Whew! It’s good the Utah primary is over. Now Senator Hatch can relapse into his natural modus operandi. As we’ve noted before, at the end of every calendar year, Congress passes a ‘tax extenders’ bill to temporarily reauthorize specific tax breaks that have not been permanently written into law. Some of these extenders include universal tax cuts such as, the AMT patch, the R&D business | Read More »
It’s becoming clear that many rank-and-file members of the House Republican Conference are chomping at the bit to resurrect earmarks after a two-year moratorium. Some are complaining that earmarks cede authority to the executive branch; others are lamenting the lack of “grease” to facilitate passage of statist legislation; still others are trying to push miscellaneous tariff bills, which violate the rules of the earmark ban. | Read More »
As we’ve noted throughout the past year’s imbroglio over transportation spending, it is clear that complete federal control over transportation spending in a post-interstate highway era (post 1992) is inefficient, costly, anti-federalist, and precludes state and private innovations. Yet, Congress continues to buckle down on a policy that has failed in recent years, exposing taxpayers to future bailouts and tax increases. Worst of all, it | Read More »
If the House highway bill is an excrement sandwich, the Senate version is…well, it’s a lot worse. The one saving grace of the bill was that it supposedly did not contain any earmarks. Well, indeed there is one earmark in the bill, and it’s directed to Nevada. The earmark is ensconced in the bill very cleverly. On page 463 of the bill (lines 8-14), it | Read More »
It’s another week in the Senate, and there’s another battle over earmarks. Senators Toomey and McCaskill are proposing an amendment to the STOCK Act (“insider trading bill”S. 2038) to permanently ban earmarks in the Senate. Not surprisingly, there is pushback from Harry Reid…and a number of Republicans as well. As always, there are those who argue that earmarks are just inconsequential “drop in the bucket” | Read More »
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 | Read More »
At some point we will need to go beyond merely cutting waste, fraud, and abuse. We will eventually have to wind down the welfare state and close government departments and agencies. However, there is no reason we shouldn’t demand an immediate bipartisan effort to eliminate programs that are just plain dumb, even according to Democrat socialist ideology. Nobody has been more assiduous and instrumental in | Read More »
We’ve seen this show before. Republicans propose grand ideas to cut spending and implement free-market reforms; they speak ebulliently about their new ideas, and …they summarily scuttle them and cave to the Democrats. Earlier this year, Republicans proposed a commendable plan to end the bipartisan pork fest of surface transportation spending. Instead of continuing the inexorable expansion of transportation spending, House Transportation Committee Chairman John | Read More »
Earlier today, Barack Obama decried the gridlock that has prevented Congress from passing a long-term surface transportation bill (highway bill) as unacceptable and inexcusable. He also asserted that we must formulate a policy in which funding would be directed to those districts that need it the most, instead of politically motivated pork, such as the bridge to nowhere (which he supported in the Senate). Well, | Read More »
Earlier this month, Senate Democrats brazenly forced a two-week partial shutdown of the FAA. They were willing to hold 4,000 employees hostage and forgo millions in revenue from airline tickets, all for the purpose of securing their inveterate pork projects. Democrats refused to pass the House extension bill because Republicans inserted minor limits on a rural pork program, better known as Essential Air Service (EAS). | Read More »
Update: Despite admitting that his demands are extreme, Harry Reid refused to approve the stopgap funding measure for the FAA, thereby ensuring a partial shutdown until September. Throughout the debt ceiling fight, Harry Reid purported to be the only true compromiser, while painting the Tea Party as extreme hostage takers. However, unlike most hostage takers, tea partiers made no demands of government for their own | Read More »
Amidst the circus surrounding the looming debt ceiling deadline, there is another deadline that is coming due tonight at midnight; funding for the FAA. The Democrats in the Senate are obdurately refusing to pass either a short-term or long-term extension of the FAA reauthorization, threatening to furlough 4,000 precious union workers beginning Saturday. Their rationale? Saving Harry Reid’s rural pork. Much like highway and surface | Read More »
One of the preferred methods liberals use to tax and spend is to create special “trust funds” for particular expenditures, with the intent of hiding the funds within the Treasury’s general fund. The system goes something like this: levy a tax that is supposedly earmarked for a specific expense and impounded in a trust fund (lock box); gradually purloin the fund by using it for | Read More »
Everyone is busy analyzing what the Democrats have learned from the midterm elections. The real question is what Republicans have learned from this election. Within 25 minutes, 8 Republicans voted to continue the practice of pork barrel spending, while 15 voted to give the FDA unlimited power to shut down food producers and cut jobs. Here is a list of the 8 Republicans who voted | Read More »
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