The Republican-controlled House is currently operating under a moratorium on earmarking. But if several GOP earmarxists have their say, this will change in the near future. Throughout the past decade, most of the arguments against earmarks have been focused on wasteful spending, corruption, cronyism, and self-ingratiating monuments. Robert Byrd’s monuments and the Bridge to Nowhere became symbols for such bad behavior. To that end, even | Read More »
Editor’s note: Here is the latest endorsement from The Madison Project It’s not too often that we have the opportunity to elect a conservative fighter who retired early from Congress and is seeking a second run. But with Dan Burton’s retirement in Indiana’s 5th district, we have the prospect to elect a battle-tested fighter in former Congressman David McIntosh. David McIntosh was elected to Congress | Read More »
The RSC budget was defeated earlier today, but the good news is that it garnered the support of 136 Republicans, 56% of the conference. Or did it? Take a look at this summation from The Hill of the roll call vote and ask yourselves what we are supposed to think about the leadership within the conference: Members rejected the RSC proposal in a 136-285 vote | Read More »
Late last night, the House began voting on the substitute budget amendments to the Ryan budget. Here is a quick rundown. Simpson-Bowles Every single Republican in Washington is committed to doing everything in his or her power to terminate Obamacare, right? Wrong! Last night, 16 Republicans from the ‘pale-pastel caucus’ voted for the Simpson-Bowles budget alternative in the form of the Cooper-LaTourette amendment. This budget | Read More »
Last year, we were proud to be one of the first websites to publicly promote the Republican Study Committee’s Cut, Cap and Balance (CCB) plan. What started out as an idea hatched by a few principled conservatives grew into a unifying rallying cry for the entire conservative movement. Sadly, GOP leadership jettisoned the universally-heralded CCB plan in favor of the Budget [Out of] Control Act, | Read More »
It appears that the grandfather of Obamacare is slated to become the Republican nominee for president. There’s not much we can do in the realm of presidential politics except hope that the new page on the Etch A Sketch will be better than the old one. At present, the most consequential thing we can do as conservatives is to follow the congressional elections in every | Read More »
As we approach the March 31 expiration date for surface transportation projects, we can take solace in the fact that the House will not vote on two bad bills; Boehner’s original 5-year $260 billion reauthorization and the Senate’s 2-year $109 billion bill. While we push for a more prudent long-term solution, the House will pass a 90-day stopgap bill to continue spending at current levels | Read More »
The much-anticipated Ryan budget for FY 2013, which also contains a blueprint for the next ten years, has been released. The headline figures of the proposal include the following factoids: it will spend $5.3 trillion less than Obama’s plan and cut $2 trillion more in taxes over the next ten years; it will spend $4.15 less than CBO baseline; spending will be reduced from 24% | Read More »
Paul Ryan is set to release the details of the House Republican budget resolution tomorrow. While liberals, conservatives, tea partiers, etc. will have plenty to say about the content of the budget, we must all acknowledge that Ryan has worked assiduously to formulate a coherent blueprint for a responsible budget. The same cannot be said for his counterpart in the Senate. Senate Budget Committee Chairman | Read More »
Editor’s note: Here is the latest bold endorsement on behalf of The Madison Project. There are few states that will provide conservatives with as many electoral opportunities as North Carolina will this year. Due to successful Republican redistricting, vulnerable blue dog Democrats, and several retirements, we have an opportunity to elect up to 5 new Republicans. In past years, to the extent that we were | Read More »
As the 112th Congress begins to mature, it’s becoming painfully clear that not everyone in the “Tea Party freshmen class” is much of a tea partier. In fact, some of them would fit in more with the coffee party [go here if you've never heard of them]. In 2010, we were largely focused on turning over the House from Democrat to Republican. To the extent | Read More »
Last year, buoyed by unprecedented conservative uprisings, we elected a new Republican majority in the House. The 87 freshmen were often referred to as the “Tea Party Congress.” Unfortunately, it has become clear that not all freshmen were created equal; not all freshmen drink a strong brew of tea. In fact, some members have nothing in common with the Tea Party. Due in large part | Read More »
When Republicans caved on raising the debt limit last year, we referred to the final Boehner proposal as a ground ball into a double play. Not only did Boehner fail to secure any transformational change in exchange for raising the debt ceiling (except for cutting the military), he actually obviated our leverage in future budget battles. As part of the debt limit agreement, Congress passed | Read More »
“The Tea Party was born out of the conviction that gov’t shouldn’t pick winners and losers, yet that is all these losers have done in Congress.” If you think that the 2010 elections cleared out all of the dead wood from the House, you need to think again. If you think that our only intra-party problems emanate from blue-district Republicans, you need a reality check. | Read More »
Well, it appears that our efforts are paying off. Responding to our charge that the GOP was violating the pledge against bundled megabills, Boehner announced that he will split the proposal into three separate bills; the highway bill (HR 7), pension reform (HR 3813), and expanded oil and gas drilling (HR 3408). This from Roll Call: In a joint statement with Rules Chairman David Dreier | Read More »
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