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While debating an amendment offered by Senator Jim Inhofe that would declare english the official language and require new citizens to pass a proficiency test, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid speaking against the amendment said, "I don't suggest in any way that Jim Inhofe is a racist."

Uh huh...riiiiight...

Today, Congressman Scott Garrett is offering an amendment in the House of Representatives that would prohibit "funds from being used to send or otherwise pay for the attendance of more than 50 employees from a Federal department or agency at any single conference occurring outside the United States."

The need for this amendment was highlighted in February when Senator Tom Coburn held a hearing examining wasteful spending at the federal agency level. Coburn solicited records from all federal agencies documenting expenses for travel. The results were shocking.

From my Feb 8 column:

In his opening statement, Coburn revealed that since 2000, federal agencies have spent more than $1.4 billion underwriting and sending federal employees to conferences (many of which are located in lavish tropical destinations). Even more shocking, noted Coburn, was that “this increase occurred during a challenging time for our country.” It is also ironic that these costs are increasing at the same time that telecommunication technologies are getting more and more reliable reducing the need for travel.

Michelle Malkin in a February column listed some of the junkets that the taxpayers fund:

-- A Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) trip to the resort town of Los Cabos, Mexico, for a conference on American real estate and urban areas.

-- Another HUD outing to Honolulu

-- for the Sacramento, Calif., Home Ownership Fair. -- A Department of State expedition to Vienna, Austria, to partake in "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and "Train the Trainer" workshops.

-- A Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) jaunt by 236 employees to an AIDS conference in Barcelona, Spain. Price tag: $3.6 million.

-- A total of 59 HHS conferences around the world with delegations of more than 100 -- including over 1,000 attendees to sunny Orlando, Fla. Employed by HHS? You're going to Disney World!

Ahhh...the life of a federal bureaucrat...Let's hope the House votes to approve Garrett's amendment.

UPDATE: Garrett's amendment passed by voice vote. 

The Senate today defeated an amendment offered by Senator John Ensign that would have prohibited illegal aliens from using fraudulent work history to obtain Social Security benefits. I wrote about Ensign's amendment last week. Here is a refresher:

A compromise immigration bill pending right now in the U.S. Senate (sponsored by Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Mel Martinez (R-FL)) comes at a time when our nation is facing an enormous crisis on the entitlements front. A recent report moved the year in which Social Security will go broke from 2041 to 2040. Congress cannot afford to keep the promise of Social Security to its own citizens, let alone illegal workers.

To remedy the situation, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) has offered an amendment to the pending Senate immigration bill that would reverse this law to ensure that law-breakers are not rewarded for their past work at the expense of immigrants who have waited in line and American citizens. Ensign’s amendment may be considered when the Senate takes up the immigration issue yet again -- possibly as soon as next week.

The Senate failed to approve Ensign's amendment by one vote. Here is the voting breakdown.

UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is not happy about the vote. Read his blogged reaction here.

The House last night passed their budget, but not before moderates in the GOP weakened it. In congressional politics on the margins, a party is only as strong as its weakest links.

It long ago had been shorn of Bush initiatives such as curbs on Medicare spending or new incentives for health savings accounts. But conservative GOP House leaders had to make further concessions to mollify party moderates in order to win a 218-210 vote around 1 a.m. EDT.

Moderates won promises for modest increases in spending on education, health and other social programs, though it's not certain voters will see them before the November elections.

Nevertheless, passage of this budget is indeed a good thing. With the budget in effect, House leaders will have procedural tools needed to keep members in line as they continue working on appropriations bills. It is also important to note that GOP leadership did not budge on the overall discretionary spending cap as requested by the President. Granted, they did shift priorities under the cap around to assuage moderates - and that always means more spending and less saving.

But, as Congressional Quarterly notes, moderates in the view of some, gave away half the store by supporting the budget in return for a promise of $3.1 billion in funding for labor, health and education funding. 

Democrats blasted the deal Wednesday as a farce. David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations panel, called the moderates “the cowardly lion in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’”

“They are now selling out for a promise,” Obey said. “There’s about as much chance of that happening as the Chicago Cubs winning the pennant this year.”

When uber liberal David Obey is throwing a temper tantrum, something must have gone right. 

Senator Jeff Sessions has been racking up victories on the immigration bill. Here is his most recent:

Amid increasingly emotional debate over election-year immigration legislation, senators voted 83-16 to add fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers along the southern border. It marked the first significant victory in two days for conservatives seeking to place their stamp on the contentious measure.

UPDATE: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is excited:

By adopting Senator Sessions’ amendment requiring real fencing, we have taken a large step toward resolving the crisis at our borders. We have immeasurably improved the border security and immigration reform legislation on the Senate floor. And we have helped to reconcile the Senate proposal with the legislation already passed by the House of Representatives.

We will continue to strengthen and improve this legislation over the next several days by voting on and adopting a series of Republican amendments focused on border security and interior enforcement.

That is a question being debated by Mark Tapscott and Jim Geraghty. And lest you think this is an academic debate, think again -- there are indeed many conservatives who, like Tapscott, think that a minor drubbing at the polls this November is just what the Dr. ordered to remedy the GOP's current big spending ailment.

Tapscott argues that a GOP loss of the House would set conservatives up nicely to retake the House and keep (or some may say retake) the Presidency.

There would be lots of talk about insanities like impeachment, congressional investigations, repealing the Bush tax cuts and the like. But the lack of actual results would drive the Moonbats into venegeful desperation and a general revulsion among independent and conservative voters, with a bloody and perhaps permanently crippling splintering of the Democrats to follow.

It would in short be the perfect setup for a stengthened conservative majority to return in Congress in 2008, most likely with a White House occupant wise enough to recognize that the "emerging Republican(i.e conservative) majority" had become a reality.

Geraghty is not so sure:

We can strongly suspect that voters would be repulsed by Speaker Pelosi and a Kos-style legislative agenda. But we don’t know for certain. Remember that a Democrat-controlled Congress is also likely to be getting astonishingly glowing press coverage. You know that roaring economy? You’ll start hearing about it, and it will all be credited to the Pelosi-Reid Economic Stimulus Bill passed in January 2007. Congressional hearings accusing oil companies of “illegal profits” will be welcomed by consumers frustrated by high gas prices. Bush’s approval rating will take another hit after he vetoes the “Every Voter Gets Free Health Care And Free Prescription Drugs And Rent Or Mortgage Subsidies And A Pony Too Act of 2007.” Senator John Kerry’s summit meeting with French President Jacques Chirac will be credited with dramatically reducing anti-Americanism around the world. And so on.

Of late, I have been inclined to see things the same way Tapscott does. It would be disasterous for limited government conservatives if House and Senate leadership maintained the status quo into the election season and then lost no seats. It would be, in their eyes, an affirmation of business as usual.

But leadership on both sides of the Capitol have been slowly waking up to the fact that their conservative base is ticked. And to their credit, they are taking baby steps towards fixing the problem. House leaders Boehner and Hastert have drawn a line in the sand on the emergency supplemental spending bill. Boehner has been very outspoken against the pork contained therein. The duo also appear poised to hold the line against a wishy-washy immigration reform bill. Also, the earmark reform recently agreed to in the House should not be overlooked.

Now granted, these are baby steps and there is still more to be discouraged about than encouraged, but they are not nothing. However, if they build on these actions over the coming months then the case conservatives have for wanting to see some pain extracted in November diminishes. That's not to say conservatives can be bought -- because they can't be -- the actions must be real and not simple gestures to the conservative heart and soul of the GOP.

Additionally, Geraghty's points must be taken seriously. What happens if the Dems win the House and then use their newfound subpoena power smartly -- i.e. not overreaching. I know this is a stretch given their Feingold-esque track record, but the point is that with the majority they will have the power to score political points if they take a measured approach to their political theatre. They will have the power of subpoena and they can use it to highlight every single perceived (doesn't matter if it is real) corruption of the GOP Majority. They will have over a decade worth of history to parse through and manipulate. If they are smart -- again a big if -- they could make real political hay.

I know the chances are they can't hold back their crazies, but the more I think about it the more I am not sure I want to take that bet.

Yesterday, RSC Chairman Mike Pence speaking to a group of bloggers reinforced this point. Pence, no tool of leadership, told the group that the loss of the House would be "disastrous." Pence just returned from an overseas trip and he noted that a Democrat victory would "send a deafening message to the capitals of the world about our commitment in Iraq."

As conservatives on the outside looking in, we are going to have to figure out pretty quickly exactly what we are willing to wager. This is indeed high stakes.

UPDATE: An example of continued good rumblings from the House...this release from Speaker Hastert's office:

(Washington, D.C.) Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) today made the following statement regarding Senate attempts to use an across-the-board cut to make room for additional spending it included in its $109 billion emergency supplemental bill. The Senate passed its bill, which is more than $15 billion over the President’s $92 billion budget request, earlier this month.

Last night conservatives in PA organized to oust big spending GOP incumbents.

Captain's Quarters:

Solid. 

The Senate is currently voting on an amendment offered by Senators Jon Kyl and John Cornyn which would close a loophole in the Senate bill that allows criminal aliens to obtain legal status. According to Cornyn staff the "amendment clarifies that any illegal alien who is ineligible for a visa, or who has been convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors, is ineligible for a green card."

UPDATE: Dems smartly went along with this amendment in unison. It passed 99-0. 

In a week in which the Heritage Foundation and Jeff Sessions unveiled studies showing that as many as 193 million new immigrants may come to the country over the next 20 years under the Hagel-Martinez bill, the Senate voted last night to cut that number back.

The Washington Times:

The guest-worker program -- which had been estimated to bring in more than 130 million new workers and family members over the next 20 years -- was scaled back severely last night. The Senate approved an amendment, which Capitol Hill Republicans said the White House had lobbied against, to cap the guest-worker program at 200,000 new workers each year.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, who has led the effort to reveal the numerical consequences of the Senate bill, hailed last night's action and said it would reduce the final number of guest workers and family members to fewer than 9 million over the next two decades.

"This amendment represented a massive victory over the open-borders lobby," he said after the overwhelming vote to approve the amendment. "It fundamentally changed the low-skill foreign-worker caps under the Senate bill by doing two things -- reducing the annual low-skill foreign-worker cap from 325,000 to 200,000 per year and eliminating the automatic 20 percent increase to the cap that could have occurred annually."

Today, Republican Study Committee Chairman Mike Pence addressed a weekly meeting of bloggers on Capitol Hill. Pence covered many topics, but had a particularly interesting idea regarding the energy debate.

Heritage's Larry Scholer reports:

Pence drove home the need for "environmentally responsible oil exploration" and his idea is one worth considering. As gas prices continue to rise, those who oppose ANWR drilling will be forced to reconcile their cries for lower gas prices with their insistance that America not explore oil resources within our own borders.

Read about the rest of Pence's talk here.

House Majority Leader John Boehner continues saying all the right things in response to a ridiculous idea that has been floated to shave troop funding to pay for pork projects.

Porkbusters has an interview: 

N.Z.: One of the trial balloons that's been floated -- and I believe we heard you shoot down last week --- was doing an across-the-board cut to meet the dollar target that ---

Majority Leader Boehner: We're not doing that. That's just nonsense. Our job, as members of Congress, we were elected to come here and make decisions on behalf of the American people. And when it comes to deciding, what should be funded and what doesn't need to be funded are decisions we're charged with making. And so some across the board cut so we can do probably well-meaning, well-intentioned projects somewhere else: that's skirting our responsibility.

A discouraging report from the Wall Street Journal...sigh:

Most are relatively small: $1 million in the Environmental Protection Agency's budget to match $2.8 million from the egg industry to study emissions outside laying-hen houses. Others are bigger: $41 million for a new Homeland Security Department data center coveted by the Kentucky delegation.

House Appropriations Committee estimates show that at least $2.4 billion in such earmarks have been included in the first five bills for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. But as the House begins floor debate this week on 2007 appropriations, the committee says it won't reveal the sponsors until Congress enacts the new requirements.

More on that Hill presser yesterday in which the Heritage Foundation and Senator Jeff Sessions unveiled astonishing numbers resulting from the Hagel/Martinez immigration bill:

"The magnitude of changes that are entailed in this bill -- and are largely unknown -- rival the impact of the creation of Social Security or the creation of the Medicare program," said Robert Rector, senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation who conducted the study.

Although the legislation would permit 193 million new immigrants in the next two decades, Mr. Rector estimated that it is more likely that about 103 million new immigrants actually would arrive in the next 20 years.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican who conducted a separate analysis that reached similar results, said Congress is "blissfully ignorant of the scope and impact" of the bill, which has bipartisan support in the Senate and has been praised by President Bush.

"This Senate is not ready to pass legislation that so significantly changes our future immigration policy," he said yesterday. "The impact this bill will have over the next 20 years is monumental and has not been thought through."

Last week it was noted that negotiators on the Senate-passed emergency supplemental spending bill which now faces a conference with the House of Representatives may attempt to cut defense spending in the bill to salvage pork projects inserted by various Senators.

A reminder:

Need proof of how pork-addicted Congress has become? Consider this: Some in the Senate are looking for ways to shift funds from the troops in Iraq to some of their favorite pet projects.

At risk is the $94.4 supplemental spending bill President Bush requested from Congress to provide $92 billion for hurricane relief and the troops in Iraq and $2.4 billion for avian flu response. Despite his warning that anything above this amount would lead to a veto, several senators abused the must-pass status of the legislation to add $14 billion in wasteful pork-barrel goodies for influential constituents, labor unions and corporations.

Today, National Journal's Congress Daily AM provides an update: 

The Pentagon is urging lawmakers to act before the recess on at least the $67.6 billion troop-funding portion. But lawmakers are likely to shave that total as well to produce savings that might be used elsewhere in the bill. The Senate has already demonstrated it is willing to cut the defense request, which it did to offset a $1.9 billion border security package backed by Majority Leader Frist and Budget Chairman Gregg.

The White House should veto any bill that sacrifices troop funding for Railroads to Nowhere. It is not enough for Congress to simply comply with the President's number of 94.5 billion for the bill. Congress should comply with the spirit of the "emergency" supplemental bill which was intended to address emergencies -- namely, the war in Iraq and Katrina recovery -- not pork projects. 

Fortunately, it appears GOP leadership in the House of Representatives has heard this message loud and clear. 

It appears that Bush's immigration speech last night failed to inspire the conservative blogosphere. To quite the contrary in many quarters...here is a sampling:

Polipundit thinks Bush is lying. In fact, the issue has become so central at Polipundit that some bloggers on the group blog are quitting over a new editorial policy.

The Belmont Club:

What would really be interesting is some sense of what this translates to in actual numbers. How many illegal aliens can be expected to cross despite the proposed beefing up of the border? How many deportations can be expected per year? What industries will suffer from penalties on hiring illegals? How many will qualify for the "path to citizenship"? How many are going to be shipped out? The devil is in the details.

Captain Ed reacts:

My initial reaction? President Bush tried reaching for the center -- a position he has occupied on this issue all along. He tried a one-from-column-A, two-from-column-B approach that probably will leave all sides more or less dissatisfied. His declaration that catch-and-release would end was the most welcome news in the entire speech. He delivered that well and sounded forceful and presidential, but most people will wonder why this practice didn't end on September 12, 2001. His tone remained measured and firm and he insisted that Congress pass a comprehensive plan that includes both tight security and normalization.

Michelle Malkin watched the speech with Tom Tancredo and then went on the O'Reilly Factor to respond. She also blogs her reaction, "same old, same old."

Powerline's Hinderaker thinks Bush blew it:

Hugh Hewitt calls it a good start but notes that the conservative blogosphere is quickly turning against the speech. I think the blogosphere was predisposed to be against this speech, and absent the most hard line of speeches, Bush was not going to get a favorable reaction from conservatives who are already in a very distrusting mood.

Finally, Hotline on Call has a roundup of media reactions, Right Angle has the pols' reactions and Pajamas Media has an authoritative roundup from the blogs.

Karl Rove told a group of conservatives that the GOP would be fine in this year's midterm elections. "But I'm absolutely confident that -- I heard this same kind of language about the 2004 elections in roughly the March, April, May, June period of June 2004," said Rove. "We're going to be just fine in the fall elections."

On that point I disagree. From my vantage point, conservative angst, especially in regards to spending, has only grown since 2004. With the implementation of the Medicare Drug Benefit and the recent fights over pork barrel bridges and railroads to nowhere and an emormous transportation bill conservative rank and file supporters have more to be upset about now than they did 2 years ago.

Neverthless, Rove made an excellent point in his speech:

And we're going to be fine because we stand for things that are important. We stand for strong natural defense abroad and complete victory in the war on terrorism which involves victory in Iraq.

We stand for a strong national defense. We stand for economic policies that are pro-growth, involving tax cuts and free trade. We are strongly for fiscal restraint in the budget process.

And our opponents, at this point, stand for little or nothing, except mere obstructionism. Whether it is the nomination of superbly qualified men and women to the judiciary, or our policies to reauthorize the Patriot Act to keep America safe in a time of global terror, the other party seems to stand for little except obstructionism.

That is the truth. As the case has been so often in recent elections, the rudderless Democrats are their own worst enemy. Now, if we could just get Republicans to stop being THEIR OWN worst enemy by enacting conservative legislation and trimming the size and scope of the federal government, then Rove's predictions about GOP success in 2006 may prove true.