Ernest's Blog

Bill Clinton Trashes Outdoorsmen

2013-01-21T16:00:00Z

Democrat mega-donors gathered in Washington, DC, for inaugural weekend and heard former Pres. Bill Clinton caution them about stressing an agenda of gun control. He managed to blend his caution with a condescending dismissal of America outside the big cities, saying, "All they've got is their hunting and their fishing."
The gun control agenda may be popular in New York, LA, and many places that have ballets, symphonies and $1,000-a-night hotels, but it can be downright toxic in rural America.

“Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them,” Clinton said to a gathering of the Obama National Finance Committee plus business leaders:

“A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things; I know because I come from this world.

“A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing. Or they’re living in a place where they don’t have much police presence. Or they’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all.”

Other issues can be pursued, Clinton warned, such as immigration, health care, and economic legislation. But going after guns sets off a powerful opposition with greater built-in intensity. The 1994 assault weapons ban, he said, “devastated” more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers in the 1994 midterms. One who lost his race was then-Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D-Wash).

Gun issues also proved decisive in 2000, costing Al Gore West Virginia, Arkansas, Colorado and Tennessee. Had he carried any one of those, he would have beaten George W. Bush for the Presidency.

Check out more details here and here.

$1-Trillion Platinum Coin Would Put Federal Reserve Bank on the Spot

2013-01-11T19:11:00Z

Federal Reserve Would Probably Go Along With $1-Trillion Platinum Coin Plan, Says Former Director of U.S. Mint

The Federal Reserve System would likely accept a $1-trillion platinum coin at face value, even though the Chinese and other creditors probably would not, according to the former director of the U.S. Mint who helped craft the now-controversial 1996 law.

Phil Diehl was director of the Mint from 1994 to 2000, and worked with former Congressman Mike Castle (R, DE) to write the law that is now being touted as a way to bypass the legal limit on federal borrowing. Diehl’s first broadcast interview was Friday morning on “Istook Live!” with host and former Congressman Ernest Istook.

Proponents, mostly on the political Left, have touted the coin as a way to evade Republican demands that federal spending be cut before any new borrowing authority is allowed. The Treasury has already reached its $16.4-trillion debt ceiling. Extraordinary measures are being used to keep operating, but likely will be exhausted by mid-February.

Istook pressed Diehl on why the Fed would treat a coin as worth a trillion dollars and allow government to draw against those funds, when creditors such as China or Japan obviously would not accept it to pay off what the U.S. owes them (which is over a trillion dollars with each of those countries).

Diehl said, “The way this works is exactly the way it works with a quarter.”

The Mint takes a piece of metal and stamps it with a value, then sells it to the Fed for that amount, he said, and added, “The only difference here is a bunch more zeroes on the face value. The principle is exactly the same, the accounting procedures, the production procedures, everything is the same as a quarter.” He said he believes the Fed would see this as “quite similar to the quantatative easing policies of the Fed, and some wags have called this platinum easing.”

Diehl defended the potential use of the special coinage law, although admitting, “We obviously never anticipated that the law would be used as a way of dealing with the debt ceiling.” The intent was to provide a means for investors to invest in American precious metal coins. The law authorized platinum coins in whatever face value the Secretary of Treasury desires.

That was one of the two unusual wrinkles in the law, he says: That the Secretary was given discretion to issue such coins or not, and was given discretion on the face value.

Istook made it abundantly clear to Diehl that he was not convinced, but thought it important that the public hear more details about this speculative proposal.

Click here to hear the full interview.

House GOP Fumbled Kickoff on New Year's Day

2013-01-04T09:31:00Z

Republicans in the U.S. House missed a golden opportunity when they put the unchanged “fiscal cliff” tax bill up for a vote.

If the Senate-passed bill was to be considered (a mighty big “if”), the House first should have scrubbed it like they did the Hurricane Sandy relief bill. Both were laden with pork. That was too much dirt for the Sandy measure, but the lard in the tax bill got a free pass from the House GOP.

Requiring a “clean” tax bill would have publicly exposed the hysterical hypocrisy we’ve heard from the Left and from big media (the twins!).

A liposuction of the pork would have forced the Senate to return to session to approve the amended and cleaned-up bill. Had they been willing, Senators could have acted quickly, as they had just proven they could do.

Middle class Americans were used as pawns to create a headlong rush for tax relief. As they drove this runaway train, the Left snuck aboard their agenda of bigger government and crony capitalism.

Only if the pork was first stripped out should the House GOP have permitted the bill to be enacted with mostly Democrat votes. That would not make it good legislation, but at least it would have been better.

Not even Gov. Chris Christie would have dared defend that fattening-up of the all-important middle class tax relief. And if they tried, President Obama and the Senate would have been stammering like Lindsay Lohan in front of a probation officer.

Imagine their claim: “We refuse to approve tax relief for the middle class until the House Republicans approve our handouts to Hollywood, our toast to liquor distillers, and our windfalls for windpower.”

Read the rest of Ernest's article here.

Why Republicans Are NOT Crazy for Opposing Boehner's Plan B!

2012-12-21T19:32:00Z

For the next two years, conservative Republicans will be taunted as toadies of the richest 0.3% of Americans who earn $1-million or more a year. That's because they killed House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" to let taxes rise on that group, as the political price to avoid higher taxes for everybody else.

But the opposition to Plan B was not knee-jerk anti-tax-hike ideology. A Tax Foundation report (Read it here) shows that the whole country would have suffered as the millionaire tax rippled through our economy. The average taxpayer's income would drop by 1.3% and the national economy would lose $145-billion a year of GDP.

Rather than raising $40-billion for the Treasury, the report concludes the suppressed economy would lower the net tax revenue to $7-billion.

Losing $145-billion in GDP to gain $7-billion in revenue is a lousy trade-off. It kills $20 in the economy for every $1 of increased taxes. Report co-author William McBride, PhD (the Foundation's chief economist) told Istook Live! that the revenue gained could actually drop to zero, as the wealthy would adopt tax strategies to adjust to the new rates.

The report also details the negative consequences on business stocks, on wages and by hours worked.

In short, the impact aimed at the rich would actually be felt by the whole country. So by opposing higher taxes for anyone, the opponents of Plan B sought to protect everyone--not just the rich.

Obama Backs Away from Showing Courage on Medicare

2012-12-14T11:48:00Z

When media reported that President Obama might consider raising Medicare's eligibility age, liberal Democrats hurriedly denounced the idea. So Obama has now backed off.

Obama's quick retreat reminds me of the story of Brave Sir Robin in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." (Watch it below)

But that very idea of adjusting the age was #1 of 6 recently proposed by The Heritage Foundation to restore Medicare to a sound financial footing. As the Heritage report describes this:

Raise the Social Security eligibility age to match increases in longevity. Originally set at 65, the normal eligibility age is rising two months every year until 2022, when it will reach 67. According to the Social Security actuaries, continuing to increase the eligibility age to 69 by the year 2034 and allowing it to rise more slowly thereafter to reflect gains in longevity could go a long way toward reducing Social Security's funding shortfall. While this would not reduce today's budget deficit, it would strengthen Social Security's finances and dissipate far more important long-term budget pressures.

You can read that full Heritage report here: Now enjoy Monty Python:

Whittling Government Down to Size

2012-12-10T22:53:00Z

How to reduce the federal workforce down to affordable and reasonable size?

Ernest gives this advice to CNBC host Larry Kudlow:

"I would first eliminate the jobs of those who say there's no place to cut!"

How Obama Won Among Uninformed

2012-11-29T15:30:00Z

More than 4 million people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 did not vote this year. But by applying new voter science, Obama nudged enough replacements in key states ? many who were rare or first-time voters ? to give him his margin of victory (leveraged even larger by the Electoral College).

Years of stealthy multimillion-dollar efforts paid off forAmerica's left in the 2008 and 2012 victories by President Barack Obama. Using new voter science to get rare and first-time voters to go to the polls, the races have changedAmerica's electorate ? those who make the country's decisions by showing up and voting.

Aided by $5 million minimum from George Soros, plus millions more from others, at least two secretive institutions were created to enable this effort by focused research on behavioral science. Their results are made available only to liberals and their causes.

Those are findings from writer Sasha Issenberg. In an interview with me on my "Istook Live!" radio program, Issenberg put a special spotlight on the Analyst Institute (AI), which he has called "a firm quietly founded in 2007 by AFL-CIO officials and liberal allies."

The AI has been quietly stacked with behavioral scientists, mostly PhDs or PhD candidates from Ivy League schools such as Harvard, Yale,Princeton, andDartmouth(with Notre Dame andUniversityofChicagothrown in for good measure). They coordinate with market researchers for various commercial products. AI materials brag that the Institute supports "a community of 400 data analysts and related professionals in collaborating and sharing their findings through monthly Analyst Group meetings and retreats."

Issenberg's book The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns details more history, as do his articles written for Salon.com.

As Issenberg told me, "The big leap in the last five or six years has come from Democrats looking to commercial markets. Campaigns are able to see in the real world what is pushing voters to change their behavior." He says this has reversed the advantage that Republicans had enjoyed after 2004 when they began using micro-targeting to categorize voters.

The progressive cause's analysts look for "sweet spots in the electorate," gathering as many as 1,000 points of data on each voter, far more than in most surveys.

Although not made public, the findings are shared with the other special organization that Issenberg explains was created to apply the research. This is Catalist, headed by longtime Democrat operative Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff in the Bill Clinton White House.

Catalist's website describes its mission: "To provide progressive organizations with the data and services needed to better identify, understand, and communicate with the people they need to persuade and mobilize."

Their website, www.catalist.us, identifies 237 clients, including more than 50 Members of Congress, Planned Parenthood, Rock the Vote, the Democratic Governors Association, AFL-CIO, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, Human Rights Campaign, ACLU, Emily's List, Sierra Club, Families USA?basically the entire inner circle of the Left.

Catalist helps its clients to apply the research done by the Analyst Institute. For example, one basic finding was that door-to-door contact far exceeds the success from any other form of communicating with voters. That led to the Obama campaign's intensive focus on that approach. But there was plenty more to apply.

Issenberg told the radio audience:

The Obama campaign wrote a $22,000 check every month to the Analyst Institute; it looked like a consulting contract the same way they would pay a media consultant to make their ads. The Analyst Institute was consulting with them on how to run experiments and had a full-time staff member stationed in Chicago…So it serves all the sort of functions and the intellectual culture of the left of a think tank but has all the secrecy that a consulting firm would…They don't have to actually show who their investors are or any sort of audit.

AI also makes available to progressive groups what its documents describe as "memos summarizing hundreds of experiments on topics including GOTV [Get Out the Vote],…persuasion, identifying persuadable voters, and preventing long lines on Election Day."

In 2008, AI reported it had "partnered with dozens of organizations to execute 44 large-scale field experiments. Topics included which voters are 'persuadable,' [and] how behavioral science insights can be translated into voter contact tactics."

AI listed its 2009 and 2010 priorities as research that included:

What Are The Predictors Of Persuadability?
Increase The Use Of Impact?Based Communications.
Which Advocacy Tactics Are Most Effective?
How Can We Best Use Social Networking Technology?
How Can We Effectively Engage Surge Voters?
Can We Experimentally, And Quickly, Test The Impact Of Television Ads?
Enhance Skills Of The Progressive Data Community.

According to Issenberg, the funding to develop this research capability came from liberal donors unhappy with the money they "wasted" in 2004 in efforts to defeat George W. Bush by funneling a fortune through 527 groups.

Issenberg told the audience that these donors included the deep-pocketed billionaire George Soros, "and they felt?how Crossroads and Restore Our Future donors may be feeling now?that their money was wasted; and they started focusing not on making big contributions to win a single election but to institution-building. And so they've spent years of investing; it's hard to put a price on what it adds up to but now those institutions are basically paying for themselves…They want to make Democrats better at winning elections."

Those multimillion-dollar investments have provided an edge to the Obama campaign in how to persuade and turn out voters. Since 2008, according to Issenberg, the GOP has marked time rather than catching up, in part because "the chairmanship of the RNC changed three times in the last four years."

While Democrats enjoined four years of unity and a known incumbent candidate, "Mitt Romney had to fight a primary. The best-case scenario is that he would have only six or nine months to sort of rev up. I'm not convinced that they took great advantage of those six or nine months."

As Issenberg writes in The Victory Lab, the work of Analyst Institute has "upended much of what the political world thought it knew about how voters' minds work, and dramatically changed the way that campaigns approach, cajole, and manipulate them."

Applying that research is no guarantee of winning, "but experimental insights could decide close races?by nudging turnout up two points here, six points there."

Those nudges added up to give Obama his margin of victory.

This post originally appeared on Newsmax.com.

Tune in to Istook Live! online every weekday, 9 a.m.-noon ET.

Liberal Stealth Groups Paved Obama Win

2012-11-29T15:30:00Z

Issenberg's book The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns details more history, as do his articles written for Salon.com.

The progressive cause's analysts look for "sweet spots in the electorate," gathering as many as 1,000 points of data on each voter, far more than in most surveys.

Issenberg told the radio audience:

AI listed its 2009 and 2010 priorities as research that included:

What Are The Predictors Of Persuadability?
Increase The Use Of Impact?Based Communications.
Which Advocacy Tactics Are Most Effective?
How Can We Best Use Social Networking Technology?
How Can We Effectively Engage Surge Voters?
Can We Experimentally, And Quickly, Test The Impact Of Television Ads?
Enhance Skills Of The Progressive Data Community.

Applying that research is no guarantee of winning, "but experimental insights could decide close races?by nudging turnout up two points here, six points there."

Those nudges added up to give Obama his margin of victory.

This post originally appeared on Newsmax.com.

Tune in to Istook Live! online every weekday, 9 a.m.-noon ET.

'We've lost Washington' laments Sen. DeMint - but the fight goes on!

2012-11-28T22:46:00Z

Sen. Jim DeMint Interview

11/27/12 with Ernest Istook on “Istook Live!”

To LISTEN to the interview -- http://www.istook.com/pg/jsp/charts/audioMaster.jsp?dispid=301&pid=56626">click here

They discuss:

Obama’s lack of credibility
"Fiscal Cliff" never should have happened
True motive behind Obama’s tax strategy
Whether Republicans will keep or break no-tax-hike pledge
Media hype about schisms among Republicans

Istook: Joining us now--Senator Jim DeMint from South Carolina. I served with him in Congress. Jim, welcome to Istook Live!

DeMint: Ernest, it’s an honor to be with you.

Istook: Well, it’s always great to be with you and I cannot say enough of how I’m proud of how you have been a model of courage. It is the type of courage that means something--standing up to your friends who may be some of your fellow Senators; sometimes some of your fellow Republican Senators. And yet you stand up for principles. And I and a great many people are proud of you for that.

DeMint: Well thank you, it’s been a difficult place to work in and if it wasn’t for people like you on the air and all over the country who keep telling me to keep fighting it would be a lonely life but it hasn’t been in fact it’s very encouraging to go around the country and people just to say, “keep fighting, we’re praying for you.”

Istook: Absolutely. And you’ve got an opportunity. This is one of those gut check times in this lame-duck session of the Congress. All the conversation about the so-called fiscal cliff. Questions of who is going to pay how much taxes. And those that already pay the lion’s share, they say they want them to pay even more and they are willing to let taxes go up on the middle class if they don’t get their way in punishing the high income earners. But it’s not just something about the country, there’s also the chatter about: this will tell us whether the Republican Party can be salvaged in the eyes of the Conservative movement.

DeMint: Well there’s a lot of questions here but Republicans are willing and ready to work with the President on dealing with these issues, but it’s hard to work with a leader who has no plan. And you can’t compromise with someone who hasn’t but a plan on the table and told Americans what he really stands for. Saying he wants to tax the rich is not a plan and it certainly doesn’t solve many of the problems, really any of the problems we’re faced with right now. So the President has got what he wants, Ernest, he wants to raise taxes, and wants to cut the military, and this is the result of a very bad deal that the Republicans were willing to make, over a year ago and we’re paying for that now. Certainly if we make taxes go up it’s not good for the economy. Cutting the military is not good for our defense and the security of our nation, but I think Republicans need to not make a long-term bad deal that hurts our country. We need to insist that this is a time that we need to reform our tax code and get rid of the loop holes and the subsidies and lower the rate. And Ernest, the key thing to remember here: the government is not short of revenue. In fact, last year we were near historic highs as far as tax revenue. We’ll probably have all-time high revenues coming in from taxpayers this year. So the country doesn’t need more money; they need less government. And as Republicans we can’t concede that point by saying, “Oh, ok we need to raise some taxes or raise revenue.” The government has doubled spending in the last ten years and the problem is not tax revenues and all we have to do is get the economy growing a little bit faster and the revenues will effectively double. So I can’t get into this argument, ok? that we need to tax the top 2% more. It doesn’t come close to solving the problems. And you’re right, it is a gut check for Republicans. Are they going to carry the conservative message and be principled about it? Or are they going to try to weasel out of this by capitulating and the President gets what he wants in tax increases and cutting the military? The only thing else he wants is for Republicans to completely discredit themselves with their base.

Istook: They do. And Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina is our guest. A couple of things that tie into this: One, even though it’s only I think at most maybe 3 or 4 Republicans in either the House or Senate that have made public pronouncements about they might do something that may be seen as violating their pledge not to raise taxes, the one involving Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform. To look at the headlines and listen to the media you would think there is a whole, huge lineup of Republicans that would like to reverse course. That’s one image the media is trying to portray and at the same time that seems to be an effort by the White House to take its victory in the election and make it larger than it was and steamroller over the opposition--to crush the opposition right now so that they can be sure to get their way on more and more issues in the next four years.

DeMint: Yes, they smell blood in the water and they’ll keep pushing. So it’s hardly, they’re not coming our way or coming to the middle to try and govern, they actually want to steamroll what’s left of the Republican Party here in Washington. But the truth of the matter is, I don’t think any of those who have been portrayed as breaking their tax pledge will actually vote for anything the President will support because there are conditions. Tthose who are talking about increasing revenue are saying only in return for real tax reform or real entitlement reform. The President isn’t going there, particularly [not] in the next couple of weeks. So I think the President and a number of Democratic Senators have said they want us to go over this so called “Cliff” because it gives them a chance to get what they want in terms of higher taxes and they believe the mainstream media will blame Republicans and it will hurt us more than it will hurt them.

Istook: Well I certainly concur in that and I also believe that the administration feels that the administration will either achieve that result--taxes go up on everybody and Republicans get the blame--or they will succeed in splitting the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement by having some people go along with them while others don’t. Then they will have fractured the opposition and have used this whole divide-and-conquer approach that this President seems to favor.

DeMint: You’re right and I think there are a number of Republicans saying they are willing to work with the President and as you said there are a few of them and the media is highlighting it as a real spilt in our party, I frankly don’t think there is, unless the President is willing to work reasonably with us to fix the real fiscal issues I don’t think you’re going to see Republicans to raise taxes. I mean there may be a few, there always are who probably aren’t real Republicans, but I don’t think you’re going to see very many Republicans go along.

Istook: What does it tell us that the media makes it want to seem like their numbers are larger. They take them they clone them they make numbers look bigger than they are. What does that tell us that the media is giving that portrayal?

DeMint: Well what we’ve known all along, they generally believe in a collectivist, big government society, and they see the government as a key player in our economy, and our culture, and anything we suggest otherwise is alien to them. So their paradigm is big government.

Ernest: You’re talking about the paradigm of the liberal democrats or the media?

DeMint: It’s the same thing.

Istook: OK, got it. So where do we go from here? We have an administration that’s going to take advantage of the gridlock, the fact that the House and Senate cannot agree on things, which means when they take an action through the bureaucracy that requires a united Congress to block, how are we going to deal with that in these next few years?

DeMint: Ernest, we need to do everything we can do as conservatives here in Washington to minimize the damage of a second Obama administration. At the same time I hope to be a part of working with states all over the country, there are 25 states with Republican Governors and Legislators, a lot of them are trying to implement conservative polices, lower taxes, better regulatory structure, tort reform, things we know that work. And that’s what we need to do as Republicans is pull together states and other, whether they be schools or other organizations to demonstrate that conservative principles work better. And last night on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Bill O’Reilly talked about the difference between California and Texas. Those are the kind of things we need to demonstrate to people. The theory of good policy is not going to work; we can tell Americans all they want but they’re not going to listen. But if we show them how conservative principles are working better in states like Texas and what’s happening in states like California, they’ll begin to see how we need to change our national policy so our country can work better for everyone. It’s a challenge but we have to admit at least temporarily we’ve lost the battle in Washington and the best we can do here at the federal level is to keep the federal government from stopping those states from doing the right thing!

Istook: We’ll pay attention to that. And I’m afraid we’ve reached the end of our time, but I’ll look forward to having you back on again.

DeMint: Thanks a lot, Ernest!

Istook: U.S. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. A stalwart, keeping the faith here in Washington.

A Caution About Uninformed Voters

2012-11-23T16:49:00Z

There is no requirement that voters must be well-informed. This year, turnout climbed significantly among "low information voters."

Now is a good time to remember this message from former President John F. Kennedy:

"Low information voters" may vote by emotion. Or to go along with their friends and peers. Or be swept away by a movement.
They may know nothing about issues except from watching The Daily Show, The View, or The Tonight Show.

Simply put, their votes will be controlled by Hollywood, pop culture, and the media.

Years ago, an infamous article claimed that Christian voters were mostly "poor, uneducated and easily led." Now we should ask whether the description fits many who liberals rely upon for votes.

And let's ask what can we do to fix this. That's what "The Kitchen Table Agenda" is all about.

Armed Services Chairman Denounces White House Benghazi Cover-Up and Muzzling of Military Leaders

2012-11-04T17:15:23Z

President Obama should come clean with the American people about what exactly happened in Benghazi, according to the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA).

In fact, the President is the only one who has all those answers, McKeon says.

"The whole thing smacks of a cover-up," he says. According to McKeon, the military has been muzzled by unprecedented orders not to provide information to Congress.

Benghazi, Libya, is where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed on September 11, 2012, by a terrorist attack, which reportedly was monitored live for several hours by President Obama from the White House Situation Room.

In an interview on "Istook Live!" Friday (Listen to the interview here), McKeon said he's heard that the White House might be setting up the military as scapegoats: "One of the things I've heard is that maybe they're trying to put some blame on the military that they disobeyed orders or they didn't respond to orders."

But the military "would have somebody taking down notes of everything that was said," according to McKeon. Normally such orders from the President would be put into writing, he said. But just in case there was a delay in written orders, the commanders would have those notes.

"I know these people," he said. "They are men of the highest integrity. They are unchallenged in their patriotism….They would do whatever they were commanded to do by their commander in chief."

Despite Congress's direct constitutional powers over the military, McKeon says:

We're not getting anything. I have written to commanders in the field, 3-, 4-star admirals and generals, and the response I got out of the Department of Defense is that "we will not be able to answer your simple yes and no questions," that I'm sure they already know the answers to. "We will not be able to answer them on your timeline (which was now a couple of weeks ago when I wrote the letter), and we do not know when we'll be able to respond." And the other requests that we've asked for briefings, "we will not be able to comply with."

This is the first time I've seen where the military has been basically silenced, when they could not answer a direct yes and no question from the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

We're not able to do our job if we can't get information, and the commander in chief or somebody that he's over has told them that they cannot respond to us. I think the whole thing smacks of a cover-up, and the President could clear this all up if he would just go before the American people.

The one who knows it all, that could clear it all up, is out campaigning and is totally silent on the issue after telling us he wants us to have all the information as soon as he receives it.

McKeon told me that the only information he can get is from Fox News and other media outlets, and from individuals who continue to push for disclosure. "The President could easily clear this up," McKeon says. "He's the only one who can."

Listen to the interview here.

Former Congressman Ernest Istook hosts "Istook Live!," broadcasting from The Heritage Foundation 9 a.m. to noon Eastern, Monday through Friday. Listen live at www.istook.com.

Armed Services Chairman Denounces White House Benghazi Cover-Up and Muzzling of Military Leaders

2012-11-04T17:15:00Z

President Obama should come clean with the American people about what exactly happened in Benghazi, according to the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA).

In fact, the President is the only one who has all those answers, McKeon says.

"The whole thing smacks of a cover-up," he says. According to McKeon, the military has been muzzled by unprecedented orders not to provide information to Congress.

"I know these people," he said. "They are men of the highest integrity. They are unchallenged in their patriotism….They would do whatever they were commanded to do by their commander in chief."

Despite Congress's direct constitutional powers over the military, McKeon says:

We're not getting anything. I have written to commanders in the field, 3-, 4-star admirals and generals, and the response I got out of the Department of Defense is that "we will not be able to answer your simple yes and no questions," that I'm sure they already know the answers to. "We will not be able to answer them on your timeline (which was now a couple of weeks ago when I wrote the letter), and we do not know when we'll be able to respond." And the other requests that we've asked for briefings, "we will not be able to comply with."

This is the first time I've seen where the military has been basically silenced, when they could not answer a direct yes and no question from the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

We're not able to do our job if we can't get information, and the commander in chief or somebody that he's over has told them that they cannot respond to us. I think the whole thing smacks of a cover-up, and the President could clear this all up if he would just go before the American people.

The one who knows it all, that could clear it all up, is out campaigning and is totally silent on the issue after telling us he wants us to have all the information as soon as he receives it.

Listen to the interview here.

Former Congressman Ernest Istook hosts "Istook Live!," broadcasting from The Heritage Foundation 9 a.m. to noon Eastern, Monday through Friday. Listen live at www.istook.com.

The Kitchen Table Agenda

2012-09-18T22:23:00Z

"We must demonstrate how limited government brings personal benefit to everyday Americans. And how big government wrecks family budgets"

For 2012 and beyond, America’s course will be set by whoever wins the hearts and minds of the middle class. Many are caught or confused by the tug-of-war between the left and the right. Today conservatives’ long-time argument of lowering taxes no longer persuades most Americans—because half of us no longer pay federal income taxes.

Appealing solely to national interest won’t win votes unless it’s accompanied by appeals to self-interest. The appeal must overcome the fact that the middle class now receives ever-growing government benefits. Less obvious is that they pay dearly for these, even when not paying direct taxes. Many important and everyday things have become unaffordable or unavailable due to federal policies, plus the passed-through cost of taxes and out-of-control regulations on business and investors.

Conservatives must demonstrate how big government destroys family budgets. Our arguments must resonate at the kitchen table where families sit down to review finances and make decisions.

The left has lost credibility as economic security keeps slipping away. The all-embracing arms of Big Brother are a poor substitute for the merits of self-reliance. But frustration with government no longer clinches the argument because so many millions of Americans—about half—have been excused from federal income taxes. A tax-centered message no longer appeals to everyone’s self-interest.

Support for conservatives remains strong from those committed to constitutional limits on power, to personal responsibility and to robust national defense. But that falls short of a winning coalition. We must demonstrate how limited government brings personal benefit to everyday Americans. And how big government wrecks family budgets, as it does in many ways:

Federal policies are a key cause of rising electricity and gasoline prices.
The federal role in driving health costs sky-high is a huge untold story.
Few people realize how Washington established a quota system favoring very-low incomes, dictating mortgage lending to a great many who could not afford to buy homes. This sparked the mortgage meltdown that launched our current economic mess.
EPA mandates kill jobs.
Appliances become unaffordable.
Fuel mileage rules drive up car prices while making passengers less safe—trying to save expensive gasoline that would be more affordable if we allowed more drilling stateside and offshore.
Then we subsidize ethanol that lowers fuel economy while raising food prices.
Obama admitted his plans will make energy prices skyrocket.
Federal loans and grants are supposed to make college more affordable. Instead they contribute to ever-escalating tuition costs. And so do federal incentives that removed state funding from colleges.

The list goes on. Big government programs supposedly exist to rescue us from a multitude of costly problems. But too often our problems are caused by a government that’s out-of-control. The Kitchen Table Agenda series describes how these clobber the budgets of middle-class families.

In a series of simple one-page papers, Ernest Istook, host of Istook Live! (available at www.istook.com), former Congressman and now Distinguished Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, outlines how big government destroys the purchasing power of today’s families, which often hurts them more than raising their taxes. Rev 09-18-2012

Ryan Comforts Evangelical Conservatives

2012-09-17T18:40:00Z

On Friday at the Value Voters Summit organized by the Family Research Council in Washington, DC, vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan spoke to a crowd of nearly 1,500 social conservatives who greeted the young Wisconsin Congressman with a rock star welcoming. Ryan, who is well known as a strong fiscal conservative, took time in his speech to address the many social issues he feels so passionately about as well as how his own faith shapes his life.

Ryan’s address had a clear theme in that America and its leaders do not belong to government but are elected to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. From this Ryan went into describing his own faith and how not only his, but others’ freedoms of religion are slowly being trampled by the Obama administration.

Giving examples such as government dictating how Catholic charities can use their own money as well how the opposing party could not agree on where our inalienable rights come from in their convention only weeks prior, Ryan stated, “Our rights come from nature and nature’s God, not from governments! Its clear, that’s the American Idea.”

Ryan also went on to give many comparisons to President Obama as a “Straw Man”, when explaining how the President repeatedly states “we’re all in this together”, though as Ryan points out, “it sounds hollow coming from a politician who has never once lifted a hand to defend the most helpless and innocent, the child waiting to be born.” Of the many standing ovations during the 25 minute long speech this tugged at the heart strings the most, giving the audience a comforting feeling that their ticket stands up for one of the most controversial social issues, the right to life.

With the election only 50 days away, Paul Ryan has been able to captivate the evangelical base of the conservative movement, something Gov. Romney has yet to fully do on his own. Conservatives now not only have a ticket that they feel has a chance to win in November but most importantly, one that they believe in.

To see Ryan’s full speech at the Values Voters Summit, click below:

http://www.therightscoop.com/full-speech-paul-ryan-speaks-at-values-voter-summit/

The Arab Spring is Broken

2012-09-13T13:56:00Z

Last year was the Arab Spring. With help from the USA and others, mobs overthrew President Mubarek in Egypt and dictator Qadhafi in Libya.

President Barack Obama said he "led from behind" by helping the revolutions without using American ground forces, saving lives and money compared to what our troops accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But some of us asked whether the new leaders were fronts for radical and militant Islam--haters of America.

Now, these Islamist have murdered a U.S. ambassador and three others. We must ask the questions that were ignored during the Arab Spring. Was the United States played, using the illusions of freedom and self-governance to replace bad regimes with worse ones, more dangerous to us than those who were overthrown?

If we don't ask these questions now, we may never learn from our mistakes.

It Wasn't the Anti-Muslim Movie, Says MidEast Expert

2012-09-12T19:23:00Z

An anti-Muslim video was just a pretext for attacking American diplomats in Libya and Egypt. The underlying motive was to attack on the 9/11 anniversary and gain leverage over not-quite-as-radical Muslims in northern Africa.

That’s the conclusion expressed by Mid East expert James Phillips of The Heritage Foundation, as interviewed Wednesday by host Ernest Istook on “Istook Live!” The daily talk radio show broadcasts from studios at The Heritage Foundation.

The organizers, according to Phillips, are the Salafists, who are “ultra-radical, much more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood.” They’re trying to outflank the Muslim Brotherhood, Phillips says, by using the anti-American soapbox

As Phillips told Istook, “It’s no coincidence that these attacks occurred on September 11. They claim to have been protesting a movie, but that movie has been online on YouTube since July. What’s made it an issue now is that it’s been highlighted by a radical Islamist preacher in Egypt.” Phillips says the cleric uses the movie to blame the U.S. government, even though it was made by private producers

The key agitator, he says, is Sheikh Khaled Abdalla. Phillips described the sheikh to Istook, “He’s a controversial TV host on an Islamist TV network. He’s been harping on this since September 8^th because he wants to see much more harsh imposition of Sharia or Islamist law. In Libya, one of the groups suspected of launching the attack is called Ansar Sharia, which supports Sharia law.”

A New York Times’ blog indicates that the controversial video was broadcast on Sunday by host Sheikh Khaled Abdalla on the Egyptian television channel Al-Nas. The blog indicated that blame for the video was aimed at Coptic Christians as well as at American pastor Terry Jones.

Says Phillips about Abdalla’s group, “Their objective is to turn Libya into an Islamist state in which they would be the leaders, trying to interpret the will of god.”

He believes the Egyptian and Libyan governments failed to provide security for American diplomats against the mobs because it would have made them look pro-American and thus weakened their ability to oppose the Salafists. “The Muslim Brotherhood is no friend of the United States,” said Phillips. They seek “ultimately to turn the world into one global Islamist empire.” However, “Salafists are even more radical. They put the Muslim Brotherhood on the defensive so they would be reluctant to take any political risks to defend the U.S. embassy or U.S. interests.”

Phillips expects that the Islamists will now intensity their ongoing campaign against Egyptian Coptic Christians, using recent events as another excuse to go after them; he also expects the Salafist efforts will become a very big issue in Libyan politics.

He told Istook that the situation reminds him of 1979 in Iran, when hostages were taken at the U.S. embassy, as clerics wanted an anti-American soapbox to consolidate their power.

“Istook Live”! broadcasts from The Heritage Foundation from 9 am to noon (Eastern) every Monday through Friday. It can be heard from anywhere at www.istook.com. Host Ernest Istook served 14 years as a U.S. Congressman from Oklahoma.

Trustees: Medicare Will Go Broke in 2016, If You Exclude Obamacare's Double-Counting

2012-08-16T17:16:00Z

The Trustees of the Medicare program have released their annual report on the solvency of the program. They calculate that the program is “expected to remain solvent until 2024, the same as last year’s estimate.” But what that headline obfuscates is that Obamacare’s tax increases and spending cuts are counted towards the program’s alleged “deficit-neutrality,” Medicare is to go bankrupt in 2016. And if you listen to Medicare’s own actuary, Richard Foster, the program’s bankruptcy could come even sooner than that.

Here’s how the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services summarize the findings, which carry the formal title “2012 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds” :

[Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund] expenditures have exceeded income annually since 2008 and are projected to continue doing so under current law in all future years. Trust Fund interest earnings and asset redemptions are required to cover the difference. HI assets are projected to cover annual deficits through 2023, with asset depletion in 2024. After asset depletion, if Congress were to take no further action, projected HI Trust Fund revenue would be adequate to cover 87 percent of estimated expenditures in 2024 and 67 percent of projected costs in 2050. In practice, Congress has never allowed a Medicare trust fund to exhaust its assets.

The financial projections for Medicare reflect substantial cost savings resulting from the Affordable Care Act, but also show that further action is needed to address the program’s continuing cost growth.

The Trustees, by saying that Medicare will go bankrupt in 2024, instead of 2016, are simultaneously saying that the program will increase the deficit by several hundred billion dollars. This is precisely the insight that Charles Blahous, one of the Medicare Trustees, explained in his recent report on the program.

Think of it this way: if supporters of the Affordable Care Act came clean, they would say one of two things: (1) Medicare is going bankrupt in 2016, but the CBO scores the ACA as deficit neutral; or (2) Medicare is going bankrupt in 2024, and Blahous’ score of the ACA as increasing the deficit by $300-500 billion is accurate.

Which path will they choose? As Chris Jacobs notes, President Obama has admitted that, “You can’t say that you are saving on Medicare and then spending the money twice.” That is, Chuck Blahous is right.

Medicare actuary Richard Foster splashes cold water on the Trustees’ report

If you want to get a sense of how Medicare’s finances look when viewed with real-world accounting assuptions, head to Richard Foster’s “Statement of Actuarial Opinion,” which begins on page 277. “In past reports, and again this year, the Board of Trustees has emphasized the strong likelihood that actual Part B expenditures will exceed the projections under current law due to further legislative action to avoid substantial reductions in the Medicare physician fee schedule,” Foster writes.

What he means is that Medicare’s reimbursements to doctors are scheduled to drop by 31 percent on January 1, 2013. Only then is Medicare solvent until 2016/2024. If Congress passes another of its numerous “doc fixes,” Medicare’s insolvency will be even closer at hand. The optimistic insolvency estimate from the Trustees will require “unprecedented changes in health care delivery systems and payment mechanisms,” without which Medicare fees “are very likely to fall increasingly short of the costs of providing those services.”

“For these reasons, the financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range…or the long range,” writes Foster.

I wrote about this problem last March: how calculations of Medicare’s solvency assume drastic reductions to Medicare’s fee schedules, reductions that would cripple the ability of retirees to gain access to medical care. If we can’t even be honest about Medicare’s finances, how can we hope to ever reform the program?

Follow Avik on Twitter at @aviksaroy.

UPDATE 1: Chris Jacobs makes the following relevant points at his Freedom on Call blog:

Insolvency One Year Closer: Contrary to predictions made in this space this morning, the insolvency date for the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fundremains at 2024 – despite the 2% sequester cuts scheduled to take effect beginning in January. In other words, if not for the sequester cuts insisted on by Congress, Medicare’s financial stability would have deteriorated even further. As it is, we’re still one year closer to Medicare running out of IOUs to cash in to pay its bills (see #3 below).
Obama Economy Making It Worse: As the Associated Press noted, “Social Security’s finances worsened” – and Medicare’s finances did not improve, sequester notwithstanding – “in part because high energy prices suppressed wages, a trend the trustees see as continuing. The trustees said they expect workers to work fewer hours than previously projected, even after the economy recovers.” President Obama’s poor economic record is not only harming workers today, it will harm future generations – seniors in current entitlement programs that are less secure, and children and grandchildren forced to pay the bills for skyrocketing spending – for decades to come.
Deficits as Far as the Eye Can See: The report once again confirms that the Medicare program is already contributing to the federal deficit, will continue to do so throughout the coming decade, and forever thereafter. Since 2008, the program has run cash flow deficits; this year’s deficit is expected to total $28.9 billion. The only thing keeping the program afloat financially is the sale of Treasury bonds in the Medicare Trust Fund – and the redemption of those paper IOUs increases the federal deficit.
Funding Warning: For the seventh straight year, the trustees issued a funding warning showing that the Medicare program is taking a disproportionate share of its funding from general revenues, thus crowding out programs like defense and education. While in theory this development should prompt the President to follow his statutory requirement to submit legislation remedying this funding shortfall, the White House has previously refused to do so – relying instead on asigning statement by President Bush to ignore the need for Medicare reform (and also breaking the President’s campaign promises in the process).
Unrealistic Assumptions: For the third straight year since the passage of Obamacare, the report features a statement of actuarial opinion by the non-partisan Medicare actuary (pages 277-279 of the report), who says “the financial projections shown in this report…do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations.” The actuary will again issue an alternative scenariofor Medicare’s unfunded obligations that he views as more realistic, because the major source of Medicare payment reductions in Obamacare may not be sustained over a long period of time.
Double Counting: The actuary also previously confirmed that the Medicare reductions in Obamacare “cannot be simultaneously used to finance other federal outlays and to extend the [Medicare] trust fund” solvency date – rendering dubious any potential claims that Obamacare will extend Medicare’s solvency. As Speaker Pelosi admitted last year, Democrats “took a half a trillion dollars out of Medicare in [Obamacare], the health care bill” – and you can’t improve Medicare’s solvency by taking money out of the program.
Massive Tax Increases: Today’s report again confirms that Medicare’s finances are also being bolstered by the extension of the health care law’s “high-income” tax – which is NOT indexed for inflation – to more and more individuals over time. Page 30 of the report notes that “by the end of the long-range projection period, an estimated 80 percent of workers would pay the higher tax rate.” As JEC recently reported, these tax increases are part of the $4 trillion in “revenue enhancements” over the next 25 years taking place thanks to Obamacare. When Democrats talk about raising taxes to reduce the deficit, keep in mind that they have already raised taxes in a way that will harm middle-class families over time – and that those tax increases were used not to reduce the deficit but to pay for new and unsustainable entitlements.
Seniors Losing Coverage, Part I: Table IV.C1 of the report notes that millions of seniors will lose their current Medicare Advantage plans – enrollment is projected to fall from 13.5 million this year to 9.7 million by 2017. However, thanks to the waiver/demonstration program announced by the Administration, and criticized by the Government Accountability Office in a report this morning,enrollment in Medicare Advantage will not begin falling until after the President has completed his re-election campaign.
Seniors Losing Coverage, Part II: Table IV.B10 of the report re-stated prior projections that enrollment in employer-sponsored retiree drug plans will fall from 6.8 million in 2010 to a mere 800,000 by 2016 – a drop of nearly 90%. This rapid decrease in enrollment occurs thanks to provisions in Obamacare that raise taxes on employers who continue to offer retiree drug coverage.

Romney's Pick of Paul Ryan is a WOW!

2012-08-11T17:23:00Z

Wow!

I didn't think it could happen.

Paul Ryan is principled, sharp as they come, well-spoken, telegenic, youthful, and married to an Oklahoma girl. What more could you ask?

This is a bold and excellent move by Mitt Romney. President Obama's re-election team, however, will now elevate the hate they spew toward anyone who dares oppose them. It's hard to imagine that their smear machine could get any worse--but it will. Their effort to dump on Ryan will start with a repeat of the "he'll dump Granny over the cliff" approach, as always taking things too far and painting their political rivals as wicked evildoers. They're already carpet-bombing "opposition research" everywhere, trying to sully Ryan's clean (and deserved) image.

Obama has already gone out of his way trying to make Ryan into a villain. Ryan will also remember the occasion when Obama invited him to be front-row for a supposed major budget proposal, then used him as a foil and prop for TV while Paul could only sit and fume. That stoked his inner fire and will be a constant motivation that maintains his passion on the campaign trail.

Nevertheless, Ryan can take it, not only holding his own but also refuting the attacks. The Romney campaign will be wise to put Ryan out front constantly. His youth combats Obama's, and all the more effectively because Ryan is a genuine reformer, not a radical masquerading as a reformer.

A big key had to be the willingness of Paul's wife, Janna, to accept this bid while raising their handful of small children. To me, this always seemed the biggest barrier to having him on the short list because Paul truly is a devoted father. Janna, however, is as smart and capable as she is lovely. The second barrier to Ryan's selection was the allure of chasing after Ohio via the "safe" pick of Sen. Rob Portman. It is nice to see Romney going bold rather than safe.

Some will equate this with picking Sarah Palin as an example of boldness, appealing to the base, telegenics, etc. But Ryan brings a greater level of depth, knowledge, and even political craftiness than Palin. As budget chairman he has been exposed to plenty of tricks and games and knows how to deal with them. He has shrewdness in abundance; he can spot traps and not only evade them but turn them around on the source.

Ryan's introductory speech was spot-on in both tone and content. Especially his re-affirmation of the fundamental principles that Obama seems determined to push aside.

Back to Ohio for a second, this choice has got to excite Gov. John Kasich. As one who formerly had Ryan's budget chair seat, he can appreciate how Ryan has used it as a fulcrum for boldness just as Kasich did (even though Ryan obviously had to make compromises required by the other GOP members, as did Kasich). The compromises made within Ryan's budget proposals must be understood in this light. Ryan's heart is definitely in the right place.

Not only is Wisconsin brought into play by this, but it strengthens the effort in the entire Rust Belt and Midwest. Unlike a choice from a redder state, Ryan throughout his career has had to deal with the panoply of job loss, outsourcing, manufacturing and related issues at are so all-important in that region. The success of Gov. Scott Walker in defeating the left's furious effort to remove him is a big factor in believing that Wisconsin might go red with home-stater Ryan on the ticket.

Finally, as a reliable social conservative, Ryan obviously shores up that base, especially since Obama's pushes on mandatory contraception and same-sex marriage have alienated so many of Ryan's fellow Catholics. But what is a true difference-maker is that Paul is an ARTICULATE social conservative as well as a committed one. He won't apologize or mince words in that category.

The challenge for Ryan on the campaign trail will be to avoid wonkishness. With the arcane nature of his budget work and his natural intellectual approach to that work, he will have to work and practice to reduce concepts down to simpler terms for the general public. But he has the inherent self-discipline that makes it possible for him to refine his words as he must.

Romney has improved his chances by selecting Ryan, not only because of Ryan's merits but also because it affirms Romney's serious commitment to the challenges of governing.

The V-P debate with Biden will be something to behold. Ryan should not hold back there. Now if we could just re-create another Ryan vs. Obama encounter . . .

Teenage Girls Set a Good Example for America

2012-08-09T17:33:00Z

We can learn a lot from several teenage girls. All of us can improve our behavior, including the politicians who are behaving so badly.

But in the Olympics our teenage gymnasts set an example that went far beyond athletic excellence. In winning they were exciting but gracious. Yet when one fell off the balance beam, landed on their bottom after a vault, took a tumble, or stepped out-of-bounds, there were no excuses, no outbursts, no finger-pointing. They accepted responsibility for their own mistakes.

Thank you McKayla, Jordan, Aly, Gabby, and Kyla.

Also a teen swimmer named Missy set an example. So did young Rachel, who wasn't in the Olympics, but stayed polite and courteous while an intolerant customer ridiculed her and her employer on-camera simply for supporting traditional marriage.

These teenage girls set an example for each and every one of us.

Tea Party Shows Muscle in Tuesday Wins

2012-08-02T13:53:00Z

Politics-as-usual got stomped by an unusual coalition Tuesday in Georgia. In Atlanta, the tea party, the NAACP, and the Sierra Club found something in common — their dislike of an $8.4 billion tax increase to expand transportation in metro Atlanta.

And in Texas, the movement again demonstrated that it is strongly racially inclusive by boosting Cuban-American Ted Cruz to an upset victory that gave him the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.

In Georgia, the political establishment outspent the plan’s foes by perhaps 250-to-1. The establishment lost by a 63-to-37 percent margin.

“We ran a unpredictable, out-of-the-box campaign; we broke all the rules,” tea party leader Debbie Dooley told me on “Istook Live!” the morning after the vote. She is co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party and a state coordinator with the national Tea Party Patriots.

“You’re not supposed to reach out to the Democrats or liberal-leaning groups and form a coalition with them. We did that. We were highly successful,” Dooley said.

Supporters of the tax plan included Republican Gov. Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, a Democrat. With a host of big-business groups, they, through the “Untie Atlanta” organization, pushed the theme “Less Traffic. More Jobs. A Stronger Economy.”

Dooley told “Istook Live!” that the sponsors outspent opponents by about $8 million to $30,000 (266-to-1), but took for granted that they would have support from Democrat-heavy, mass-transit-friendly Fulton and Dekalb Counties. So when the sponsors focused instead on Republican-leaning areas farther out from Atlanta’s core, Dooley says that provided an opening to form the coalition with the tea party, NAACP, and Sierra Club.

“We activated the tea party activists in all the counties. We got a lot of earned media. We were able to use the media that was very highly supportive of this massive transportation tax. It would have been the largest tax increase in Georgia history. We went after the governor and speaker of the house for supporting this tax increase,” she says, “and even Democrat-heavy, mass-transit-friendly areas voted no.”

As she explained to me, Dooley began tailoring the tea party message to appeal to the Democrat base in Fulton and DeKalb counties.

“We talked about:

Distrust of government
‘Aren’t you paying enough taxes?’
The fact that this [contracts] would go to political cronies
That elected officials tell us they don’t have enough money for transportation but they were preparing to spend $300 million of taxpayer money for a new stadium for the Atlanta Falcons.”

I told Dooley, “I think there’s a lesson there,” that the tea party and NAACP had found something in common to work on.

Not only did this and other elections (like Ted Cruz’ victory in Texas) demonstrate how rumors of the tea party’s death are greatly exaggerated. It also clobbers the left’s false claims that the tea party somehow is racist.

Also on Wednesday’s “Istook Live!,” Phillip Dennis of the Dallas Tea Party noted that the movement’s diversity was proven again in its successful support of Ted Cruz, who is Cuban-American, bucking the political establishment and overcoming a massive disadvantage in campaign funds.

The rising stars in the Republican Party, Dennis said, are all minorities who are winning with massive tea party support. He named Cruz, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Congressman Tim Scott, R-S.C., Congressman Allen West, R-Fla., and Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana as examples.

As Dennis described it, his Dallas group has grown from 300 people to 22,000, and nationally the tea party has gone from being a rag-tag group to one that is well-funded, communicates internally, and successfully trains people to organize and to get out the vote.

Ernest Istook's Response to Friday's Colorado Shootings

2012-07-20T18:34:00Z

The terrible shootings in Colorado should make Americans think about how we handle our problems. It shocked us all when we awoke to Friday’s awful news of the theater murder rampage in Aurora, Colorado. While details trickled in, I devoted most of Friday’s “Istook Live!” to this tragedy.

The victims, their families and loved ones remain in my thoughts and prayers. Many people, I know, are focused on them just as I am. As a news reporter and as a public official, I’ve been at the scene of many tragedies. From each senseless tragedy, we need to learn something.

Because details usually are slow to develop, speculation often is injected into the gap. That can launch never-ending conspiracy theories, as happened after the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. At the time I was Congressman for most of Oklahoma City, and I was aghast to see how those theories developed, despite the better information that we eventually learned.

But what’s worse is the instant political exploitation of tragedies, which begins even before all the victims are identified. It’s sick how some rush to make sure they don’t “let a crisis go to waste.” On Friday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg immediately used the theater killings to promote gun control. That was bad.

Yet the problem is not the weapon; it’s the person who pulls the trigger.

Each tragedy, however, is also an opportunity to learn.

One of our Friday guests, Congressman Louie Gohmert, is an individual who always speaks his mind. He described his concerns about the direction of our country and about the ongoing efforts to take God out of acceptable society. In general, I share concerns over efforts to suppress religious freedom and to disregard America’s religious heritage. Still, at this time we have no way to know whether the terrible murders in Aurora have any direct link to specific religious or anti-religious beliefs.

Many good people turn their thoughts to faith whenever a tragedy occurs, so it’s not surprising that Congressman Gohmert’s thoughts turned in that direction.

The Colorado killer somehow felt his problems or issues could not be resolved without violence. I see a parallel with today’s hyper-heated political rhetoric. We need blunt conversations to address our nation’s problems. But the unrelenting and deceitful negativity of this summer’s Presidential campaign goes too far; it seems aimed at political killing. Another bad example of this trend is the awful rhetoric being aimed at the Boy Scouts for staying true with their beliefs and their traditions.

The theater shooter needed a better way to handle whatever are his problems. We need a better way to handle ours. Perhaps this event will spark some soul-searching about how we should handle our disagreements. Even in a Presidential race, it’s wrong to treat others as evil or hateful just because our politics or even our values are different. And political assassination is just as wrong.

Click below to hear our interview with Rep. Gohmert.

Click here for Rep. Gohmert's statement.

Obama's millionaires are asking you for money

2012-07-17T18:08:00Z

What a rush to have millionaires do your bidding. And President Obama has several of them.

Four of them were like the president’s puppets on a White House stage with Obama Wednesday. They stood mute, but Mr. Obama gladly spoke for them. Each millionaire, he said, believes they should pay higher taxes. (These millionaires also want you to send money to them. More on that later.)

“They haven’t been asked to do their fair share,” the president declared. “They believe there is something deeply wrong and irresponsible about that.”

That should have been the cue for the four to whip out their checkbooks and write checks to the Treasury on the spot. They didn’t. However, all four are political supporters of President Obama and have written checks to his campaign.

Each is also part of Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength (PMFS). Last November, PMFS members marched on Congress (perhaps aided by chauffeurs) to lobby for higher taxes. Yet despite their rhetoric, they weren’t ready to help reduce the federal deficit or debt. The Daily Caller’s Michelle Fields confronted several of them and asked if they would voluntarily contribute to the U.S. Treasury to help pay down the national debt. Each one of these OWS (Obama Wealthy Supporters) refused.

The rationales they offered to The Daily Caller included:

?? “I don’t think we can solve the problem just with contributions.”

?? “That is not going to help anybody.”

?? “It would be of no impact whatsoever. It would be puny and ineffective.”

?? “Taxes are not charity; they’re not voluntary. And that’s what we have to do for rich people as well as middle-class.”

Even if they’re being hypocritical, these rich people have a valid point because Obama’s tax on millionaires would accomplish very little. As The Heritage Foundation has noted, Obama’s plan “will only cover one-half of one percent of the president’s new spending. Soaking the rich cannot get deficits down, only spending reductions can do that.” Plus, the investment income of millionaires often has been taxed already, such as by the 35% corporate tax. That’s part of why a lower tax rate is assessed against the remainder.

The millionaire’s tax is Obama’s effort to change the subject from his jobs-killing agenda and issues such as skyrocketing gasoline prices.

Perhaps the Patriotic Millionaires have another goal. Across the top of their website, PatrioticMillionaires.org, is a button that says, “Support the Fight for Fiscal Strength. Donate today.”

That’s right. These millionaires want you to give them money. Curious why such filthy-rich people would need our charity, I clicked through to the donation page. It offered no information about where or how donations would be spent. Still, feeling more generous than they were toward reducing the national debt, I gave $1 through my PayPal account. The receipt finally told me that my $1 went to the Agenda Project Education Fund. I found their website, AgendaProject.org.

The Agenda Project is the parent group of the Patriotic Millionaires; it is a hub and a clearinghouse for left-wing causes and ideas. Its online newsletter not only promotes higher taxes, but urges people to question Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith, hints that conservatives are racists and otherwise launches well-known liberal screeds.

The effort is headed by Erica Payne, who also uses the Agenda Project website to promote her belief that the organized conservative movement — which includes The Heritage Foundation as well as the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, Judicial Watch, Citizens Against Government Waste, the Council for National Policy and a multitude of others — is a threat to America. She writes, “Combating this well-funded, well-coordinated machine is the work of this generation of progressive leaders.”

Payne brags that her writings have been called “a blueprint for a progressive conspiracy to help save the country.”

So that’s the origin of Wednesday’s stage-managed event at the White House. It was not about patriotic millionaires wanting to sacrifice their wealth for the nation. Their wallets remained as firmly shut as their mouths were Wednesday. They were doing the bidding of Obama and of their parent group, the Agenda Project. But these rich folks are actively angling for cash from us everyday people so they can “educate” us about the big, bad Right-Wing Conspiracy.

Obviously, being rich doesn’t make you right.

Our Dangerous Dependence on Foreign Chocolate

2012-04-03T15:00:46Z

America is addicted to chocolate. Foreign chocolate.

A majority of us consume chocolate each day. Although the U.S. produces only 6% of the world's cocoa, we consume more than 20%.

The threat is obvious. It's time for government to step in and promote alternatives.

Any day, President Obama will be barnstorming the country to tell us, "If we really want chocolate security and chocolate independence, we’ve got to start looking at how we use less cocoa and use sources that we can renew and that we can control, so we are not subject to the whims of what’s happening in other countries."

Today, we are at the mercy ofAfrica, which produces over 75% of the world's cocoa. That's an unstable source, which means our chocolate dependency undermines national security.

Each of us probably began with that first innocent M&M but now it's an unsustainable $13-billion a year habit. The average American eats 11 pounds of chocolate per year. We gain weight from chocolate. Pimples get blamed on chocolate.

Fortunately, alternatives exist. With proper federal loans and subsidies these can relieve our cravings and wean us from our addiction to chocolate.

Every member of Congress should be ready to spend on aSpree. (And it's a lot easier to pronounce than Solyndra.) The economy would be stimulated by the outpouring of government-subsidized alternatives to chocolate.

Subsidizing LifeSavers is another way to demonstrate our commitment to health care.

We can re-affirm our commitment to children if we provide Dots for Tots.

Others would pull for taffy. The ag sector might prefer Jolly Ranchers. Swing states may be indecisive, but Twix would be perfect for them.

And why not switch over our ethanol subsidies to candy corn?

Some chocolate alternatives are no-no's, however. Promoting Sweet Tarts risks offending the National Organization for Women. And no self-respecting Democrat would mimic Ronald Reagan by providing Jelly Bellies.

President Obama can lead the way by explaining how we should not rely on foreign chocolate anymore than we should rely on foreign oil. Of course, we'll hope he doesn't mess up his chocolate numbers as he does when he claims we have "only 2%" of global oil reserves. But he's using the most restrictive definition possible. Obama's own Department of Energy reports that, "Proved reserves are a small subset of recoverable resources."

As noted by Investors Business Daily,America's actual oil reserves are 60 times higher than the President's carefully-chosen number: "The figure Obama uses — proved oil reserves — vastly undercounts how much oil theU.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, theUSA is awash in vast quantities — enough to meet all our country’s oil needs for hundreds of years."

Mr. Obama is using flimsy and misleading numbers to justify his anti-oil and gas energy policy, and his mega-billion dollar subsidies for "green energy" and "green jobs."

So perhaps it's time for him to pivot to another basic necessity, like chocolate. If that goes well, he could move on to coffee, because we consume 16% of the world's coffee but grow less than 1%. And we manufacture less than 1% of the world's TV sets, yet use 17% of them. Then there's olive oil: We produce a tenth of one percent but use 8% of the world's supply. There are plenty of other examples of how we are dependent on trading with other nations, just as they are dependent on trading with us.

But we have an over-abundance of politicians who are addicted to government subsidies and regulation but allergic to free markets. After all, the free market could not have produced the $50 light bulb. It took government to come up with that bright idea.

Former Congressman Ernest Istook is a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Follow Ernest on Twitter: @ErnestIstook

Our Dangerous Dependence on Foreign Chocolate

2012-04-03T15:00:00Z

America is addicted to chocolate. Foreign chocolate.

A majority of us consume chocolate each day. Although the U.S. produces only 6% of the world's cocoa, we consume more than 20%.

The threat is obvious. It's time for government to step in and promote alternatives.

Today, we are at the mercy ofAfrica, which produces over 75% of the world's cocoa. That's an unstable source, which means our chocolate dependency undermines national security.

Fortunately, alternatives exist. With proper federal loans and subsidies these can relieve our cravings and wean us from our addiction to chocolate.

Subsidizing LifeSavers is another way to demonstrate our commitment to health care.

We can re-affirm our commitment to children if we provide Dots for Tots.

Others would pull for taffy. The ag sector might prefer Jolly Ranchers. Swing states may be indecisive, but Twix would be perfect for them.

And why not switch over our ethanol subsidies to candy corn?

As noted by Investors Business Daily,America's actual oil reserves are 60 times higher than the President's carefully-chosen number: "The figure Obama uses ? proved oil reserves ? vastly undercounts how much oil theU.S. actually contains. In fact, far from being oil-poor, theUSA is awash in vast quantities ? enough to meet all our country’s oil needs for hundreds of years."

Mr. Obama is using flimsy and misleading numbers to justify his anti-oil and gas energy policy, and his mega-billion dollar subsidies for "green energy" and "green jobs."

Former Congressman Ernest Istook is a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Follow Ernest on Twitter: @ErnestIstook

Congress Needs to Fix Itself in 2012

2012-01-04T18:50:42Z

Congress owes America better start for 2012, and not to repeat the way it ended 2011.

Even if the Senate is hopelessly dysfunctional, the House could do better. The final House session of 2011 was a prime example of how to lose public confidence. The body was gaveled into session on short notice Friday morning, December 23^rd, and a mere ten members approved legislation for the entire 435-member House. The others had left for the holidays, so instead of a roll call vote on a controversial two-month lowering of the "payroll tax," the bill passed by "unanimous consent" of the handful who were there.

House leaders had given Members insufficient time to return to Washington. Representatives who had scattered for the holidays were informed at 5 pm that Thursday of a key vote at 10 am Friday. This unusual procedure for a major vote was possible only because the House a few days before had voted for a "martial law" procedure that removed the normal requirement for greater advance notice.

That is why only ten House Members were present for the vote according to the Washington Times—four Republicans and six Democrats.

The rush was purely political. Had Members been told to return for a vote after Christmas, no deadline would have been missed and the public would have the accountability of a regular roll call vote. Many Republicans had publicly opposed the two-month extension, but we will never know how they would have voted.

Media reported that House Speaker John Boehner informed his Republican colleagues at 5 p.m. Thursday of what would occur Friday morning. The notice came during a conference call that allowed them only to listen to the Speaker, not to respond, and they were informed that it was the "Speaker's decision," not theirs. It was the opposite from a call five days earlier, when Members sounded off at length to Boehner and pushed him to oppose the Senate's and President Obama's positions on the bill.

Some were angered that their own GOP leaders out-maneuvered them with a quick count. FOX News reported that unnamed Republicans were incensed and believe the action could put Boehner's speakership at risk in 2012.

However, Speaker Boehner was only exercising special authority that almost every GOP Member had approved in advance. A so-called "martial law" protocol was adopted by the House on December 14^th, empowering the Speaker to schedule quick action by simply giving notice on the prior calendar day. As The Heritage Foundation has documented previously, the Speaker of the House only possesses whatever powers the other Representatives choose to give to him,

Using the "martial law" provision, Boehner gaveled the House into session at 10 a.m. Friday after giving the notice at 5 p.m. Thursday, and was not bound by the usual three-day delay before acting on new legislation. The House clerk's official website shows the legislation, HR 3765, was introduced and passed by voice, all within 5 minutes and 15 seconds. The Senate and Obama also quickly approved HR 3765, extending by two months a lowering of the Social Security tax also known as the "payroll tax." That sets the stage for a continuing fight in 2012 over a longer extension.

The vote ended, for now, a stormy political battle that featured President Obama daily pounding Republicans in the media, a rift between House and Senate Republicans, and internal differences among the House GOP. Many Republicans wanted to link the tax holiday to reductions in the federal workforce plus several reforms. The quick vote dropped that effort.

Any lone Congressman wanting to continue the fight could have stymied Boehner's decision if they could rush to Washington to be on the House floor that Friday morning to object to the unanimous consent procedure, or to challenge the absence of a quorum. None did so.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a Kansas Republican, told CNN he had considered objecting but the Speaker's quick action made it impossible to return to Washington in time. “By the time we were notified that the unanimous consent agreement would be offered, where I come from in Kansas, I can’t get to Washington quick enough on this short notice,” he said.

The House has serious challenges of dealing with a do-nothing Senate that protects President Obama's aggressive liberal agenda. Even if House Republicans were totally united, their task would be herculean. But short-cutting the regular order of the legislative process became too common in 2011. It undercuts public trust when promises of open and transparent government are not kept.

By design, the House should have power flowing from the bottom-up, not be controlled from the top down. Both leaders and rank-and-file should seek a fresh start as 2012 dawns, by avoiding the unseemly process that we witnessed as they ended 2011.

Congress Needs to Fix Itself in 2012

2012-01-04T18:50:00Z

Congress owes America better start for 2012, and not to repeat the way it ended 2011.

That is why only ten House Members were present for the vote according to the Washington Times?four Republicans and six Democrats.

'Twas the Day After Christmas

2011-12-26T16:00:52Z

‘Twas the day after Christmas,
And all 'cross the land
All the people were saying,
"Wasn't Christmas just grand?"

The children were joyful,
The parents were tired,
And grandfolks, aunts and uncles
Had been really inspired.

The stockings still hung by the chimneys with care
But the toes were now empty; there was nothing left there.

All the presents were opened
The carols all had been sung
We'd enjoyed our big gathering
Where we'd seen everyone.

But beneath all the clutter, the leftovers and toys
Was the meaning eternal, and the source of our joys.
For we'd focused our time not on gifts, not on food
But on the true source of our holiday mood.
We read verses, we sang songs, we remembered and smiled
For the cause of it all was the holy Christ Child.

So may we proclaim 'ere the year starts again:
Let's promote peace on earth, and good will to men.

Ghost Savings: Spectrum or Spectral?

2011-12-05T21:22:00Z

The federal government owns vast assets that would be better managed and more productive in the hands of the private sector. Selling some of these makes sense to reduce debt, reduce the deficit, and help shrink our bloated government.

However, selling assets is often abused as another Washington ploy that claims to reduce the deficit but becomes a ruse for more spending.

There is real money to be had from the sales. Public lands. Unused buildings. And the ever-popular "spectrum auctions" that take bids for the right to use different portions of the airwaves.

But proceeds too often are spent to make short-term fixes of spending gaps, creating no permanent solutions to serious ongoing problems and instead delaying reforms. They do not reduce the deficit. They do not reduce the size of government.

Congress is poised once again to abuse asset sales by using them to justify more spending rather than to shrink government and its deficit spending. A prime example is that they may use permanent auctions of spectrum to plug just part of a single year's problems with Medicare payments to doctors.

That's a standard Washington game: Use different time frames to make something look better. In the real world, we know that something can only be sold once (excepting perhaps the Brooklyn Bridge). And one-time money should not be spent on repetitive costs.

Congress has created a recurring problem known in D.C. as the "doc fix." This traces to a 1997 decision (creating what is officially known as the Sustainable Growth Rate?SGR) to cap the amounts paid to doctors by Medicare. That made projections of future costs appear to be smaller. Because the SGR formula cuts payments so that they lag behind actual costs, doctors rightfully complain about government is price-fixing. Physicians warn that they cannot afford to treat Medicare patients unless they are paid properly.

Undoing the SGR is expensive; it projects as a $300-billion expense over the next 10 years. Instead, ever since 2003, Congress has rescinded the SGR's cuts for one year at a time?fixing the payments to doctors. Thus, the "doc fix."

The longer the underlying formula remains unfixed, the more it gets out of whack. Without a doc fix this year, medical providers will see a 27% cut in their fees come January. But making just a one-year adjustment carries a $21-billion price tag. Politics requires that Congress claim to get the money from an offset someplace else in government, rather than just borrowing that amount.

Enter the spectrum auction as a major source of money.

Since 1994, the Federal Communications Commission has auctioned off different wavelength segments of the airwaves, for uses that include radio and TV broadcasting, cell phones, public safety and military communications, and wireless broadband. Having a license to use the spectrum has become increasingly valuable as technology expands. The auctions have generated tens of billions of dollars to the federal treasury, much more than earlier allocation systems that involved only licensing and lotteries.

Auctions are held whenever Congress authorizes it for segments of the spectrum. For example, an auction in 2006 raised $13.9-billion; one in 2008 raised $19.6-billion. These proceeds do not always reduce the deficit, though, because Congress often uses some of the money for other things. Like public safety communications networks. Educational TV. Cultural broadcasts. So net savings often become illusory.

The successful spectrum bidders essentially get a permanent lease, subject only to costs of renewal applications every few years. Those who have been using non-auctioned airwaves?such as licensed broadcasters and others who won under the old lottery system?want to hang onto those rights, and not have to compete in an auction.

The latest proposal is to have another spectrum auction and use its proceeds as an offset for a one-year "doc fix" for Medicare.

President Obama projected it could raise $28-billion, but wanted to use big chunks of that for a public safety communications network. The Congressional Budget Office projected that network would cost almost $12-billion, reducing the net budget savings of the spectrum auction to $15.8-billion. Several bills in Congress propose variations on this theme.

But netting $15.8-billion from auction of permanent spectrum rights is an unbalanced and insufficient offset for the $21-billion cost of a one-year "doc fix." The fix is temporary; the sale is forever.

Doing a doc fix a single year at a time is costly and delays the real reforms needed to Medicare. But by pretending that selling part of the spectrum forever is a justified offset for more spending, Congress would be trying to grab money out of thin air.

Where Can Congress Find Room to Cut? Look to Obamacare.

2011-11-18T17:15:49Z

Where can Congress' "super committee" find its $1.2-trillion target in savings?

The answer is hidden in plain sight. The money could come from Obamacare, to avoid implementing its huge expenses. Repealing the health care law would solve the super committee's dilemma, yielding more than enough savings to fulfill their mission.

Yet Obamacare has been placed "off-limits" for no good reason.

As POLITICO noted:

"Anyone tracking the super committee has heard the mantra: Everything is on the table. But there's one big item that doesn't appear to be on that gigantic deficit-cutting table: President Barack Obama's health reform law, his signature domestic achievement."

By itself, repeal of Obamacare would more than fulfill the mission assigned to the super committee. If we didn't have the expense of Obamacare, it would save more than the $1.2-trillion in savings they are supposed to find over the next 10 years.

But in most quarters, the silence about repeal is deafening. Not so, though, for Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), who is making a determined but overlooked effort through his HR 3243, "The Common Sense Deficit Reduction Act."

Rehberg goes after the costliest parts of Obamacare now, before they kick in and Americans become dependent upon them. They include taking out the expansions of Medicaid and the health insurance premium subsidies that are projected to cost $1.379-trillion over the next 10 years. As analysts Nina Owcharenko and Jim Capretta note in their paper, "The reality is that the new health care law will result in trillions in unaffordable deficit spending.

The Congressman points out that Obamacare's brand-new entitlement programs are not yet operative, so nobody's current benefits would be lost or reduced. Cutting out those Obamacare programs would also avoid the defense cuts and Medicare cuts that otherwise would occur (under sequestration law) if the super committee fails to find $1.2-trillion somewhere else.

Rehberg knows the damage ahead if Obamacare stands; he chairs the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. HR 3243 is silent on all others aspect of Obamacare save the massive spending expansions, so issues like the individual mandate remain would untouched until after the Supreme Court rules on its constitutionality.

The bottom line is that Rehberg's proposal points out a key fact that most politicians are ignoring: The simplest way to meet the super committee's $1.2-trillion goal is to stop new spending before it happens, by undoing Obamacare's subsidies and Medicaid expansion.

After that, we should get all of Congress—not just the super committee–focused on reforming entitlements and cutting spending, but not raising taxes.

Where Can Congress Find Room to Cut? Look to Obamacare.

2011-11-18T17:15:00Z

Where can Congress' "super committee" find its $1.2-trillion target in savings?

Yet Obamacare has been placed "off-limits" for no good reason.

As POLITICO noted:

"Anyone tracking the super committee has heard the mantra: Everything is on the table. But there's one big item that doesn't appear to be on that gigantic deficit-cutting table: President Barack Obama's health reform law, his signature domestic achievement."

After that, we should get all of Congress?not just the super committee–focused on reforming entitlements and cutting spending, but not raising taxes.

Piecemeal 'Jobs Bill' Can Still Be Dangerous

2011-10-13T19:45:00Z

If something is too big to swallow, you cut it into bite-sized pieces. But that won't improve the taste?unless you jettison any stinky stuff.

Likewise, the notion of splitting-up President Obama's Senate-rejected 326-page "jobs bill" won't improve any of the proposals.

It's good that the break-up would prevent the classic congressional strategy of blending the good and the bad together into one piece of legislation. That strategy expects that Congressmen will hold their noses and vote for a package when they're not given a choice to remove the worst parts.

But backup strategies are already in motion and they carry dangers as well.

Even segmented versions of Obama's $447-billion plan can be used to squeeze in those worst parts. That's because it's almost impossible to get both the House and the Senate to enact identical versions of a bill, thus requiring a conference committee to "work out the differences"?which sometimes includes adding distasteful details.

Congressional leaders select the conference committee members, so it becomes an opportunity for leaders to buy votes, such as Senate leader Harry Reid did with the infamous "Cornhusker Kickback" and "Louisiana Purchase" provisions in Obamacare. (Technically, those didn't happen in a conference committee, but the technique was the same.)

Rumors are already afoot that, in order to get support from Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Reid may relieve the oil and gas industry from punishing provisions in the bill. If so, what other Senators might want to get in on the action?

In fact, the more separate bills that are created, the more vehicles exist for political games. Splitting up the bill is already acceptable to Obama, who said in Pittsburgh. "If they don't pass the whole package, we're going to break it up into constituent parts,"

The threat that Washington may enact this "Son of Stimulus" legislation has not been removed by a single vote in the Senate. As Heritage Foundation President Dr. Ed Feulner often notes, "In politics, there are no permanent victories and no permanent defeats."

A Plan to Limit Dishonesty in Congress

2011-10-06T00:40:22Z

Give two U.S. Senators credit for trying to do something about the smoke-and-mirrors games in Washington.

The "Honest Budget Act" by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) goes to the heart of public distrust of Congress, namely the dishonest budget gimmicks and accounting tricks.

The public is rebelling because too many "budget cuts" have turned out to be spending increases or, at best, promises that a future Congress will curtail spending.

By no means does the senators' legislation fix all the problems, but it's definitely a good start. They take aim at what they calculate are $350-billion in gimmicks used during recent years, by both political parties. Their checklist includes:

–No budget, no spending. It's been over two years since the Senate has adopted a budget plan. The proposal is to prevent any new spending whenever an overall budget has not been approved by Congress.

–Quit crying wolf. So-called "emergency spending" is exempted from budgetary limits, so they propose that any claimed emergency must have supermajority approval. (As Heritage has noted, "routine expenditures [are] given the emergency designation simply to evade spending caps.")

–No phony piggy bank raids. We have hundreds of billions in unspent money that was appropriated in prior years–$703-billion was the total at the start of fiscal year 2011. Rather than canceling those old, unused and unnecessary obligations from prior years, Congress re-directs them to new spending that is then exempted from normal spending limits. The proposal would curtail the practice.

–A freeze should be a freeze. Remember President Obama's claims last year that federal workers' pay has been frozen for two years? The claim is phony, because of backdoor "step increase" adjustments that have averaged 2-3% increases. Under the plan, those would be frozen until 2013.

–No time games. Billions of dollars of revenue and spending have been "deemed" to occur a day earlier or later, so that they're credited to a different federal fiscal year. The IRS won't let taxpayers ignore the actual calendar, so Congress shouldn't either.

The Sessions-Snowe plan is good. As they say, the goal is, "No more gimmicks, tricks, or empty promises. America deserves an honest budget.

Their plan will not, however, curtail all of Washington's huge bag of tricks. Many more are described in a Heritage guide, "Things You Never Knew About Appropriations—But Should."

And even if Congress fixes its process, that won't fix the rhetoric—the false claims that are routinely made about the contents of spending bills. But the longest journey begins with a single step, and the senators' plan would start that journey on the right foot.

A Plan to Limit Dishonesty in Congress

2011-10-06T00:40:00Z

Give two U.S. Senators credit for trying to do something about the smoke-and-mirrors games in Washington.

The "Honest Budget Act" by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) goes to the heart of public distrust of Congress, namely the dishonest budget gimmicks and accounting tricks.

The public is rebelling because too many "budget cuts" have turned out to be spending increases or, at best, promises that a future Congress will curtail spending.

The Sessions-Snowe plan is good. As they say, the goal is, "No more gimmicks, tricks, or empty promises. America deserves an honest budget.

Their plan will not, however, curtail all of Washington's huge bag of tricks. Many more are described in a Heritage guide, "Things You Never Knew About Appropriations?But Should."

And even if Congress fixes its process, that won't fix the rhetoric?the false claims that are routinely made about the contents of spending bills. But the longest journey begins with a single step, and the senators' plan would start that journey on the right foot.

Obamacare: Forgotten But Not Gone?

2011-09-22T15:44:31Z

Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) is introducing an amendment that would deny money for Obamacare during the upcoming fiscal year.

Has Congress forgotten Obamacare? All the promises to repeal it mostly faded into the background months ago, even as the health law disrupts our economy.

Fortunately, at least one lawmaker is still trying to undo that disruption. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) is forcing the Senate to confront the issue. He's sponsoring an amendment that would deny money for Obamacare during the upcoming fiscal year (which starts Oct. 1st).

The law was structured to provide $105-billion worth of automatic funding and $1.4-trillion over the next 10 years, so the money gets spent unless Congress blocks it. Stopping the funding is exactly what Sen. Shelby is trying to do.

As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Shelby plans to offer his amendment today as the committee considers the bill that funds the Department of Health and Human Services. His language won't repeal Obamacare outright, but it prohibits spending any money on it for a year.

"Anyone who believes that the government will save money by spending taxpayer dollars on a new entitlement is living in a fantasy world. In reality, our nation is already struggling to reform existing entitlements in order to preserve them . . ." Shelby said.

Congress may have gone quiet about Obamacare, but businesses haven't forgotten it. They can't, because its costs and mandates are already suppressing job growth and causing many employers to plan on dropping health coverage. Even former national Democratic chairman Howard Dean agrees with a McKinsey report projecting that almost a third of businesses will terminate their employee health plans as Obamacare becomes fully-implemented. Instead, taxpayers would pick up much of the costs for the workers' health care.

The massive 2,700-page health care law is deliberately designed to make defunding and dismantlement difficult. Original estimates counted that it creates 159 new government agencies, but an exact count later proved impossible due to the enormous complexity of the law.

Because the new law also attempts to bypass the normal appropriations process, even defunding it is difficult. But at least Sen. Shelby is trying. His insistence will force his colleagues to take a stand, rather than ignoring the problem while Obamacare does its damage.

Obamacare: Forgotten But Not Gone?

2011-09-22T15:44:00Z

Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) is introducing an amendment that would deny money for Obamacare during the upcoming fiscal year.

Has Congress forgotten Obamacare? All the promises to repeal it mostly faded into the background months ago, even as the health law disrupts our economy.

Obama's Maleficent Seven

2011-09-01T19:45:00Z

President Obama is accustomed to having his way?like trying to dictate the date and time when Congress would assemble for him to address a special joint session.

But that's small stuff. The big stuff is the dictatorial flood of regulations that Obama is imposing. He can't get his big-government agenda through Congress anymore, so now he does it through the executive branch.

A regulation is a law made by the executive branch?permitted only because Congress over decades passed a multitude of vague laws that empowered bureaucrats.

Obama is taking advantage of this to govern by dictate. As his spokesman says, "There are things he can do without Congress, and he will do them." Overturning Obama's regulations requires both houses of Congress to unite by veto-proof margins to wipe out the red tape.

Because the Senate protects the Obama White House by bottling up House efforts to block the regulations, the White House-run bureaucracies are going wild. The only alternative is court challenges that take years to produce results, if they produce any.

By the Administration's own count, 219 major regulations are impending?meaning 219 efforts that EACH are estimated to cost the economy more than $100 million per year. But President Obama?responding to a letter from House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)?has personally identified what could be called the "Big Seven" because each of them would impose annual burdens over $1 billion. Collectively, these seven surpass $100 billion per year. So let's call them the "Maleficent Seven."

Obama defended the Seven in his letter to Boehner, claiming that his Administration just finished an exhaustive review of unnecessary regulations and weeded out old ones that were costing $2 billion per year (which Obama tried to magnify by saying it was "$10 billion over five years"). But his team has already issued 75 major new regulations last year and this year, which are an annual $40 billion drag on the economy. So he's already made things 20 times worse than his "improvements"?and that's even before the Maleficent Seven kick in.

What are the Seven? Here's the official chart appended by the White House to Obama's letter:

Agency/Subagency	Title	Primary Annual Cost Estimate
EPA/AR	Reconsideration of the 2008 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards	$19-$90 Billion
EPA/AR	National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for Coal- and Oil-Fired Electric Utility Steam Generating Units	$10 Billion
EPA/AR	National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for Major Source Industrial, Commercial & Institutional Boilers and Process Heaters	$3 Billion
EPA/SWER	Standards for the Management of Coal Combustion Residuals Generated by Commercial Electric Power Producers	$0.6-$1.5 Billion
DOT/NHTSA	Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 111, Rearview Mirrors	$2 Billion
DOT/FMCSA	Electronic On-Board Recorders and Hours of Service Supporting Documents	$2 Billion
DOT/FMCSA	Hours of Service	$1 Billion

Thousands of pages of other pending job-killing regulations are not even on the list, including those from Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation.

The picture is clear. Businesses in America can't afford to expand AND pay for the new regulations about to hit them. Hurricane Irene?and even Katrina?didn't pack nearly the wallop that Hurricane Obama is bringing ashore. Companies already are evacuating the area of job creation.

Sadly, Congress failed to prepare for disasters of this magnitude, through decades of heedless delegation of authority to unelected bureaucrats. The House is considering helpful legislation, such as the REINS Act (by Representative Geoff Davis, R-KY), to rein in bureaucracy. But it can do more.

Until Congress fixes the entire regulatory system that enables a dictatorial executive branch, we're at the mercy of more disasters in the form of job-killing regulations, especially from a President who doesn't want to be bothered with congressional opposition. Meanwhile, Obama's Maleficent Seven will continue to ride roughshod over our struggling economy.

Are Green Jobs 'Gone with the Wind'?

2011-08-28T18:04:00Z

President Obama plans a big jobs announcement?right after he finishes his vacation in Martha's Vineyard. Expect him to say that green jobs are the key to recovery?that they will generate millions of jobs and a new era of prosperity.

Oh, you've already heard that one? So has everyone else. Even The New York Times has begun to debunk Obama's claim, headlining, "Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises." Obama's claim is getting quite old and quite expensive, but remains just as false as ever.

If Congress' "super-committee" wants to cut wasteful spending, the green jobs agenda is a great place to start.

Obama's 2011 Labor Day announcement is likely to echo his similar jobs announcement just after Labor Day in 2010, asking for another $50-billion in spending.

His stimulus plans always include green jobs and lots of greenbacks for them. As the White House website quotes Obama, "the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs – but only if we accelerate that transition."

On his Midwest bus tour this month, Obama pledged an additional $2.4-billion for green jobs, especially to make batteries for electric cars. It was another re-hash. The 2009 "stimulus" bill already provided $2.4-billion for the same purpose. A typical result was reported by CNS, "From that amount, $300 million in grants went to Johnson Controls to manufacture batteries. According to the White House, thus far the firm has added 150 jobs because of the grant. That means the government spent about $2 million per job."

Green jobs are about government subsidies, cronyism, and job cannibalism. They aren't self-sustaining because they rely on giveaways of taxpayer money and they cannibalize existing jobs.

As Aaron Glantz wrote in his NYTimes article, “federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed” and Obama’s goal of creating 5 million new green jobs within 10 years is a “pipe dream.”

Many others have known this for quite some time.

The Washington Times reported almost a year ago, "After months of hype about the potential for green energy to stimulate job growth and lead the economy out of a recession, the results turned out to be disappointing, if not dismal."

ABC News found that 80% of the $2 billion set aside in the “stimulus” package for “green jobs” is going overseas — mostly to China.

Too many green jobs and renewable energy companies can't make it without taxpayer subsidies. Some can't make it even with that help, such as Evergreen Solar in Massachusetts, which went bankrupt even with $40-million of help (and were offered even more).

Because of how they backfire, it's proper to ask whether these are "Green Jobs? Or Gangrene?" Academics have explained the backfire in articles such as “Seven Myths of Green Jobs."

The green agenda soaks taxpayers. But it also packs a double wallop because taxpayers are first hit to pay for the subsidies, then everyone is hit by higher energy prices caused by energy taxes and regulations.

The waste should be obvious even to die-hard liberals like Rep. Maxine Waters (D, CA), who last week told MSNBC, “green jobs have been about a lot of talk and not a lot has been happening on that."

Actually, a lot of spending has been happening, just not much job creation.

Sadly, when it comes to green jobs, President Obama's Labor Day jobs speech is likely to be just another summer rerun.