Yesterday, it was announced that John Boehner and Harry Reid had reached an early agreement on the FY 2013 budget in order to avoid a government shutdown on October 1. Pursuant to the agreement, both chambers will vote on a 6-month continuing resolution after returning from the August recess in September. The CR will provide spending for discretionary programs set at the $1.047 trillion level | Read More »
As we approach the 1-year anniversary of the disastrous debt ceiling deal hatched late last July, it is worthwhile to reflect on what we have gained from that legislation. On August 1, 2011, the House passed the Budget Control Act with support of 72% of the Republican conference. The Senate followed suit on August 2, with support of 60% of the Republican conference. Buoyed by | 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 »
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 If we’ve learned anything from past experiences, it’s that no government entitlement program is ever repealed once the dependency takes root.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 »
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 »
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 »
If Obamacare is the worst piece of legislation passed by Obama and the Democrats, Dodd-Frank is clearly close behind on the list. This pernicious bill, sponsored by the instigators of the financial and housing crises, will permanently alter our financial markets for the worst just as Obamacare will kill the healthcare sector if it’s not repealed. I’ve met many small business owners who are contemplating | 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 »
“But that’s still not a reason for taxpayers to foot the bill. It’s a reason for the actual research and development to be paid for by the companies that will profit from this long-promised breakthrough, and if they’re not willing to finance it with their own money, we have no business forcing our constituents to finance them with theirs” — Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA), House | Read More »
It’s another week in Washington, and another story is out containing a plethora of quotes from Republicans who are willing to “put revenues on the table.” Here are some quotes from today’s article in Politico: “Nobody wants to raise taxes, but the question is can you lower tax rates, lower loopholes and deductions and apply that to debt reduction? I think the answer is yes,” | Read More »
Promoted from the diaries. The 2010 election spurred hundreds of Americans to call for a change in the direction our nation was taking. They were sick of the reckless spending of the Democrat-controlled Congress and they wanted their representative to be above the culture of corruption in Washington, D.C. As a result, November saw 87 new Republicans elected to the House of Representatives with a | Read More »
“ Once the Democrats know that the debt ceiling will invariably be raised, they have no incentive to play ball. The end result will be another raw deal that is worse than doing nothing.” There is much hullabaloo in the media about John Boehner’s shot across the bow in the upcoming battle over the debt ceiling this fall. Specifically, Boehner warned that he “will again | Read More »
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