We'd Like To Know Why You Haven't Read All The Bills You've Filed

This wonderful little diddy was brought to my attention via Michelle Malkin'sblog. This is good! Truly visionary

A Capitulation, Not a Compromise: Thanks To Three Senators, Republicans Have Lost An Opportunity.

By Pat Toomey.

Note from author of Gop For Liberty:
Pat Toomey, a Republican with libertarian leanings, is currently seeking the nomination of the Republican Party for the Pennsylvania Governor's Race In 2010.

The three Republican senators who struck a deal with the Democrats are touting the Senate’s stimulus bill as a bipartisan compromise. In yesterday’s Washington Post, Sen. Arlen Specter even labeled the $838 billion package cobbled together late last week the “moderates’ compromise.”

But the surrender of three liberal Republicans does not make a bill a compromise. Dig into the details of the Senate bill, and it’s obvious that this isn’t a compromise but a capitulation.

Sens. Specter, Collins, and Snowe tout the spending cuts they were able to wrangle from the Democrats, but they neglect to mention all the additional spending that has been added over the past week through amendments. The ink on the House bill was not yet dry when Senator Specter himself introduced an amendment to add $6 billion in spending for the National Institutes of Health. The bill is stuffed with pork projects and spending programs that don’t even pretend to be about economic growth. One has to wonder how the “moderates” can defend $1.5 billion for carbon-capture projects, $1.3 billion for NASA, and $75 million for the Smithsonian Institution, among many other earmarks, as “stimulus.” In the end, the so-called compromise bill actually costs $18.7 billion more than the bill passed by the House.

And while the moderates croon about the bill’s tax cuts, very few of those cuts are pro-growth measures that will encourage Americans to invest and produce. In fact, some are only refundable tax credits—meaning checks issued to people who don’t pay federal income taxes. There is a more accurate term for this kind of tax cut: spending.

Thanks to Specter, Collins, and Snowe, the Republican party lost the opportunity to pass a true compromise bill that would have encouraged economic growth. By unanimously voting against the stimulus bill, House Republicans empowered Senate Republicans to demand substantive, pro-growth amendments. After all, without 60 votes in the Senate, President Obama would not have been able to pass any bill, good or bad.

If Senate Republicans had united as their counterparts in the House did, President Obama would have had no choice but to include Republican proposals to cut income-tax rates, along with taxes on businesses and investment. These measures would have encouraged workers to be more productive, freed American businesses currently laboring under one of the highest corporate-tax rates in the world, and encouraged investors to support our ailing financial markets.

To be sure, Republicans would have been forced to accept a large dose of spending, but Democrats would have been similarly forced to accept tax cuts they refused to include in the current bill. That is what a real bipartisan compromise would have looked like—not this $800 billion–plus spending spree that tosses a couple of crumbs to Specter, Collins, and Snowe.

The Senate’s compromise bill is as fundamentally flawed as the original version. While its supporters claim it will create millions of jobs, they neglect to mention all the jobs it will destroy. The money for the bill has to come from somewhere—and that will be straight out of the private sector, where it could have been invested far more efficiently and productively, creating jobs in the process. The subsidies for “green jobs” will, perversely, end up destroying jobs as the country is forced to waste money producing overpriced, inefficient energy.

Whether we are talking about the original House bill, the original Senate bill, or the so-called compromise bill, the stimulus is based on the backward and discredited idea that the country can spend itself out of a recession. It didn’t work for the United States during the Great Depression, it didn’t work for Japan during the 1990s, and it won’t work now.

President Obama’s own economists admit that many of the programs in the bill will do little to stimulate the economy, and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, confessed that Democrats are using the stimulus to check off their Christmas shopping list. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Emanuel said. “And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Even the Democrat-controlled Congressional Budget Office predicts the stimulus bill will actually hurt the U.S. economy in the long run. According to the CBO, the massive amount of new debt will crowd out private investment in the future and hamper economic growth.

Senator Specter cites John F. Kennedy, who said: “In politics, nobody gets everything, nobody gets nothing, and everybody gets something.” In this case, the Democrats get almost everything, and the American taxpayers get to look forward to generations of debt. We have three “moderate” Republicans to thank for that crowning achievement. Let’s remember who they are.

—Pat Toomey is the president of the Club for Growth.

Congressmen Ron Paul and Harry Mitchell Seek to Block Congress' Annual Payraise

Republican Congressman Dr. Ron Paul of Texas and Democrat Harry Mitchell from Arizona have sponsored federal legislation to stifle the $4700 receives yearly as a "cost of living adjustment".

Both men think that a raise of that magnitude in these troubling economic conditions, is not in the best interest of the nation.

Mitchell spoke out on the legislation in a statement "We’re in the midst of a recession, and our elected leaders need to do the right thing, for Congress to give itself a pay raise at a time when so many hardworking Americans are suffering is unconscionable.”

Ron Paul said that Congress turning down a pay raise would demonstrate a commitment to fiscal responsibility.

If the Mitchell-Paul legislation becomes passes and becomes law, members of Congress would have to forgo their anticipated 2010 pay raise. That move would save taxpayers an estimated $2.5 million.

Mitchell and Paul introduced similar legislation last year to block the 2009 pay raise. H.R. 5087 earned 34 bipartisan co-sponsors.

The new legislation, H.R. 156, introduced yesterday has already garnered 57 co-sponsors, including another Texas congressman, Republican Michael McCaul.

In 1989, Congress passed a law that provides lawmakers with an automatic pay raise every January unless they vote specifically to reject the raise.

Nancy Pelosi To Reverse House Fairness Rules

From Human Events.

Nancy Pelosi is planning to re-write the House rules today ensuring that the Republican minority in congress is unable to have any influence. The fairness rules were originally written by Republican speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich, when he enacted his "Contract With America".

Changes to the House rules would make it nearly impossible for Republicans to offer alternative bills, amend Democrat bills or even the guarantee of open debate accessible by motions to recommit for any piece of legislation during the entire 111th Congress. The retraction of the rules will also greatly reduce the transparency in Congress and politician's personal accountability.

In reaction to Pelosi's effort Republican House leaders is sending an objection letter to Pelosi.

"January 5, 2009

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
H-232, U.S. Capitol
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Madame Speaker,

We hope you and your family had a joyful holiday season, and as we begin a new year and a new Congress, we look forward to working with you, our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and President-elect Obama in tackling the many challenges facing our nation.

President Obama has pledged to lead a government that is open and transparent. With that in mind, we are deeply troubled by media reports indicating that the Democratic leadership is poised to repeal reforms put in place in 1995 that were intended to help restore Americans’ trust and confidence in the People’s House. Specifically, these reports note that the Majority, as part of its rules package governing the new Congress, will end six-year term limits for Committee chairs and further restrict the opportunity for all members to offer alternative legislation. This does not represent change; it is reverting back to the undemocratic one-party rule and backroom deals that the American people rejected more than a decade ago. And it has grave implications for the American people and their freedom, coming at a time when an unprecedented expansion of federal power and spending is being hastily planned by a single party behind closed doors. Republicans will vigorously oppose repealing these reforms if they are brought to a vote on the House floor.

As you know, after Republicans gained the majority in the House in 1995, our chamber adopted rules to limit the terms of all committee chairs to three terms in order to reward new ideas, innovation, and merit rather than the strict longevity that determined chairmanships in the past. This reform was intended to help restore the faith and trust of the American people in their government – a theme central to President-elect Obama’s campaign last year. He promoted a message of “change,” but Madame Speaker, abolishing term limit reform is the opposite of “change.” Instead, it will entrench a handful of Members of the House in positions of permanent power, with little regard for its impact on the American people.

The American people also stand to pay a price if the Majority further shuts down free and open debate on the House floor by refusing to allow all members the opportunity to offer substantive alternatives to important legislation -- the same opportunities that Republicans guaranteed to Democrats as motions to recommit during their 12 years in the Minority. The Majority’s record in the last Congress was the worst in history when it came to having a free and open debate on the issues.

This proposed change also would prevent Members from exposing and offering proposals to eliminate tax increases hidden by the Democratic Majority in larger pieces of legislation. This is not the kind of openness and transparency that President-elect Obama promised. This change would deprive tens of millions of Americans the opportunity to have a voice in the most important policy decisions facing our country.

Madame Speaker, we urge you to reconsider the decision to repeal these reforms, which could come up for a vote as early as tomorrow. Just as a new year brings fresh feelings of optimism and renewal for the American people, so too should a new Congress. Changing the House rules in the manner highlighted by recent media reports would have the opposite effect: further breaching the trust between our nation’s elected representatives and the men and women who send them to Washington to serve their interests and protect their freedom.

Sincerely,

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), Republican Leader
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Republican Whip
Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), Conference Chairman
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), Policy Committee Chairman
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wyo.), Conference Vice-Chair
Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), Conference Secretary
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), NRCC Chairman
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Chief Deputy Whip
Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), Rules Committee Ranking Republican"


Please call and e-mail your representatives as soon as you can and let them know exactly how you feel about the voices of Conservatives all over this country being drowned out by a Democratic majority. These rule changes must be voted on and it is important that you let your congressperson know exactly how their constituents feel about this.

Republican Congressman Anh Cao Comes From Strong, Libertarian Like, Self-Relient Background

Anh Cao knows communism. Anh "Joseph" Cao fled South Vietnam as a boy in 1975 when a Communist invasion threw the last remnants of U.S. influence out of the country. He, like many anti-Communist Vietnamese refugees, also became a Republican.

On December 6, 2008, Anh Cao defeated incumbent William Jefferson, an African American in a primarily black district, in a total congressional surprise to most. Cao was virtually unheard of until that moment.

Here is an excerpt from the Huffpo's latest blurb about Cao:
Cao (pronounced "Gow") is the first Vietnamese American elected to Congress,but only the fourth Asian American to join the House as a Republican. A child of refugees, his father served as an officer in the South Vietnamese Army, fighting communism alongside American troops. It's all too easy to portray Cao as a Vietnamese American with conservative views that stem from a legacy of anti-communism. Here, the obvious comparison can be made with right-wing Cuban Americans of southern Florida. But Cao's New Orleans East -- home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese Americans of Louisiana -- is no Little Havana. And Cao is no Republican ideologue. A political independent until only recently, Cao, who once trained as a Jesuit seminarian working with the poor in Latin America, described his politics as "walking the middle line" in a recent New York Times article.

But by holding fast to the middle, Cao isn't merely playing it safe as the first House Republican to represent New Orleans since Reconstruction. The middle line is proxy for the nuanced political and racial location that Vietnamese Americans of New Orleans occupy, a location that doesn't quite conform to traditional left-to-right political ideologies. Indeed, the Vietnamese Americans of New Orleans pride themselves on self-reliance, yet they also demand government accountability, especially when confronted with injustice. They seek to advance themselves politically and economically, yet seem to do so without sacrificing solidarity with other racial groups, particularly neighboring African Americans. Nowhere were these values more clearly on display than in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Less than six weeks after the storm, the Vietnamese Americans of New Orleans East returned to their homes, doing so over the objection of local and federal officials. Their leader was Father Nguyen The Vien, a political firebrand and head of Mary Queen of Vietnam church (MQVN). "Before the storm, I guess you could call us libertarians," Father Vien said. "Our attitude toward government was: 'you don't bother us, we won't bother you.' But Katrina changed all that. We had a responsibility to speak out." And so with each step of the rebuilding process, the priest and his congregation battled those who stymied their efforts: foot-dragging FEMA officials, The Waste Management Corporation that sought to dump Katrina debris in their backyard, city leaders all-too-eager to sell off New Orleans East to developers. Through it all, the priest was surrounded by a coterie of experienced community organizers, policy wonks and attorneys.


Finally! Someone to speak the conservatism that the Republican party has been lacking! Enough with the religious right and the wing nuts. Let Cao speak for the real Republicans that are left in this country so we can begin rebuilding our party.

Things are looking up in GOP land.