Permitted 2016 High Priority RINO Quarry...

Voted FOR the 2016 Omnibus Spending Package and up for Re-election to the U.S. Senate:
Ayotte (R-NH)
Kirk (R-IL)
McCain (R-AZ)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Thune (R-SD).....meanwhile, in the House...

The Bad Joke that is Congress...

Less than five days after it was introduced, the Senate passed the 144-page, two-year budget deal that suspends the debt limit until March 2017 and raises spending caps.

The Senate passed the budget deal, 64-35, just after 3 a.m. on Friday. Thirty-five Republican senators opposed the deal, though it was not enough to stop the bill from heading to President Obama’s desk.

The bill was approved after a 1 a.m. procedural vote which passed, 63-35, and allowed the budget plan to proceed.

The budget deal, the result of weeks of closed-door negotiations between McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, former House Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, passed the House of Representatives Wednesday night.

The president is expected to sign the two-year budget agreement, called the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, within the next few days.

Though the deal passed by the House and Senate with support from members of both parties, the fiscal plan was protested by conservative senators who opposed both the substance of the deal and the manner in which it was negotiated.

Republican Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Jeff Sessions of Alabama—the current and former chairmen of the Senate Steering Committee, respectively—sent a letter to their GOP colleagues calling on them to oppose the deal. In their message, Lee and Sessions criticized the deal for being “crafted in secret without the involvement of the vast majority of our conference.”

Additionally, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., threatened to filibuster the legislation in what many believed would be an overnight protest. Paul, however, spoke on the Senate floor for just 18 minutes.

The Kentucky senator did appear on the Senate floor later in the night and criticized the deal for giving Obama unlimited borrowing authority.

“Both sides of the aisle have what I would call sacred cows. On the right, they have the sacred cow of military contracts. …The left wants more welfare,” he said, adding, “Should we give Congress more money? Hell no.”

Conservative senators went head-to-head with Republican leadership before the vote.

“The budget deal before the Senate today is not just a horrible piece of legislation that is undeserving of this chamber’s support. It also represents the last gasping breath of a disgraced, bipartisan Beltway establishment on the verge of collapse,” Lee said on the Senate floor. “The bill is a product of an unfair, dysfunctional and fundamentally undemocratic process, a process that is virtually indistinguishable from what we promised the American people a GOP-controlled Congress would bring to an end.”

McConnell, though, stressed that the agreement satisfied the list of demands Republicans had during negotiations with Democrats.

“This agreement isn’t perfect. I share some concerns other colleagues have raised. But here’s the bottom line: this is a fully offset agreement that rejects tax hikes, secures long-term savings through entitlement reforms and provides increased support for our military, all this at a time when we confront threats in multiple theaters,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “Each of these was a Republican goal heading into negotiations. Each of these items was achieved in the agreement before us.”

The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 lifts spending caps by $80 billion—$50 billion in 2016 and $30 billion in 2017—with the increases split evenly between defense and nondefense spending.

It also suspends the debt limit until March 2017, and shifts $150 billion from the Social Security Trust Fund to the Disability Insurance Trust Fund

The budget deal was viewed by Boehner, who resigned from his post earlier this month, as a way to “clean the barn” for his successor, the newly elected Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

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The House on Friday overwhelmingly approved a $1.1 trillion spending package that includes the first major change approved by Congress to ObamaCare and keeps the government open through September 2016.

Lawmakers backed the package following a furious effort by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and their leadership teams to corral votes in both parties.

In the end, there was no drama in the 316-113 vote.

Ryan won 150 GOP votes, a majority of his conference that represents a big victory for the new Speaker. Ninety-five Republicans voted against the measure.

Only 18 Democrats voted against the spending bill, while 166 supported it.

The Despot's Heel is Still On Our Shore....

from the Baltimore Sun

Maryland's rarely sung state song may be in for some tinkering. A state advisory group is calling for changes to "Maryland, My Maryland" because it takes the Confederate side in the Civil War and bashes "Northern scum."

Sung to the same tune as the Christmas carol "O Tannenbaum," the state anthem — performed mainly at the Preakness and some other official events — has irked or embarrassed many over the years because of its pro-Southern sentiments. This week, an eight-member panel of historians, musical scholars and a poet urged lawmakers to replace most or all of the lyrics, or even select an entirely different song.

"No one's looking to ban the [current] state song," said Timothy D. Baker, state archivist and chairman of the group. Instead, he explained, the group suggested coming up with some musical expression that would be "reflective of all Marylanders."

The proposal to change the state song follows debates in Maryland and elsewhere over removing Confederate flags, statues and other lingering symbols of the pro-slavery South in the wake of the shooting of black worshippers by a white man in Charleston, S.C.

The panel formed after Del. Peter A. Hammen, a Baltimore Democrat and chairman of the House Health and Government Operations Committee, asked Baker in July to come up with ideas for replacing the state song. Del. Karen Lewis Young, a Frederick Democrat, has put in a bill to make the change.

The song was penned in 1861 by a Baltimore native, James Ryder Randall, in reaction to the riots in Baltimore when Union troops passing through the city were attacked by a pro-Confederate crowd. It begins by decrying "the despot's heel" being planted on Maryland's shore and calls for avenging "the patriotic gore" of those killed by the federal troops.

"That song has always been objectionable," said Marvin L. "Doc" Cheatham Sr., a longtime civil rights advocate and former chairman of the Baltimore NAACP. "I think America now is at last opening their eyes and ears to what we've had to put up with for a while."

It was officially designated the state song in 1939. But few know all the words, because only one or two of its nine verses tend to get sung.

"Nobody has sung the entire song for generations," Baker said. "Nobody knows what the verses are."

Previous attempts to get the legislature to change or replace the state song have failed. This move also could face resistance. One likely opponent is Gov. Larry Hogan, who despite having supported removing the Confederate flag from state license plates has objected to altering the state flag and song. Hogan, a Republican, called it "political correctness run amok."

A spokesman said Thursday Hogan's views have not changed.

House Speaker Michael E. Busch, a Democrat, is open to changing the song, according to his chief of staff, Alexandra Hughes, as long as the objectionable verses can be replaced with "historically accurate language."

The panel suggested several alternatives. Under one, all but the third verse of the original lyrics would be swapped out for an 1894 poem, also titled "Maryland, My Maryland," by John T. White. The new words could still be sung to the current tune.

Another option would be to adopt another song altogether, including possibly "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"You know, Maryland really has a legitimate claim to the national anthem," Baker said. "It was [about] an event that happened in our state, written by a Marylander."