Through Obama’s truculent special interest campaign of division and derision, he is rapidly exhausting his check list of demographic groups. He’s already targeted women, Hispanics, gays, blue collar workers, and all sorts of minorities. Now he is going after the ‘commuter vote’ in northern Virginia. Politico is reporting that Obama is up with a 60-second radio spot in northern Virginia claiming that Paul Ryan’s budget | 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 »
It’s becoming clear that many rank-and-file members of the House Republican Conference are chomping at the bit to resurrect earmarks after a two-year moratorium. Some are complaining that earmarks cede authority to the executive branch; others are lamenting the lack of “grease” to facilitate passage of statist legislation; still others are trying to push miscellaneous tariff bills, which violate the rules of the earmark ban. | Read More »
As we’ve noted throughout the past year’s imbroglio over transportation spending, it is clear that complete federal control over transportation spending in a post-interstate highway era (post 1992) is inefficient, costly, anti-federalist, and precludes state and private innovations. Yet, Congress continues to buckle down on a policy that has failed in recent years, exposing taxpayers to future bailouts and tax increases. Worst of all, it | 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 »
Last week, John Boehner’s spokesman, Brendan Buck, falsely asserted that the highway bill is “completely paid for –without raising the gas tax,” and will not engender further bailouts. The reality is that this bill will impel an immediate $40 billion bailout from the general fund, while relying on phantom offsets to pay for it over 10 years. Moreover, these offsets will never pass and will | 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 »
One of the numerous legislative deadlines that Congress will be forced to confront this session is the expiration of the 8th short-term extension of the 2005 surface transportation authorization law (SAFETEA-LU). With federal transportation spending growing beyond its revenue source, an imbalance between donor and recipient states, inefficient and superfluous construction projects popping up all over the country, and burdensome mass transit mandates on states, | Read More »
We’ve seen this show before. Republicans propose grand ideas to cut spending and implement free-market reforms; they speak ebulliently about their new ideas, and …they summarily scuttle them and cave to the Democrats. Earlier this year, Republicans proposed a commendable plan to end the bipartisan pork fest of surface transportation spending. Instead of continuing the inexorable expansion of transportation spending, House Transportation Committee Chairman John | Read More »
There is an old adage that defines insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” What’s worse than insanity is hypocritical insanity, which may be defined as doing the same thing that your opponent did over and over again, while expecting different results. Unfortunately, that is an apt description of the House GOP leadership of late. During the 2010 | Read More »
Earlier today, Barack Obama decried the gridlock that has prevented Congress from passing a long-term surface transportation bill (highway bill) as unacceptable and inexcusable. He also asserted that we must formulate a policy in which funding would be directed to those districts that need it the most, instead of politically motivated pork, such as the bridge to nowhere (which he supported in the Senate). Well, | Read More »
Earlier this month, Senate Democrats brazenly forced a two-week partial shutdown of the FAA. They were willing to hold 4,000 employees hostage and forgo millions in revenue from airline tickets, all for the purpose of securing their inveterate pork projects. Democrats refused to pass the House extension bill because Republicans inserted minor limits on a rural pork program, better known as Essential Air Service (EAS). | Read More »
Update: Despite admitting that his demands are extreme, Harry Reid refused to approve the stopgap funding measure for the FAA, thereby ensuring a partial shutdown until September. Throughout the debt ceiling fight, Harry Reid purported to be the only true compromiser, while painting the Tea Party as extreme hostage takers. However, unlike most hostage takers, tea partiers made no demands of government for their own | 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 »
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