Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

It’s a rule of thumb that when Congress goes home on recess, the majority want a list of accomplishments they can tout to the folks back home, even if many disagree with what they have accomplished.  This Memorial Day recess, congressional leaders are going home with their plans to pass a series of bills in shreds.

First, just as it was announced that the national debt is approaching the 13 trillion dollar mark, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer admitted that he has all but abandoned plans to pass a budget for Fiscal Year 2011.   This would be the first time in 36 years, since the budget act was passed that the House has not passed a budget, even in years when the Senate didn’t follow through or the two Houses could not agree on one budget.  The deficit number seems just too much for even liberals to deal with in an election year.

Next, they were embarrassed when a bill that would have sailed through in years past with bipartisan support failed twice on the House floor.  It’s called the America Competes Act, a Bush Administration “compassionate conservative” program to improve math and science education by creating new federal government programs and throwing money at it.  The Democrats took the program and tried to double the spending, but the Republicans were able to force an embarrassing vote that would stop the big program spending increases while adding provisions to fire federal employees who download porn off the internet, the focus of a scandal at the National Science Foundation, one of the beneficiaries of the bill.  When that passed, the Democrats pulled the bill off the floor.

A decades long effort to give the District of Columbia congressional representation as if it was a state was killed for the year when left wing ideologues in city government refused to accept an amendment that gives its citizens the right to own firearms without crippling restrictions.

A massive spending bill that included unemployment compensation and health care subsidies and would have increased the deficit by $144 billion was whittled down three times in three days before the House barely passed a very slimmed down version on Friday 215-206. 34 Democrats voted against it and only one Republican, Cao of Louisiana, voted “Aye.”  (The 34 Democrats read like a who’s who of vulnerable incumbents from Alan Boyd of Florida to Jay Inslee of Washington State).  The problem is, Majority Leader Harry Reid, who had threatened to stay in session during the Memorial Day weekend, folded his tent and went home after the Senate passed the war supplemental bill.  This means “temporary” tax credits that businesses have come to rely on, as well as unemployment insurance and Cobra health benefits subsidies, will expire May 31.  Oh by the way, the House left without dealing with the Senate-passed war supplemental, which includes money for the troops.  The Democrats are trying to use the bill to attach yet another $23 billion in spending to deal what they say is an “emergency” problem of teacher layoffs, causing heartburn for those Democrats in the House who claim to be fiscal conservatives.

Even the number one political priority for Democrats, a bill to gut the Supreme Court Citizens United decision, which gave incorporated groups rights to participate in the political process, scheduled for a vote in the House on Friday, was suddenly shelved until mid-June due to Democrat squabbling.

So it looks like those who are willing to face their constituents next week will have to hope they can punt the issues to the next recess—that would be the Fourth of July.

www.conservative.org

Dear Representative:

Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

The House suspended operations Wednesday while House and Senate Democrats squabbled over just how much they wanted to increase the deficit.  When the smoke cleared, they decided increasing the trillion-dollar deficit by $80 billion would be just fine. (This is down from about $140 billion or so in the original bill). The bill they argued over is known as the “extenders” bill, H.R. 4213, because it extends expiring tax breaks for business and special subsidies for unemployment insurance and health insurance put into place during the recession.  Also included is the annual problem of Medicare payment cuts to doctors put into place many years ago but never enacted.  Because the budget forecast has to include these cuts, even though they know they will never happen, making sure they don’t happen also increases the deficit.  (And you wonder why the government cannot make ends meet?)

The actual cost of the “compromise” reached Wednesday night is $144 billion, and to no one’s surprise, part of the bill’s cost is being “paid for” by tax increases—permanent tax increases to “pay for” temporary spending.  This has been a characteristic of spending bills the Democrats have sponsored since they took over control of the Congress in 2007.  It sets up a scenario to raise different sets of taxes each year as these “temporary” spending measures expire.  The “extenders” bill is expected to sail through the House Thursday.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will still need one Republican vote to end debate and get a vote in the Senate before next week’s Memorial Day recess, but he is confident he can get that, probably from one of three Senators, Snowe and Collins of Maine or Brown of Massachusetts.  Of course, he has been confident before and lost, at least temporarily, so we will see.

Once again, as predicted by conservatives, the so-called “pay-as-you-go” legislation signed with great fanfare in February by President Obama to “restrain spending” has had no effect on spending but has been used as a great excuse to raise taxes.

Director of Government :: Larry Hart

The last week before a congressional recess in the House of Representatives is characterized by a schedule of legislation that isn’t worth the paper it is no longer written on.  The House leadership knows that its members will be anxious to get away for the holiday so they try to spring controversial bills at the last minute in the hopes that they can jam them through without much debate.  This week’s doozy is a bill called the DISCLOSE Act, H.R. 5175.  It’s designed to minimize the effects of the recent Supreme Court decision which lifted restrictions on corporations and unions to participate in the election process and advocate or oppose candidates, a decision which sent the leading liberal political types, such as Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), into apoplexy.  This bill was not on the announced calendar for this week, but Monday morning the House Majority Leader announced that amendments to the bill must be submitted by Wednesday, implying the Democrats will try to force a vote before adjournment on Friday.

Although the decision can’t be overturned, the bill attempts to stifle those groups who might make use of this ruling, to force a disclosure of donors to groups who might be involved in political ads or other political activities, whether or not these donors are funding the political activity involved.  Now you might think that unions as well as incorporated groups interested in this activity would oppose this bill.  That might be true if unions were included in the bill.  But in a blatant partisan move, the bill excludes unions from these requirements.  Although it is likely the Democrats with their large majority can ram this through the House, the union exemption may make it difficult for Senate passage, if Republicans hold together, always a big “if.”  The Democrats themselves have disagreements and they may or may not be resolved before the gavel sounds on Friday, forcing a layover until June, but this bill is unlikely to be the only surprise this week.

Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

The Democrats have a dilemma.  Senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln (D-AR) is the Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee and in a hotly contested primary to get  the Democrat nomination for reelection.  To show her influence, Lincoln successfully passed an amendment which would force influential Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs to give up derivatives trading.  (Derivatives are products based on assets, and bets are made on their rise and fall, much like commodity futures).  Although they claim they are “out to get revenge on Wall Street,” the Democrat leadership has let it be known they were ready to gut this amendment, probably by postponing its effect for two years, so they can then quietly kill it altogether.  At the same time, they did not want to embarrass Lincoln, who they are supporting against the union-backed Lt. Governor Bill Halter. So they did not act before the May 18^th primary.  That did not solve the problem as Lincoln only received 45% of the vote and is in a runoff that will end June 8.  So Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd had to pass the bill Thursday with the amendment intact and not answer any questions about plans for the final bill that will be merged with the House version (which does not have this provision).  Look for action after June 8 to give the coup de grace to the derivatives amendment whether Lincoln wins or loses her primary.

Congress scheduled a seven week session following the Easter recess.  In typical fashion, the House took up no major legislation for six weeks and will try to pass all the bills they have been sitting on in four days.  These include a bill to once again extend business tax breaks along with subsidies for unemployment insurance and health insurance under Cobra which would raise taxes while still increasing the deficit by about $130 billion.  Maryland congressman and congressional campaign chairman for the Democrats Chris Van Hollen is itching to get a bill passed to neutralize the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which granted more freedom to incorporated organizations to participate in political campaigns.  The House leadership set an amendment deadline for Wednesday but is keeping mum on whether they will try to ram through a vote right before they adjourn.  The Senate will take up the war supplemental spending bill with plenty of amendments including some on border security.  ACU will be following these bills closely as the week progresses.

Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

So far, the election of Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, hailed as the “41^st” vote that would give the minority Republicans the ability to sustain a filibuster and stop the passage of bad bills in the Senate and help shape legislation have affected the following bills: 

None.

On the health care bill, the major issue in Brown’s campaign, the “41^st vote” turned out to be irrelevant as the Democrats used the procedure of budget reconciliation that only requires a majority vote to pass a bill rather than the 60 votes most legislation must have these days.  When it came to increasing the deficit with bills to extend various social programs and business tax breaks for short periods of time without paying for them, Brown decided to join the Democrats in voting to end debate.  At that point, it mattered not whether he voted for or against the bill on final passage. Then, on Thursday, came a pivotal moment: the latest move by the Obama/Pelosi/Reid machine to force a federal takeover of each sector of the American economy.  First it was autos, then health care. This time it’s the banking sector with a bill to transfer enormous power to the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Treasury Department to decide which businesses will succeed or fail and put further price controls on credit card fees.   This, said the Democrats, will “punish Wall Street.”  They said this while taking millions of dollars from Wall Street firms in campaign contributions.  They said this while the bill they produced gained the support of big banks like Citigroup and the opposition of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, representing the supposed “victims” of Wall Street.

On Wednesday, Majority Leader Harry Reid was surprised to find that two of his Democrats, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, up for reelection, and Maria Cantwell of Washington, miffed because Reid would not allow a vote on an amendment she wanted, voted “no” on the motion to end debate, negating the two Republicans Reid had in his pocket, the senators from Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who often vote with Democrats on these motions.  The motion to end debate failed.  So Reid needed one more Republican vote.  When he went to Brown, it seemed that Brown didn’t mind this huge government takeover and transfer of authority from Congress to the Executive.  He was just concerned about some obscure provision about his home state insurance in the 1,300 page bill.  No problem, Reid said.  We’ll take care of that when we go behind closed doors to merge the Senate bill with the House bill passed last year.  So Brown, who said he came to Washington to “stop business as usual” cut the deal and provided the 60^th vote Reid needed.  Then, rather than use the 30 hours of further debate allowed under the rules, the Republican leadership cut a deal with Reid to take a vote right away and get out of town for a long weekend.

As Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute puts it so well in a post-mortem in the Wall Street Journal:

We learned that “Democrats are still the party of government and special interests that cling to it.  The trouble is the Republicans have not shown the American people that they have as clear an understanding of what they are for.”

Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

The $800 billion stimulus boondoggle was a terrible piece of legislation for many reasons, not the least being the ability of the bill writers to hide legislation within its 2,000 pages that could not have passed as a separate bill.

One of the most insidious sections reversed years of welfare reform philosophy by once again rewarding sates for increasing their welfare caseload, rather than reducing it, a welfare philosophy that went out with the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program in 1996.  Here’s how it works:  Section 2101 of the bill created a $5 billion “emergency fund” over two years for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.  The money comes with strings and the strings include a requirement that the states face an increasing welfare caseload (presumably due to the recession).  The Feds match 80% of the state’s expenses but only that portion of the welfare caseload that represents an increase from the previous year.

This program will be highlighted this week as the House Republicans initiate a project called “YOU CUT” which invites people to vote online for their choice of a program that needs to be cut from the federal budget.  The “YOU CUT” Website can be found here http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/.  The welfare add-on won this week’s contest.  The Republican leadership plans to use a procedural motion to force the House to at least consider voting on this issue.  We’ll look forward to next week’s contest.  It should be a long time before they run out of ideas for programs to cut.

Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

Overlooked in the reporting on riots in the streets of Athens and panic by European bank executives over their foolish investment in Greek bonds is that once again Uncle Sam is on the hook to help pay for the trillion dollar bailout package put together by the European Union to save Greece (temporarily) from bankruptcy. How is this possible? Through the U.S. participation in the International Monetary Fund, sort of a financial version of the United Nations, designed to assist countries in financial trouble and keep currencies stable. The IMF has so far committed $40 billion to prevent Greece from defaulting on its debt and may commit to as much as $317 billion of the $952 billion bailout the EU is working on. As is the case with so many international agencies, the U.S. is the biggest contributor to the IMF, some 17% of its income, so the U.S. Taxpayer may wind up on the hook for about $54 billion in loan guarantees. This could be only the beginning as other EU countries such as Spain and Portugal are also facing financial trouble.

Sounding the alarm in the House of Representatives is House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana and his Vice-Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state. They have introduced H.R . 5299, the European Bailout Protection Act, that would temporarily prohibit U.S. loans to the IMF from being used for the Greek bailout. To raise this issue to a higher level, they are hosting a discussion called “End the Bailouts: A Greek Forum” Wednesday, May 19 at 10:30am in the Capitol Visitors Center with think tank types and other House members. For more information, you can contact Todd Weiner with Rep. McMorris at 202-225-2006.

The ACU Ratings for 2009 rated the Senate vote one year ago to prevent an additional $5 billion no strings attached commitment requested by Treasury Secretary Geitner, who used to work there. The amendment only received 30 votes. Of course, Geitner is still pushing for more, not fewer billions to go to the IMF, so it’s highly unlikely anything can be done, but at least more Americans will be aware of what’s going on. As Pence put it:

“America is not looking to the European Union to bail out New Jersey or California. The European Union should not be looking to the taxpayers of the United States of America to provide the loan guarantees to bail out Greece, Portugal, Spain or any other country.”

Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

Recent polling and incumbent defeats in their conventions and primaries may be behind a rare Republican win on the floor of the House Thursday.  The America Competes Act was actually cooked up by the Bush Administration as a demonstration of how Republicans are really for science and technology by spending taxpayer money on any proposal that sounds good.  The bill to reauthorize the program for five years would have dramatically increased the funding for this mishmosh of programs by another $22 billion with no thought to the deficit.  This was expected to sail through with at least some Republican votes.

However, faced with the difficulty of passing any outright amendments, the Republican leadership has made good use of their motion to recommit, which sends a bill back to committee with specific amendments. In this case, the motion reduced the cost $47.5 billion by cutting the authorization from five years to three, cutting out additional programs and freezing existing programs at current funding levels.  New restrictions would stop the federal pay for any employee disciplined for downloading pornographic material and require that institutions that receive federal funding allow military recruiters on campus, a big issue in the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan.

When the roll was called, the motion passed 292-126, with almost half of the Democrats present—121 to be exact—voting “yes” along with every Republican save one.  That was Vern Ehlers of Michigan, retiring this year and a scientist by profession  The list of Democrats in the “Aye” column reads like a “who’s who” of those facing a difficult reelection this Fall, from Shea-Porter of New Hampshire to McNerny of California.

The Democratic leadership, having total control of the House rules, may find a way to overcome this minor setback, but it’s safe to say a vote of this kind would have had a very different outcome one year ago.

Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

One of the consequences of the far left Obama/ Pelosi/Reid agenda they have pushed relentlessly in both the executive branch and Congress has been to alienate moderate Republicans and push them to make common cause with conservatives.  An example of this is the move by the Environmental Protection Agency to treat CO2 emissions as “dangerous to public health” and therefore subject to regulation as a pollutant.  If they follow through on this, it would give EPA the right to determine fuel economy standards by fiat and force utility prices even higher than they would be under the House –passed cap and trade bill.  The strategy behind this was to “threaten” these regulations and thus scare big business into supporting the cap and trade bill as a less threatening alternative.  But with the bill having virtually no chance of passage in the Senate this year, the EPA threat becomes a very real one.

Congress has a window of opportunity to “disapprove” any regulation of this size.  It’s a process used successfully only once, to reverse the “ergonomics” rule put in place by the Clinton Administration.  Now Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy Committee, is leading the charge to pass a disapproval resolution of this EPA “endangerment” finding.  Although Senator Murkowski, with a lifetime ACU rating of “70” has often supported more government regulation rather than less in many areas, she believes this move by the Obama Administration is a usurpation of power by the executive and beyond the pale.  Murkowski’s privileged resolution which must be considered and needs only 51 votes to pass.  As it has 41 co-sponsors, including Democrats Nelson, Landrieu and Lincoln, it has at least a chance.  Although the House would probably kill the measure, passage in the senate would be an embarrassment for the Obama Administration, and for Majority Leader Harry Reid who would once again be caught between his liberal caucus and his Nevada constituents.  The deadline for voting on this resolution will come sometime in early June but it’s expected Murkowski will make a move before the Memorial Day recess May 28.

ACU will be following this closely and will alert our activists across the country as the vote approaches.

Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

Overlooked in many of the news reports on the banking overhaul bill now before the Senate is that in all the more than 1300 pages of the bill (S. 3217), there is not one word affecting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the “government sponsored enterprises” at the heart of the mortgage meltdown in 2008.  When the federal government put them into receivership in 2008, the taxpayer bailout was capped at $200 billion.  This turned out not to be enough.  At 7pm on Christmas Eve, Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner quietly removed the cap.  The Obama Administration appointed a commission to “study the problem” and come up with a solution to this debacle, but that has come to nothing.

Today Senator John McCain (R-AZ) backed by the Republican leaders of the Banking and Budget Committees, Richard Shelby of Alabama and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, tried to rectify this huge hole in the bill by proposing an amendment that would wind down these bloated, incompetent agencies and stop the bleeding of taxpayer funds.  This common sense amendment would have:

• Ended the conservatorship in 30 months.
• Required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to reduce each of their mortgage portfolios by 10 percent each year.
• Established more prudent post-conservatorship guidelines for loan guarantees
• Reinstated the federal funding limit of $200 billion per institution.

Knowing that this issue resonates with the American people, Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) was apoplectic in his denunciation of the McCain amendment on the floor of the Senate, saying how horrible this world would be without Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and got his own amendment passed which just put the issue off once again.

The McCain amendment then went down by 43-56 with all 41 Republicans  and two Democrats, Feingold of Wisconsin and Bayh of Indiana, voting for it.  It’s apparent (if it wasn’t already on the health care bill) that the Democrats are willing to buck public opinion in support of whatever the White House and the federal bureaucracy dictate and take the consequences.

Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

Sometimes it takes a newcomer in Congress to recognize just how the system in place has led to the fiscal insanity that has produced trillion-dollar plus deficits as far as the eye can see. (It’s hard to believe that fifteen years ago the Clinton Administration was under attack for producing budget deficits of around $200 billion per year).

Senator George LeMieux (R-FL) was appointed as a “caretaker” Senator (pledging not to run himself for a full term) to fill the 16 months left on the term of Mel Martinez, who resigned in 2009. Not much has been heard from him until now.  Appalled by the lack of interest by the old bulls in Congress on placing some kind of binding limit on spending, LeMieux has introduced a bill that would force a vote next year in freezing federal spending at Fiscal Year 2007 levels.

As LeMieux points out, many, if not most, Americans are living with less than they were in 2007 as a result of the recession.  Hard as its is to believe, just returning to the spending levels of three years ago would balance the budget (a return to 2008 spending levels would balance the budget by 2014). In an interview with the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes, LeMieux called Congress’s spending practices “bizarre,” saying that no one even asks how much revenue is coming in and even attempts to use that as a gauge of how much to spend.

In the face of this, LeMieux has introduced S. Con. Res. 57, which would create an expedited procedure for a vote on a spending freeze.  At the beginning of each Congressional session, the majority leaders of the House and Senate would have one week to introduce a bill that returns spending to 2007 levels.  Failing that, the minority leaders would get their chance.  After two weeks, any member of the House or Senate could introduce the bill.  The bill may be referred to committee with a 30 day time limit and then sent to the floor with a 50 hour limit on debate.  A three-fifths majority of each chamber would be required for passage.

LeMieux has other fiscal ideas strange to the ways of Washington, such as requiring federal agency heads to submit annual budgets with a 5 percent cut across the board just for “a healthy exercise in efficiency.”  (Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) proposed amendments to appropriations bills doing precisely that in 2009, and ACU rated one of those votes in its 2009 Ratings of Congress).

Next time your member of congress or senator waxes eloquent on reducing government spending, ask him or her to look at the LeMieux “2007 solution.”

When Congress starts acting in a “bipartisan manner, it’s often time for taxpayers to hold on to their wallets.  Such is the case with a move by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) to end what is known as “secret holds.”  This is when an unidentified Senator puts a “hold” on a bill, refusing the unanimous consent required for the Senate to do business. Although there is a good case to be made that Senators who use this procedure should identify themselves, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) points out that often a hold on a bill is the only way to allow the public to learn what is being voted on, or as he puts it, “secret spending,” so he has proposed his own amendment.

The best explanation for this comes from Senator Coburn himself, so here it is:

“Secret Holds”

Wyden/Grassley Amendment 3775 would require all Senators who object to proceeding to a bill, nomination, or other matter to submit a notice for inclusion in the Congressional Record that they intend to object, thereby ending the practice of “secret holds.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Director of Government Relations :: Larry Hart

Remember “Cash for Clunkers?”  Well, Congress had such a good time handing out your money to people who wanted to buy a car, they’ve come with a new version, dubbed “Cash for Caulkers.”  This time they want to hand out “free” money–$6 billion over two years to be exact—to people who want to make their homes more energy-efficient.  Just how are they going to do this?  By establishing a whole new program within the Department of Energy to administer it. This new set of federal bureaucrats will, working with state bureaucrats, develop a network of vendors to retrofit homes so homeowners can qualify for a rebate–$3,000 for a partial retrofit (Silver Star program), $8,000 for an entire house (Gold Star program).  These vendors will be called—are you ready for this—rebate aggregators.  These rebate aggregators will be chosen at the sole discretion of the Secretary of Energy, a political appointee. Other provisions are designed to make sure that unionized contractors get preference to be a “rebate aggregator.”  The bill is HR 5019, sponsored by Congressman Peter Welch (D-VT).  Undoubtedly, this will sail through the House on Thursday with the same enthusiasm as Cash for Clunkers which passed the House by a vote of 298-119 in 2009, undoubtedly after some morning floor speeches about the need to reduce government spending.