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Senate GOP negotiates with themselves on human trafficking bill

Thursday, March 19, 2015 13:02

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(Before It's News)

Let me set the stage.

The Senate Democrats are balking at voting on a bill that allegedly will have an impact on human trafficking. The sticking point is that it includes Hyde Amendment language that prohibits any money associated with the program for being used to support abortion. The language was not slipped in during the dead of the night. Either the Democrats didn’t bother having staff review the bill or they did review it and decided to use it as an issue on the Senate floor. I can buy either explanation but I lean towards the second.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)Heritage ActionScorecardSen. Mitch McConnellSenate Republican AverageSee Full Scorecard67% has maybe sorta said that he will not move the nomination of Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch to a vote until the human trafficking bill is passed.

I have to tell you that I am more than a little ambivalent about the bill. Right now we are awash in laws to the extent that the average American commits three federal felonies every single day of their life. Existing law seems to address the elements of the crime but, every cause demands its own law. Whatever. As human trafficking is linked inextricably with sex trafficking and that is linked with abortion, it is pretty easy to see why the spending language include an abortion prohibition especially when dealing with a reckless and lawless administration that has never found a baby that couldn’t be killed in utero. So while I’m not opposed to the law, a) I think it covers ground that is already covered by any number of existing statutes and b) it doesn’t qualify as “must pass” by any stretch of the imagination.

On the other hand, Loretta Lynch is a left wing ideologue who would be at least as bad as Erick Holder and told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there was no legal problem with Obama’s amnesty by fiat. Her not being confirmed is a manifestly good thing and, because a number of members of our Quisling Caucus have said they will vote for her, the best way of keeping her from being confirmed is to just not vote on her. And, did I mention that McConnell has said no vote on Lynch until there is a vote on the human trafficking bill?

Enter, from Mars, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)Heritage ActionScorecardSen. Mitch McConnellSenate Republican Average See Full Scorecard67% and his hard-nosed team of negotiators:

On Thursday, senior Senate Republicans said they had a way out of the logjam. The original bill creates a restitution fund that is bankrolled by fines slapped on traffickers, with a key restriction on using that money for abortions. The compromise suggested from Republicans would instead route the money through the federal government accounts before going to victims, where it is already subject to that abortion restriction, according to aides familiar with the process.

Guys, there is no “logjam” here. What you have is obstruction pure and simple. Just like with DHS, you actually hold the high cards. You can afford to walk away from the negotiations and the Democrats really can’t. Rather than acting like normal negotiators, these nimrods are now reduced to begging the Democrats for a deal to break the impasse the Democrats have created. How do the Democrats react?

Democrats continued to object to any reference in the trafficking bill to abortion restrictions, which Cornyn’s compromise contains.

Asked if the Cornyn plan falls short, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)Heritage ActionScorecardSen. Dianne FeinsteinSenate Democrat AverageSee Full Scorecard2% (D-Calif.) said: “It does. It leaves the language in. … We want that language out.” And Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), said, “It keeps the expansion of Hyde. We’re not going to expand Hyde, you know that.”

And into the breach steps a couple of our top-shelf Quislings, ready and willing to sell out principle, their caucus, and kill babies in order to cave to the Democrats.

Still, the movement suggests there could eventually be a way to end the impasse that has stalled the confirmation of Lynch, who would be the nation’s first black female attorney general. Sens. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)Heritage ActionScorecardSen. Heidi HeitkampSenate Democrat AverageSee Full Scorecard5% (D-N.D.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)Heritage ActionScorecardSen. Susan CollinsSenate Republican AverageSee Full Scorecard22% (R-Maine) are working on a compromise intended to further assuage Democratic concerns about abortion. They plan to unveil it on the Senate floor Thursday.

This is the hard hitting negotiating style we’ve come to expect from Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)Heritage ActionScorecardSen. Mitch McConnellSenate Republican AverageSee Full Scorecard67% and his cronies in the Senate leadership: talk trash, start out with a minimalist position, then cave. There is an obvious solution here. Walk away. Steal some money from handicapped kids or whatever it is GOP senators do when they aren’t having a train run on them by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)Heritage ActionScorecardSen. Harry ReidSenate Democrat AverageSee Full Scorecard10% and the rest of the Democrats. Let the Democrats know that the time to negotiate was in committee and until they vote Lynch’s hands will stay far removed from the throats of American citizens.