Tag: John Boehner

Harris votes to keep Boehner as Speaker. Not exactly conservative or gutsy.

Since I was away all day working and stopped listening to talk radio after the election, I came home to find out that John Boehner had been re-elected the Speaker of the House. So much for those bated-breath rumors that:

  • Boehner was going to resign, or
  • There were anywhere from 20 to 30 Republicans ready and willing to vote against Boehner on the first ballot, denying him victory, and/or
  • Boehner would step aside in favor of another if he didn’t win the first ballot. Eric Cantor was one choice, Jim Jordan was another.

Instead, only 12 Republicans put their careers on the line and decided to support either a more presumably conservative alternative or no one at all (h/t Becca Lower – Lowering the Boom):

Becca has the list of nine, plus the “present” vote. The other two didn’t cast a vote, and Andy Harris was not among those either.

So the guy who was bold enough to vote against the “fiscal cliff” and wouldn’t support “Plan B” didn’t follow through on eliminating from power the person who negotiated these deals. I don’t know about you, but I’m shaking my head as well. What happened to the guy who was unafraid to be the lone voice of opposition to bad bills burning their way through the Maryland Senate? Was there a threat made regarding his committee position?

(I suppose the question could – and should – be asked by constituents of Representatives Trent Franks and Jim Jordan, who exhibited a similar voting pattern, but I’ll leave that to Arizona and Ohio bloggers, respectively. Jordan represents an area of my home state not far from where I grew up but lives in the southern part of the district. Still, it’s a rock-ribbed conservative region.)

Frankly, I’m disappointed that Harris gave in to the majority, even if no candidate was running against Boehner. He could have simply voted “present” or selected another person more qualified than the current Speaker.

It’s getting tiresome to see our side continually give ground yet continue to elect the same failed leadership. Do I believe we could have more effective Congressional leadership? Yes. Do I believe we can and should have Republican Party leadership that’s more assertive? You betcha. Otherwise, why should we even bother to be the opposition?

Some are going to tell me, “look at the election results.” All I see is that our President barely squeaked out a majority against a candidate who was apparently going through the motions. Barack Obama fooled enough of the people enough of the time to win, although he did so by masterful usage of data and willing dupes volunteers, I will grudgingly admit. He also had just enough of a coattail to pull through two additional Senators, but only a handful of Democratic House members. It was hardly a wave election like 2010 was.

We need stronger leadership, someone to take the bull by the horns, project a clear choice (like something along these lines), and seize the narrative. (It’s almost unfortunate, for example, that Tim Scott was elevated to the Senate – imagine liberal heads exploding had he been selected as Speaker of the House.) Unfortunately, too many people like that have no interest in the political rough-and-tumble.

So color me disappointed by this vote. Someone asked me, though, whether we should primary Andy Harris because he voted against Grover Norquist the other night. (It’s a comment to this post.) Well, first of all, Grover Norquist was wrong because there was really no question the Bush tax rates would be extended – the argument was over just how many would benefit. I think voting against the fiscal cliff deal isn’t a vote for higher taxes but instead the higher principle of a flatter tax system which doesn’t punish producers.

I look at it this way: I don’t mind contested primaries. We didn’t happen to have one on the GOP side in 2012, but that doesn’t mean we won’t in 2014. Let those chips fall where they may and the Republican voters decide. Hopefully they make a smarter choice than Andy did in this instance – besides, he has two years to mend fences and explain his curious choice.

Harris among ‘no’ votes on fiscal cliff

Good for him. Too bad more Republicans didn’t have a spine.

It also looks like Roscoe Bartlett’s last vote is also against the deal, while all six Maryland Democrats obviously believe in hosing job creators. What do they care? Most of them have districts with overly proportionate numbers of government employees or government wards. Meanwhile, the Democrats are whining that there’s no vote on Hurricane Sandy relief, a bill stuffed with non-essential spending. So John Boehner may cave on that too.

And to think…the 113th Congress will have even fewer Republicans. Maybe next time we’ll show up at the polls enough to overcome the fraudulent press and other factors which led to the 2012 results. Regrets? You’ll have a few.

Odds and ends number 65

Gee, this format seems familiar. I don’t know if it’s the time of year or just luck of the draw, but there have been a slew of items I’ve seen as interesting yet not necessarily worthy of a full post by themselves. So we’ll blend them all together and see how it turns out, sort of like homemade chocolate chip cookie dough.

I don’t know if this is the Maryland GOP shooting itself in the foot once again or just being inadvertently tone-deaf. But as part of an otherwise rather boilerplate formal announcement of its Pathfinders program, which “is a statewide effort to develop the party through local candidate assistance and cultivating grassroots organizations,” they selected a date for their initial seminar which happens to be the exact same day many of those conservative grassroots have a gathering in Annapolis called Turning the Tides 2013. Fortunately, Pathfinders sounds like a continuing effort by the MDGOP so those of us who were booked for Turning the Tides can catch up rather quickly.

But you would think the powers-that-be would sort of scan the political landscape before selecting a date.

The political landscape may be just a little harder to survey if the IRS doesn’t change its mind about discontinuing a “key economic metric” after compiling data for two decades. In my last odds and ends post, I talked about Jim Pettit’s opinion on this pet subject of his, but the political consultant stated his case on National Review Online this week. It made the job of Change Maryland so much easier because the proof was in the pudding and easily spotted to boot. Now we’ll have to use more anecdotal data.

Accessing our elected representative to the federal government isn’t always easy, but one gentleman did and his question is the subject of what is billed as the first “Ask Andy” segment, featuring our Congressman Andy Harris.

It’s not exactly earthshattering that Andy wants a far more fiscally conservative approach than what is being proposed – certainly I do as well. (Actually, I’d prefer an infinite amount of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increases since you can’t divide by zero.) But I can think of a lot of other interesting questions to ask Andy, one in particular being whether he’ll support John Boehner for Speaker after what Boehner did to Republicans who wouldn’t toe the mainstream party line. Somehow I don’t think that will be his next video.

And I think there’s a young conservative who agrees with me on this point about spending. Jonathan Bydlak has graced my website before, when the Coalition to Reduce Spending was formed last spring. But his op-ed (again, on National Review Online) states the biggest flaw in promises made by politicians over the last couple decades:

For years, Grover Norquist and Republicans have tried “starving the beast” of the federal government by capping taxes. While they’ve been highly successful at preventing tax increases, they have been less effective at addressing one problematic aspect of fiscal policy: the ability of the Federal Reserve and Treasury to borrow more and more to finance massive spending, as they have done under the Bush and Obama administrations. It’s simple: Borrowing today means a higher tax burden tomorrow when the debt comes due. True fiscal responsibility, then, requires us to curb spending in addition to limiting tax rates.

Imagine if instead of pledging not to raise taxes, all those politicians had pledged not to raise spending. It’s unlikely the United States would be facing massive tax increases as part of the so-called fiscal cliff. That’s why it’s important to do for spending what Norquist has done for taxes: create a means for voters to hold elected officials accountable when they break campaign promises of fiscal responsibility.

While Bydlak uses the op-ed as a means to promote his “Reject the Debt” pledge, the fact that he’s even starting this conversation is a good sign. Of course, it’s much more politically popular to refrain from raising taxes than it is to cut spending because, as with all things political, making cuts is a grand idea unless and until your particular pet program faces the budgetary meat cleaver. Even I’m realistic enough to know that certain items can’t just be axed abruptly; for example, in my book I proposed a lengthy sunset for Social Security because I knew too many people would have a rug pulled out from underneath them otherwise.

One thing the federal government should be paying more attention to, though, is the amount of time federal workers toil at furthering the agenda of their union at the expense of taxpayers like you and me. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group familiar to my readers, put out a note this week asking the Office of Personnel Management to release a study done regarding “official time”:

Federal employees spent about 3.4 million hours performing union duties while on the clock in 2011, according to an unreleased Office of Personnel Management (OPM) report made public in a November 26 Federal Times article. This amount of time, referred to as “official time,” cost the federal government $155 million. It represents an 11 percent increase in the amount of official time in 2010.

This information comes from leaks inside the administration.

Matt Patterson, a CEI Senior Fellow who covers the Big Labor beat for the free-market advocates, expounded on his findings in a post at the OpenMarket blog. It’s interesting timing considering the right-to-work controversy in Michigan. Look for a piece on that in tomorrow’s Patriot Post Digest; I wrote it yesterday.

I haven’t heard whether yet another effort to make Maryland a right-to-work state will be tried in next year’s General Assembly session, but I suspect that it will. Unfortunately, if I were to make a bet I would say Maryland would be about the last to pass such a common-sense law – then again, who would have thought Michigan would be the 24th?

Stranger things have happened.

16 Republicans

This is something we should be aware of, although chances are it wouldn’t happen that way.

A post by Ned Ryun in RedState points out that just sixteen Republicans could be the difference between having milquetoast John Boehner as Speaker of the House or enacting a changing of the guard. For my part, I believe we need someone who will tell Barack Obama to pound sand until he comes up with realistic and reasonable bipartisan solutions on addressing the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and automatic spending cuts installed the last time we all kicked the can down the road. That someone is not John Boehner.

And before loyal Republicans freak out at the possibility of giving the Speaker’s gavel back to Nancy Pelosi, Ryun points out that House rules require a majority of members select a Speaker, not a plurality. The only way we would see Pelosi back in the chair is if sixteen of the most moderate Republicans crossed the aisle and guaranteed themselves a primary challenge in 2014.

Many conservatives are fed up with Boehner anyway, but the straw which broke the camel’s back may have been stripping some of the more strident House members of their former committee assignments.

Obviously we don’t have a say in what goes on in the House, but those of us in the First Congressional District elected someone who does. Since Andy Harris has said that he doesn’t believe in new taxes, why should he vote for a Speaker who’s willing to negotiate away the one key piece of leverage we have in these budget talks? I hope he doesn’t.

There are other interesting possibilities at work here, though. Let’s say the conservative Republicans succeed in getting enough votes committed to withholding support from Boehner that he couldn’t be re-elected Speaker with just GOP votes. Would Democrats cross over, knowing how he seems to loathe the most conservative in the Republican caucus as much as they do, and provide the votes to re-elect him Speaker? Stranger things have happened, but we would at least know where we stood.

Just because Barack Obama barely won re-election doesn’t mean all of America embraced his economic policies – more than likely it was a reaction to the demagoguery of his opponent and the lack of excitement he brought to the race from the same conservative quarters now questioning whether Boehner deserves another term.

Arguably that same group on a state level lost its confidence in party leadership as well, given that roughly 2/5 of the bodies voting last Saturday – 104 of 247 – voted in favor of the no-confidence resolution against Reince Priebus. Counties on the Eastern Shore, though, split almost evenly, with 34 for and 36 against. And if you add the clear majority from among the Central Committee voters in Baltimore, Carroll, and Harford counties calling for Reince’s head – remember, those are part of Andy’s district now – you can understand that the Harris constituency might be a little perturbed at party leadership.

Hopefully Harris bears that in mind when leadership roles are picked early next year.

Andy’s Salisbury townhall

Finally, I get a chance to reflect on Monday’s townhall meeting with a suitable multimedia presentation.

On Monday our Congressman, Andy Harris, culminated a day spent on the Lower Shore with a public townhall meeting at Chef Fred’s in Salisbury. Several dozen constituents took advantage of the opportunity to ask questions of Andy and otherwise say their piece.

His presentation began with a PowerPoint show which illustrated his main point of the evening: we have been “misled” for 20 to 30 years financially. Slides that showed the “reckless spending spree,” “tidal wave of debt,” “what drives our debt?,” and a comparison between the state we currently find ourselves in and the one in Greece before the EU bailout dominated his early remarks. One particularly interesting (and troubling) statistic: the foreign ownership that was just 5% back in 1970 is now 47 percent, with China the largest holder.

Against that stark backdrop, Harris told the group the aim of the House was to bring that debt under control. We “can’t be competitive with that amount of foreign debt,” he added. Their three-pronged approach was to trim spending without raising taxes – “increasing taxes is not the solution,” Andy said – and cutting regulation to “common sense” levels.

However, those cuts couldn’t just slash entitlement programs. “We have to establish a Social Security and Medicare system that’s viable,” stated Andy.

This took about the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the meeting. Most of the next two hours were spent answering questions on a number of subjects: among them the Federal Reserve, jobs and the economy, education, the PATRIOT Act, the Fourteenth Amendment, energy policy, and Medicare.

Perhaps my favorite question of the group was the one on education, which was asked as part of a soliloquy from a local teacher. It was a story from the front lines that lamented the amount of regulation placed on teachers, and Harris agreed that there was no federal role necessary in education.

I also thought Andy’s view on foreign aid was valid – we should require a country-by-country vote on foreign aid. This was friendly allies would be rewarded while those who oppose us would be first in line for cuts. Among those Harris favored retaining at least the present amount of aid for was Israel, our “staunchest ally” in the Middle East.

Andy also had a long explanation of his beliefs on the PATRIOT Act, a question asked by fellow blogger Julie Brewington of Right Coast. The process of resolving the act was “complicated” because of provisions which expired at different times and being of the belief that some parts of the PATRIOT Act were useful.

Of course, I asked a question, too. In short, what is wrong with the leadership?

Andy also revealed he’s a co-sponsor of a bill to clarify the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t apply to “anchor babies,” which makes sense because the parents aren’t under our jurisdiction as non-citizens.

Quite a bit of the discussion focused on government health care.

As a medical practicioner, Andy eaasily explained some of the factors which allowed drug companies to sell drugs cheaply to Canadians as opposed to here in America. Technically, purchasing drugs from Canada enables drug companies to flout Canadian law, but the reason drugs are cheaper there is the formulary they use – in other words, their selection is far less than ours. Later, there was a question about Medicare doctor reimbursements where Andy made the point that cutting the payments to doctors was a form of “backdoor rationing” because limiting Medicare payments to doctors forced them to stop accepting Medicare patients. (How many people would willingly take a 30 percent pay cut for doing the same amount of work? That’s what they are asking doctors to do, as I understand it.) A more desirable effect could be had by increasing competition between insurance companies, Andy concluded.

There was a questioner who asked about the cuts to job services, but Andy reminded her that there were 47 programs out there which still had $1.5 billion to spend this fiscal year. Meanwhile, due to overregulation, the poultry industry was “on the brink of leaving the country.” We have the workforce to bring light manufacturing to the area, but needed to have a government which would allow businesses to thrive.

Term limits? Andy is a co-sponsor of a term limits bill. I also recall in 2008 he said he’d serve no more than 12 years.

NASA was a good program, but in a time of limited budget flexibility they needed to prioritize their missions.

“Energy independence has to be one of our top priorities,” opined Andy. I couldn’t agree more. He pointed out the Marcellus Shale formation under portions of Maryland and other neighboring states as a key untapped resource.

But, it can’t be an Andy Harris event without somebody protesting, whether in a chicken suit or not.

Mike Calpino, the Libertarian candidate for a County Council seat last year, mildly protested the direction the two principal parties had led the country by holding this sign out front before the event. However, no one disrupted the proceedings inside. Aside from an admitted RINO who thought the Republican Party needed to jettison its right wing, the dialogue was relatively friendly.

Two final quotes from the meeting:

Referring to our financial situation: “(There is) an unwillingness in Washington to face the music.”

“My philosophy is, that if we reduce the size of government, we free up capital and our American entrepreneurship to create jobs and business, to be the best in the world.” That was a reply to the self-described RINO.

Needless to say, the Congressman encourages input from constituents. His district office is downtown at 212 W. Main Street, right inside the Gallery Building.

Valentine leftovers

This was somewhat amusing.

The photo below was one of a series taken of Valentines dropped off at particular Congressional offices (for the full story, go here.)

Sadly I don’t know who to give the credit to aside from the Bankrupting America website.

Honestly, I’d be surprised if these weren’t just tossed out – not because someone wasn’t receptive to the message but because Capitol security is probably a little paranoid about unsolicited food gifts. You never know who could lace these with arsenic.

But it’s a cute way of getting a message across and you can’t fault Bankrupting America for trying. As Kate Pomeroy of the group notes:

Our “gift” is to remind lawmakers that while the debate about spending cuts is a good start, one old adage rings truer now than ever before: actions speak louder than words.

Among a few of the Members on tap to receive this special gift are: Speaker Boehner, House Minority Leader Pelosi, House Majority Leader Cantor, House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan, Minority Whip Hoyer, Majority Whip McCarthy, Minority Whip Lewis, Senate Minority Leader McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Reid, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sessions, and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Conrad, to name just a few.

We are holding both sides of Congress to do what they promised to do. Cut Spending!

Not exactly love letters, but we hope it will warm the hearts of taxpayers everywhere.

Especially when they’ve been chilled by that $3.7 trillion budget Barack Obama proposed. On the other hand, perhaps it’s a cause of heartburn for Congress when they have to deal with that.

(Too bad John Boehner didn’t say it was “dead on arrival” like the Democrats used to say about Reagan’s budgets.)

Update: Rep. Paul Ryan came close.

But as time goes on we’ll see if the love affair between the TEA Party and the House continues. We need not ask about the irreconcilable differences between them and the Senate majority, or the President for that matter. Those divorces will likely become final in November 2012.

Earmarks: the gauntlet has been thrown down

With the 2010 elections looming and the lack of fiscal responsibility by Washington becoming a larger issue, both parties are taking steps to curb the use of earmarks, which are loosely defined as appropriations added to spending bills to benefit a particular interest, usually within the sponsor’s state or district.

Democrats Wednesday proposed an end to earmarks designated to for-profit entities, which will mainly affect defense spending. This ban was passed by the House Appropriations committee.

But in the game of “can you top this” they were trumped by the Republicans’ decision Thursday morning to enact an immediate, unilateral moratorium on all earmarks. House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence was excited about the move, calling it, “very uncomfortable for business as usual.”

In truth, earmarks are but a small portion of the federal budget, accounting for only about 1% of total spending. Yet crusaders in both the House and Senate (most notably Senator John McCain) have attempted with little success over the years to curtail the earmarking practice. Even President Obama was on the anti-earmark bandwagon originally but had to capitulate early on by failing to veto a pork-laden omnibus spending bill.

Obviously, the impact of these efforts will only be felt if House Republicans have the stomach to carry out that which they’ve proposed after winning back the majority. Meanwhile the Senate is cool to such restrictions on their own spending. As we’ve seen with Senator Jim Bunning’s stance against a blatant violation of the PAYGO regulations passed weeks earlier, that which is passed into law has no effect on Congress if they interpret the rules in ways that make sense only to them.

And the temptation to bend these new rules is great – according to a study by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a politician’s share of the vote increases anywhere from 4.1 to 5.7 percent for every 100 percent increase in earmarks obtained by a legislator. Before too much faith is placed into Congress, though, we have to remember this is an election year and job one for a sitting member is to be re-elected.