When Barack Obama campaigned for president, he claimed "I am running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over. They have not funded my campaign. They won't work in my White House." Despite this promise, Obama hired over 50 lobbyists in his administration. Among them, was Cecilia Munoz, previously vice president and lobbyist for the National Council of La Raza, as his Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Despite breaking this promise, in the 2010 State of the Union, Obama said, "We've excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs."
This lie has become even larger, with Obama giving La Munoz the top policymaking job in the administration as the head of his Domestic Policy Council. How does Obama account for this? Tim Carney notes in the Washington Examiner, to liberals “Muñoz doesn't count as one of the bad lobbyists” because in the words of MSNBC host Chris Hayes. "She was a lobbyist for immigrant rights." Obama compared Munoz and other lobbyists he hired as a “doctor who ran Tobacco-Free Kids” who is “technically is a registered lobbyist,” but really was just trying to help kids.
By making this argument, Obama and his allies are portraying the National Council of La Raza as such a great organization that they are willing to sacrifice their own standards to allow people like Munoz to influence this nation’s policy. This policy invites Americans ask just who the National Council of La Raza and what they lobby for.
The National Council of La Raza translates to National Council of the Race, meaning the Hispanic race. It goes without saying what would happen if a conservative was a member of a group called the National Council of the White Race. In recent years, La Raza has denied that La Raza actually means race. According to their website;
The term was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions. Mistranslating “La Raza” to mean “the race” implies that it is a term meant to exclude others. In fact, the full term coined by Vasconcelos, “La Raza Cósmica,” meaning the “cosmic people,” was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all other peoples of the world a common heritage and destiny.
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Taking La Raza at their word, I took a look at a translation of La Raza Cosmica. The translation called it “the Cosmic Race” not “The Cosmic People” and far from calling for Hispanics sharing a shared heritage and destiny with the the world, he focused on the struggle against the “Saxons”, which he uses to describe the English speaking people. According to Vasconcelos, “The struggle of Latinity against Saxonism has come to be, continues to be in our time, a clash of institutions, objectives, and ideals” and calls “the Saxon, our rival for possession of the continent.”
Their name aside, La Raza has lobbied for amnesty, Obama Care, increases in welfare spending, driver’s licenses and in state tuition for illegal aliens, against making English the official language, and against securing the border.
La Raza has not just lobbied for their bad policies; they have also lobbied to receive government money. In 2010 alone, they received 11 million dolllars from the federal government. While I have problems with earmarks, one of the unintended consequences to removing them from bills is that it puts more spending discretion in the executive branch. With Obama and his advisors like Munoz at control, we can expect even more money to go to La Raza.
The Republicans in the House passed bills to bar all government funds to other left wing groups such as ACORN and Planned Parenthood. With A La Raza lobbyist as chief lobbyist for the Obama administration, it is high time that they do the same for this far left, pro-amnesty, lobbying outfit.
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