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 »
While Obama has spent the past two years pandering to leftist dictators in Latin America, he has also impeded ratification of free trade agreements with our allies. Along with Democrat leaders in Congress, Obama has refused to approve the 5-year-old trade pacts with Columbia, Panama, and South Korea unless Republicans agree to renew a trade subsidy program known as Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA). Yesterday, Senator | Read More »
In recent years, the job of United States Senator has evidently been added to the list of ‘jobs that Americans won’t do.’ Harry Reid’s Senate has categorically shirked its core constitutional responsibility by refusing to pass a budget for over two years. Concurrently, the Senate has been preoccupied with feckless, unconstitutional legislation that fails to deal with any of the paramount public policy problems facing | Read More »
This week’s legislative schedule in both houses of Congress will provide Republicans (and faux moderate Democrats) a unique opportunity to efface farm welfare by eliminating ethanol credits/tariffs and direct farm subsidies. On the House side, the annual Agriculture Appropriations bill is expected to hit the floor as early as Tuesday. Earlier this month, the Appropriations Committee passed the FY 2012 Ag bill, cutting $2.6 billion | Read More »
The Democrats have a penchant for advancing their big government dreams through the insidious use of unelected members of government. To that end, Obama has nominated radical ideologues to judgeships and executive agencies since the beginning of his presidency. Another unelected body of the federal government that is rapidly becoming a fourth branch is the Federal Reserve. Due to the vitality of their creeping economic interventions, | Read More »
Last week, Nevada Senator John Ensign resigned his seat, creating a vacancy on several Senate committees. While Congressman Dean Heller will fill Ensign’s Senate seat, a member with more seniority will be appointed to his coveted slot on the Senate Finance Committee. The Finance Committee is considered a prized “Super-A committee” due to the extent and relevance of its jurisdiction, which includes trade, taxes, Social | Read More »
Over the weekend, Speaker John Boehner showed that he is even more conservative than the Tea Party. While the petulant rubes in the Tea Party were credulously focusing on the ‘small potatoes’ of the 2011 budget, Boehner wisely decided to proceed to the real fight; the debt ceiling and the FY 2012 budget. In the process, he even secured $38 billion, or 1%, in cuts | Read More »
The major legislative item on the agenda in the Senate this week will be The Small Business Reauthorization Act (S. 493). Republicans plan to use this bill as a platform to promote critical pieces of legislation through the process of non-germane amendments to the bill. Here are some vital amendments that will be debated and voted on throughout the week: Senator Mitch McConnell is offering | Read More »
Yesterday, The Columbus Dispatch reported that Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel is leaning towards a run for Senate in 2012. Josh Mandel is precisely the person to take out left-wing kook and famed Nazi hunter, Sherrod Brown. We need Josh in the Senate. Conservatives worked assiduously in 2012 to elect Republicans who would not only oppose Obama’s proposals, but would also stem the tide of 80 | Read More »
Perhaps no politician is more willing to engage in political acrobatics than Joe Manchin. There is no degree to which he will not contort his political statements and ideological alignment in order to obtain and retain power in West Virginia. Manchin aired an infamous TV ad depicting himself taking aim at the cap and trade bill while campaigning to join the anti-gun, pro-’cap and trade’ | Read More »
In 1995, the Republican-controlled House and Senate passed a balanced budget act, which contained a provision to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil drilling and exploration. On December 6th of that year, President Bill Clinton vetoed the bill, ensuring that not a drop of oil would be extracted from the barren land of this 20 million acre area. We have literally been | Read More »
Yesterday, we dinged Senator Coburn for his involvement in the ‘Gang of Six’. Today, we commend him for initiating a GAO report which exposes the contempt in which the statists view taxpayers. Conservatives have always known that the promulgation of government programs was not conceived from some genuine conviction of Keynesian economics, or a professed concern for the recipients. Most government programs serve the function | Read More »
Imagine for a moment a private financial services firm caught running a ponzi scheme in which public funds were spent on lavish projects for the manager’s friends. Astoundingly, instead of incarcerating the perpetrators and returning the money to the investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) negotiates with the criminals. That’s right. The SEC collaborates with the criminal executives to force the public to contribute | Read More »
Well, the dust has settled from the 2010 legislative session, and organizations like National Journal and American Conservative Union have published their annual voting reports. So who are the ‘top conservatives’? You’ll never guess. Here is a list of the ‘top conservatives’ from National Journal and the ACU, along with their composite conservative scores. Check out this link for the description of ACU’s scorecard and | Read More »
Gallup has collected the data from their daily tracking polls throughout 2010 and contrasted the results to the same information from 2009. Not surprisingly, their findings show that Obama has suffered a decline in every state since 2009. His unpopularity is now ubiquitous. Overall, Obama’s national approval rating has dropped 11% from 58% to 47%. Furthermore, the polling data collected from nearly 180,000 interviews shows | Read More »
Jon Kyl’s sudden retirement announcement has set off a domino effect on the ambitions of several Senate Republicans. When Senator Kyl retires in 2012, he will be vacating the position of Senate (Majority, most likely) Whip, in addition to his Arizona Senate seat. Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (RINO, TN), the 3rd ranking member in the GOP leadership, has announced that he will seek the Whip | Read More »
Al right. That is not precisely the title of the latest headline at Roll Call, but it is close. The actual headline reads, “Reid Set a Filibuster Record”. In other words, thanks to RINOs, Harry Reid became the most successful Majority Leader in terms of killing filibusters through cloture. Keep in mind that the Democrats had 60 seats only for a short time during the | Read More »
Back in 2005, when Republicans controlled the House, Senate, and presidency, they were contemplating a “nuclear option” to end the filibuster on judicial nominees. We were all aghast at the unprecedented number of filibusters that were mounted by Democrats to block highly qualified nominees to Federal Appellate courts. At the time, the ever perspicacious George Will warned conservatives of the counter-intuitive consequences of squelching the | Read More »
Richard Lugar has become the leader of the rampaging RINOs. Ever since the November electoral repudiation of liberalism, Lugar has voted for the FDA farm takeover, Amnesty for illegals, and co-sponsored the child nutrition law. Lugar also opposed the moratorium on earmarks. He has also been the chief architect of the near confirmation of the START, unilateral disarmament treaty in the Senate. In fact, he | Read More »
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