Voice For Liberty

Tag: United States Congress

  • Huelskamp not deterred

    At a time that conservatives are concerned with the direction Speaker John Boehner is taking in negotiations over the fiscal cliff, he gives conservatives another reason to worry.

    Heritage Foundation writes that Boehner’s counteroffer to President Obama is “little more than categorical, pre-emptive capitulation.”

    The Washington Times reports: “Republican leaders struggled Tuesday to contain the backlash from conservatives over the GOP’s offer of $800 billion in tax increases to head off the ‘fiscal cliff’ — a move that didn’t impress the White House, even as it spawned a rebellion on the right. Conservative lawmakers and interest groups said House Speaker John A. Boehner’s offer abandoned core Republican principles and earned no credit from a White House that has insisted on even bigger tax increases and balked at major spending cuts.”

    So perhaps it’s not surprising that Boehner has taken steps to discipline a handful of members, including Tim Huelskamp, who was just re-elected to a second term representing the Kansas first district. Three of the four are notable for their votes on fiscal issues, voting for limited government rather than expansion.

    In a press release, the watchdog group Club for Growth reported: “The Club for Growth today praised the conservative voting records of Congressmen David Schweikert (R-AZ), Justin Amash (R-MI) and Tim Huelskamp (R-KS). All three members of Congress were removed from their committee assignments as a consequence of their principled stands on behalf of pro-growth policies, often bringing them in conflict with the leadership of their own party. … Congressmen Schweikert, Huelskamp, and Amash are now free of the last remnants of establishment leverage against them. We expect that these three defenders of economic freedom will become even bolder in their efforts to defend the taxpayers against the big spenders in both parties. The dirty little secret in Congress is that while refusing to kowtow to the wishes of party leaders can sometimes cost you some perks in Washington, the taxpayers back home are grateful.”

    Huelskamp said “No good deed goes unpunished. We were not notified about what might occur but it confirms in my mind the deepest suspicions that most Americans have about Washington D.C: it’s petty, it’s vindictive, and if you have conservative principles you will be punished.”

    In a statement on his Congressional website, Huelskamp explained “It is little wonder why Congress has a 16 percent approval rating: Americans send principled representatives to change Washington and get punished in return. The GOP leadership might think they have silenced conservatives, but removing me and others from key committees only confirms our conservative convictions. This is clearly a vindictive move, and a sure sign that the GOP Establishment cannot handle disagreement. I am not at all ashamed of any of the principled, conservative stances I took in the past two years.”

  • Obama’s regulatory extremism

    In the introduction to his book Democracy Denied, Phil Kerpen gives us a history lesson on the grab for executive power by presidents through the use of “signing statements.”

    Elizabeth Drew made the case against Bush’s abuse of executive power in a lengthy New York Review of Books piece called “Power Grab.” She specifically highlighted Bush’s use of signing statements (a technique to object to elements of a law while signing it, and refusing to enforce those elements), the detention of foreign combatants at Guantanamo, and warrantless wiretaps. She concluded that Bush was a tyrant.

    Kerpen explains how the view from the oval office can make one forget campaign promises:

    Even the Bush practice that raised the most ire — the use of signing statements — was embraced by Obama just weeks after he took office, when he said: “it is a legitimate constitutional function, and one that promotes the value of transparency, to indicate when a bill that is presented for presidential signature includes provisions that are subject to well-founded constitutional objections.” Contrast that with what Obama had said about signing statements on the campaign trail: “This is part of the whole theory of George Bush that he can make laws as he is going along. I disagree with that. I taught the Constitution for 10 years. I believe in the Constitution and I will obey the Constitution of the United States. We are not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end run around Congress.”

    Not that Obama alone takes criticism for exercising presidential power contrary to the actions of Congress, as he describes the auto industry bailout in the last days of the presidency of George W. Bush. A bill didn’t make it through Congress, but Bush “repurposed” TARP funds — intended for banks — and used them for an auto bailout in the amount of $17.4 billion.

    It is this use of executive power and agencies to bypass the will of people — as expressed through Congress — that is detailed in a book authored by Phil Kerpen and published at this time last year: Democracy Denied: How Obama is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America — and How to Stop Him.

    Kerpen’s website is philkerpen.com, and it features excerpts from the book along with a theatrical trailer.

    Kerpen explains the problem by describing a solution: The Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, or REINS Act. This proposed law would require any major regulatory action to be approved by Congress and receive the president’s signature. Kerpen writes: “We have regulators who are effectively writing and executing their own laws. The major policy decisions that affect every aspect of our economic lives are moving forward without consent of the people’s legitimately elected legislative branch.”

    The problem is that often Congress passes generic laws and leaves it to regulatory agencies to write the rules that implement the law. By requiring Congressional and Presidential approval of major regulations, agencies will be accountable to the current Congress, and lawmakers will have a chance to ensure that actual regulations are consistent with the intent of enabling legislation.

    Cap-and-trade energy legislation provides an example of Kerpen’s thesis, which is “how the Obama administration was disregarding Congress and the American people to accomplish its objectives through regulatory backdoors.” The legislation passed the House, but couldn’t pass the Senate. So what happened next? Kerpen explains Obama’s detour around Congress:

    Just to show you how unfazed the Obama administration was by the political defeat of cap-and-trade, consider what’s on page 146 of Obama’s 2012 budget: “The administration continues to support greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the United States in the range of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% percent by 2050.” Those just happen to be the same levels required by the failed Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. Obama is telling the EPA to just pretend that the bill passed and regulate away.

    In fact Obama’s EPA was already moving full steam ahead to implement a global warming regulatory scheme that could even be more costly than cap and trade — without the approval of the American people and without so much as a vote in Congress.

    The remainder of the chapter details some of the ways EPA is accomplishing this backdoor regulation.

    The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare, is another topic Kerpen covers where regulation is replacing lawmaking by Congress:

    Nancy Pelosi was right in more ways then she realized when she infamously said “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” Not only was the more than 2,000-page bill negotiated in secret and so densely complex that few humans could understand it, it also deferred most of the really difficult and important decisions to the regulators, including dozens of brand-new boards, committees, councils, and working groups. So even after ObamaCare had been passed there was no way to know what was really in it until the bureaucracy was assembled and began issuing regulations.

    Kerpen describes the bill that passed as not “finished legislation,” and is now being interpreted by bureaucrats, the most powerful being HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Her office is now, according to Kerpen, “issuing a whole string of official guidelines and regulations that attempt to ‘correct’ the draft law, often by asserting things that the law doesn’t actually say.”

    Other chapters describe regulation of the internet (net neutrality), card check, the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and energy regulation. All of these represent the Obama administration either ignoring Congress or creating vast new powers for itself. The chart Kerpen created shows the plays being made.

    Obama regulatory extremismKerpen’s chart of Obama regulatory extremism. Click for larger version.

    What about regulatory reform? Obama’s doing that. In January he wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “We’re looking at the system as a whole to make sure we avoid excessive, inconsistent and redundant regulation. And finally, today I am directing federal agencies to do more to account for — and reduce — the burdens regulations may place on small businesses.”

    In a chapter titled “The Back Door to the Back Door: Phony Regulation Reform” Kerpen explains that this promise or regulatory reform by the president is a sham. Kerpen describes the executive order that implements regulatory review this way: “The new executive order is the regulatory parallel to the Obama administration’s strategy on federal spending, which is to spend at astonishing, record rates and rack up trillions of dollars in deficits while paying lip service to fiscal responsibility by establishing a fiscal commission.”

    And in a gesture of true public service, Kerpen introduces us to Cass Sunstein, the man who is heading the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the agency that will be conducting the purported review of regulations. A quote from Sunstein: “In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ‘ours’? Did we earn it by our own autonomous efforts? Could we have inherited it without the assistance of probate courts? Do we save it without the support of bank regulators? Could we spend it if there were no public officials to coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of the community in which we live?”

    Kerpen sums up Sunstein’s political philosophy of central planning:

    The idea of Sunstein’s “nudge” philosophy is that the fatal conceit of central economic planning can somehow succeed if it is subtly hidden from view. Sunstein thinks that if he imposes regulations that steer our choices instead of outright forcing them, he can achieve desirable social objectives. … Given Suinstein’s views and the central role he will have in reshaping federal regulation to be “more effective,” we need to be deeply concerned that any changes that come out of the process may make regulation less apparent, but no less costly — and more effective at crushing genuine individual choice and responsibility and substituting the judgment (even if by a nudge instead of a shove) of a central planner.

    The challenge, Kerpen writes in his conclusion to the book, “is to change the political calculus to elevate regulatory fights to the appropriate level in the public consciousness. We must make sure the American people understand that a disastrously bad idea becomes even worse when it’s implemented by backdoor, unaccountable, illegitimate means.”

    Kerpen recommends passage of the REINS Act as a way to restore accountability over regulatory agencies to Congress. The two messages Congress needs, he writes, are: “You can delegate authority, but you can never delegate responsibility,” and “If you fail to stop out-of-control regulators, voters will hold you accountable.”

  • Chambers to host Congressional Summit

    On September 7 the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce will host the 2012 Congressional Summit in Wichita, presented by Black & Veatch. All six members of the Kansas federal delegation have committed to attend this event.

    The event will be from 12:00 pm to 2:30 pm at Drury Plaza Hotel Broadview in Wichita. Individual tickets are $20, which includes lunch. To register, click on 2012 Congressional Summit.

  • Pompeo: Impending tax increases threaten economic growth and jobs

    Following is an article from U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo, a Republican who represents the Kansas fourth district, which includes the Wichita metropolitan area.

    This week the House of Representatives will vote to stop the largest tax hike in American history, which, absent legislative action, is set to occur on January 1, 2013. I hope the Senate and President Obama will join us. Last week’s report of the economy growing at an anemic 1.5 percent is further evidence that tax increases are not what our nation needs.

    Don’t be fooled into thinking this impending tax hike is “on the other guy” or “only on the rich.” President Obama is demanding that federal taxes go up on nearly every single American and nearly every single business. Whether you make more or less than $250,000, whether you own a business or work at one, whether you are retired and receiving dividend income or whether you are a Kansas school teacher who is provided health care under your employer’s plan — your taxes will go up. It will even become far more expensive for many people to die, with a major increase in the estate tax taking effect. All of this will occur as a direct result of the President’s deep and open desire to raise taxes and spread the wealth.

    This pending federal tax increase would be on top of several tax increases the Democrats have already given each of us. President Obama’s health care takeover increases taxes by $800 billion over the next ten years alone. More than a dozen of those tax increases — including the individual mandate — hit the middle class squarely. These increases violate his oft-repeated promise not to raise taxes on those making less than $200,000. They also lower incomes as the threat of tax increases has caused the economy to remain stagnant with unemployment above 8 percent for 41 consecutive months.

    The anticipated economic consequence of such an enormous tax hike is so devastating that the media has coined the term “Taxmageddon” to describe it and suggested that a failure to stop it would be equivalent to driving our economic car off a “fiscal cliff.”

    How big is the impending tax increase? In 2013, every taxpayer in Kansas will be charged with paying an additional $2,984 in federal income taxes. The increased tax payments of all the families in Kansas’ Fourth District put together totals a staggering $1 billion, $4.2 billion from all Kansans, and $494 billion nationwide. The tax increase would target Kansas families, low-income workers, and retirees — and it would be the largest tax hike our state has ever had to endure.

    The President has it backwards. We don’t have a problem with too few taxes. Our problem, rather, is that we have too much federal spending. The federal government is already 20% bigger than when President Obama took over. We have more people on food stamps and more people drawing federal disability benefits than ever before in our nation’s history. A tax increase will just make these problems worse by further stunting economic growth.

    I firmly believe that the first thing Congress must do to provide economic certainty is to stop the tax hike now. Until American families and job creators are certain their federal taxes will not be increased, we cannot get the economy back on track. This week I will vote in the House of Representatives to approve a bill that would provide that certainty by halting Taxmageddon in its tracks. If President Obama and Senate Democrats follow suit, the result will be relief and certainty for small businesses and families that would propel economic growth and create a job for every American who wants one.

  • Three years, no budget

    From Bankrupting America: “After operating for three years without a budget, it is time that the Senate stop pointing fingers and do their job! In the past three years the national debt has skyrocketed to more than $15.5 Trillion dollars, deficits top $1 trillion dollars annually and the Senate has no plan when it comes to spending. While some in the Senate insist they can cut spending and operate without passing a budget resolution, history would say otherwise.”

  • Pompeo: Compromise has meant increased spending

    At the recent economic development conference produced by Kansas Policy Institute, U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo of Wichita explained how the process of political compromise has worked to increase spending. Political compromise of the type Pompeo explained is also called logrolling.

    Pompeo told the audience that in his first 15 months in office, over 260 people came to his office to ask for something, a particular request. 85 percent of those requests came from Fortune 500 companies, our largest companies. Sometimes, he said, they brought along one of his constituents to help make the argument.

    These companies were asking for money from the federal treasury or some other form of special treatment, which Pompeo referred to as crony capitalism.

    Pompeo said he’s urged to compromise, to go along and get along. But he described how compromise has worked in Congress over the past 60 years, no matter which party is in charge of Congress or the presidency, and no matter the combination: “Congressman ‘A’ needed a bridge in his district, Congressmen ‘B’ wanted a flood control project in hers, and the president wanted more money for education. And the compromise was ‘Let’s do all three.’”

    The compromise for 60 years has been not to meet in the middle, but to increase spending. The real party of interest — people whose money is being spent — wasn’t in the room.

    Later, he explained the difficulty that elected officials face. Citing his proposed legislation to end federal tax credits for all forms of energy production, Pompeo said that the beneficiaries of these credits will come to his office and point out jobs created by — for example — a wind power equipment plant in Hutchinson. These people working are easy to see. They’re concentrated in one place at one company.

    But the costs of these credits and programs are being borne elsewhere, he said, and their effects are difficult to see.

  • Cronyism in the tax code

    Why is so much money spent on lobbying government? In a short video, Professor Randall G. Holcombe explains: “The reason you have so much lobbying and so much special interest activity in Congress is because government is so big. Government taxes a lot, government spends a lot, and so as a result there’s a lot of reward to people from going to Congress trying to get a piece of the action. Whether the piece of the action is a tax cut or a subsidy, I don’t think there’s any real solution to those special interest benefits outside of cutting the size of government.”

    Holcombe also explained how tax law is formed: “If you really want to understand the nature of our tax code, don’t ask yourself ‘Why are these provisions in the public interest?’ That’s not how taxes are passed. Ask yourself ‘Who benefits from these taxes, and how much political power do they have?’”

    This is not only a problem at the federal level. In Kansas last week special interest groups were able to extend using the Kansas tax code to funnel millions to special interests at the expense of the general public by extending the STAR bonds program.

    In Wichita, a special interest group recently persuaded the city council to manipulate property tax law in their favor by forgiving property taxes to new home buyers, again at the expense of the general public.

    I do have one disagreement with Holcombe when he says there are not groups that lobby Congress on behalf of the general public for tax reform. There are groups like Americans for Prosperity, Cato Institute, Tax Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, Heritage Foundation, and many others that advocate for tax simplification and lower rates that benefit everyone. Not all these groups explicitly engage in lobbying, but they produce research and spread the message.

  • Who has the economic power?

    Though there is often much focus on the richest private individuals in the United States, the U.S. Congress actually has far more economic power.

    In this video, economist Robert Lawson compares the economic power of the 535 most wealthy private citizens with the spending power of the 535 members of Congress. You might be surprised by what you find out.

    As Congress continues to spend and government continues to increase in size, our economic freedom will continue to decrease. And as our economic freedom decreases, our economic opportunities and quality of life are threatened.

  • The Democrats continue unjustified attacks on taxpayers and job creators

    The following article by U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo, a Republican who represents the Kansas fourth district, including the Wichita metropolitan area, explains — yet again — how ridiculous it is for President Barack Obama and others to attack Wichita-based Koch Industries on the Keystone XL pipeline issue. Pompeo explains that Koch has no financial interest in the pipeline, what “intervenor” status means, and who really stands to benefit if the pipeline is not built. Pompeo hints at who it is, but I’ll be more direct: Warren Buffet. A news article that explains how Warren will personally benefit from blocking the Keystone XL pipeline is Buffett’s Burlington Northern Among Pipeline Winners.

    The Democrats continue unjustified attacks on taxpayers and job creators

    By U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo

    The President and his allies, including those in Congress, have shown what a nasty, personal, and abusive re-election campaign we are about to experience. A recent sideshow in my committee in Congress provides yet another clear and shocking example.

    A recent letter from Representatives Henry Waxman and Bobby Rush, both Democrats, demanded a live witness and testimony from “a representative of Koch Industries” at a hearing on the Keystone XL pipeline, scheduled to be held just two days later. The frivolous nature of the request is proven by that plainly unreasonable deadline. But the partisan tactics go far beyond that.

    Even if Koch Industries had a financial interest in the Keystone XL pipeline, what possibly could be wrong with that? Perhaps more importantly, under what circumstances would such an interest be worthy of a congressional inquisition? Charles Koch and David Koch, co-owners of Koch Industries, are citizens, taxpayers, entrepreneurs, and employers. Their companies employ nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. alone. The company maintains its headquarters in the district I represent, employing 2,600 great Kansans. The company and its employees are among the most hard-working and generous in our community. The company has never been bailed out by the American taxpayers. And given that Americans are desperate for jobs, we should be begging entrepreneurs to look for new opportunities, not attacking them simply because their companies might make a profit.

    The facts are clear: Koch Industries does not have a financial stake in the pipeline — why, therefore, should its officials become part of the all-too-familiar congressional committee circus? The facts are straightforward and a matter of public record. Koch Industries has repeatedly stated that it does not have a financial stake in the pipeline: It does not own the pipeline, it has no role in the pipeline’s design, it is not one of the shippers who have signed contracts to use the pipeline, and it will not build the pipeline.

    Democrats dug deep for some excuse to attempt to haul Koch officials in for a public flogging. What did they find? A 2009 attempt by a Koch subsidiary to obtain “intervenor” status in a Canadian legal proceeding, in order to track the approval process for the pipeline. Wishing to know the fate of the pipeline, and having an interest in whether or not the pipeline is built — as thousands of frustrated American workers and consumers do — obviously does not amount to a financial interest in the pipeline’s construction. Indeed, the Sierra Club of Canada applied to “intervene” in the same proceeding. Notably, no one has alleged that Congress should investigate the Sierra Club’s interest in the pipeline project. So the “intervenor” ploy is a patent sham, and provides no basis for harassing Koch Industries.

    It is also difficult to believe that Members of Congress really think that a particular company’s asserted financial interest in a project is, or should be, relevant to the merits of that project. It becomes still harder to believe, given the decision to target only Koch Industries and the Kochs — and no other company or individual. Doubtless many companies and individuals stand to benefit, or to be harmed, depending on whether President Obama’s decision to delay the pipeline is allowed to stand. News accounts have mentioned a number of those who might reap financial windfalls from the pipeline’s demise, including at least one of President Obama’s most prominent supporters and donors. (Hint: His secretary was the President’s highly visible prop at the State of the Union address.) But two congressmen directed their attention exclusively toward the Kochs, who — as successful businessmen and outspoken critics of the President’s job-killing, statist programs — have been targets for the Administration and its allies for many months.

    Indeed, the very first line of President Obama’s very first campaign advertisement for the 2012 election attacks the Koch brothers. And liberal blogs and publications have published countless slanted pieces on Koch Industries, heavy on innuendo and light on facts. The Obama Administration has long been criticized for maintaining a de facto “enemies list” of its perceived political opponents, whether they are respected Supreme Court Justices, disfavored reporters, or private citizens who just want to keep their own doctors. The Democrats’ obsession with the Kochs as a political target is, indeed, additional evidence of a truly Nixonian approach to politics. That the Obama Administration and its allies use private citizens as symbols to be attacked and vilified is both unfair and deeply threatening to our civic life and the rule of law.

    America deserves better from its elected officials. To be sure, the serious challenges facing the country often generate heated discussion and disagreement. But there is no justification for Democrats who want to haul American citizens before Congress for the exclusive purpose of political abuse. Congressional hearings should not be hijacked by naked political opportunism; legitimate business creators should not be vilified; and Congress should focus on the many policy questions before it, rather than wasting time in an illegitimate pursuit of the Administration’s perceived “enemies.”

    Mr. Pompeo represents the Fourth Congressional District of Kansas. He serves on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, as well as the Subcommittee on Energy and Power. A version of this article appeared at Politico.