It appears the Boehner/Reid debt fix, which was really no fix at all, did what most legislation does nowadays: it extended the power of the government while doing very little to solve the problems for which it was designed. Thus, while Obama was doing “victory laps” around the White House following the bill’s passage in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid and the rest of his comrades were trying to figure out how to load the new “Super Congress” in their favor.
What is the “Super Congress” you ask? It’s a creation of the Boehner/Reid plan: a Congress-within-a-Congress which the Senate cannot filibuster nor the Speaker of the House control.
In other words, by design it is superior to either legislative body set forth in the Constitution (which means it is but one loony Democrat away from being a rogue congress, bent on usurping every right Americans have enjoyed since our Founding).
If you think I’m engaging in hyperbole here, consider this – once the debt bill had passed and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was trying to calm conservative nerves about the limited scope of the newly created congress, Reid was standing at a microphone saying: “[On the ‘Super Congress’] there are no constraints….They can look at any program we have in government, any program. … It has the ability to look at everything.”
Did you catch that folks? The “Super Congress” can look at any program and “at everything.”
(Unless you’ve been living under a rock, your gut reaction to the news that the “Super Congress” can look “at everything” should make you want to stockpile guns and ammo, so you have plenty to hide when they come looking for both.)
No wonder Gun Owners of America (GOA) was sounding an alarm as the debt bill moved toward a final vote on Tuesday. They warned us that the “Super Congress” could pass gun control where there is neither filibuster nor Speaker of the House to intervene, and then “22 liberal Republicans can join the Congressional Democrats and the President in closing the gun show ‘loophole,’ banning semi-automatic weapons, creating a national handgun registration, or ordering state gun laws moot.” (Keep in mind there are plenty of John McCain’s out there in the Republican Party who’d cross the aisle in a heartbeat to shut down gun shows.)
The “Super Congress” will be comprised of six Democrats and six Republicans. And according to Reid, it’s important that these twelve come “with minds willing to consider every option” (which is political-speak for “Republicans need to shut up and get with the Democrat program”).
Added Reid: “Cooperation is the only way forward. Compromise is the only way forward.”
I couldn’t disagree more. Compromise is what got us in this mess in the first place. I’d rather see the House, led by the Tea Party, stand up and say “this far and no further.”
As for the rest of us, if the “Super Congress” does indeed turn their attention toward our guns, I believe the late Charlton Heston put it best when he held up his rifle over his head and uttered the words, “from my cold dead hands.”
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