After picking apart the gang bill one issue at a time, I put out a summary of all the issues with the immigration bill for The Madison Project. Here it is for those who have not seen it. Note that some of this might be subject to change after the dust settles from the 350-page manager’s amendment that was tacked onto the bill.
Dear Senator Rubio, As the public finally gets an opportunity to read and analyze the bipartisan gang of 8 immigration bill, it is clear that there will be some irreconcilable differences between your vision of immigration reform and that of many conservatives across the country. However, we should all agree that this is an extremely consequential bill and must go through a long process – | Read More »
The Commerce Clause of the Constitution has been used as a garbage can of left-wing jurisprudence to grant the federal government infinite power over the the citizenry for years. Ironically, the original intent of the Commerce Clause was to serve as a check on state power grabs across state lines, not as a new power for the Feds to wield over the people. Here’s what | Read More »
Did you know that Congress and the President quietly repealed misguided aspects of the Stock Act a few days ago? I thought not. Late in 2011, CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired a sensational news story detailing allegations that lawmakers were profiting from investments spawned by non-public information. Harry Reid seized the moment, and in a highly political calculation, brought the STOCK Act (S. 2038) to the | Read More »
Yesterday, 16 Republicans voted along with the Democrats to break the filibuster against the Reid gun control bill (S.649). Although Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn voted against it, they failed to whip against the vote, exerting no pressure on these wayward Republicans to put the brakes on this fast moving train wreck. The end result is exactly what the Wall Street Journal editorial page advocated | 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 »
There is no breathing room this year for those of us who fight endless GOP capitulations in Washington. Within the first few weeks of the new session, we must confront a grave assault on the Filibuster in the Senate. Harry Reid is plotting some version of the “nuclear option” to limit the filibuster when the Senate convenes to adopt the rules package for the new | Read More »
There is a sad reality we must confront. We have less than 10 reliable conservatives in the Senate. If we ever hope to improve our fortunes in the “House of Lords,” we cannot become complacent and squander even a single opportunity to grow our numbers. We’ve enjoyed successes in Texas and Indiana this year, as well as Nebraska (to a certain extent). The next battle | Read More »
Last week, with the help of Senator Orrin Hatch, the Senate Finance Committee voted to extend dozens of special interest tax preferences for green energy – preferences that are nothing more than subsidies and market distorters. Included in the $205 billion package is the Production Tax Credit, which subsidizes up to 80% of wind energy production. Score one for Big Wind! Other special interest handouts | Read More »
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 »
In recent years, GOP establishment figures have accused the Tea Party of thwarting a Republican majority in the Senate by nominating conservatives whom they believe are unelectable. One would expect them do elicit a commensurate degree of outrage from the following story reported by The Hill: Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) has endorsed Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) in her Senate bid, a surprising move since the | Read More »
It is funny how those who believe Congress has unlimited power to regulate the private sector are abdicating their primary constitutional responsibility. Senate Democrats have not passed a budget in 1,169 days. Last year, despite their failure to comply with the Budget Act of 1974 and to pass a budget resolution, they made an effort to pass a couple of individual appropriations bills. Now Roll | 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 »
If you want to understand the fundamental difference between the pale-pastel and the bold-colored wings of the GOP, take a look at this Politico profile of Jim DeMint. With Kay Bailey Hutchison retiring at the end of the year, Jim DeMint is slated to become the new Chairman of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee in the 113th Congress. It is so unique for a | Read More »
The most important legislative goal for conservatives is to fully repeal Obamacare. If we’ve learned anything from past experiences, it’s that no government entitlement program is ever repealed once the dependency takes root. Once Obamacare is implemented, any discussion of enacting entitlement reform will be moot. It will be too late. That’s why we must act before we run out of time. By now, we | 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 »
Yesterday, Erick mentioned a revolutionary one-stop website designed to hold Republican House members accountable for their voting records. The Madison Project unveiled ConservativeVotingRecords. Com, which houses a simple yet novel index that compares the voting records to the ideological bent of the member’s district. The results are not pretty. 52 members who hail from solid Republican districts scored 20 points below where they should be | Read More »
Barack Obama and the Democrats have promised to make this election a turning point in the fight to make the rich “pay their fair share” of taxes. They are using biblical innuendo to suggest that it is immoral for the top 1% of earners (who happen to make 17% of nation AGI) to only pay 36.7% of the federal income taxes. This is their hill | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}