,” while holding “the Executive branch accountable for its myriad abuses of power and its national security failures both foreign and domestic” and a new beginning that puts “the interests of the United States of America first among nations.”...