| Too many politicians want to talk a big conservative game, then complain they cannot deliver because they do not have the votes. |  |
 | I am sick of the House of Representatives claiming that they are one-half of one-third of government. I am sorry to say, but that is clearly people making a lame excuse to not get things done. The House of Representatives holds the purse strings. No legislation, taxing or spending can happen without them. |
| The House of Representatives could pass their conservative plans. With clarity and with boldness, they could take each government program separately and pass their conservative adjustments for that program. They could tell President Obama, and the liberals in the Senate that they can pass and sign the bill or that program is not funded. |  |
 | Programs should always need the votes to be funded, they are not funded by default. Legislators should never think that a defund bill needs to be passed because programs are funded by a vote. The default is that the program ends without a vote. The structure of our government is that the House, Senate and the President must all agree for legislation to occur and programs to be set up and funded. These programs have to be funded every year. This is a high bar and was meant to be high in order to keep most sectors of our society in private sector control. |
| For example, the score might be about fifty votes from the House to repeal the ACA to about 5 to fund. However, those fifty repeal votes had no effect because the Senate did not take it up. The 5 to fund the ACA over the years passed both houses and signed into law. If Republicans seriously did not want the ACA, they would stop funding it once a year, the Senate and the president do not care how many ‘statements’ the House GOP make with defunding bills, they only need that one funding bill every year. |  |
 | State Government Currently (April 2014) in Virginia, there is a showdown between the Democrats in the Senate aided by Governor McAuliffe and the Republicans in the House of Delegates over Medicaid expansion. It is overwhelmingly frustrating to many conservatives that the Republicans did not fight for a smaller budget or a rollback of governmental functions with a 68% majority of Republicans in the house. |
| They (the GOP) proposed a massive spending increase, thus a massive tax increase--from $43 billion a year to $48 billion. While I hope they hold tight on not passing Medicaid expansion, they are likely using that as a cover for massive government expansion into our lives by the budget. |  |
