Tag Archives: Senator Dick Durbin

Moving Toward The Country Our Founding Fathers Envisioned

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Under our Constitution, there are three branches of government–Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. Each branch has specific duties. The legislative branch is supposed to make the laws. The legislative branch is held accountable for the laws they make by the election process–the House of Representatives every two years, the Senate every six years. The Founding Fathers did not want an elected Senate–they wanted Senators appointed by the states to make sure the Senators represented their home states. The Seventeenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, began the direct election of Senators. Currently, most of our laws are not laws–they are regulations created by unelected bureaucrats. That was never the intention of the Founding Fathers. It seems as though Congress may be getting ready to reclaim its responsibility.

On May 12, The Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) reported the following:

While President Donald Trump has made reining in the unelected federal bureaucracy a top priority of his second term, the Republican Congress has thus far largely failed to get in on the action. But that could be set to change with a new bill that strikes at the heart of the Deep State and runaway executive power.

The Regulations From the Executive In Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act , which Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) introduced in the Senate earlier this year (Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) also introduced a companion version in the House)(H.R.3058) requires that all federal regulations with an economic impact greater than $100 million be passed through Congress. As Politico put it, the REINS Act “would turn Congress into a gatekeeper for certain major rules and allow lawmakers to roll back countless regulations for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.” The outlet further described the legislation as a “rule-busting bill” and “rule-shredding proposal.”

While Democrats like Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois have criticized the bill as a “war on regulations” (a criticism that will no doubt read as high praise to conservatives), Republicans argue the REINS Act is a long-overdue check on the power of the unelected bureaucracy to impose regulations that have an enormous impact on the economy. “For those who say it would make a radical change, a radical departure from the status quo of rulemaking, I’d say, ‘Thank heaven above for that,’” Lee said.

The article concludes:

The urgency of addressing regulatory burdens is further highlighted in a 2024 report by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The conservative think tank found that regulations under the Biden-Harris administration imposed $15,000 in annual costs on the average American household. That’s a serious number, particularly when the median household income is only $80,000 per year.

Congress has an opportunity to lower costs for American consumers and fuel an economic boom by passing the REINS Act – it should seize the chance now.

It would be really great if Congress would pass this bill.

What Should The Sentence Be?

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On Tuesday, The Epoch Times reported that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Tuesday blocked legislation in the Senate that would have strengthened penalties for child porn possession, saying the bill “doesn’t reflect the realities of today.”

What realities of today is he talking about?

The article notes:

The legislation—put forward by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and cosponsored by Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Rick Scott (R-Fla.)—comes after weeks of heated debate over Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s track record in sentencing child porn offenders.

After one such debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Durbin, who chairs the committee, said that the Senate had been derelict in its duty to update child porn law, which was originally designed to deal with physical images rather than digital ones.

“I hope you will agree we all want to do everything within our power to lessen incidents of child pornography and exploitation,” Durbin said last week. “I want to tell you, Congress doesn’t have clean hands. We haven’t touched this now for 15, 16, or 17 years.”

Durbin added that Congress had shown “inattention and unwillingness to tackle an extremely controversial issue.”

“I don’t know if you’ve introduced a bill to change this—I’ll be looking for it,” Durbin told Hawley. “If we’re going to tackle it, we should.”

Referencing that interaction, Hawley said on the Senate floor Tuesday: “I agree 100 percent. I agree we should tackle it, this is the time to tackle it, and I’m here to do that today.”

In 2003, Congress passed legislation instituting mandatory minimum sentencing for child porn offenders. In a controversial decision, the Supreme Court in United States v. Booker struck down the mandatory minimum laws, which bind judges’ hands, as unconstitutional.

This is not the time to be ‘looking at it”–this is the time to do something about it.

Pot, Meet Kettle

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Townhall posted an article today about some recent comments by Senator Dick Durbin. The Senator is obviously very upset about the treatment of Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation process. Please follow the link to read the entire article. I am just going to quote a small part of it here.

The article includes the following:

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) claimed Monday that some members of the Republican Party had accused Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of “vile things” during her recent hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Durbin, who chairs the committee, said that most Republican members had kept their promise not to turn the proceedings into a “circus” — but he claimed that some had not done so, and had instead made ugly accusations in front of the judge’s family.

“On the whole, my Republican colleagues starting with my ranking member, Senator Grassley, treated the nominee with dignity and respect,” Durbin began. “They promised not to turn this confirmation process into a court circus, and most kept that promise.”

“Some, however, did not,” he continued. “Instead they repeatedly interrupted and badgered Judge Jackson and accused her of vile things in front of her parents, her husband, and her children. There was table pounding, some literal, from a few of my colleagues. They repeated discredited claims about Judge Jackson’s record. They impugned her motives and questioned her candor. One all but called her a liar. They even suggested that Judge Jackson, mother to two wonderful daughters, quote ‘endangers children.’”

Does giving pedophiles lighter jail sentences endanger children? Probably. That accusation would be considered valid had it been a conservative nominee.

The article concludes:

Oh, please. My eyes cannot roll any harder. I guess Durbin thinks that Kavanaugh’s family wasn’t at all impacted when Democrat after Democrat, along with their media allies, repeated and smeared their father over fake sex crimes that never happened. Christine Blasey Ford was a doofus who only did what she did to stop Roe v. Wade from being overturned.  It’s why her so-called allegation never made any sense. She had no recollection of key parts of her alleged assault because it never happened. It was part of the zero-hour character assassination attempt by the Left and it nearly succeeded. Even then, it took a lot of wrangling to keep the GOP in line. 

What is fact is that Judge Jackson is soft on child porn predators. What is not fact is that Justice Kavanaugh was part of a gang-rape ring in high school. His accusations were never verified because they were trash. Durbin, go shove it.

Judge Jackson will probably be confirmed quickly. That is sad. It is another step in the direction of not protecting our children.

The Misuse Of The Hearings

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Yesterday CNS News posted an article about a statement by Senator Dick Durbin on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

The article reports:

“Take a look at the composition, the Republican composition, on the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Durbin said on Sunday:

Let’s start with Texas. Senator Cornyn is in a very tight race for re-election. He’s also in a state where there are 1.7 million people who will lose their health insurance when Amy Coney Barrett votes to eliminate that program, another 12 million who have pre-existing conditions.

Now you just go down the table there. I should have started with the Chairman, Lindsey Graham, in the state of South Carolina. He has 242,000 who will lose their insurance if Amy Coney Barrett eliminates the Affordable Care Act and 2 million who have pre-existing conditions.

Iowa, Joni Ernst, 187,000 will lose their insurance. North Carolina (Sen. Tillis), 500,000 will lose their insurance.

So you want to know the point we’re going to make? We’re making a point that this not only has an impact on the lives of so many innocent Americans, it could impact the members of this committee.

…And what we’re trying to drive home to the American people is this makes a difference in your life as to whether or not you have health insurance, whether or not, with a preexisting condition you can afford health insurance.

And we believe that, once the Republican voters across this country wake up to the reality of the strategy, many of them are going to say to their senators, listen, this is not what we bargained for. We may be conservative, but we’re not crazy. Our family needs health insurance protection,” Durbin said.

I mean, it’s understandable people are skeptical of the Republican message and are fearful of what’s going to happen if this Supreme Court nominee goes through and threatens their very health insurance.

There are a few problems with these statements. First of all, if the Supreme Court is making laws, then the legislative branch has neglected its responsibilities. Secondly, a confirmation hearing is not the appropriate place to grandstand and play politics. Senators have a job to do. They need to do it without a lot of political posturing. Thirdly, the confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court justice should not be about specific issues–it needs to be about the qualifications of the nominee.

Just for the record, there is a replacement for ObamaCare. It includes taking care of people with pre-existing conditions.

Just a note about the Affordable Care Act that the Democrats seem so intent on defending. In 2017 Forbes reported:

The data allow us to break down the pre- and post-ACA changes by age, individual vs. family, and plan type. Overall, Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) premiums actually decreased 4.6% in the four years before the ACA reforms came into effect (that is, from 2009 to 2013), but increased 46.4% in the first four years under the ACA. Point-of-Service (POS) premiums decreased 14.9% before the ACA, and increased a whopping 66.2% afterwards. Premiums for the more common Preferred Provider Organization (PPO) plans increased 15% in the four years before the ACA, and 66.2% afterwards.

Why in the world would we want to continue that?