Over the past few months, we have witnessed a dynamic in Washington in which House leadership is passing liberal legislation with support from the Democrat caucus. Instead of using their unfettered control over the House to advance conservative legislation and jam the Senate with popular bills, they are playing defense on Senate-passed legislation. On other occasions, they have wasted valuable legislative days on suspension bills | Read More »
If we’ve come to the point where Republicans believe that dealing with domestic violence is within the purview of the federal government, we should just stick a fork in the party. Yet, not only do Republicans in the House plan to reauthorize the wasteful and politically-motivated Violence Against Women Act, they plan to pass the Senate version (S.47), which contains egregious anomalies. The Senate bill | Read More »
Note: Kerry Bentivolio has already been endorsed by Erick. This is my endorsement on behalf of The Madison Project. This election cycle, Michigan’s 11th district might prove to be the biggest gift to conservatives. This oddly shaped district, which covers parts of Oakland and Wayne counties in eastern Michigan, was represented by the quirky, pro-labor Thad McCotter for the past decade. Nobody paid attention to | Read More »
Last week, the House Agriculture Committee marked up the preposterous $957 billion farm/food stamp bill (H.R. 6083). Despite the media reports about severe cuts to the food stamp program, this bill actually locks in the appalling levels of spending established in the Obama-era. In many respects, the committee votes from last week shed light on the problem we have with many red state statists within | Read More »
While we are struggling to repeal the government takeover of healthcare, a bipartisan bicameral group of politicians are further entrenching government control of Agriculture. They are also agreeing to enshrine Obama’s food stamp spending into the welfare system indefinitely. We have witnessed a robust counteroffensive against the farm/food stamp bill among great writers and policy makers in the conservative movement. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many | Read More »
Even as gas prices decline, we must not relent in our pursuit of free market energy solutions. Gas prices will continue to spike every few months as long as we refuse to increase supply to meet our energy needs. Moreover, $3.40 per gallon of gasoline – or even $3 per gallon – is too much. We must not let Obama off the hook for continuing | Read More »
In 1975, Ronald Reagan declared that we need a Republican Party that will raise “a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people.” Almost 40 years later, we’re still struggling to provide that bold contrast. Case in point: the Farm Bill (S. 3240). Several weeks ago, Senate Democrats, with | Read More »
The House just completed work on another FY 2013 spending bill; the Transportation-HUD Appropriations bill. This is a unique appropriations bill because most of the underlying content is an anathema to conservatives. A good part of transportation (highway spending) should be within the purview of state governments; mass transit spending should be eliminated; HUD should be abolished altogether. As you can imagine, the open floor | Read More »
Every Republican swears up and down that he/she supports limited government, a balanced budget, and free markets. Yet, once again, only a fraction of Republicans in Washington were able to stand for those ideals. The House and Senate passed the Obama highway bill/student loan stimulus on Friday with overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress. [Read more about the bill here and here.] Among other things, | Read More »
While everyone is focused on how to deal with the impending government takeover of healthcare, we must continue to battle the forces of big-government in Congress. Yesterday, in another display of venerable bipartisanship, leaders from both parties agreed to roll the $120 billion Democrat highway bill, subsidies to fuel the Big Education bubble, and a 5-year extension of government-run flood insurance into one omnibus bill, | Read More »
While everyone is waiting breathlessly to see whether the Supreme Court will strike down Obama’s egregious power grab in the healthcare sector, a bipartisan group of congressmen and senators are working to grow government in several other sectors of the economy. We must not be complacent. In our battle to shrink the size of the federal government, there have been a number of issues on | Read More »
In what was supposed to be a snoozer election night, a little known conservative candidate, Jim Bridenstine, came out of nowhere to unseat 10-year veteran John Sullivan in conservative Oklahoma District 1. He did so by a 7-point margin, even though he was outspent 4-1 and nobody gave him any hope of succeeding. Even among many politicos who woke up to read about this astonishing sleeper | Read More »
As we’ve noted several times this year, there is a concerted effort to overturn the earmark ban in the House and reinstate some form of this onerous practice. Some conservatives might fall prey to the argument that we should focus our attention on the big-ticket items rather than the chump change that is spent on earmarks. That would be a serious mistake. If the practice | Read More »
We often hear pro-abortion activists caution conservative judicial nominees that they must follow the decision of Roe v Wade, irrespective of their personal views on abortion. Yet we never hear these same activists warn Democrats to follow laws they personally disdain. Roe v Wade was merely a Supreme Court decision; our immigration laws were duly passed by Congress. Even those who embrace open borders and | Read More »
When observing the chaos that big union bosses have interleaved into the labor market, you instinctively think of the above-market wages that are forced upon employers (and taxpayers, in the case of public-sector unions) as a result of the monopolistic collective bargaining contracts. However, what is even more deleterious is the limitation on paying individual workers more than their contract dictates. Believe it or not, | Read More »
This week, the House debated and passed the FY13 Energy-Water appropriations bill, which primarily funds the Energy Department and agencies within the Department of Interior. While House leadership claims to support a balanced budget, they are not willing to eliminate the requisite number of programs needed to achieve that goal. As conservatives, we believe that the entire Department of Energy – except for the nuclear | Read More »
Among the many Republican capitulations we have witnessed over the past year, one of the most egregious is their willingness to support the Senate highway bill. We’ve chronicled the problems with the highway bill extensively in these pages over the past few months. Aside for the policy issues, the cost of the bill is most problematic because it will engender future bailouts. The $109 billion | Read More »
There’s an enduring rule in all aspects of life that is very applicable to conservatives in politics. Whenever you achieve a rare, hard-fought victory, you do everything possible to ensure that the victory stays intact. The House-adopted earmark ban is one of our biggest achievements over the past decade. As such, we must not reinstate the practice of passing Miscellaneous Tariff Bills (MTBs), which are | Read More »
There is perhaps nothing as destructive to the free market as the federal government’s stranglehold over the agriculture sector. There is also nothing as detrimental to the GOP’s ability to draw a bold contrast on free markets, dependency, spending, and crony capitalism, as their willingness to support 5-year farm bills. Current farm policy creates inveterate dependency in some of the most conservative corners of the | Read More »
**Updated below** One would think that all Republicans would realize that not only do labor unions want to destroy the economy; they want to destroy the Republican Party. Last night, while Scott Walker was launching his counteroffensive against the onslaught of Big Labor during the debate against Barrett, dozens of Republicans voted to reinstate special handouts to the labor bosses. Late last night, the House | Read More »
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