What could you possibly have been thinking? The ad you have launched featuring a young actress equating voting for you to a sexual act is offensive to me, to millions of women and to the stature of the office you hold. As a father of two beautiful girls, how could you possibly have allowed this to be aired? Did you approve this? Did someone on your campaign staff actually think this was a good idea? It is offensive, repulsive and should be removed immediately. It is beneath the dignity of the office you hold. Mr. President, are you and your Democrat colleagues so focused on sex and reproductive rights that you really think that is the single motivator for women? Are you not aware that women in 2012 are focused on jobs, the economy, economic opportunity? Women are running companies, serving as the human resource director of companies and helping employees solve problems. Women are doctors, lawyers, teachers, sales managers, marketers. They handle problems in the workplace by day and manage their families by night. They are concerned about the healthcare of their families and are the drivers in healthcare decisions, making 85% of all healthcare decisions. Many women are heads of households. Many are the primary wage earners for their families.

Do you know that many women are voting this year because they have $16T reasons to go to the polls? Debt and out of control spending are at the top of their list. They are concerned that you don’t want to pass a budget. They are concerned that the future for their children is being capped and traded to the countries that own our debt. How can you possibly look these moms in the eye when you have equated their vote to ‘the first time’? Are you really serious?

I find it ironic that you have time to approve such a message but you don’t have time to find out what happened in Benghazi . By the way, we are still waiting to hear directly from you when you were told of the attacks. Did you know before you put your head on the pillow that evening that you had an Ambassador and staff that were in danger? Did you know it was a terrorist attack? When you hob-nobbed in Las Vegas, did you know it was not a video? Was getting out on the campaign trail, seeing your Hollywood friends and raising campaign cash more important that fighting terrorism and defending those who are giving their lives to defend us?

Serving as President of the United States is a privilege that is afforded to few in our country. When you became the 44th President, you accepted the responsibilities of preserving this nation and protecting us from foes, foreign and domestic. Sir, you need to reign in the inappropriate behavior, retract your Rolling Stone comments and get this First Time ad off the air. You should be conducting yourself like the American people expect their President to conduct himself.

Marsha Blackburn

Member of Congress

P.S. I can guarantee that I am working my hardest and doing my best to build a victory for my side of the aisle and my candidate, Governor Mitt Romney. And, yes, on November 6, I fully believe that you will find that “we the people” have decided to “be the people.” We are building this victory and will look forward to looking back at this election victory and saying, “Yes, we did build that! We have built this country and it is here to stay!”

Today the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology is examining a dangerous international attempt to regulate and tax the Internet.

Several hostile countries are pursuing the expansion of a 1988 International Telecommunication Regulation (ITR) Treaty under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), an agency within the United Nations. Their preferred venue for this back-door power play is the December 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai.

This morning’s hearing will be watched with great interest around the world as everyone looks to see what the United States says about surrendering exclusive inter-governmental policy controls over things like network governance, technical standards, domain names, content controls, access taxes, cybersecurity and more.

Make no mistake about it: our national sovereignty is at risk. If the expansion of a global legal regime for communication technologies gains traction, the effects to the global economy as well as our individual liberties will be severe.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell has said that several foreign dignitaries personally spoke to him about creating a new Internet user fee to subsidize an international universal service fund at the expense of traditional end users. Countries like Iran and China support an Internet Iron Curtain that would censor political dissidents and deny anonymous activity online through mandatory registrations of IP addresses. Russia’s Vladimir Putin has even openly stated his intention to seek, “international control over the Internet using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the [ITU].”

Thankfully, there’s bipartisan agreement in Congress that we shouldn’t give new authorities to the ITU. We’re rallying behind the decentralized, multi-stakeholder models that have enhanced flexibility and innovation in the past. Even the Obama Administration should be commended for its efforts to help thwart this attempt. However, it’s also frustrating to think about how this Administration undermined our nation’s credibility in this developing fight against international regulations when it superimposed regulations over management of Internet networks in the United States.

Because America leads the world by example it’s no surprise that some might seek to imitate our domestic rules and regulations on a global scale. Despite our own failures to reign-in the regulatory Leviathan at the FCC, we now need a serious game plan that deals with those who would put international politics ahead of an open and prosperous Internet. We may have our differences on domestic telecommunications policy, but having those policies decided at the international level would be the worst thing for the Internet.

Today’s open and free Internet is an empowering force for good in our world. That’s why we need your voice – tell your Member of Congress and this Administration to beat back any ploy to internationalize control over the Internet. When you do it also ask them to hold our domestic telecommunications regulators at the FCC more accountable, too.

Every new rule, mandate, and regulatory edict is one more obstacle that small business owners, entrepreneurs, and job creators have to swallow. That holds especially true for our dynamic and competitive tech industry, which I have worked hard to protect from Big Government intrusion. Unfortunately, the tech industry is not immune to Obama’s regulatory capture, and it looks like America’s iconic innovators might be next on Obama’s hit list.

Most people don’t realize that the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) reach extends to one-sixth of our economy. Most people don’t know that in the last 50 years the FCC’s rules – measured in pages – have grown 800 percent. And now the FCC’s sister agency – the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – has its tentacles deep into the privacy debate, data security, and control over advertising practices.

As in all sectors, excessive regulation kills — regardless who your regulator is.

What’s worse is that the federal government fundamentally misunderstands the tech industry even more than it misunderstands health care, finance, and energy. Technology is characterized by constant change, rapid innovation, creative destruction, and revolutionary products. The technology sector moves 500 times faster than the detached delusions that dominate Big Government agencies. The fact is we don’t know where this industry is going, how technologies will converge, what competition will look like, or what products consumers will want in the future.

If Obama’s regulators were tasked with ensuring playground safety, the first thing they would do is ban monkey-bars, swing-sets, slides, and the ever-dangerous see-saw. A bloody nose in West Tennessee would “force” them to ban running, skipping, and foursquare. In all likelihood, they wouldn’t be content until recess was outlawed entirely. To be fair, these actions would protect our kids from a few sprained ankles, scraped knees, and hurt feelings. But at what price?

At what price are we willing to imprison American businesses in a regulatory straightjacket? At what price are we willing to destroy what works? At what price are we willing crush innovation and ship tech jobs overseas? We must consider the unintended consequences of excessive regulation. Let’s think first before we drive a regulatory tank into a thriving American industry.

So how do we respond?

First, the government’s default position must be “Do No Harm.”We must oppose any so-called government “solutions” thathinder innovation and job creation. Put jobs at the forefront of the regulatory debate, immediately.

According to the Phoenix Center, a simple 5% reduction in the regulatory budget is estimated to result in about $75 billion in expanded private sector GDP each year, with an increase in employment by 1.2 million jobs annually. On average, eliminating the job of a single regulator grows the American economy by $6.2 million and nearly 100 private sector jobs annually.

Second, the Obama Administration must force the independent agencies to comply with Executive Order 13563, which requires a justification for new regulations as well as a retrospective analysis of existing rules. New rules must address specific market failures in a narrowly tailored fashion and they must cost significantly less than the benefits that result.

Third, government needs to respect private industry. A conservative vision to tech issues assumes the imperfection of mankind and a preference for markets – not politics – to drive outcomes. I would suggest that if politicians and regulators were ineffective at engineering society before the digital age, they might not be the best at keeping pace in this new era of US-based technological progress. Government knows so little, reacts so slowly, and works so poorly. The government should stop pretending it has all the answers and knows how best to regulate. Job creators are rapid responders. The tech industry is infinitely more responsive and better equipped to meet consumer needs, wants, demands, interests, and desires than the federal government.

Finally, we need to stream-line government rules and regulations to better reflect the competitive and dynamic characteristics that define the tech industry. That means Congress must take the lead in getting the regulatory agencies away from duplicative regulation. Congress must insist on the repeal of outdated and unnecessary rules. We need to address legacy regulations and examine ways to make the FCC more relevant to today’s competitive realities. Level the playing field for everyone so innovators can operate and compete under a similar set of rules. We need a new way of doing business that flips the government’s regulatory presumption on its head. Government should neither pick winners and losers on the front end nor practice selective and excessive enforcement on the back end.

There’s a long list of businesses and industries that Congress has regulated into insolvency and shipped overseas. Even President Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi would probably agree: shipping America’s high-paying tech jobs to China is a bad idea. Not to beg for bipartisanship, but how about we keep our tech jobs in Brentwood from getting regulated off to Beijing?

Nobody changes their playbook when they’re winning in the fourth quarter. America’s playbook for economic prosperity has always been very straightforward: let the American people and American job creators do what they do best – get government out of the way and allow them to create and innovate. History has taught us the bigger the government, the smaller the private sector. Let’s embrace what has always made America great – our ability to solve problems, revolutionize industries, and meet the needs of consumers. Those should be the principles that govern any new regulation, especially in the dynamic and innovative tech industry. Let’s apply this vision before Obama’s regulatory apocalypse crowds out private innovation and job creation in the tech arena.

I support safeguarding users’ personally identifiable information and sensitive data like health or financial records. I also believe the government has a responsibility to punish deceptive and unfair practices that defy reasonable expectations about consumers’ privacy. The real problem is that the FTC has grossly exaggerated the true harm to consumers, and they are stubbornly unwilling to accommodate any free-market solutions.

The FTC’s government firewall proposal would effectively require an “opt-in” approach before users could gain access to the digital economy. Congress and the American people should recognize that such strict prescriptions would have huge real world costs on the advertising model that supports the creative economy online. U.S. online ad revenue totaled $31 billion last year, representing 40% of global sales. In today’s thriving information age, ad spending not only sustains the quality and quantity of content consumers demand, it adds real social benefits in the form of access to relevant information, personalized applications, more competition, and lower costs. More importantly, online ad revenues sustain our free press online as the FTC’s own workshop on journalism in the Internet age amply demonstrated.

More subtly, the FTC’s privacy regulations would limit the innovator’s ability to analyze non-sensitive consumer information to add to its value. An absolutist privacy regime that trumps all other social values threatens not only this value-added prospect, but also the very online model that has so far been the greatest vehicle for individual freedom, economic growth, and democracy the world has ever known.

These restrictions would also erect anti-competitive barriers for smaller start-up firms attempting to enter the market. It’s a disincentive for job creation, new investment, and innovation. Naturally, “opt-in” mandates disproportionately benefit entrenched incumbents who have more political muscle. Strategically, it helps explain why the Googles of the world readily endorse clever government mandates: they get to box out their new competitors and appease their activist regulators.

We should heed former President Reagan’s advice that “Government is not the solution, government is the problem.” Ironically, one of the clearer threats to consumer privacy is the government’s largely unchecked ability to collect your sensitive information without due process.

A better approach is for the FTC to encourage and enforce the self-regulatory structures that already exist, and for the agency to devote its resources to punish obvious “unfair and deceptive” business practices. Innovators have embraced a reasonable middle ground: empowering consumers with accessible and easy-to-use tools that allow greater transparency, choice, and control to protect “the virtual you” – one’s online information. We should applaud the ongoing evolution of those privacy tools instead of insisting on a top-down government solution.

An overly expansive virtual “toll” for the Internet that blocks consumers’ and competitors’ access to the e-commerce superhighway is not the right answer. We need to think critically about how well-intended privacy regulation could become an unintended Internet kill switch. The FTC’s plans would cripple our creative economy, limit our ability to access useful information online, harm competition and innovation, and test the limits of the First Amendment. If we don’t address it, the free and open Internet we use to promote our ideas across the country today is going to be at risk tomorrow.

President Obama continues to blame our Republican Party for all economic woes facing our country. The problem with that argument is that the Democrats have now controlled the White House, the Senate and the House for nearly 2 years. They have rammed through every policy they’ve wanted and are now faced with dealing with the failure of those policies.

Instead of owning up to their mistakes and working to repair the damage they have done, now the President is saying “it could be worse.”

Try telling that to the unemployed people struggling to provide for their families. 14.6 million Americans are out of work. To them things can’t get any worse. They recognize that the Obama Administration’s economic policies have failed. They know that billions of dollars have been spent with a guarantee that unemployment would not rise above 8 percent, and yet it sits at 9.5 percent and hasn’t moved significantly lower for many months.

People look at a federal government that has become so bloated that it is now involved in virtually every facet of our lives and wonder can it be worse? They look at record deficits and out of control spending and wonder can it be worse? They look at hundreds of thousands of small businesses closing their doors and wonder can it be worse?

No matter how the President and his advisors attempt to spin the economic crisis, the American people will hold him and his Party accountable in November.

Cross posted at Vote Marsha.com

Cameron has also indicated a far different approach on their health care program. The United Kingdom has for years had a form of socialized health care, one that our new director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says he “loves”. According to Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) they are going to make some “changes” in their health care system. They recognize that government-run health care leads to increased cost, less quality care, and yes, rationing of health care. Faced with a budget/deficit crisis, the United Kingdom, in trying to deal with a national health system that has become so cumbersome and difficult to administer, has decided to decentralize its national health care system.

According to the New York Times, “practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level.”

Britain’s Sunday Telegraph reports that the NHS is planning widespread cuts, including restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.

The British health care system is a blueprint for the failure of Obamacare, as it is structured. We need to work to repeal Obamacare and replace it with the kind of health care choices that the American people want. That doesn’t include government run health care. Nor does it include rationing of health care for one of our most respected groups – our seniors. Hopefully, we will learn from the failures of the NHS.

Cross Posted at Vote Marsha.com

His inaccurate assertions and his continuing to blame our current problems on President Bush are simply getting old and tired with the people of Tennessee.

Let’s see now. The Vice President says the setbacks in Afghanistan are the fault of President Bush. Did I miss something here? This from the “statesman” who thinks it is a good idea to give the enemy in Afghanistan the time table for our withdrawal – a position even President Obama is running from.

The Vice President also continued with the tired old theme of blaming President Bush for the size of the deficit and for not paying for many of the programs enacted during his administration. While all Republicans acknowledge that there were mistakes made during the Bush Administration, again the continuous pointing a finger at President Bush has gotten tiresome. It’s time for the Obama Administration to level with the people of Tennessee.

When President Obama took office the debt stood at $10.6 trillion. It now is over $13 trillion. Although deficit spending is never a good idea, it seems to me if the Obama Administration wants to continue to blame President Bush for the deficit, they should remember that it has only taken President Obama 544 days to increase our deficit by $2.4 trillion. It took President Bush four years to incur a deficit of $2 trillion.

Its time for President Obama to act responsibly and become the leader the country needs. Stop the blame game!!

Cross Posted at Vote Marsha.com

Nevertheless, we welcome the Vice President today. Tennessee is a great place for the Vice President to see that the failed economic policies of the Obama Administration are not the way to solve the problems of the economy. Here in Tennessee, instead of the big spending, big government, job killing agenda of the Obama Administration, Tennesseans have tightened their belts, and are struggling to find jobs that will enable them to support their families.

The Obama Administration continues to talk about the “policies of the past” and insist that a return to those policies will lead to disaster. This kind of argument just shows how far out of touch the Vice President and his liberal Democratic friends are with reality. We in Tennessee know that low taxes, less government, and less spending are the ways to grow our economy. We know that working with small businesses to create jobs will do more to help our economy than anything the Obama Administration has tried to do.

Tennesseans are facing an unemployment rate of 10.4%. We know we have a long way to go to recover economically. We also know that the policies advocated by the Vice President and the Obama Administration are not the way to do it.

Tennesseans can show the Vice President what policies WILL work. We have done it in the past and will do it in the future.

Cross Posted at Vote Marsha.com

One of the most important tasks of the United States House of Representatives is to pass a budget resolution.  The Budget Act of 1974 established a timetable for the annual budget process.  Under Title III of the Act, Congress is to complete action on the concurrent resolution on the budget by April 15.  While the budget resolution is a nonbinding blueprint, it is, nevertheless, an important guideline for Congress.  Once the President’s proposed budget is received by Congress on the first Monday of February, Congress generally goes to work on appropriating the funds required.

Congress of course is not bound to accept the President’s budget figures, but the House has the sole power to appropriate funds for spending, and it is a duty that should not be ignored.  Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress have made the decision to skip the annual task of crafting a budget for the U.S. government.

Why?  It’s pretty simple.  The Democratic members of Congress are unwilling, in an election year, to approve a measure sure to include huge deficits.  With the midterm elections just around the corner, and voters increasingly concerned over out of control spending, Democrat leaders are now saying that it is likely that Congress will forgo passing a tax and spending plan.

In today’s environment of ever increasing deficits, it is especially important that Congress return to fiscal responsibility.  A starting point would be passing a Budget Resolution.  With the American people voicing their displeasure with the antics of Democrats in Congress this is not a way to restore voter confidence.

In fact, Democrats are shirking a basic congressional responsibility.  Democrats in Congress are refusing to make the hard choices American families and small businesses must make every day – adopting a budget and sticking to it.  With spending deficits and debt continuing to spiral out of control the refusal by Democrats to pass a Budget Resolution sends a clear signal to the people that Democrats are not serious about controlling or cutting spending.

Cross Posted at Vote Marsha.com

I firmly believe that the most important feature of spending the people’s money is complete transparency. Any spending should be debated openly on the floor of the House and voted on in open session, with the American people having a chance to watch and listen.

That is why in 2008 I took the position that I would oppose all earmarks. Earmarks, unlike Article I, Section 7, require no transparency. In fact, it undermines the transparency and debate necessary by allowing individual members of Congress to obligate funds to their districts without giving the body as a whole the chance to weigh them against national priorities.

Earmarks are almost always inserted by a member of Congress without any notice to other members, and without a chance for Congress as a whole to debate a particular earmark as they relate to national priorities. This year the Republican caucus in the House voted to abstain from all earmarks.

I am hopeful that this process will lead to the transparency that the American people want. More importantly, it is my hope that it will lead to a vigorous public discussion of national priorities before appropriating taxpayer funds.

The Tennessean recently published an Op-Ed I wrote that you might find of interest.

Cross Posted at Vote Marsha.com