So this is what the “age of budget austerity” looks like?

Yesterday, the Senate voted against a measure to disapprove of Obama’s request for an additional $1.2 trillion of debt.  Every Democrat (except for Ben Nelson and Joe Manchin) voted against the resolution.  Consequently, pursuant to the Budget Control Act (the “debt ceiling deal”), Obama will automatically get his new credit card.  Our debt will increase by another $1.2 trillion, topping $16.4 trillion by the end of the year.

Here are the relevant numbers that should define Obama’s presidency, yet they will not be disseminated in the major media.  When Obama took office, the total federal debt stood at $10.6 trillion.  By the end of his first term, the debt will be at least $16.4 trillion, an increase of $5.8 trillion.  To put that in perspective, it took us until late 2001 (from our nation’s founding) to accrue $5.8 trillion in debt.  Even President Bush, who was a big-spending Republican, racked up “only” $4.9 trillion over 8 years.

Let’s now explicate the debt figures as a percentage of our economy.  Our total federal debt and our GDP stand at parity.  The debt is $15.281 trillion, while our GDP is 15.294 trillion.  It is unlikely that our economy will grow by more than a 2-2.5% annualized rate in the coming year.  On the other hand, with the additional $1.2 trillion of debt, our national debt will grow by 7.9%.  In other words, our GDP will remain below our gross debt indefinitely.

Unfortunately, the Republicans are not innocent from reproach in this debt crisis.  While every Republican except for Scott Brown voted for the resolution of disapproval, most of them supported the debt ceiling deal that engendered this disaster in the first place.  Only 19 of the 47 Senate Republicans opposed the debt deal, which gave Obama a defacto blank check to raise $2.1 trillion in debt without any transformational budget reforms.  We have already raised the debt ceiling by $900 billion since passage of the Budget Out of Control Act.  Today, by default, Obama was granted the rest.

This just underscores the need to focus on congressional races.  We might win back the Senate in November; however, if we continue to elect those who will vote for similar inane legislation, it will be worthless.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

Almost a full year into the presidential campaign, Romney finally received a full-fledged beatdown for his mendacity over healthcare.  He has the nerve to feign outrage over Obamacare, even while he touts Romneycare – a carbon copy of Obamacare – as a virtuous success, supported by 90% of Massachusetts residents.  Santorum did his homework, and called him out on the hypocrisy.  Romney was never able to answer why the same market intervention and distortions – mandates, subsidies, and Medicaid – which form the bedrock of Obamacare , supposedly worked so well in Massachusetts.  The reason he couldn’t answer the question is because Romneycare was a complete failure.  It is the canary in the coal mine for Obamacare.

The reality is that Romneycare did not merely affect the 8% that were uninsured, as Romney has suggested; it punished everyone with record high premiums.  It is incontrovertibly clear that MassCare has engendered the highest premiums in the nation,while dumping thousands of people onto federally funded Medicaid and disincentivizing people not to earn more money.

In other words, Romneycare, at its core, is exactly like Obamacare.  When Romney could not articulate any fundamental difference between the two pernicious government takeovers, he wandered off into ancillary differences.  He pointed out that Obamacare contains 2600 pages, raises taxes, and cuts Medicare.  However, those are all nebulous differences related to the packaging or funding of the proposal.  At the core, they are the same; mandates, subsidies, and Medicaid.  That core is what Romney recently dubbed as fundamentally a conservative principle.

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We have a legislative process, often referred to as “regular order,” for good reason.  The committee, floor, and conference committee stages of the process are designed to maximize transparency and allow all members of Congress to offer their input on the impending bill.

In recent months, there has been a disturbing trend among House leaders to jettison the floor process in the House in favor of a shortcut straight to conference committee with the Senate.  They claim that this is needed in order to finish all the “must-pass” legislation on time.  In reality, they are undermining their own majority in the House, while abdicating gratuitous power to the Senate.  You would think that Republicans would be eager to leverage the power of the House – the one body they control – as much as possible.  Instead, they have shown that their desire to forge deals supersedes transparency, as well as the leverage of their own conference.

Under regular order, after a bill has been fully vetted and voted on by the members of the committee with jurisdiction, it is then sent to the floor so that all members can vote on amendments to the bill.  The other body follows the same procedure, either concurrently or sequentially.  At that point, the two legislative bodies reconcile their differences by instructing conferees to a conference committee or by ping-ponging the bill back and forth until one body acquiesces.

However, under ‘House GOP order,’ they have agreed to send bills to conference committee even though the bills were never considered on the House floor.  In some cases, the bills never even got out of committee.  In other instances, they took obsolete bills that passed the House and totally transformed them without coming back to the conference for a floor vote.

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Our national debt stands at $15.2 trillion, and is growing by roughly $6 billion per day.  We have tens of trillions in unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Unfortunately, we have learned that Republicans lack the gumption to fight for transformational spending cuts and reforms of major entitlements.  However, at the very least, one would expect them to oppose silly pork projects like Buffalo Soldiers!

Yesterday, the Republican-controlled House passed HR 1022, a bill that would require the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a study of the history of Buffalo Soldiers in the establishment of national parks.  The study will cost $400,000.  The purpose of the study is to ascertain the feasibility of a plan to create a 200-mile trail between San Francisco and Yosemite National Park in commemoration of the Buffalo Soldiers.  The federal government already owns roughly 1/3 of all American land.  Do we need to afford them the opportunity to take over more land?

The bill was sponsored by Democrat Congresswoman Jackie Speier, yet Republican leaders agreed to bring it up under a suspension vote with limited debate.  Even though  a two-thirds super majority is required for passage, the bill passed easily with 338 votes.  Only 70 Republicans opposed this inane endeavor.  While this is small potatoes in the scheme our more existential problems, it is very instructive.  If they can’t find the courage to oppose some silly bill that nobody cares about, how are they going to roll back major dependency programs that enjoy popular constituencies?

Moreover, if you take a look at page 34 of the GOP Pledge to America, they made the following observation regarding suspension votes during the Pelosi Congress:

The number of House legislative days devoted to action on noncontroversial and often insignificant “suspension” bills is up significantly in this Congress by comparison with the past several Congresses, wasting time and taxpayer resources.  Of the bills considered under the suspension procedure – requiring 2/3 vote for passage – so far during this Congress,
more than half were bills naming federal buildings, recognizing individuals or groups (like sports teams) for achievements, or supporting the designation of particular days, months, or weeks.

The Buffalo Soldiers undoubtedly served with courage in the United States Army, and deserve some sort of commemoration.  But doesn’t this study qualify as “wasting time and taxpayer resources?”

Cross-posted From The Madison Project

One of the most salient messages from Obama’s State of the Union Address is that he is unwilling to take responsibility for any of his failures.  Instead, he took credit for successful policies that he opposed, and ascribed blame on others for failed policies that he supported.

Here is just a partial list of some of his most hypocritical moments:

Iraq

“For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq.”

Obama fought tooth and nail to oppose the surge of troops and force that helped defeat the insurgency in Iraq.  In fact, his entire political career and successful run for president was born out of his opposition to the surge.  Yet, he has the impertinence to take credit for the success of policies he tried to defeat.

War on Terror and Afghanistan

“For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.  Most of al Qaeda’s top lieutenants have been defeated.  The Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.”

Obama has forced our troops to fight with egregious rules of engagement, zero intelligence from interrogations, inferior force, and looming cuts to our weapons and war craft.  While our troops are fighting valiantly, yet dying in scores because of the tepid war effort, Obama is negotiating with the Taliban.  Biden believes that the Taliban are not our enemy, and as such, the administration has released many of the most dangerous terrorists from captivity.  We are propping up a failed government that will make peace with the Taliban – the very threat that we sought to eradicate in the first place ten years ago.

Yet, Obama has the audacity to claim victory in the war on terror?

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It’s that time of year again – time to formulate the FY 2013 federal budget.  Like every family, business, and organization, the federal government must draft an annual budget.  Unfortunately, Obama and the Democrats treat this fundamental necessity with callous disregard.

Pursuant to the 1974 Budget Act, the president must submit a budget to Congress on the first Monday in February, roughly seven months prior to the start of the new fiscal year.  After reviewing the budget, along with analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), each house of Congress must pass its own budget resolution by April 15.

Yesterday, the White House announced that they will disregard the law and submit the budget a week later on February 13, even though they had an entire year to work on it.  Actually, this is the third year that Obama will submit a tardy budget.  For those keeping score, he’s only been president for three years.  This might appear to be a minor banal detail; however, it is profoundly emblematic of this administration’s apathy for fiscal prudence and balanced budgets.

There is an obvious reason why there is a lack of alacrity on the part of Obama to submit a budget.  Last year, Obama submitted a $3.8 trillion budget with a record $1.6 trillion deficit, even though numerous tax hikes were included in the budget.  He proposed $46 trillion in new spending over 10 years, with a projected deficit of $7.2 trillion, even with unrealistically optimistic economic forecasts.  To put that in practical terms, Obama’s proposed deficits would have cost every taxpayer over $67,000.  His budget was such an embarrassment that not a single Democrat voted for it in the Senate.  No wonder he is uncomfortable releasing his FY 2013 budget!

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Immediately prior to the congressional recess in December, Congress passed an inefficacious two-month extension of the Social Security tax cut.  Additionally, they reauthorized another two months of unprecedented long-term unemployment benefits, along with more spending for Medicare ‘doc fix.’  None of it, including the entitlement spending, was paid for in any meaningful way.

Nevertheless, you might ask, didn’t we get the Keystone pipeline as part of the deal?  Well, in reality we got nothing.

Last week, Obama announced that he will deny the requisite permit to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, a decision that will cost thousands of jobs, billions in revenue from royalties, and cheaper products for all consumers.  Even though Obama was required to issue the permit within 60 days of passage of the payroll tax deal last December, the text of the amendment (Title V) offered Obama the following loophole:

(b) Exception.–

(1) IN GENERAL.–The President shall not be required to grant the permit under subsection (a) if the President determines that the Keystone XL pipeline would not serve the national interest.

(2) REPORT.–If the President determines that the Keystone XL pipeline is not in the national interest under paragraph (1), the President shall, not later than 15 days after the date of the determination, submit to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives, the majority leader of the Senate, the minority leader of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the minority leader of the House of Representatives a report that provides a justification for determination, including consideration of economic, employment, energy security, foreign policy, trade, and environmental factors.

Despite the fact that TransCanada has spent over three years complying with regulations and sundry environmental impact studies, Obama still has the power to issue a faux report deeming the pipeline a risk to our environment.  That is exactly what he will do this week.

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One of the numerous legislative deadlines that Congress will be forced to confront this session is the expiration of the 8th short-term extension of the 2005 surface transportation authorization law (SAFETEA-LU).  With federal transportation spending growing beyond its revenue source, an imbalance between donor and recipient states, inefficient and superfluous construction projects popping up all over the country, and burdensome mass transit mandates on states, it is time to inject some federalism into transportation spending.

Throughout the presidential campaign, many of the candidates have expressed broad views of state’s rights, while decrying the expansion of the federal government.  In doing so, some of the candidates have expressed the conviction that states have the right to implement tyranny or pick winners and losers, as long as the federal government stays out of it.  Romneycare and state subsidies for green energy are good examples.  The reality is that states don’t have rights; they certainly don’t have the power to impose tyranny on citizens by forcing them to buy health insurance or regulating the water in their toilet bowels – to name a few.  They do, however, reserve powers under our federalist system of governance to implement legitimate functions of government.  A quintessential example of such a legitimate power is control over transportation and infrastructure spending.

The Highway Trust Fund was established in 1956 to fund the Interstate Highway System (IHS).  The fund, which is administered by the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration, has been purveyed by the federal gasoline tax, which now stands at 18.4 cents per gallon (24.4 for diesel fuel).  Beginning in 1983, Congress began siphoning off some of the gas tax revenue for the great liberal sacred cow; the urban mass transit system.  Today, mass transit receives $10.2 billion in annual appropriations, accounting for a whopping 20% of transportation spending.  Additionally, the DOT mandates that states use as much as 10% of their funding for all sorts of local pork projects, such as bike paths and roadside flowers.

As a result of the inefficiencies and wasteful mandates of our top-down approach to transportation spending, trust fund outlays have exceeded its revenue source by an average of $12 billion per year, even though the IHS – the catalyst for the gasoline tax – has been completed for 20 years.  In 2008, the phantom trust fund was bailed out with $35 billion in general revenue, and has been running a deficit for the past few years.  Congress has not passed a 6-year reauthorization bill since 2005, relying on a slew of short-term extensions, the last of which is scheduled to expire on March 31.

Short-term funding is no way to plan for long-term infrastructure projects.  In their alacrity to gobble up the short-term money before it runs out, state and local governments tend to use the funds on small time and indivisible projects, such as incessant road repaving, instead of better planned long-term projects.

It’s time for a long-term solution, one which will inject much-needed federalism and free-market solutions into our inefficient and expensive transportation policy.

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Earlier today, the House voted to disapprove of Obama’s request for an additional $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling.  Needless to say, they failed to garner the requisite two-thirds majority to preclude Obama from issuing more debt.  The total federal debt will inexorably rise to at least $16.4 trillion by the end of the year.

But wait.  Didn’t we pass a Budget Control Act to usher in a new era of budget austerity?

On August 1, the total federal debt stood at $14,342,358,440,969.10.  Today, it stands at $15,236,288,061,558.65.  That’s an increase of $894 billion.  What’s the significance of August 1?  That is the day Congress passed the Budget Out-of-Control Act.  It took us from the country’s founding until 1982 to accrue $894 billion in debt, yet we have accomplished that in a half year.

Thus, on average, we have incurred an additional $5.26 billion in debt since passage of the debt deal.  That’s $219 million per hour.

As Senator DeMint noted today, “This isn’t what winning looks like.”

Nothing typifies the inane cycle of government dependency and poverty more than the issue of healthcare.  Given that healthcare constitutes 18% of our economy and that millions of Americans are languishing under its crushing costs, it is important that we articulate healthcare reform from a position of strength.  We must demonstrate how it is socialist interventions in the marketplace that are responsible for high costs.  We must demonstrate how our policies will bring costs under control.

When discussing entitlements, conservatives must remember that the goal of healthcare reform is not to merely cut its costs to the federal budget; it is to alleviate the burden of government-run healthcare on the entire healthcare sector.  Any proposal to tweak the outlays for programs such as Medicare, without fundamentally reforming their anti-free-market structure, will only achieve minor savings, cause pain for those suffering from healthcare inflation, and incur the wrath of the largest voting bloc.

Medicare is socialized medicine for those over 65 in all but name only.  Its very presence in the market as the 800-pound gorilla has a counterintuitive effect of driving up the cost of healthcare, thereby forcing people to remain dependent on its broad shoulders.  Unless Medicare (along with Medicaid) is reformed as a defined contribution voucher system, instead of an open-ended market distorting behemoth, any attempt to raise the eligibility age or cut benefits would severely squeeze older healthcare consumers.

Now we learn that such a proposal would fail to stem the unsustainable trajectory of Medicare costs.

Last week, CBO published a report which suggests that a plan to gradually raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 would save $148 billion over 10 years.  That may sound like a large sum, but when compared to projected outlays, it is infinitesimal.  According to the most recent CBO budget outlook, Medicare outlays will top $7.4 trillion over the next 10 years, with a 75-year unfunded obligation of $35 trillion.  And that is probably a conservative estimate.  Thus, pulling the trigger on raising the retirement age and incurring the wrath of seniors will only reduce outlays from $7.4 trillion to $7.25 trillion.  We’ll be broke before we reach that point anyway.

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As we forge ahead to the new legislative session, it is important that we internalize the lessons of the dismal failures from last session.

Most of the dominant and sundry legislative battles last year can be explicated by the inane cycle of Republican capitulation.  It goes something like this:

Democrats propose some odious and profligate legislative idea or budget bill.  Conservatives advocate that we uproot the entire premise of the destructive legislation by drawing a line in the sand on the principles that got us elected.  Republican leaders eschew conservative principles and acquiesce to the premise that the Democrat legislation or budget is a priority too big to fail.  They telegraph the message to Democrats that they will never let the budget bill or stimulus proposal fail, but promise to make them pay for it with reforms or other spending offsets.

Inevitably, Democrats unite against the GOP leadership proposal, and we are left with the GOP caving on the spending without the offsets.  Then they unequivocally swear to stick it to the Democrats during the next budget battle by finally utilizing their leverage.  Repeat and rinse and needed.  As the saying goes, the rest is history.

The overarching lesson is that once you emphatically communicate to Democrats that you will ultimately pass their legislation or you will never take the budget fight or the debt fight to the brink, you have already lost the battle.  You can garrulously demand concessions and spending offsets until you are blue in the face, but Democrats will wait you out until the deadline.  Once you give away your leverage, there is nothing left to fight for.

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Pursuant to the Budget Control Act, brought to you by the GOP leadership’s sellout, Obama notified Congress yesterday that the federal debt is approaching the statutory ceiling of $15.194 trillion. [The actual total debt is already $15.237 trillion, but a small amount is not subject to the limit.]  As such, he is calling on Congress to grant him another $1.2 trillion in debt, conveniently enough to last him until after the election, with the possibility of saddling his successor with a tough decision over yet another debt limit increase.  It is really more of a notification than a request.  Obama will automatically receive his $1.2 trillion supercharged credit card unless two-thirds of Congress votes to disapprove of the request within 15 days.

In just three years, he has accrued $4.6 trillion in debt, more than Bush amassed during his entire eight-year tenure.  Now he will add another $1.2 trillion by the end of his first term, and, thanks to the horrendous budget deal, which was cheered on by the same outlets that are now fawning over Mitt Romney, there’s nothing we can do about it.

But here’s the question: If Congress is in recess and cannot fulfill its responsibility to advice and consent, as the President has suggested, how can Obama fulfill his obligation of submitting a certification to Congress?

The Budge Control Act requires the following of Obama:

“the President submits a written certification to Congress that the President has determined that the debt subject to limit is within $100,000,000,000 of the limit in section 3101(b) and that further borrowing is required to meet existing commitments, the Secretary of the Treasury may exercise authority to borrow an additional $900,000,000,000, subject to the enactment of a joint resolution of disapproval enacted pursuant to this section. Upon submission of such certification, the limit on debt provided in section 3101(b) (referred to in this section as the ‘debt limit’) is increased by $400,000,000,000.”

Is this submission invalid?  Do we need a new submission to start the 15 days Congress has to disapprove of the increase in debt?  How was the House able to file the resolution of disapproval and set up a vote for next week?   After all, Congress is all but gone, according to Obama.

If Obama wants Congress to issue $1.2 trillion of debt while their gone, imagine what they can do when they’re “in session.”

Irrespective of the outcome of the presidential primaries, it is highly unlikely that we will nominate a reliable and consistent conservative.  Unfortunately, with the exceptions of Coolidge, Goldwater, and Reagan, we never do.  Not on a presidential level.  This year we might nominate someone who is not a conservative at all.  Perforce, our most important task going forward (aside for defeating Obama) is to win majorities in both houses of Congress.

What is even more essential is that we elect enough reliable conservatives – ones who will keep their campaign pledges – that we will not be relegated to the minority in those majorities.  With the prospect of electing an unpredictable Republican president, in conjunction with tepid leadership in Congress, it is vital that we choose Republicans who will stand on principle, not benchwarmers who will merely serve as yes-men for leadership.

Last year, many of us thought we achieved a historic breakthrough by electing 87 “Tea Party” freshmen.  Undoubtedly, many of them have been stalwart fighters for liberty and the limited government principles that buoyed them into office.  Unfortunately, many of them voted for the debt deal and every single spending bill, in violation of multiple campaign pledges.  Indeed, many of them are anything but Tea Party leaders.

One of the unwavering and indefatigable members of the freshmen class, Mick Mulvaney, had this to say about his fellow rookies:

“I would be embarrassed to tell you how many folks ran saying that they weren’t going to spend a bunch of money, they weren’t going to raise the debt ceiling, and then they went to Washington, D.C., and did exactly that.” My dad told me something long before I was in politics, and when your dad gives you advice every single day, eventually one or two of the things stick in your mind. And he said, don’t believe what people say, believe what they do.”

“We cannot have another experience like we’ve had in my freshman class, of people saying one thing and doing another.”

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April 12, 2006 is a day that will live on in infamy.  That was the day that then-Gov. Mitt Romney signed his signature socialized healthcare bill into law with Ted Kennedy standing over his shoulder.  It was the first time in American history that government of any sort compelled its citizenry to purchase health insurance.  It served as the catalyst for an individual mandate on a federal level, paving the road for Obamacare.

At the time, John Kerry heaped accolades on Romney, ominously suggesting that “we really need to be doing that on the national level.” Ted Kennedy praised it as “just what the doctor ordered,” and observed that we “may well have fired a shot heard round the world.”  It took less than four years for the shot to metastasize into a bombardment – one that will permanently attenuate our free-enterprise economy.

So how did Romney feel about his signature accomplishment of an otherwise uninspiring one-term tenure as governor?

At the time of its passage, Romney dubbed it as a “once in a generation” achievement.  He referred to his magnum opus, which created subsidies for government run exchanges (larger than those created under Obamacare), as a “landmark” achievement “to get all of our citizens insurance without some new government-mandated takeover.”

From Romney’s perspective, did he consider final passage of MassCare a meritorious ideal or a mediocre compromise watered down by the Democrat legislature?

Well, immediately after he signed the bill into law, he told Newsweek reporter Jennifer Barrett that “the final legislation incorporates about 95 percent of my original proposal.”

At the time, did Romney feel that the framework for his healthcare plan was a virtuous policy endeavor for the rest of the nation?

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At this point, residents of South Carolina are already getting tired of those TV ads and documentaries detailing the destruction wrought by Romneycare.  They are jaded by the flashing screens of middle class sob stories from respectable Massachusetts taxpayers – taxpayers who never requested handouts – being forced to struggle with skyrocketing health insurance costs as a result of the market-distortions engendered by Romneycare.

Every South Carolina resident can recite the now infamous closing line of the anti-Romney ads by heart: “shall we nominate the grandfather of Obamacare to run against its father?”

Oh, wait.  Those ads never ran.

Amidst this week’s contretemps over Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, for some reason, we are obscuring the real albatross around Romney’s neck; the issue of healthcare.  While Romney’s record at Bain might provide Obama with his biggest campaign weapon, Romneycare will disarm Romney, and by extension, all Republicans, of our biggest campaign weapon, namely, Obamacare.  And while Bain might provide Romney’s Republican opponents with a useful political argument (Romney’s electability problems in the general election), it does not provide them with a prudent and virtuous ideological argument.  Romneycare, on the other hand, provides the Mitt-alternatives with inviolable ideological arguments as well as political ones.

Romneycare is the antecedent to Obamacare.  It dramatically distorted the free-market of private insurance; it dumped a few hundred thousand people onto federally funded Medicaid; it set up gov’t-run exchanges that disincentivize success and offer larger subsidies than those proposed in Obamacare; it placed unreasonable mandates on employers to fund their employee’s healthcare.  The net result of Romneycare was the archetypical outcome of every statist policy; the price of a vital service was purposely distorted as a means of enticing more people to become dependent upon government.

Yes, it was all orchestrated by state government, not the federal government.  Such a rationalization, according to Mitt, will ameliorate all of Romneycare’s vices – vices that are identical to those inherent in Obamacare.  Somehow, regressive statism is desirable simply because Romney had the “right” to implement it as governor of a state.

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At the beginning of the 112^th Congress, as part of an effort to inject more transparency into the legislative process, the House adopted a rule requiring that each bill be accompanied by a Constitutional Authority Statement.  The purpose of the rule was to expose the cavalier attitude of those members who desire to legislate ‘just because they can.’

Well, after a year of legislating under this rule, it appears that we are in serious need of accountability measures to provide some clarity and specificity to the authority statement.  Otherwise, the rule will be regarded as yet another “transparency” gimmick of Congress.

Republican congressional staffers combed through almost 3800 bills and joint resolutions that have been introduced this year, in an effort to gauge the clarity and specificity of the Constitutional Authority Statements.  For the most part, the results are pretty pathetic.  Here are some of their key findings:

• Overall, 945 bills contained authority statements which do not reference a specific power granted by the Constitution.  Many of these merely cited “Article 1” or “Article 1 Section 1” “Article 1 Section 8.” In other words, they just cited the fact that Congress has the power to legislate, but failed to divulge which constitutional power or specific clause is supporting their legislation.
• There were 732 bills which only referenced the commerce clause, 660 which only referenced the general welfare clause, and 321 which mentioned the necessary and proper clause without reference to a previous Constitutional clause to which the necessary and proper clause might apply.
• In total, there were 2658 Constitutional Authority Statements that were either questionable or vague.  That represents roughly 69% of all bills and resolutions introduced in the 1^st Session of the 112^th Congress.
• While more of the vague citations are attributable to Democrat bill sponsors, many Republicans were lax in offering meaningful authority statements.  Almost as many Republicans used the inexplicit commerce clause as Democrats.

After the first year of the Constitutional Authority rule, it is clear that it has failed to dissuade members from proposing frivolous legislation.  At a minimum, every authority statement should detail the specific clause and power that authorizes the legislation.  Moreover, the statement should be accompanied by a brief explanation describing the reason why there is a constitutional mandate for that particular bill.  Without further improvements, this rule is just a waste of ink and paper.

Almost two and a half years since the recession officially ended, we are finally observing a modest recovery in the job market.  Even if we discount the 42,000 new holiday season jobs for “couriers and messengers,” there is clearly some jobs growth in key sectors of the economy.  Unfortunately, aside for the fact that the recovery is languid and underwhelming by historical standards, it is also unwholesome.  Our economic recovery is similar to a computer that is repaired from a serious virus; it functions adequately but is never the same.  In other words, we are reaping the benefits of a government-managed Keynesian recovery.

During 2008-2009, instead of letting the economy settle and enjoy a robust recovery through the perennial business cycle, the Bush and Obama administrations engaged in fiscal stimulus, monetary stimulus, housing stimulus, bailouts, and takeovers of major industries.  Perforce, our economy, as much is it will inevitably recover, will be fundamentally weaker than it was prior to the recession.  Historically, we have always come out of recessions in a stronger position than prior to the economic downturn, but not this time.

Nothing is more emblematic of our permanently damaged economy than the interminable shrinkage of our labor force.  Our labor force is roughly 850,000 smaller than it was when the recession ended in middle of 2009, even though the civilian population of working age people has increased by roughly 4 million.  At this point in the Reagan recovery, the labor force had expanded by 4 million.

The labor force participation rate has steadily declined from 65.7% in mid-2009 to 64.0%, even as unemployment has eased.  During that same period, almost another 200,000 people gave up looking for work.  If the participation rate were back to its recent average, the U3 unemployment rate would be well over 11%.  This is not even accounting for the U6 number of underemployed and part-time workers, which is still astronomically high (15.2%).  Overall, 23.7 million are either out of work or underemployed.

Oh, and what about the fact that the Black unemployment rate has climbed another 0.8% to 15.8% over the past three months?  Is this good news?  Or is it more soft bigotry of low expectations?

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Let’s face it: the ABC News New Hampshire debate was the worst debate of the entire election cycle.  And that is saying something, considering the sheer volume of debates.  How many years and election cycles will it take before Republicans learn to turn to conservatives as moderators for presidential debates, instead of washed up Democrat hacks disguised as journalists?

Now, to the extent that such a pathetic debate is worthy of any analysis, the clear winner was Mitt Romney.  Watching the debate, you’d think Ron Paul was the frontrunner.  All of the verbal altercations played out between Ron Paul and one of the other candidates.  Romney was able to sit pretty throughout the entire debate, except for one monologue from Santorum at the end of the debate.  Undoubtedly, the platform for the debate, along with the inane questions, wasn’t exactly conducive to attacking Romney’s liberal record as governor.  However, they all had an opportunity during the opening salvo of the debate.  They failed miserably.

The candidates were given an opportunity to assail Romney’s business record at Bain Capital as a job killer.  Gingrich and Santorum should have parried the question and gone after Romney on his record in politics.  They should have praised Romney’s record as a businessman while ticking off his liberal vices and his terrible record as Governor, most prominently, his record on healthcare.  They should have decried the fact that we are on the precipice of nominating Obama’s inspiration for Obamacare as his successor.  Instead, they chose an awkward position – one that placed them to Romney’s left on free-market entrepreneurship.  Why attack his record as a CEO when you can destroy him on his liberal record as governor?  This was the biggest mistake on the part of those who are seeking to derail Romney.

To be sure, it was refreshing to hear Santorum finally take Romney to task for his class system rhetoric; however, he obviated his argument by making “blue collar worker” a prominent part of his lexicon.  Santorum should have also used that response as an opportunity to attack Romneycare for its inherent class warfare.  Romneycare disincentivizes success and upward mobility by offering greater subsidies for lower income earners.

I still can’t get over the fact that we are about to nominate the godfather of market-distorting government-run healthcare in an election against government-run healthcare.  This is insane.

Yesterday, Barack Obama engaged in one of the most unprecedented assaults on the Constitution.  He appointed Richard Cordray as the first chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and named three new members to the National Labor Relations Board, even though the Senate did not approve them and is not in recess.  Obama employed absurd casuistry to suggest that the Senate has in fact been in recess for weeks:

Here are the facts:  The Constitution gives the President the authority to make temporary recess appointments to fill vacant positions when the Senate is in recess, a power all recent Presidents have exercised.  The Senate has effectively been in recess for weeks, and is expected to remain in recess for weeks.  In an overt attempt to prevent the President from exercising his authority during this period, Republican Senators insisted on using a gimmick called “pro forma” sessions, which are sessions during which no Senate business is conducted and instead one or two Senators simply gavel in and out of session in a matter of seconds.  But gimmicks do not override the President’s constitutional authority to make appointments to keep the government running.  Legal experts agree.  In fact, the lawyers who advised President Bush on recess appointments wrote that the Senate cannot use sham “pro forma” sessions to prevent the President from exercising a constitutional power.

You might have been at the golf course on December 23, Mr. President, but here are the real facts.  On that day, during a “gimmicky” pro forma session, the House and Senate passed a sweeping tax extenders bill, which granted tax cuts to almost every worker, unemployment benefits to millions of the jobless, and reimbursement payments to hundreds of thousands of healthcare providers.  That is much more consequential than a few agency appointments.  If Congress can do all that during a “recess,” they certainly have the ability to advise and consent on a handful of executive branch nominations.

And if a pro forma session is indeed considered a recess, can we now vitiate the ridiculous two-month extenders package?  What if Congress would send you another stimulus bill to sign during a “gimmick” pro-forma session; would you reject it?  As you know, Mr. President, many consequential things can occur during those few “seconds.”

Update: House Democrats seem to disagree with Obama.  They held a press conference calling on Republicans to come back to Washington and join them in working on the conference committee for the extenders package.  That’s some recess going on there.

The results of the Iowa Caucuses are in.  To the extent that you can draw conclusions from the votes of 123,000 individuals, here are some quick observations.

1) The Media will invariably focus on which conservative candidates should drop out.  They will also focus on the fact that there is nobody who has a definitive roadmap to defeat Romney.  But the larger point they will overlook is how much the Republican electorate dislikes Romney.  He spent million of dollars in 2008 and got crushed by Huckabee.  He spent millions of dollars this year, yet he failed to improve on his 2008 showing (Santorum spent just $30,000 on ads).  The punchline is that 75% of GOP voters are willing to vote for anyone anyone against Romney.

2) It appears that Romney’s base of support is limited to rich secular voters.  That’s not exactly the appeal you want to have going into this election.  There is very little overlap between Romney’s 2008 voters and his current supporters.  In other words, he is last cycle’s McCain.

3) As we head into New Hampshire and South Carolina, I have a feeling that Romney will finally incur aggressive and sustained attacks from multiple candidates.  In particular, Newt is seeking his revenge – to the extent that he wants Romney to lose more than he wants to win himself.

4) With 27% of the electorate being Independent voters, and Ron Paul garnering support of almost half those voters, can we finally end this nonsense of having non-Republicans vote in a Republican primary/caucus?

5) With the prospects of electing a conservative president becoming dimmer by the day, we really need to divert some of our attention to the congressional races.  In a presidential election year, all of the primaries are much earlier, including those for Senate and House candidates.  We need to mobilize for conservatives down the ticket.  Our Republican president will need a strong conservative Congress to prevent a rehash of the 2001-2006 era of compassionate conservatism.

6) The most important observation from Iowa?  Republicans are dramatically underwhelmed by the current field.  In a year when Republicans are fired up to defeat Obama, they barley broke the 2008 turnout record, and when the increase in Independent voters is factored in, there were probably less Republican voters this time around.  Unlike previous elections, there is a huge opportunity for a conservative candidate to enter the race and sweep the field.  Unless someone else gets in, Gingrich appears to be the only one who still has a decent level of national support to drag Romney into a protracted primary battle.

7) On a personal level, I’ve always said that I would support the anti-Romney whomever that would be (except for Paul), just as I would support any Republicans nominee against Obama in the general election.  For now, with Perry headed back to Texas and Santorum with little support outside of Iowa, it appears that Newt is the only hope for those who proudly declare: Mittens Delenda Est.  McCain’s impending endorsement of Romney will only galvanize us to kill (politically, of course) two Republican imposters with one stone.