We all agree that a temporary payroll tax cut without permanently restructuring Social Security, along with its funding source, is a ludicrous idea. Sadly, Democrats would rather play politics by introducing this inane stimulus measure, in an attempt to get Republicans to vote against a tax cut. For far too long, the extension of the payroll tax cut was coupled with more entitlement spending, in | Read More »
Today is President Obama’s FY 2013 budget roll out day. This last budget was unanimously defeated by the Senate last year and we should expect a similar result this year. According to news reports, the $3.8 trillion budget will contain about $1.4 trillion in higher taxes. The House and Senate will take up a bloated highway bills. The Senate will take up a judicial nomination to | Read More »
Anne Boleyn was queen for 1000 days then her head rolled off her shoulders thanks to a Frenchman’s sword. We’re seeing the Anne Boleyn of budgets making its way to Capitol Hill now — after 1000 days the President is finally presenting his budget. But like the last one that got rejected 97-0 in the Senate, this one too, it seems, will get rejected by | Read More »
Ted Cruz is an old friend of RedState, of course: so we made sure to spend a couple of minutes talking about the race, how the ongoing redistricting dispute in Texas is making everybody’s elections difficult, and about CPAC generally. And if you’re wondering why a Texas federal Senate race would be affected by redistricting, it’s because nobody really wants to have three primary dates | Read More »
This particular interview with Richard – we’ve talked with him before about the race – is of interest for another reason: Dave Weigel of Slate happened to reference it in his day-in-the-life article about Richard Mourdock at CPAC. I don’t have any actual beef with Weigel’s reporting of anything that I was involved with – I did ask those questions, more or less, and I | Read More »
One of the interesting things about CPAC is, of course, that you can meet a whole lot of different candidates. Below was my conversation with Dan Bongino, who is a former US Secret Service agent now running for Senate in Maryland against Ben Cardin – and if you don’t remember who Ben Cardin is, don’t worry. Cardin’s an amazingly generic Senator who, on his good | Read More »
Aside from defeating Obama, the most important goal of the 2012 elections is to win back the Senate. Or is it? On days like today we should begin to wonder if there really would be much of a difference when there are 51 senators with an R next to their name as opposed to just 47. In another terrible day on the Hill, Senate Republicans | Read More »
Throughout the week, Republicans have expressed their shock and dismay that we would have the unbridled temerity to oppose a highway bill. They want to know why we are suddenly opposed to such basic things as transportation bills, even ones that will leave us with a $70 billion budget shortfall. They are impugning our motives, charging us with opposing everything that emanates from leadership. Well, | Read More »
We’ve directed a lot of attention to the deficiencies of the House version of the highway bill (here and here). We must also work to defeat the Senate version, which is even worse. The 2-year $109 billion Senate bill (S.1813) offers no reform to mass transit and continues to mandate that states use 10% of their funding for wasteful “enhancement projects.” As bad as the | Read More »
The Obama Administration has to be in shock as a result of the Gallup poll released last week indicating that Obama would lose his re-election according to state-by-state approval ratings. According to Conn Carroll of the Washington Examiner if the election were held today: Obama would lose the 2012 election to the Republican nominee 323 electoral votes to 215. Expect desperation from Senate liberals. Senate Democrats will accelerate | Read More »
Last week, several House committees favorably reported the $260 billion 5-year House GOP highway bill to the full body. This 846-page behemoth is now headed to a floor vote sometime next week. Simply put, conservatives oppose the House leadership’s highway bill (H.R. 7) because it continues the failed top-down federal approach to transportation spending, while precluding devolution to the states for at least another five | Read More »
It’s another week in the Senate, and there’s another battle over earmarks. Senators Toomey and McCaskill are proposing an amendment to the STOCK Act (“insider trading bill”S. 2038) to permanently ban earmarks in the Senate. Not surprisingly, there is pushback from Harry Reid…and a number of Republicans as well. As always, there are those who argue that earmarks are just inconsequential “drop in the bucket” | Read More »
We have a legislative process, often referred to as “regular order,” for good reason. The committee, floor, and conference committee stages of the process are designed to maximize transparency and allow all members of Congress to offer their input on the impending bill. In recent months, there has been a disturbing trend among House leaders to jettison the floor process in the House in favor | Read More »
As we forge ahead to the new legislative session, it is important that we internalize the lessons of the dismal failures from last session. Most of the dominant and sundry legislative battles last year can be explicated by the inane cycle of Republican capitulation. It goes something like this: Democrats propose some odious and profligate legislative idea or budget bill. Conservatives advocate that we uproot | Read More »
Pursuant to the Budget Control Act, brought to you by the GOP leadership’s sellout, Obama notified Congress yesterday that the federal debt is approaching the statutory ceiling of $15.194 trillion. [The actual total debt is already $15.237 trillion, but a small amount is not subject to the limit.] As such, he is calling on Congress to grant him another $1.2 trillion in debt, conveniently enough | Read More »
![[RS]](/t/img/logo-footer.jpg){kind=logo}