Jack Kingston

With House Democrats in the steering wheel, Congress’ approval ratings have fallen to a record low (in Jack’s words, even President Bush won’t appear in pictures with us…) and Speaker Pelosi is scrambling for accomplishments to tout during the five-week vacation she intends to take.

Let’s see, should we address the nation’s energy crisis?  Not on her watch!

Should we work towards real reform of the nation’s healthcare system?  Not on her watch!

Should we fund the government through annual spending bills?  Not on her watch!

Should we do something about Social Security reform?  Not on her watch!

What, then, should Congress do?  Mark Armstrong’s “Drawing Board” puts it perfectly…

So what have House Democrats done this week?

Last Friday, they held an impeachment hearing against President Bush.  That’s sure productive.

Today, they issued a contempt citation to Karl Rove and, since that’s not productive enough for one day, they voted to ADJOURN for the month of August.

What’s the House doing under Speaker Pelosi’s watch?  Taking vacation.

Derek Hunter has a great piece in today’s Politico arguing against the “Fairness Doctrine” which is effectively government censorship on talk radio.  It’s on a long wishlist of “Those angry Democrats” who are mad because their domination of the media can’t carry over to the radio.

From the peice:

“You’d think something on which the Constitution is unambiguous (the First Amendment does say, ‘Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech’) would be settled beyond dispute, but history has proved otherwise…

“[T]oday’s politicians are too savvy to attempt this sort of full-frontal assault on speech.  Instead they’re employing a slightly different, more modern tactic - censorship in the name of diversity.”

To read the full article, click here.

Among other things, the article highlights Rep. Mike Pence’s efforts on the issue including an amendment to an appropriations bill that passed overwhelmingly last year and Speaker Pelosi’s refusal to bring up his “Broadcaster Freedom Act” to a vote for fear that it might pass.  For more information on the act from Rep. Pence’s office, click here.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Jonathon Lesser puts it plainly, “to lower gasoline prices permanently, you can reduce demand, increase supply, or do both.”

Sounds pretty logical right?  The problem is that Congressional Democrats don’t seem to understand this fact.  They refuse to increase domestic supply by drilling in ANWR or off shore and their only idea thus far to combat the high price we pay at the pump is a “windfall” profit tax on oil companies.

Sure, oil companies have a lower approval rating than Congress itself so they’re a pretty easy target.  There are just a few glaring issues with this rationale.  First, any American with a retirement plan or investments in a mutual fund is more than likely a stock holder in one of these companies.  Second, these profits are what funds the exploration and research that could prove to be a market-based way out of this crisis.  Finally, as Lesser points out, “unfortunately, by reducing supplies, a windfall profits tax will only lead to even higher prices.”

With Speaker Pelosi and congressional Democrats blocking all the other alternatives, what’s Lesser’s proposal?  Rationing:

“The next obvious step for our solons is to cap demand by rationing gasoline, and then gradually reduce the quantity of ration coupons.

“‘Trading’ in coupons would be encouraged to ensure gasoline is allocated to uses of only the highest value. So Congress could reserve quantities of ration coupons for key lobbyists and their clients. Environmentalists could buy up coupons and “retire” them, lowering gasoline sales even more. Refineries could continue to produce gasoline, but as consumer demand would be sharply limited (and declining), oil companies would be forced to reduce the prices they charge. No more windfall profits! And lower carbon emissions!

“For legislators and environmentalists – if not average citizens – this plan has other virtues: As ration coupons are reduced, consumers would increasingly clamor for more electric cars, cars that ran on French-fry oil, and ‘flex-fuel’ cars that burn everything from gasoline to garbage. Eventually, gasoline could just be banned, reducing prices to zero and eliminating all ill-gotten profits.

“And if Congress then had to tackle French-fry oil speculators and impose a windfall profits tax on Big Spud, well why not?”

Sounds bizarre right?  What Lesser does a good job of pointing out, however satirically, is that if Democrats are blocking the most logically solutions to our problem we’re just going to have to start thinking outside the box.

To weigh in with your thoughts on how to lower gas prices, take Jack’s energy survey by clicking here.

To read Lesser’s full article, click here.

Even if their leadership can’t, freshmen Democrats Bill Foster and Don Cazayoux saw the light when it came to the largest tax increase in American history.  The tax hike came in the form of the Democrats budget resolution which passed the House last week.

From today’s The Hill:

“I can’t support a budget, from either party, that raises taxes on the middle class,” Foster said in a statement posted on his website. “I campaigned on a platform of middle-class tax relief, and I was elected to Washington to bring about change. When asked to choose between my party and the people I represent, I will choose the families of the 14th district every single time.”

“I voted against [the budget] because it allows tax cuts to expire in 2010, raising taxes on most American taxpayers,” [Cazayoux] said in a statement given to The Hill. “I promised the people of the 6th district of Louisiana to vote with my party when they are right, and vote against them when they are wrong. My vote today was the right vote for my constituents.” (Full article here.)

This goes in exact opposition to what Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the floor last Thursday:

“This year’s budget plan does not include a tax increase. It actually calls for a $340 billion reduction in revenues,” Pelosi said on the House floor Thursday afternoon. “The problem that our friends on the Republican side have is that these tax cuts are for the middle class, not just for their friends in the upper 1 percent bracket.”

So what is it?  Did Pelosi and her tax and spend friends pass the largest tax increase in history or are their newly elected members lying?

In year two of their majority, Democrats are again showing that they just can’t lead the nation.  According to today’s CongressDaily:

“Key lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are resigned to the idea that few, if any, of the 12 FY09 appropriations bills will be separately enacted and fear they will be packaged into an ombibus measure…”

That means that, yet again, hundreds of billions of dollars will be rolled into a single bill no doubt drafted in the dead of night behind closed doors and that members will be forced to vote on a measure they haven’t even had a chance to read.  Take Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s feelings on the recently crafted supplemental appropriations bill (from the same article):

“Even some House Democrats are upset about how the appropriations process has been handled…’It is not the way I want to do business,” said veteran appropriator Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio.”

It’s time for Democrats to get in the drivers’ seat and take the wheel before we go any further off course than we already are.  The American people deserve better.

To mark Memorial Day, the Democrat Party of Georgia filed their fourth lawsuit against Georgia’s Voter ID law.  Despite the failure of the last three suits and a recent Supreme Court ruling that upheld Indiana’s law (even the dissent praised Georgia’s law) the DPG just can’t get enough.  Secretary of State Karen Handel provides the perfect response: 

On Friday, May 23, millions of Georgians were busy planning their Memorial Day weekends, writing letters and making phone calls to loved ones serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, and remembering family members and friends who paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. That same day, the Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG) was busy on a different matter: filing a fourth lawsuit against the State attacking the voter ID law. This lawsuit is brought by the same lawyers who filed the first three. All three were dismissed – one by the plaintiffs voluntarily and the other two by the courts. The State must now spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars fighting the DPG’s baseless and repetitive claims.

Ironically, a month ago, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s more stringent photo identification requirement by a 6-3 margin. In the majority opinion, written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who is one of the Court’s most liberal members, the Supreme Court concluded that Indiana’s photo identification law is “justified by the valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.” Georgia, of course, shares that same interest.

Justice Antonin Scalia concurred, adding, “To vote in Indiana, everyone must have and present a photo identification that can be obtained for free. The State draws no classifications, let alone discriminatory ones, except to establish optional absentee and provisional balloting for certain poor, elderly, and institutionalized voters and for religious objectors.”

In Georgia, the photo identification requirement also applies equally to every voter, but in Georgia, any voter can vote an absentee ballot. No excuse is needed to request an absentee ballot, and no photo identification is required to vote an absentee ballot by mail. A Georgia voter who does not have an acceptable form of photo identification when voting in-person can also cast a provisional ballot at the poll and then has 48 hours to return to his or her county registrar’s office with an acceptable form of identification to have that ballot count.

Justice Stephen Breyer, a President Clinton appointee, dissented but specifically acknowledged the marked differences between Indiana’s and Georgia’s photo identification requirement:

“By way of contrast, two other States – Florida and Georgia – have put into practice photo ID requirements significantly less restrictive than Indiana’s…Georgia restricts voters to a more limited list of acceptable photo IDs than does Florida, but accepts in addition to proof of voter registration a broader range of underlying documentation than does Indiana.”

Justice Breyer also cited U.S. District Court Judge Harold Murphy’s 2007 ruling upholding Georgia’s photo identification requirement and praising the State’s outreach and education program:

“Moreover, a Federal District Court found that Georgia ‘has undertaken a serious, concerted effort to notify voters who may lack Photo ID cards of the Photo ID requirement, to inform those voters of the availability of free [State-issued] Photo ID cards or free Voter ID cards, to instruct the voters concerning how to obtain the cards, and to advise the voters that they can vote absentee by mail without a Photo ID.’”

In the span of the last year, the Georgia Supreme Court dismissed the state court challenge because there was no proof that any voter was harmed by the voter ID law. U.S. District Court Judge Murphy also upheld the law, concluding that there was no proof any voter was harmed, that free voter IDs were and are readily available, and that the Georgia Secretary of State Office’s multi-phase outreach and education effort had resolved any complaints related to lack of education about how to get a photo ID. Even a U.S. Supreme Court Justice who voted to strike down Indiana’s law lauded the Georgia law.

The DPG’s lawsuit reads as if none of these rulings exist. The DPG complains that Georgia’s photo identification requirement means the Georgia Democratic Party must expend its resources to resolve three problems that the DPG imagines to exist: “identifying those of its supporters who are affected by the Act, assisting those supporters in obtaining Photo IDs and getting to the polls those of its supporters who would otherwise be discouraged by the new law from voting.” Try as they might, these same lawyers have been unable to identify - in over three years and three separate cases - any person with any of these difficulties.

By now, some may question whether this is even about the voter ID law any longer. Are the opponents of the ID law more concerned with the law itself or are they trying to put into place a mechanism to challenge the legitimacy of an unfavorable election result? After all, these same opponents have failed to produce a single adversely affected voter out of the millions who have cast votes with the law in effect.

A 2005 study by political scientists at the University of Miami and California State University - Northridge may shed some light onto the real motivations of the law’s opponents. The professors found that since the 2000 presidential election, pre-election litigation has essentially become a presidential election strategy. Prior to the 2000 presidential election, 48 cases were filed in state and federal courts, mostly by smaller political parties to secure ballot access for their candidates. Prior to the 2004 presidential election, 114 cases were filed in state and federal courts.

Most of the cases filed in 2004 focused on voter access and registration issues, such as automatic restoration of felons’ right to vote. The challenge to voter ID laws is simply the next step in this strategy, and the DPG seems intent on continuing its quest to disrupt Georgia’s elections process through any means available and at considerable cost to Georgia’s taxpayers.

The opponents of Georgia’s photo ID requirement have now lost in the Georgia Supreme Court and the U.S. District Court. In upholding the Indiana law, the U.S. Supreme Court even commented favorably on Georgia’s law. As Georgians, we know that the right to vote is too precious and too hard-fought to tolerate vote dilution and election fraud. We will not stand idly by as opponents of this common-sense law seek to undermine our vote and our elections through their pursuit of frivolous litigation. Georgians can be assured that this Secretary of State will continue to fight for Georgia’s photo ID requirement – and its implementation in this year’s elections – because I have sworn to protect our voters and the integrity of our elections.

Karen C. Handel
Georgia Secretary of State

In a recent hearing with oil executives over the ever-increasing cost of gasoline, Rep. Maxine Waters revealed the Democrats’ hand and showed what they really want to do - nationalize industry. (Click below for video)

America’s strength is in our capitalist, free market economy.  Something must be done about oil prices but do we really want the famously ineffecient bureaucracy in charge of oil?  The real solutions will be found in conservation, exploration, and innovation.

Yesterday in a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Chairman Henry Waxman threatened to have Congressman Darrell Issa “physically removed” from the hearing.  Why, you ask?  Because Issa asked Mr. Waxman to adhere to the rules of the committee and allow equal time for both parties.

Video available here.

This week in Washington, we’ll be considering the Democrat Budget which is yet another example that Democrats never stray far from their tax and spend ways.  The budget contains the largest last increase in American history, puts discretionary spending at $1 trillion (with a ‘T’), and does nothing to reform out of control entitlement spending or the earmarking process.

TAX INCREASE: The Democrat budget increases taxes by $638 billion over the next five years.  This includes increases in marginal tax rates, elimination of the 10-percent tax bracket for lower-income taxpayers, higher taxes on marriage, children, small business, and estates; and higher taxes on investments.

With the economy lagging, Democrats think it’s time to increase taxes on the lowest tax bracket, on small businesses (who, by the way, employ seventy-five percent of Americans), and on investments.  Why you ask?  So they can spend more.

 SPEND, SPEND, SPEND: The budget will include more than $1 trillion in discretionary spending so they can pay back their special interest friends.  If the ongoing battle over the supplmental is any indication, that means they intend to spend that trillion without the transparency and accountability of the regular spending process.  Infact, Chairman David Obey and Rep. Murtha have already indicated that we probably won’t even pass a regular spending bill this year and will instead roll everything into one huge omnibus bill surely to be crafted behind closed doors.

 ENTITLEMENTS ON AUTO-PILOT: Despite the fact that Medicare and Social Security alone currently face $40 billion in unfunded liabilities, Democrats do nothing to address the growing need for entitlement reform.  Rather than give the American people the tools they need to achieve the American Dream, they want to keep people chained to these programs that will (not may) one day default.  Democrats are bankrupting the country and refuse to do anything about it.

EARMARKS: Despite their campaign promises, Democrats have done nothing to bring about real reforms to the earmark process.  Rather than answer the call to reform, they are growing them by leaps and bounds.  Last year, Jack introduced the only bipartisan earmark reform proposal which has been adopted by the House Republican Conference as its standard.  For more information on our proposal, click here.

In this time of economic uncertainty, American families are tightening their budgets and struggling to make ends meet.  The government’s budget should reflect that - reduced spending and lower taxes are the way out of this economic situation.

At yesterday’s hearing on why Democrats chose to violate the rules of the House and turn over a vote that didn’t go in their favor, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer admitted that yet another one of their promises would be broken.

According to CQ Today, “one of the dramatic changes Democrats imposed to show they had ended a ‘culture of corruption’ now is on the rocks.”

That’s right - the Dems have decided to break yet another promise.  Rep. Hoyer doesn’t believe the fifteen minutes allotted for votes is enough time to twist enough arms to keep his minority in line.  Oh wait, this isn’t news - they’ve been doing it all along…

The article goes on, “indeed, holding open votes while latecomers register or others switch their position is just as common now as before the rule, and minority party members suspect that good old-fashioned arm-twisting is happening under Democrats…”

The opening paragraph of today’s article in Roll Call sums up the last year of the debate on Iraq:

“A year and a half after voters’ frustrations over the Iraq War carried Democrats to victory in Congress, the last solid opportunity for the party to change the direction of the conflict appears likely to pass with only token attempts to bring it to an end.”

Rather than answer the call of the left-wing groups that swept them into power, Democrats are offering up no real effort to bring the Iraq war to a close.  They’re in the driver’s seat, they hold the power yet all they do is blame Republicans.

The article points out that the last significant debate on Iraq (last February in the Senate) occurred when, “Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) only brought [it] up as a way to assuage anti-war crusader, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).”

Perhaps these leaders are finally realizing that we’re making progress in Iraq.  Perhaps they’re realizing that their campaign promises were unrealistic.  In either case, it’s starting to show and one’s got to wonder how they’re going to energize their, “angry, far-left base” this year.

To read the full article, click here.

Democrats who refuse to allow up or down votes on nominees to serve on the Federal Elections Commission scored a victory on Monday.  So exasperated by the log jam Robert Lenhard, a nominee (one of theirs no less) whose recess appointment expired four months ago, gave up and went to the private sector.

Not only is the FEC which governs federal elections still two seats short of have a quorum call to issue guidance or levy fines but the clock is running out.  According to Lenhard:

“There are two windows in which the president and leadership can reach a resolve on the nominees: One is to get something done prior to [Congress] going out on recess in June…after that it will be sometime in March of the next administration.” (quote from today’s Roll Call)

That means if Democrat senators continue to block these nominations, federal elections could go unmonitored and the laws unenforced through the election.  Doesn’t that seem a little opportunistic and George Soros and the 527s are reving up to go into high gear?

In another sign of their ineffective leadership, a spitting contest between two Democrat chairmen is holding up a bill considered a “high priority” by Speaker Pelosi and Democrat leaders.

In today’s The Hill, it’s reported that:

“Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), who has clashed with other powerful Democrats on data security and energy legislation, is engaged in yet another turf battle.  This time Dingell has run up against Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and their jurisdictional dispute has stalled tobacco legislation that Democratic leaders consider a high priority.” (full article here)

This is just one more example of how Democrats are letting turf battles and enlarged egos get in the way of legislating.  Regardless of the merit (or lack thereof) of the legislation, they can’t get beyond the sqabbling to bring something of substance up for a vote.  Instead, we name post office after post office, and pass do-nothing legislation night after night just to buy leadership time to soothe and to wrangle their caucus enough to have a vote turn out their way.

“Republicans Believe Every Day Is The Fourth Of July, But Democrats Believe Every Day Is April 15.” - Ronald Reagan