Senate Vote on More Money for U.N.
AIM Column | By Cliff Kincaid | July 22, 2008
Over the next several days Coburn will be trying to get his colleagues to join him in demanding that this catch-all “omnibus” legislation be subjected to thorough scrutiny, debate and amendment before being voted on.
Having failed to stop the irresponsible $50 billion global AIDS bill, Senate conservatives are now being given a second chance. Can they stand up to Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid and block the so-called Coburn Omnibus of more irresponsible spending? Reid jokingly named the bill after the Oklahoma Republican Senator, Tom Coburn, who has prevented dozens of excessive federal spending bills from passing the Senate. But Reid is actually titling the bill “Advancing America’s Priorities.”
The 398-page bill, which Reid hopes to bring up this week, is an amalgam of 36 different pieces of legislation, including $12 million for a federal greenhouse facility in Maryland and $24 million for the United Nations. Coburn put “holds” on the bills to prevent them from being passed quickly without adequate debate
Early estimates put the cost of the entire package at over $11 billion.
Through Senate passage of the “Torture Victims Relief Reauthorization” (H.R. 1678), which is one of the bills, Reid hopes to funnel $24 million to the so-called United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture for the operation of foreign treatment centers in such places as the “occupied Palestinian Territories,” Lebanon and Russia.
Some of the U.N. money underwrites the Mandela Institute, which features a “Free Palestine” map on the home page of its website and provides assistance to alleged victims of Israeli aggression and torture.
The greenhouse facility (H.R. 5492) is for the care and feeding of orchids.
Under the unusual Senate procedure that Reid intends to exploit, senators would have to vote on the entire legislation and would not be able to strip away any bills or provisions through amendments.
Over the next several days
Coburn will be trying to get his colleagues to join him in demanding
that this catch-all “omnibus” legislation be subjected to thorough
scrutiny, debate and amendment before being voted on. Among other things,
Coburn would like to see the new spending offset by cuts in other programs.
That seems like a reasonable request in view of mounting economic and
financial difficulties for the government and many families.
But it might be difficult for
many senators to insist on a rational debate of their costs because
many of the bills in the Coburn Omnibus involve nice-sounding causes,
such as protecting women, children and the disabled, and fighting disease.
You can count on the liberal
media to portray this legislation as a humanitarian measure and any
Republicans standing in the way of its passage as obstructionists.
Nevertheless, on his Senate website, Coburn explains the significance of what is happening here. Entitled, “Holds and Hotlines: How a Single Senator Can Block Consideration of a Bill and the Senate Passes Bills Without Votes,” Coburn’s website explains how he has been trying in many cases to make sure that senators understand the full cost of federal legislation before they vote on it. By placing a “hold” on a piece of legislation, a senator or a group of senators can make sure that a bill is not rushed to the senate floor and “hotlined” for quick passage without adequate debate.
The solution is to have a full and fair debate on all pieces of legislation before the Senate.
The Coburn website explains, “During the 109th Congress (2005-2006), 341 bills and joint resolutions were passed by the Senate. According to the Congressional Research Service, only 21 of those bills received a roll call vote on the Senate floor. That means 94 percent of law making measures that were passed through the Senate were passed by UC or by voice vote. A large majority of these were hotlined and therefore excluded from full and open debate and the amendment process. In the 109th Congress, 1,408 bills, resolutions, or nominations were attempted to be hotlined, with as many as 40 measures being hotlined in a single day.”
Senator Barack Obama’s Global Poverty Act was in the process of being hotlined before Senators Coburn, David Vitter and Jim DeMint put a hold on it. This costly $845 billion bill commits the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid to meet United Nations objectives.
It had passed the House by voice vote last year and was on the verge of quickly passing the Senate. It was brought up in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year and passed by voice vote. No hearings were ever held on the legislation.
A hold doesn’t kill the legislation but it does make it harder to pass. A hold means that Reid has to get 60 votes to bring up and pass the bill. With a 51-49 Democratic edge, Reid can attempt to ram the Coburn Omnibus legislation or any bill through the Senate if he can convince nine Republican senators to break ranks and vote with the Democrats. That is how he got the global AIDS bill to the Senate floor. He overcame holds placed on the bill by conservative Republican Senators David Vitter, Jim DeMint and Jeff Sessions.
The nine or more Democratic collaborators could come from the liberal wing of the Republican Party and are likely to include such figures as Republican Senator Gordon Smith, who is running for re-election in Oregon by airing ads touting Obama as a statesman.
There was some fear that Obama’s Global Poverty Act would be included in the Coburn Omnibus. But Reid didn’t put it in. This time, Reid appears to be trying to ram through some other nice-sounding bills to see if he can successfully roll the Senate Republicans. If he wins here he could try the same ploy again with even more costly bills, such as the Obama Global Poverty Act. So the fate of the Coburn Omnibus will help demonstrate if there is any fighting spirit left in the Senate to stop the slide into socialism.
While money to meet U.N. goals through the Global Poverty Act is not in the Coburn Omnibus, the bill does include funds to implement the “Torture Victims Relief Reauthorization,” which passed the House last year by an amazing 418-7 vote.
Did members understand they were voting on a bill to funnel millions of dollars to the corrupt U.N. and other foreign entities?
Only seven House members voted against it. They were Republicans Burton, Duncan, Flake, Goode, Paul, Rohrabacher and Sali. The bill was then rushed to the Senate, where the Foreign Relations Committee passed it by voice vote without any hearings at all. That is when Coburn put a hold on it.
The failure of the Congress to do its job in analyzing these bills is complemented by the indifference of the major media to out-of-control federal spending. The fate of the Coburn Omnibus will help determine whether politicians and reporters ever start doing their jobs.
You can contact your senators
by calling 202-224-3121 or through the Senate website. As of this writing, the bill doesn’t
yet have a number. But it can be referred to as the Coburn Omnibus.
Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at
17 Comments
All the Bush Admin has proven is that women and ‘people of color’ don’t belong in a position of responsibility let alone of decision in Government. As they all are owned by AIPAC, an Eastern European Trotsky Communist.Zionist Organization. Which had no place there so came to the U.S. and screwed the Republic silly.
Good for the lone voice of reason in the Senate. Perhaps we should have a committee of 50 dedicated Americans interrogate the Senate and House as to the whys and wherefores of each and every vote. And, insist on line-item being completely dismissed.
This totally corrupt Democrat leadership in Congress is attempting to destroy us with huge spending bills like this $845 billion dollar “global poverty” act. Of course, they can override President Bush’s veto, and still Bush and the Republicans will be blamed forever for this enormous assault on our economy.
I hope the American voters see through the Democrats and refuse to return them to Congress.
Oh, I forgot - The DNC has guaranteed their re-election already by propping up the incompetent ones and knee-capping any opponents. The American people lose, not only in this election cycle, but for generations to come as they try to pay off the national debt.
NINE PERCENT IS THE POPULARITY RATING OF THE HOUSE AND SENATE. YET THEY REMIND US BUSH IS A LOWLY 25%. DID UDEI PELOSEI SERVE SYRIA WELL THIS WEEK? DID BILL BAYONET THE BABIES WARM UP THE BENCH FOR BASHAR AL ASSAD, HIS POLITICAL LOVER? DID JACK REED THE RHODE ISLAND FLAG BURNER AND BABY KILLER VISIT AL QUEDA LAND AGAIN? FLAG BURNERS AND TAX BURNERS ALL. MONEY IS NO OBJECT AS LONG AS YOU HAVE DEEP POCKETS. OF COURSE THE HAND IN IT IS NOT YOURS. NOW IT TURNS OUT THE ANOTHER WHINING VIET CON GREASE MOUSE WEXLER DOES NOT EVEN LIVE IN THE STATE HE REPRESENTS. IS HE AN ILLEGAL ALIEN FROM ANOTHER PLANET? YET HE SHOWED UP IN FLORIDA TO PULL TERRY SCHIAVO’S FEEDING TUBE. TOOK THE SMILE RIGHT OFF HER FACE.
HER ONLY CRIME WAS THAT SHE WAS THE ONLY WITNESS TO A MURDER. FIRE THEM ALL AND START FRESH.
UNCLE TOM IN THE 911 BUNKER.
You give to your own first, THEN you can help “the neighbors”. Our government has yet to learn and abide by this basic human rule…
I have also contacted my Senator, George Voinovich, who is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I wrote twice and got the same form letter response both times even though the second letter specifically pointed out errors in the first response letter such as the difference between 7% and .7%. They are clueless in the Senate and our letters are not read.
Ah, yes - the same George Voinovich who cried over the prospect of seating the well-qualified and successful John Bolton as our Ambassador to the U.N. What a disgrace he is. He’s another RINO who needs to be tossed from the Senate.
Of course this is outrageous unbridled spending. This is a result of corrupt congressional leadership and followers. They want to spend OUR hard earned tax dollars without our awareness or approval. It is time to stop the blank check congress. The only recourse we have now is to support Sen. Coburn and his possible allies to stop this insane bill. Also, contact our own senators to let them know we have an eye on them and we expect them to vote against this bill.
I believe the only reason the pro spending Senators are in favor of this bill is because they are getting paid off under the table, in the millions of dollars. No other reason makes sense.
They are rank thieves hiding behind their titles.
It is patently absurd to discuss sending an amount approaching $100 billion a year to the despots of the UN, when the same liberal fecal feeders decry the woeful state of our own citizens and scream for more $ to be extracted from the “wealthy 5%”. Just how much do they feel they can justly seize from this segment, which already provides 60% of the total tax collections, while ignoring any logical sense of priority. If we were not discussing sending $100 billion to the UN, and spending approximately $329 billion on illegal immigrants each year, we could for about 1/4 of the total for those two fiascos, provide health care to every single one of the uninsured americans, through conventional private insurance companies, without establishing the federal gestapo of health care and erroding the level of our health care services.
I contact my elected DC Rep and Senators from time to time (NC: Rep Robin Hayes, Senators Burr and Dole) by email, phone, and snail mail (for the really important stuff).
When I receive responses to my snail mail, Burr is generally conservative and his positions are usually along the lines I elected him to pursue. He WILL cave now and again, but is largely on the up and up as far as I know.
Liddy Dole, a RINO (her receptionist didn’t know the meaning of the term), has served in the Senate much like her short attempt at the Oval Office in 2000, in which she was on TV just long enough to clearly communicate that she was a RINO. She casts a sane vote from time to time, but one never knows when this lightning will strike.
Rep Hayes, in an attempt to be all things to all people, strikes me as bought and paid for (he’s rich, but can’t have “too much money,” it would seem). His “one size fits all” responses may or may not have anything to do with what I contacted him for in the first place. Those who pay attention may have noticed that his victory in ‘06 (against a school teacher!) was not declared for weeks on end as the race was so close. With his record, I’m surprised the dems bother to try to unseat him, as he is entirely too cooperative with them in the first place.
All the Yankees have “improved” Northern cities to the point where it’s impossible to live there, so they come down here to “improve” OUR cities. Thanks, but no thanks.
Yankee: Northerner who visits the South.
Damn’ Yankee: Northern who moves to the South, then tells us how THEY did things up North.
Good Yankee: One who moves to the South and tells everyone how glad he/she is that he/she moved down here, escaping from the liberal Northeast. New Jersey seems to be a wonderful place from which to move away. Those who do tend to be fairly decent and friendly people from my observations.
Maryland and Virginia have already largely moved to the dark side of the Force. NC may be next. Georgia and S Carolina have large black populations (and vote 90% dem, so it’s not their race, but their inability to make sound political judgements, a trait they share with too many whites to be considered racist; it’s just a fact of life; your avg black will die well before the age of retirement, so gets screwed on Social Security; they don’t seem to understand that this isn’t in their own best interests).
While the South is largely misrepresented as a bunch of hateful racists, it was the North that made blacks 3/5 of a person for purely political reasons: to lower the population of the South so that Yankees could run everything.
Less than 5% of Southerners owned slaves (slaves were expensive), so I am somewhat ashamed of a bunch of poor slobs fighting a Civil War in behalf of the wealthy slaveowners, who would have had to *pay* these slobs to work for them.
Lillian Hellman wrote the play “The Little Foxes,” in which she portrayed small Southern towns as filled with poor people who treated the owners of each town’s only industry as High Society folk, while in fact they were paying the “low society” folk just as little as they could get away with.
Things change…but not that much.
The dems have a good idea now and again, but tend to make a mountain out of a mole hill, hiking costs much more than originally worth, much like the Big Dig in Massachusetts, which will one day make a classic dark comedy movie.
Off the cuff fact: Moonshine per se doesn’t cause blindness. However, when some inbred hillbilly uses a rusty truck radiator in the distillation process instead of running the mash steam through coiled copper tubing inside a barrel of cold water (which is why they tended to build stills in the woods near a free-flowing stream to provide cold water).
I question our giving so much to the UN when our own economy is in trouble. It’s not too unlike someone deeply in debt charging unnessary items to his credit cards which are already maxed out. Further, I think the US should get credit towards it’s UN assessment for the following:
the cost of the international activities of the CDC, which rushes to any place around the world that a health issue becomes critical.
The cost of the international activities of the USNavy, that extraordinary group of dedicated Americans who keep the sea lanes clear for international commerce. Without the USNavy, world trade would be impossible.
The cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cowardly governments and people of Europe stand by and critize us while we do what is necessary to keep order in the world. Europeans and others feel it necessary criticize us in brazen coverups for their craven behavior, as a cover up for their own inaction [much like John Kerry’s virulent anti-American, pro-North Vietnam diatribes to cover up his cowardice in fleeing his combat mission in Vietnam via his three questionable purple hearts. After all,if he was against the war, his craven behavior could not be called cowardice, could it? It was merely running from a war which he was against and refusing to fight alongside American war criminals!]
We should also get some cretit for the extraordianry cost of rushing in to save and rescue people in natural diasters, earthquakes, tidal waves, etc., while the American people donate generously to diaster relief.
Add all these up.
If you add up the cost of CDC, the Navy, the wars we have fought—including Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and all the others, the US contribution, both moneywise and in keeping world order, it is astounding, perhaps far exceeding our UN assessment. We should pay the UN nothing!
Finally, as an after note, Europeans, especially, should hang their heads in shame for having stood by while leaving so much of the world’s problems to America, and having so been virulently anti-American to cover up (as well as simultaneouly profiteering on the world’s problems—France, Russia, and Germany proping Saddam up by undercutting the sanctions, eg.). We could add the incredible expectation that we, the US, is expected to solve the problems in North Africa when Europe, the former colonizer of Africa, is right there across the Mediterrean, and so often with culteral ties (language and colonial). Any one of a number of European nations could have stopped many of the African genocides—why call on America, and more incredibly, why so many liberals in the US, who are always against any involvement, call out for us to rush to Africa with armed forces to stop the African dictatorships? We know, as in the case of Somalia, the liberals called for us to do something about the starvation there, only to work full time to undermine the effort once we acted. Thus, before we ever listen to the leftist or liberals calls for action in Africa, we must remember Somalia and fully expect Hollywood and the Demos to lead a shrill counter-effort and undermine anything their country subsequently tries to actually do to end the genocides.
Try this: If Hitler had stayed within his borders (perhaps only taking the Sudetenland, the Polish Corridor, Alsace-Lorraine) while setting us Auschwitz-like extermination camps within Germany, would the world have moved against him? And if any sanctions had been instigated, how many of the world’s nations would have secretly traded with him whenever they found it profitable?
Thus the world tolerates the most vile dicatorships today, and many nations (including democracies) seek profit by dealing with any of them. Think of Castro had the world’s democracies held the line against him. Even Canada, our good neighbor from the north, from the first could not resist the easy profits to be had in trading with and supporting Castro.
I’ve digress too much. The point was both that the US should get some credit against its UN assessment, and that that assessment should be greatly reduced during a time of a severe economic downturn.
Actually, I favor leaving the U.N. and kicking their sorry butts out of New York. We don’t need them and they are not worth spending another nickel on them. I say don’t donate anything to them. Let them go to Paris, Geneva or anyplace else they choose. Just say good bye to them. They have been just a terrible waste of our hard earned tax dollars.
Here’s what the “Global Poverty Act” should look like:
RESOLVED
That Capitalism is the only economic system that creates wealth rather than destroying wealth and further
RESOLVED
That Constitutional Republican governments are the only political systems that protect and promote Capitalism and further
RESOLVED
That individual rights including, but not limited to, life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness, are inalienable to all human beings,
IT IS HEREBY RESOLVED
That the policy of the United States shall be to actively and strenuously support, defend, and promote Capitalism, Constitutional Republican government and individual rights globally.
Boy, does that ever say all there needs to be said. John, you have said everything there is to say about the method of ultimately erasing world poverty. It is also understood that acknowledging the Creator who created all of us is part of the system. Thanks for a wonderful insight. John
Amen! John Galt, you should be sitting there in Congress to teach those lame-brained legislators a few things.
July 22 at 2:13 pm | #1 | Link
I’ve tried sending multiple emails to CA senators Feinstein and Boxer in the past.
Naturally I get an auto response each time to the effect—
“This is what I’ve decided to do and I believe this is the best course of action, blah, blah blah.”
It is hopelessly useless in the left coast.
Good luck to you all!