The voters demanded that Congress stop this President’s fundamental transformation of America using every power at their disposal, ending the Executive Branch abuses against both the citizenry, and restoring Constitutional balance of power and the foundational concept that individual rights are derived from God, not government.
That is the preamble to a just-released “Citizens’ Mandate” signed by more than 50 conservative leaders, including this author.
It is a strong reminder to the Republicans who run the 114th Congress that they were elected to do more than go along to get along with President Obama under the guise of “governing.” The “Citizen’s Mandate” calls on this Congress to “use every power at its disposal” to stand up for limited government principles and a restoration of Constitutional government.
{mosads}The call to “end Obamacare; stop executive amnesty; hold the executive branch accountable for its abuses of power and its national security failures both foreign and domestic; and put the interests of the United States of America and Americans first” should sound familiar to many of the current Congress as it could have been ripped from the pages of their 2014 election brochures.
Now it is time for members to live up to those commitments.
To keep the promise of the 114th Congress, Republicans must reject the soft seduction of the corporate crony insider class that has dominated both sides of the aisle for the past few years. Failure to resist this pernicious corruption, as staff and members see their pathway to a McMansion in McLean, Va. running from Capitol Hill through K Street, guarantees a catastrophic loss of faith with voters who expect their leaders to put America first.
Putting America first means challenging and throwing sand in the gears of President Obama’s regulatory assault on the very free enterprise system that has made our nation the envy of the world.
Putting America first means ending the International Monetary Fund’s access to the U.S. Treasury for up to $100 billion so they can bail out failed socialist states and the banks that enabled them without additional congressional approval.
Putting America first means carefully and thoroughly examining international trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and not ceding congressional constitutional authority unless our national interests “overwhelmingly demand it.”
America did not vote for this Congress to enable Obama to accomplish his agenda; they elected this Congress to stop it, and for anyone in Washington to pretend otherwise is either disingenuous or outright delusional.
People are tired of an alphabet soup group of agencies like the the NLRB, FCC, EPA and DOJ actively working to keep Obama’s campaign promise to fundamentally transform America, and they expect this Congress to not only fight, but to stop them from succeeding.
That is what the 2014 election was about, and it is what the 114th Congress will be judged on.
Obama will be striving to cement his legacy of transformation, and this Congress will either be complicit in his plan or they will follow the citizens’ mandate of November 2014 and they will stop him.
Manning is president of Americans for Limited Government.