Boehner and Obama Join to Pass Bill Funding Obamacare and Amnesty

CNS News – by Terrence P. Jeffrey

House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama joined forces Thursday to push their respective party members to provide 219 votes–one more than was needed–to ensure passage of an omnibus government funding bill that permits the administration to spend money implementing Obamacare and Obama’s planned unilateral actions that will effectively amnesty as many as five million illegal aliens.

The bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will allow the administration to spend $1,188,927,000,000 on discretionary government programs. It provides funding for amost all of the government through the end of this fiscal year–which occurs on Sept. 30, 2015–and for the Department of Homeland Security through Feb. 27, 2015.  

Because it does not prohibit the president from using appropriated money to implement his plan to legalize illegal aliens, the president may move forward–drawing taxed and borrowed money from the Treasury–to carry out this plan.

The bill also allows the president to withdraw taxed and borrowed money from the Treasury to continue implementing Obamacare.

Additionally, the bill also does not prohibit the administration from continuing its annual federal grants to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.

Nor does it include language prohibiting the administration from continuing to enforce the regulations it issued under Obamacare requiring almost all health-care plans in the United States to provide co-pay free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

Many church groups, charities, schools, business owners and individuals have argued that these regulations force them to violate their consciences and religious beliefs. More than 100 lawsuits have been filed against them. House Speaker Boehner himself has described the regulations as attack on religious freedom, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had previously asked the Congress to attach language to “must-pass” legislation that would provide Americans with a conscience exception to mandates such as this that force them to act against their moral or religious beliefs.

However, the bill that Boehner pushed through the House tonight–with the help of President Obama–permits the administration to use money from the Treasury to enforce this regulation that forces Christians into complicity in the taking of innocent unborn human lives.

The vote on the bill took place at 9:37 p.m., less than two and a half hours before the continuing resolution that has been funding the government was set to expire. The vote had originally been scheduled for the afternoon but was delayed at the last minute when Boehner and the Republican leadership could not muster the 218 votes needed to carry a majority in the 435-seat House.

In the end 219 members voted for the omnibus spending bill, 206 voted against it, and 10 did not vote.

A total of 67 Republican members stood against their speaker and voted against the bill. Fifty-seven House Democrats voted for it. President Obama and Vice President Biden both reportedly called Democratic members urging them to vote for Boehner’s spending bill to ensure its passage. The full roll call vote is available here.

The text of the 1,603-page bill was first posted online by the House at 8:17 p.m. on Tuesday night. The final vote on its passage came only 49 hours and 20 minutes after that posting. During the 2010 election cycle, then-House Minority Leader John Boehner said on more than one occassion that if he became speaker he would ensure that the American people were given “at least 72 hours” to read all bills before Congress voted on them.

On Sept. 23, 2010, Boehner and other Republican House leaders published a campaign document–“A Pledge to America”–in which they promised Americans that they would post all bills online for “at least three days” before voting on them. In describing this promise at the press conference at which the “Pledge to America” was released, Rep. Jason Chaffetz said the Republicans were promising Americans to post all bills online “at least 72 hours” before taking a vote on them. Boehner was standing immediately behind Chaffetz when he explained that this is what the pledge meant.

Because the bill funds almost all of the government through the end of this fiscal year it effectively takes away from the incoming Republican majorities in the House and the Senate–which were elected in November–any say over federal spending policy until next  fiscal year.

It also removes from that Congress, which will have Republican majorities in both houses, the leverage it would have had over administration policies by wielding the power of the purse.

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