Archive for the ‘Nancy Pelosi’ Category

Did you know the president’s controversial health care law helps guarantee “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?” That’s what Nancy Pelosi said on the House floor on Wednesday.

“I appreciate [my colleague's] leadership on helping us honor what our founders put forth in our founding documents, which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Pelosi told her colleagues, citing the Declaration of Independence. “And that is exactly what the Affordable Care Act helps to guarantee.”

She wasn’t done.

“A healthier life, the liberty to pursue happiness, free of the constraints that lack of healthcare might provide to a family,” she said. “If you want to be photographer, a writer, an artist, a musician, you can do so. If you what to start a business, if you want to change jobs, under the Affordable Care Act, you have that liberty to pursue your happiness.”The fact that Pelosi would use the Declaration to defend Obamacare is likely to flummox many, especially considering the administration’s past move forcing Catholic employers to provide birth control to their employees.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says the Catholic Church wants the federal government to enforce contraception because the church, by default, has failed to do so.

“Ninety-eight percent of women in childbearing age that are Catholic use contraception,” Pelosi, a Catholic, said in a speech at Texas A&M University in College Station.

“So, in practice, the church has not enforced this, and now they want the federal government and private insurance to enforce it. It just isn’t consistent to me,” a CNSNews.com report quotes the California Democrat as saying.

Americans should pray for successful implementation of President Barack Obama’s mandate that insurance companies provide healthcare plans with contraception, including sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, Pelosi said.

“Abortion should be rare and safe,” she said, so contraception offers women a logical choice.

“The same kind of science that can help women with the size and timing of their families is the same type of science that can help with infertility and other health issues that women face. So let’s be prayerful of that and how we go forward on that,” Pelosi said in response to a question from the audience.

The Catholic Church opposes Obama’s mandate, scheduled to go into effect Aug. 1. All 181 Catholic bishops in the United States have denounced the regulation and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have called it “an unprecedented attack on religious freedom.”

Read more on Newsmax.com: Pelosi: Catholic Church Secretly Wants Govt Contraception
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Here is another Pelosi Gem. This is what she intends to do regardless of the voters and the will of the American People. It is the screw you communist approach. Don’t you love being talked down to by those who are suppose to work for you? Dam that must have been some acid she took back in the 60′s. She must still be stoned, oh wait, she is just an ass, stoned ass that is.

By Elizabeth Harrington

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Planned Parenthood’s relationship with the Girl Scouts of America is “very valuable,” Wednesday, at a congressional reception to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the organization for young girls.
Rep. Pelosi was featured at the reception with a group of female government leaders to promote the Girl Scout’s new initiative “To Get Her There,” which seeks to create “gender balanced leadership” in one generation.

After the event CNSNews.com asked Pelosi: “The Girl Scouts has had some ties to Planned Parenthood, do you think that’s a valuable relationship to have working together?”

“The Girl Scouts have relationships with many organizations,” Rep. Pelosi replied.

“And, yes, I think they are all very valuable.”

The Girl Scouts have been linked to the nation’s largest abortion provider in the past. In 2010, a panel sponsored by the Girl Scouts USA at the United Nations Commission featured a Planned Parenthood pamphlet called “Healthy, Happy and Hot,” according to published reports.

A portion of the pamphlet read: “Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse. But there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. Sex can include kissing, touching, licking, tickling, sucking and cuddling. Some people like to have aggressive sex, while others like to have soft sex and slow sex with their partners. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!”

A similar pamphlet was distributed at a Waco, Texas Girl Scouts organization in 2008 that included information on masturbation, diagrams of adults having sex and a boy putting on a condom.

That year then-CEO of the Girl Scouts Kathy Cloninger told NBC’s “Today” show, “We have relationships with our church communities, with YWCA’s, and with Planned Parenthood organizations across the country, to bring information-based sex education programs to girls.”

A Girl Scout conference was also co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood in 2004.

Today’s event also featured Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Sen. Barabara Mikulski (D-Md.), and other members of Congress who praised the organization’s advocacy to increase the number of females in leadership positions in the U.S.

I’m sure most of you recall when then-incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised that her Congress would be “the most ethical Congress evah!”. O.K., perhaps she actually said “ever” instead of “evah”, but you get the point. This was supposedly in response to all of the ethics issues occurring while Republicans were in control of the House, such as dealings with uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the Mark Foley scandal. But truly, how could any House of Representatives that still contained Barney Frank, William Jefferson and Alcee Hastings be considered anything remotely close to ethical.

Speaking of Alcee Hastings, do you know about him? This Florida Congressman was once a Federal Judge before being impeached for accepting bribes. Go back and read that last sentence. If you read “was once a Federal Judge before being impeached for accepting bribes” then you read it correctly. Alcee Hastings was impeached in 1988 by the Democrat-controlled House before being removed by the Senate the next year after he was charged (though acquitted after his co-defendant refused to testify) of accepting around $150,000 in bribes.

Fast-forward a few years and former Judge Hastings was elected to Congress to represent a heavily-gerrymandered minority district in South Florida which was newly created (some argue specifically for him, but we all know that such things never happen) in 1992. Since then he’s done very little, not offering much in the way of actual legislation and generally enjoying such perks as a taxpayer-funded Lexus.

Shockingly, Congressman Hastings has found himself caught up in yet another ethics scandal, this time involving claims of sexual harassment made by a former staffer who claims:

For over two years, from January 2008 through February 19, 2010, Ms. Packer was forced to endure unwelcome sexual advances, crude sexual comments, and unwelcome touching by Mr. Hastings while serving as the Representative of the Commission to the United States Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Although Ms. Packer repeatedly rejected Mr. Hastings’ sexual attention and repeatedly complained about the harassment to the Commission Staff Director, Fred Turner, Mr. Hastings refused to stop sexually harassing her. Rather, Mr. Hastings and Mr. Turner began to retaliate against Ms. Packer—including making threats of termination—because she continued to object to Mr. Hastings’ conduct.

If this is an example of “the most ethical Congress ever”, we are relieved that former Speaker Pelosi didn’t promise that it would be the most fiscally conservative Congress ever.
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Posted by Barry Secrist Published on January 18th, 2012 @ 10:59:07 pm ,

Pelosi proves the poignant point which states that “Ambition and cerebral Wit do not always bunk together”

Now many might state, to Pelosi’s vacuous ruminations, that she was baiting the Republicans to go with a worse choice, that choice not being Romney. But, trust me, if that were the case, she would have never called a man who has called himself a Progressive and held many identical positions to Obama in the past, as the far-Right choice.

Sorry, but Nancy is far more ideological than she is politically saavy, at least as it regards Conservative politics, otherwise, she would have found a way to hold her position in the House, and she would have never bought the Obama-Marxist agenda, lock, stock and barrel.Politico
By SEUNG MIN KIM
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday launched political grenades at Mitt Romney, arguing that Republicans haven’t coalesced behind the GOP frontrunner because they don’t believe he can beat President Barack Obama in November.

The House’s top Democrat repeatedly jabbed at the former Massachusetts governor during an hour-long interview hosted by POLITICO and taunted the GOP for a slate of presidential contenders that she said was “not exactly what you would call the first string of the Republican Party.”

“If the far right thought that Romney could win, they might be more enthusiastic about him,” Pelosi told POLITICO’s Mike Allen during Tuesday’s Playbook Breakfast. “But they question what he stands for and they don’t think he’s going to win. So what’s the sell? I’m not sure he knows what he stands for, and that makes it harder too.”

“I don’t know who knows him,” she added of Romney. “Does he know him?”

When asked about Romney’s vow to veto the DREAM Act if he were president, Pelosi said that showed he lacked an “understanding” of policies that would not only help young illegal immigrants but bolster the United States’s competitiveness in a global economy.

“He’s not going to be president,” Pelosi said. “But I think it’s indicative of a hard line that doesn’t seem consistent with who he was as governor.”

And though she remains one of the most prominent congressional figures, Pelosi said she has no problem with Obama running against a so-called “do-nothing” Congress as he campaigns to keep the White House in 2012.

“This is a Congress that has done such a disservice to our country,” Pelosi said. “Bless their hearts. They do what they believe, these Republicans. They do what they believe. And they do not believe in a government that has any role in clean air, clean water, food safety, public safety, public health, public education, Medicare, Medicaid.”

Pelosi, the first female House speaker in history, struck an optimistic tone as she outlined her strategy this year for Democrats to win in November and for her to take back the speaker’s gavel. She mapped out six states that she said would be critical to win the 25 districts needed for Democrats to regain control of the House – Illinois, New York, California, Texas, Florida and Arizona – and set an even higher bar of 35 seats.

She said Democrats have targeted about 75 districts so far and would have to play in at least 50 of them to have a shot at winning back 25 seats. Pelosi also touted female congressional candidates such as Tammy Duckworth, a former assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs who is running for Congress in Illinois, and former Orlando police chief Val Demings, who is trying to unseat Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.).

Ultimately, it didn’t matter which Republican was at the top of the ticket for House Democrats, according to Pelosi.

“For us, this cast of characters, it’s not about them,” Pelosi said “It’s about President Obama, how well he will do and our candidates — how they compare and contrast to the candidates that they’re running against.”

AND WHAT SHOULD “WE THE PEOPLE” DO ABOUT IT?

January 9, 2011

Sen. Warren G. Harding of Ohio originated the term “Founding Fathers” in his address to the 1916 Republican National Convention. Harding ran for and was elected to the office of President of the United States in 1920.

To the Editor:

Every concerned American should read carefully the following article posted at The Daily Pen in which the following statement is made:

The legal tactics employed by the Obama machine are specifically designed…to discourage challenges to Obama’s fraudulent occupation of the White House…

In my opinion, the most important statement in the whole article appears in fact number 13 in a list of twenty-eight indisputable facts associated with the 2008 Hawaii presidential election fraud:

the Democratic National Committee, headed by Nancy Pelosi, committed election fraud and violated the Constitutional right(s) of the people of the state of Hawaii (and all Americans).

There is no conceivable criminal act more serious than election fraud of this magnitude, such that the very essence of the protections from tyranny so carefully incorporated into the Constitution by its authors were intentionally, and in a conspiratorially subversive manner, bypassed and compromised.

At a minimum, this is an extremely serious violation of the oath of office sworn to by every government official, office-holder, and employee.

But in reality, this is an unconscionable act of disloyalty to the nation and to the Constitution to which the Founders pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,” and for which so many gave their lives over the last two centuries defending their country in faraway places.

This is nothing less than a high crime of treason which cries out for the justice meted out to traitors.

As far as I am concerned, the Democratic Party has disqualified itself from further participation in the democratic processes of the Republic.

We are now learning for ourselves that Liberalism, Progressivism, Socialism, and Communism are irretrievably incompatible with constitutional self-government, as we were warned so clearly over sixty years ago by Friederich A. Hayek in his little masterpiece “The Road to Serfdom.”

It is time for We the People to decide whether this nation will fulfill the destiny of freedom and liberty ordained for it by our Creator, acting through our divinely-inspired founders, or if We the People will allow the Communist revolution which is now under way in the United States of America to continue to its horrible and inevitable climax of poverty, enslavement, and death.

I too am a PO’d Vietnam vet. I swore an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”  That oath is still in effect for me, and for many others.

We now have a domestic enemy who is attacking the very Constitution that brought this nation into existence.

What are we going to do about it?

It is clear that the people with the primary responsibility for addressing this crisis, our elected representatives in the Congress, will do nothing.

And it is clear that the professional media, guaranteed the rights of a free press in the Constitution in order to provide a check on governmental misconduct, and to protect the people from governmental infringement on the rights of the people, has utterly failed in its duty expose the pervasive fraudulent activity which characterized the 2008 presidential election. In fact, the media itself was, and continues to be, an active participant in the cover-up of the massive election fraud which enabled an effective coup d’état to take place in the United States of America, resulting in the installation of a constitutionally ineligible person, and very possibly an illegal alien, in the White House. The mainstream media has demonstrated clearly by its own criminal behavior that it will do nothing to address the present constitutional crisis in America which was precipitated by the greatest hoax ever inflicted on the American people.

It is also clear that our courts, especially the Supreme Court, will go to any lengths to avoid resolving the issues raised by this crisis, as they are charged to do by the Constitution and by the very words of their most learned and articulate predecessors on that court.

Finally, it is clear that the United States Department of Justice, operating under the authority of a usurper-president who is the primary beneficiary of the alleged election fraud carried out by the Democratic National Committee, and an Attorney General whose devotion to justice is simply laughable, will not act.

I can see no other option now but to call on the most senior of our military veterans to organize themselves to find a way to resolve this crisis.

This nation needs a leader who is prepared to fulfill the duties and obligations which he accepted when he took his (or her) oath of office as an officer of the United States military services, and we need him now.

David F. LaRocque

CDR USNR (ret)

In 1920, Adolf Hitler formed the Youth League of the National Socialist Workers’ Party.  In 1922, a new youth organization emerged that eventually became known as Hitler Youth.  It targeted boys ages 14-18.  Eventually a second group was formed for boys ages 10-14 and a girls’ organization that covered ages 10-18.  The goal of the Youth organizations was to indoctrinate the next generation of leaders to help insure the success for the Nazi Party.

From 1922 to 1945, the Hitler Youth saw thousands of teenaged kids turning in their parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins and friends, the government for speaking out against Hitler and his Nazi rule.  Thousands of people were imprisoned, beaten and even executed.  They turned in their neighbors and school mates who were Jewish.

Hitler Youth was so effective that ever today some of them still carry the hatred and prejudices they were taught.  The father of a man I worked with was a member of the Hitler Youth.  Today’s he’s in his early 80’s and he still hates Jews, Christians and blacks and believes that Hitler should have won the war.

And now House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has announced that she intends to push for national childcare reform, supposedly modeled after Obamacare but is starting to sound more like it is being modeled after Hitler Youth.

Pelosi started by recounting her own experience saying,

“‘I could never get a babysitter — have five kids in six years and no one wants to come to your house. … And everywhere I go, women say the same thing’ about how hard it is to find the kind of reliable care that would make their family lives calmer and work lives more productive.”

Duh!  Who in their right mind would want to babysit for Pelosi?  I’ve read stories of witches who are more rational and realistic than what I have seen from Pelosi over the past few years.

One political pundit summarized her proposed ObamaChildcare as,

• “A childcare mandate requiring all parents to buy childcare for their children and enter the workplace
• “A national electronic database of all parents and their parenting habits, ostensibly to determine and enforce the use of “best practices” for raising children
• “Forcing all private-sector child care professionals out of business, creating a single-caregiver government monopoly subjecting impressionable young children to government indoctrination in everything from climate change to illegal immigration and abortion.”

The government and social do-gooders have already made it difficult for a parent to discipline their children according to biblical guidelines.  Parents have had their children taken from them for spanking and less.  Now Pelosi wants the government to dictate how you raise your children, what you teach them, and most importantly, who will teach them.

ObamaChildcare sounds eerily like Hitler Youth, with the only difference being the age.  Pelosi’s program will start soon after birth and continue to up school age.  Once reaching school age, most kids end up in the government brainwashing program known as the public school system.  From there, they move on to colleges and universities which are a haven for radical liberals and political Marxists.  By the time they leave college, we will have a whole generation of programmed Obama clones moving into the workplace and government.

If anyone out there values family and their children, they need to wake up and smell the manure that Pelosi and her coven are about to spread across the American people to grow a crop of mind-controlled robots.

The fact that many members of Congress appear to have traded on non-public information in their personal brokerage accounts during the financial crisis is outrageous.
But since this bombshell news broke on Sunday night, the excuse has been that, however ridiculous it may sound, insider trading is legal for Congress.
This same assertion has been repeated for years, every time someone observes that Congress members do much better in their personal stock trading than average investors do. Unlike average Joes, the pundits explain, Congress has exempted itself from insider-trading laws, so Congress-people are allowed to trade on private information that they gather in the course of their work while other Americans can’t.
But at least one law professor argues that this is just not true.
Insider trading is just as illegal for members of Congress as it is for the 300+ million Americans, Indiana Law Professor Donna Nagy argues.
Congress never “exempted” itself from insider trading laws, Nagy says–because Congress has never actually passed a law about insider trading.
By trading on information gathered in the course of their jobs, Nagy says, Congress-people are abusing the public trust and violating a legal duty, just the way any other insider-traders do.
So the Congress people who traded during the financial crisis (and since) should be investigated and, possibly, prosecuted for their behavior.
The definition of insider trading is trading while in possession of material non-public information.
On September 16th, 2008, a new book by Peter Schweizer alleges, Rep. Spencer Bachus and other members of Congress attended a private, off-the-record (read: non-public) briefing from Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke about the state of the economy.
The next day, some Congress-people who attended the briefing, including Rep. Bachus and Dick Durbin, sold stocks or bet against the market. A few days later, after the market had tanked, Rep. Bachus cashed out his bet for a tidy profit.
Now, hands up, who out there thinks that a private off-the-record briefing from the two most important financial executives in the country would be considered “material non-public information”?
I certainly do.
“Material non-public information” is any information that a reasonable person might want to consider when making an investment decision.
And this reasonable person, anyway, would definitely want to consider the latest thinking and information of Fed Chairman and the Treasury Secretary when placing a bet on the market.
If a Wall Street executive had been at that briefing and then immediately dumped his/her stocks or bet against the market, you can be confident that Congress and the public would be screaming about corruption and unfairness and the shafting of “the little guy” and calling for the executive’s head.
The personal trading of Congress-people after this briefing is no different.
Bachus and Durbin (and others) got the information they traded in possession of because they were doing a job on behalf of their constituents. The information was confidential, and, in in all likelihood, material. And they appear to have immediately used it for their own personal gain.
Even if this behavior is not judged to be illegal, it’s certainly unethical. At the very least, the SEC should launch a full investigation.
By Henry Blodget

Yesterday, I wondered how Nancy Pelosi and her husband were able to participate in Visa’s IPO in March 2008. It is very difficult for an individual investor to participate in IPOs, especially those which are heavily ‘oversubscribed’ as Visa’s was. It was the hottest IPO of the year, drawing what one analyst described as “extreme demand.” So, this tidbit from Newsweek’s story on Visa’s campaign to curry favor with Pelosi caught my attention:
Separately, Pelosi’s husband, Paul, a major investor in California, got a lucrative phone call from his personal broker—a pre-screen invite in March 2008 to take part in Visa’s $17.9 billion public stock offering, at the time one of the hottest stock offerings in an otherwise soft market. The initial-public-offering price was $44 per share and was limited to institutional investors and a group of specially selected individuals. Almost $18 billion was made available in public stock to preselected investors. Paul Pelosi made the cut.
Wait, what? He was called and ‘invited’ to purchase shares in the IPO? Seriously? Let’s isolate one particular sentence from this graph:
The initial-public-offering price was $44 per share and was limited to institutional investors and a group of specially selected individuals.
Specially selected individuals? Selected by whom? And, for what reasons, specifically?
If you are John Bresnahan at Politico, this will all seem like a fortuitous coincidence. The Pelosis obviously have lots of money to invest and their broker may have been one of the few people empowered to select who was lucky enough to buy into the hottest IPO of the year. Although, individual investors with access to IPOs tend to be far more active and wealthy investors than the Pelosis, a ‘reporter’ at Politico could view it all as perfectly normal. But, let’s look at the larger context here.
As Newsweek notes, Visa was very worried about Democrat proposals to regulate interchange, or “swipe” fees. Late in 2007, they organized a campaign to “court” then-Speaker Pelosi to plead their case and block new legislation regulating their business. One of their lobbying firms even hired a former top Pelosi staffer, Dean Aguillen, and the company, its executives and lobbyists began donating to her campaign.
Dean Aguillen was prohibited from lobbying his former boss for one year, but, according to Newsweek he provided key strategic advice to Visa:
By law he was unable to lobby his former boss for a year, but he immediately registered to lobby Congress on the credit-card issue, offering guidance to other lobbyists on Visa’s team during strategy sessions, according to a lobbyist present in strategy deliberations.
In other words, the former Pelosi staffer was helping Visa figure out a way to win her support on their top legislative priority.
In Spring 2008, Rep. John Conyers introduces the very legislation that Visa feared most and just a handful of days later, Paul Pelosi is invited to buy shares in Visa’s IPO. Again, really? Who made that decision? Was it Dean Aguillen, perhaps?
If that decision was in any way related to Nancy Pelosi’s position as Speaker, she may run afoul of House ethics rules. As even Politico notes:
Under House rules, lawmakers are prohibited from using their official position “for personal gain.” This ban includes instances when a lawmaker uses “his political influence, the influence of his position … to make pecuniary gains” or take any official action that affects their own personal finances, the House Ethics Manual states.
Being part of Visa’s IPO, where the stock price rose 50% in two days, would generate a heck of a lot of “personal gain.” Was the invitation in any way tied to her position as Speaker? As Politico noted this morning, Nancy Pelosi really does have a ‘golden touch.’
By Mike Flynn

iowntheworld.com

The Wall Street Journal

 JANUARY 21, 2011 By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

The White House co-opts GOP talking points—will House Republicans take advantage of their newly won recourse?

Come one, come all, to witness President Barack Obama’s Great Leap Rightward. Come, as well, to witness the GOP response.

Mr. Obama has a new mission this year—to make the country believe in political reincarnations. The man who presided over one of the most liberal, most expensive, most government-centric agendas in modern history? It would appear he was kidnapped over Christmas break and replaced by one who is fiscally responsible, a cheerleader for capitalism, and a skeptic of government. It can happen, you know.

As shape-shifting masters like Bill Clinton or Tony Blair might attest, the goal of any move to the center is always two-fold. The first is to lull the public into forgetting past transgressions, and to present them instead with a politician in tune with the pulse of the nation. The second goal—just as important—is to co-opt the other side’s message.

After its midterm victory, the new House leadership crafted a playbook that Majority Leader Eric Cantor unveiled in a briefing in the first days of January. Week one the Republicans would devote to repealing ObamaCare. Week two would focus on the party’s plans to roll back discretionary spending to 2008 levels. Week three would laser in on the president’s job-killing regulatory blowout.

The White House was listening and has been hustling to get ahead of the GOP message machine. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the president’s Tuesday op-ed on this editorial page announcing an executive order to restore “balance” to federal regulation and root out rules that hurt economic growth. It was a largely symbolic move, designed to counteract the public perception that Mr. Obama is antibusiness, and to bolster corporate America’s support.

That, and to beat the GOP to it. When Mr. Cantor or Speaker John Boehner (who are behind a week in their schedule because of the Tucson shootings) finally do focus on regulatory excess, Mr. Obama will respond: “I agree regulations can hurt the economy. So much so that I just signed an executive order . . .”

The exact strategy will be on display in the president’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. Next week is GOP Cut-Spending Week, though the Tucson delay means it will now be the president who commands the network cameras. And Mr. Obama will smartly use the hour to highlight his own supposed commitment to fiscal responsibility, to muddy the waters, and to again suggest that any differences between his team and Republicans are minor policy disputes, not a philosophical divide.

Count on Mr. Obama also to use his speech to address his health law. This is tougher for the White House. Republicans have a clear repeal message. The White House approach so far is to argue both sides should work together to find ways to “improve” the law, that repeal is a waste of time, and that the only thing standing in the way of finding common ground will be opportunistic GOP politicking.

Republicans figured that all this might be coming, and the serious ones are, if anything, hopeful about it. Far better, they note, to have a president who may be open to helping the economy than one who isn’t. The great unknown is whether Mr. Obama means any of this, or if it is entirely rhetorical. President Clinton’s own movement, after all, was only successful because he was serious enough about it to craft bipartisan victories like welfare reform.

The Republican opportunity now shifts to finding out. In two years in office, Mr. Obama has proven adept at saying one thing while doing another. The difference now is that control of the House allows the GOP to point out the distinctions. A broad complaint—say, that Mr. Obama is “pro-regulation”—may not work. But the GOP does have the ability to send, week after week, clear pieces of legislation to the Senate that will challenge Mr. Obama to back up his rhetoric with action.

A first example: Republicans are unveiling a bill to prohibit taxpayer-funded abortions. Mr. Obama claims to believe in this; last year he signed an executive order that in theory backs the ban. The GOP legislation would codify the prohibition. Will the president demand the Senate take a vote? The president may be hoping that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will shield him from some of these legislative challenges. But Republicans intend to make Mr. Reid’s intransigence a daily issue and in the process put Mr. Obama on the spot.

The White House is making new promises. For its own sake, it had better mean some of them. The president skated through the first part of his term with Washington in awe. Circumstances have changed. The administration may be shrewdly co-opting GOP talking points, but the GOP today has recourse. And it could be that a president who claims to be something he isn’t is as much a problem for voters as a president with a misguided agenda.

The 111th Congress is officially over, and according to Gallup, it’s also officially the worst Congress in the history of polling. Yet despite its 13% approval rating there are those who are hailing the 111th Congress for its myriad legislative “accomplishments.” Not surprisingly, many of those touting those “accomplishments” are the very members of Congress who voted for the legislation in the first place. Starting at the top with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), you find a woman who is not at all ashamed of the legislation she has passed, despite the disastrous poll numbers. Pelosi says she is “very, very proud of the work that was accomplished by this Congress.”

The American people, though, think differently, and they have already issued their verdict on the 111th Congress by way of an earthshaking election in November. If you take a look at some of Congress’ big-ticket “accomplishments,” you might understand where they’re coming from. Here’s a look at 10 major pieces of legislation coming out of Congress the last two years and why Americans might not be so pleased:

Obamacare: Billed as the panacea for America’s health care woes, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare,” is a 2,700-page behemoth that “portends a massive transfer of power, dollars and decision making to the federal government,” says Heritage’s Nina Owcharenko. Heritage also finds that under the law, workers and families will face increased costs, seniors will lose access to care, and American taxpayers will take the hit for a trillion dollars in new federal spending. (3/2010)

The Failed Stimulus (a.k.a., the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act): President Obama promised that his stimulus would save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. The result? America saw a bunch of orange and green “ARRA” signs sprout up like dandelions all over America, touting the slogan “Putting America to Work,” but here we are in December 2010 with a 9.8 percent unemployment rate, a national debt of $2.9 trillion, and 7.3 million jobs shy of President Obama’s promise. Some stimulus! (2/2009)

The 9,000-Earmark Omnibus Bill: Never mind the $1.4 trillion budget deficit facing America in 2009. Congress went ahead and passed an omnibus spending bill containing 9,287 pork project earmarks costing $13 billion. Included in the earmarks were a $200,000 tattoo removal program in Mission Hills, Calif., and more than a million dollars to combat Mormon Crickets in Utah. (3/2009)

Mountains of Debt: You can’t pin it on one piece of legislation alone, but the 111th Congress has piled heaps upon heaps of new debt — a massive $3.22 trillion. That comes out to $10,429.64 for every man, woman and child counted in the 2010 census. That’s more debt racked-up than in the first 100 Congresses combined, according to CNSNews.com. The total national debt as of the 111th Congress’ last day? $13.859 trillion.

The Government Union Bailout: As if one massive bailout weren’t enough, President Obama and the 111th Congress delivered another $26.1 billion bailout in the summer of 2010. The beneficiaries? Government unions and big-spending states that wouldn’t know a balanced budget if it smacked them in the face. The bill was supposed to “save” jobs, but the reality is that most jobs were never in jeopardy. (8/2010)

Wall Street Reform? Think Again: While President Obama touted the Dodd-Frank bill of 2010 as a reform of Wall Street and America’s financial rules, the resulting law is a boon for lawyers and lobbyists, thanks to its creation of 243 new formal rule-makings by 11 different federal agencies. What’s more, the bill “does nothing to stop future government bailouts,” makes a TARP-like bailout system permanent, and does nothing to reform two of the biggest culprits behind the financial crisis: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. (7/2010)

The “Neighborhood Destabilization Act”: Speaker Pelosi would refer to it as the “Helping Families Save Their Homes Act,” but in reality the law does the opposite by “putting millions of homeowners or potential buyers at greater risk of an unstable credit and housing market and creating high interest rates in the future.” And if you’re a responsible homeowner, you lose big time.

Cash for Clunkers: Stuck with an old car or truck? Under this plan, the U.S. government would have paid you $3,500 to $4,500 to trade it in for a new, more fuel efficient vehicle. Though the program boosted sales for the two months it was in place, a study showed the clunker program was a clinker. It didn’t bring new buyers into the market; it merely accelerated purchases. The cost to the taxpayers? $3 billion. (According to an Edmunds analysis, it came to $24,000 per car.) (6/2009)

New START: President Obama sold this nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia as an effort to reduce nuclear weapons. Conservatives, though, criticized it for being “useless in limiting proliferation, detrimental to missile defense, and counter to the purpose of defense treaties — defending and protecting America from her enemies.” (12/2010)

Cap-and-Trade: The Waxman-Markey climate bill that passed the House was intended to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions with the goal of curbing global warming. Were it enacted (which it wasn’t), the plan would have increased gas prices by 58%, and average household electric rates would increase by 90% by 2035. (Passed House in 6/2009; stalled in Senate)

Americans should expect better results from the 112th Congress, that is, if the newly-elected representatives heed their electoral mandate: less spending, lower taxes and limited government. But Americans should also be aware that even if Congress stays in line, President Obama can still pursue a big government agenda with more regulations from unelected bureaucrats. As the president said when the Democrats lost the House and failed to enact cap-and-trade, “I’m going to be looking for other means to address this problem.” America, look out.

The nation’s unemployment rate stands at 9.8 percent, a post–World War II record 19th month that unemployment has been over 9 percent. President Barack Obama is the largest tax hike in American history. So what do Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) have Congress voting on today? Amnesty. Specifically, the House and Senate will be voting on the fourth and fifth versions of the DREAM Act, which would legalize anywhere between 300,000 and 2.1 million illegal immigrants.

Supporters of the DREAM Act claim the bill would provide citizenship only to children who go to college or join the military. But all any version of the legislation requires is that an applicant attend any college for just two years. And if President Obama wants to reward non-citizen service members with citizenship, he already has the power to do so. The Secretary of Defense already has the authority under 10 U.S.C. § 504 (b) to enlist illegal immigrants in the military if “such enlistment is vital to the national interest,” and 8 U.S.C. § 1440 allows such immigrants to become naturalized U.S. citizens, with their applications handled at accelerated rates. The military component of the DREAM Act is a complete red herring.

Neither of these bills has gone through their respective committees, and only one has been scored by the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, they are chock full of loopholes designed by open border advocates to make an even wider amnesty possible.

One bill would even grant Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano the power to waive the college and military requirements if the illegal immigrant can demonstrate “compelling circumstances” and the immigrant’s removal would cause a hardship to the them, their spouse, their parents, or their children. When exactly would removal from this country not cause a hardship? What other loopholes are in these bills? As Speaker Pelosi might say: “You have to pass this amnesty so that you can find out what is in it.”

The DREAM Acts are also an invitation for fraud. All of the bills would make it illegal for any information in an amnesty application to be used to initiate removal proceedings against an applicant. Law enforcement agencies would be forced to prove that any information they used to find, detain, and try to remove an illegal immigrant was already in their files before an application was received or was not derived from the application. If an illegal immigrant lies about his age to qualify for the program, and the lie is never detected, he gets amnesty. And if the lie is found out, no worries—law enforcement is forbidden from using that lie against him.

The real goal of the DREAM Act is to make it even harder for our nation’s law enforcement agencies to enforce any immigration laws. And Congress is not the only forum where amnesty advocates are working to undermine the rule of law today. Right across the street from the Capitol, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments over an Arizona immigration enforcement law. This is not a hearing on the controversial SB 1070 law that passed earlier this year. This case, supported by the usual amnesty suspects (La Raza, the SEIU, the Chamber of Commerce, etc.), challenges Arizona’s 2007 E-Verify law, which penalizes employers who do not verify the legal status of their employees. This challenge by amnesty advocates to even common-sense immigration enforcement measures should send a clear measure to anyone wavering on the DREAM Act: Any enforcement mechanisms that DREAM Act supporters agree to today will be immediately challenged in court tomorrow. Enforcement is fickle; amnesty is forever.

Our country does need immigration reform. We need smarter border security, stronger interior enforcement, and a more efficient naturalization system. But amnesty plans like the DREAM Act undermine real reform. The DREAM Act encourages people to ignore our borders, undermines our law enforcement across the country, and makes fools of law-abiding immigrants who play by the rules.