“Without a budget agreement, Congress cannot pass detailed appropriations bills that enforce the law and restrain President Obama …”
By Cong. John Culberson
Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON, D.C. – More than any other president, Barack Obama has routinely bypassed Congress and done his best to implement his agenda through Executive Orders, government agency rule changes, and advisory legal opinions. Without a budget agreement, Congress cannot pass detailed appropriations bills that enforce the law and restrain President Obama.
He has also shown a pattern of ignoring existing law, ignoring the Constitution, and even ignoring specific appellate court orders such as the opinion nullifying his National Labor Relations Board appointees. Obama and his Cabinet, especially Attorney General Eric Holder, ignore Congressional requests for information and ignore Congressional hearings and subpoenas. The only way to restrain Obama and force him and his Administration to obey the law is through the appropriations process.
My Republican colleagues in the House and I have discovered that the administration is guaranteed to obey the law if we restrict their access to funding until they prove they’ve followed the law.
Therefore, Continuing Resolutions — which contain no detail — give a blank check to the Administration and constrain our ability to force the Administration to follow the law and keep the America that we know and love from turning into a European social welfare state like Spain or Greece.
This is the principal reason that I decided to support the budget agreement that Congressman Paul Ryan and Senator Patty Murray negotiated.
The budget agreement also cuts our deficit by $23 billion, doesn’t raise taxes, and keeps in place 92% of the original Budget Control Act sequester savings.
The agreement protects our military from bearing the brunt of the upcoming spending cuts, and moves spending cuts to the mandatory side of the budget so that we can start to make real reforms to these autopilot programs that are the true drivers of our debt.
When I first came to Congress in 2001, I had the privilege of serving with Senator Phil Gramm before his retirement. I agree with one of his key guiding principles: if a piece of legislation moves us in the right direction, we should support it — even if it only moves us an inch or two. Since conservatives control one-half of one-third of the government, we will sometimes be compelled to only move an inch or two.
While the agreement does not solve the underlying problems of our debt and entitlement programs, it moves us in the right direction by reducing spending and our deficit.
Most of all, returning to the appropriations process will allow the House to enforce laws, to restrain President Obama, and to enact the real budget reforms that our country desperately needs.
Congressman John Culberson represents Texas’s 7th Congressional District.
