Lincoln’s Legacy and our Enduring Constitution
William Jessup University
September 17, 2012


Thank you for the opportunity to visit with you and share some thoughts on Lincoln’s contribution to our enduring Constitution on this Constitution Day. 

It seems that in the last few years, America’s thoughts are returning to that remarkable man and searching him for answers to the questions that now perplex us in our own times.  People are beginning to sense that perhaps we have more in common with his generation than might be apparent (and so we have), making his words and wisdom as valuable today as they were more than a century and a half ago. 

One of the most common questions I’m asked as a member of Congress is, “Why must things be so partisan in Washington?  Why can’t you guys just compromise, be reasonable and behave like grown-ups?”

If you think things are partisan today, one day in 1856, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina walked across the Capitol into the Senate Chamber, approached Senator Charles Sumner of Maine, raised his walking stick and smashed it over Sumner’s head, almost killing Sumner and shattering the walking stick to pieces.  Brooks’ constituents responded to this act of barbarity by sending him more walking sticks!

Two years later, Abraham Lincoln referenced the agitation of the times and warned the nation that it “will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.  A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.”

    Lincoln recognized that there are times when two antithetical and irreconcilable principles compete for the future of the nation.  He recognized that freedom and slavery were two such principles.  They could not coexist, and ultimately a choice had to be made.

    Lincoln viewed the conflict between freedom and slavery in a much broader context that he described as an eternal battle between the common right of humanity and the divine right of kings.  A few months later, at Alton, he made reference to the larger question when he said:

“That is the real issue.  That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent.  It is the eternal struggle between these two principles – right and wrong – throughout the world.  They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle.  The one is the common right of humanity, and the other is the divine right of kings.  It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself.  It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’  No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”

    That passage perfectly sums up the nature of human political conflict.  In every society, in every country, in every time, there is always a large group of people who wish to be left alone to lead their own lives according to their own best judgment – “the common right of humanity.”  Yet there is also always a smaller but more domineering group that think they’re so good at running their own lives that they are also entitled to run everybody else’s – “the divine right of kings.” 

Lincoln clearly recognized that the conflict over slavery was simply a manifestation of that larger and eternal struggle.  We could become one thing or the other – but not both. 

In his day, the nation was drifting far from the principles of the American founding – and it is those principles precisely that defined everything that motivated, inspired and guided Abraham Lincoln.  There’s no mystery to Lincoln’s beliefs – he spelled them out with crystal clarity when the inaugural train stopped at Philadelphia and he spoke briefly at Independence Hall.  He said,

“I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself standing here, in this place, where were collected together the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, from which sprang the institutions under which we live. You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands is the task of restoring peace to the present distracted condition of the country. I can say in return, Sir, all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated and were given to the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”

The central theme of the Declaration is the existence of a certain class of rights that individuals hold in the natural order of things.  This includes the right to the fruit of our own labor; the right to enter into voluntary agreements for the free exchange of our labor; the right to form our own opinions and to express those opinions freely; the right to raise our children according to our own values.  These rights come from the laws of nature and nature’s God – our Creator.  They predate the establishment of governments so they cannot come from governments.  Rather, we create governments to protect these individual rights.

Lincoln recognized that America had to choose.  It could be a voluntary society where individuals were free to take their own course through life, to make their own decisions and as Jefferson put it, “to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.” 

Or, it could become a compulsory society based not on the wishes and rights of the individual, but rather upon the coercive power of government to order society in a manner pleasing to those in power. 

The wishes of the individual, the God-given rights of the individual, so clearly set forth in the Declaration are not only meaningless in this latter vision of government, but are active impediments to it.  So they must be discredited.

And that is what Lincoln’s adversaries attempted to do.  In order to sustain their view, they had to neutralize the power of the Declaration. 
 
In a famous letter to Henry Pierce of Springfield in 1859, Lincoln summarized it nicely.  He said,  “it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation…The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them ‘glittering generalities’; another bluntly calls them ‘self evident lies’; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to ‘superior races.’''

We hear that very same song today.  A few years ago, a California politician made this remarkable statement: 

“A handful of men got together in Philadelphia and wrote our Declaration of Independence.  It declared that all white men who owned property were created equal and had unalienable rights to life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.  Women were servants and men of color, slaves." 

I remember debating a prominent member of the California State Senate years ago.  When the subject of the Constitution arose, her response was, "Oh, the Constitution!  That's an antiquated document made for an agrarian society dominated by white males." 

Lincoln addressed that destructive sentiment at Alton when he said:

“I assert that Judge Douglas and all his friends may search the whole records of the country, and it will be a matter of great astonishment to me if they shall be able to find that one human being three years ago had ever uttered the astounding sentiment that the term ‘all men’ in the Declaration did not include the negro…I believe the first man who ever said it was Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case, and the next to him was our friend, Stephen A. Douglas.  And now it has become the catchword of the entire party…And when this new principle – this new proposition that no human being ever thought of three years ago – is brought forward, I combat it as having an evil tendency, if not an evil design.”
Lincoln went on to utterly and completely demolish the argument in his famous Cooper Union Speech of 1860 in which he painstakingly traced the strong anti-slavery intentions of the Constitution’s framers.  Later that year in Chicago, Lincoln noted that the Founders were born into a time when slavery existed and that they deliberately framed the Constitution to place it “upon the course of ultimate extinction.” 

By winning this argument, Lincoln restored the full moral force of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that set it in motion.  Lincoln often spoke of the Declaration as the “golden apple,” and of the Union and the Constitution as the “silver frame.”  The Union and the Constitution were there to frame, to enshrine, to animate, to protect and to preserve for all time, the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

That’s why the Union had to be preserved, not for its own sake, but because it was the vessel that carried and protected mankind’s greatest hope.

And so it does today.  I believe that is why we are seeing a revival of interest in Lincoln and his times, because we see in him answers to the same overarching questions that we confront today.  Shall we continue the uniquely American principles of individual liberty, personal responsibility and constitutionally limited government that produced the most successful, happy, prosperous, productive and powerful Republic in the history of mankind?  Or will we renounce and abandon those principles in favor of a system in which the rights of the individual are once again subordinated to the will of those in power? 

    Lincoln was right, that is the real question that continues long after the tongues of his day fell silent – and will continue long after ours fall silent too.  It is the eternal struggle between two irreconcilable principles that will always be with us because they are deeply rooted in our own nature. 

Flash back to a cold winter’s night in Springfield when 29-year old Abraham Lincoln rose to address the Young Men’s Lyceum.  He chose for his subject, “The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions.”

In that speech, Lincoln warned of the effect on the country of disrespect for the principles of the Declaration and the supremacy of the laws and the Constitution.  In the days of the Revolution, these principles were vivid because they were lived and felt every day.  But nearly a full human lifespan had since passed and few could personally recall those heady days.  The passions of the Revolution were passing with that generation, he said.  "They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason." 

That quarry could be found in the principles of the American Declaration of Independence and would be safe as long as the Constitution and the laws were venerated, cherished and respected. 

But Lincoln also posed this haunting question, which I leave with you on this Constitution Day:

"Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step over the ocean, and crush us at a blow?  Never! -- All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.  At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected?  I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us.  It cannot come from abroad.  If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.  As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
 

50 More Solyndras
House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
September 13, 2012

Mr. Speaker:

This bill ends the Title 17 loan guarantees that produced Solyndra and so many other alternate energy scams that cost working Americans hundreds of millions of dollars, while the politically connected perpetrators of these scams walked away as wealthy men and women. 

But this measure would still put taxpayers on the hook to loan out billions of dollars more to at least 50 additional shady alternative energy schemes that were submitted before January 1st. 

So there will be more Solyndras under this act.  I had offered an amendment to pull the plug on these applications but was told that the Rules committee would not allow the amendment to be brought to the floor.

I agree with my friend from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) at least that the title, “No More Solyndras Act” is misleading.  I would suggest a more accurate title, “The 50 More Solyndras and Then We’ll Stop Wasting Your Money – Really – We Promise Act.”

Secret Courts and Warrantless Surveillance
House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
September 12, 2012

Mr. Speaker:

FISA allows the government to target foreign nationals and to intercept their communications with American citizens without a warrant as required by the Fourth Amendment. 

We’re told not to worry – the law requires that irrelevant information collected in this matter be disregarded.  Here’s the problem: the enforcement of this provision is itself shrouded in secrecy, making the potential for abuse substantial and any remedy unlikely. 

Secret courts and warrantless surveillance are not compatible with a free society, or English common law or the American Constitution. 

We’re told that FISA is necessary to uncover terrorist plots and that this trumps privacy or due process concerns.  Benjamin Franklin answered this argument years ago when he warned that “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” 

In fact, America’s security is far better assured as a thriving free society in a world that respects her strength and fears her just wrath.  

Lake Tahoe Summit
Lake Tahoe, Nevada

August 13, 2012

    I appreciate the invitation to speak today among these distinguished public officials about the future of Lake Tahoe, and I especially want to thank Sen. Heller for bringing us all together today for a candid discussion about the future of Lake Tahoe.

    When I visit with community groups here – not the politicians or the professional environmentalists, but the shopkeepers and employees who actually live and work here – their singular struggle is with a stagnating economy and a staggering unemployment rate hovering around 16 percent.

    The El Dorado County Board of Supervisors last year received an extensive economic study of the Tahoe Basin. It warns that the occupancy rate of hotels here is running at a dismal 30 percent.  Food stamp usage is up 40 percent in the last four years.  School enrollment is down 35 percent over the past decade. The basin’s population has plunged by nine percent.  The study’s manager warns – quote – “The middle class is fleeing the (Tahoe) basin in droves.”

    Three years ago at this summit, I said, “I hope today we can agree that restoring the proper balance between the environment and the economy is not only the prudent thing to do, but also the right the thing to do.”

    That hasn’t happened. 

    TRPA’s executive director seems to be trying to move toward a more sympathetic approach to local concerns, but she’s often stymied by her Board.  Nowhere in TRPA’s mission statement is there a word about the economy.  You have to dig deep into their web site to find even a passing reference to it.

    The Tahoe citizens who call my office complain of being thwarted in their attempts to protect their property from fire danger, or to make minor and harmless improvements to their homes, or of being assessed exorbitant fees, or of being denied simple permits by boards they can’t even elect.
   
    They feel they have lost control of their own communities to state and regional agencies that are utterly unresponsive to the people who actually live here.

    They feel that every attempt to develop or make property improvements is crushed by a permitting process that usually costs more than the project itself. In one case, a homeowner who needed to make $8,000 in pier repairs found it would cost between $20,000 and $25,000 just in permit fees. 

    Worse, none of the agencies coordinate with each other, so one agency will require actions that another agency prohibits.   

    The Lahonton Water Board is the worst of them.  It repeatedly blocked fuel reduction projects by the US Forest Service’s Tahoe Basin Unit, until the Forest Service’s new manager, Nancy Gibson, went to a Board hearing in April and essentially said “the next fire is on you.” 

    Homewood resort is in desperate need of a long-term use permit for winter skiing that has been going on there for 40 years – and upon which $40 million of private financing depends.  Yet, even after receiving approval from TRPA and the US Forest Service, the effort is now stalled by environmental litigation.

    Today’s theme is private-public partnerships for environmental improvement, but there’s not going to be a private sector left unless we get serious about economic improvement. 

    Tahoe’s unique environment and breath-taking beauty comprise a vital foundation both for tourism and for the quality of life of its residents.

    But tourists don’t go where they’re not welcomed, or where facilities are left to decay because simple repairs can’t be made, or where prices are inflated to pay for exorbitant fees, or where forest fires have scarred the landscape.

    And as for quality of life, people are fleeing Lake Tahoe, and a lot of them are heading to the Nevada desert.  With all due respect, no conceivable act of God could turn Lake Tahoe into a less desirable place for people to live and work and raise a family than the Nevada desert.  Only acts of government could do that.  And they have. 

      Lake Tahoe has no more zealous or trustworthy guardians of its environment and its economy than the people who actually live here, and it is high time they had these decisions restored to them through local elections. 

    I offer these thoughts as something for us on the platform to consider as we drive away this afternoon, and leave the residents of Tahoe to live with the result of the decisions that they once made for themselves – but that are now made for them by regional boards they can’t elect.

An Appeal to a Higher Court
House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
July 10, 2012

Mr. Speaker:

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision on the so-called "Affordable Care Act," the House will once again take up the imperative of repealing it. 

But the Supreme Court decision has much more dire implications for our nation and its cherished freedoms than merely affirming the government takeover of our health care. 

In reaching its conclusion, the Court obliterated a fundamental distinction between a penalty and a tax.  Congress has the power to lay and collect taxes, and therefore, the Court reasons, it can apply a tax for any reason, even those otherwise outside the confines of the Constitution. 

In this case, the Court ruled that Congress could not pass a law requiring citizens to purchase a government-approved health plan under the commerce clause, but it can enforce exactly the same requirement through a tax.  Government cannot fine you for disobeying, but it can tax you for disobeying.   

If the government fines you $250 for running a red light, or it taxes you $250 for running a red light, the effect is the same.  What’s the difference?  There are two critical differences. 

First, as a fine – as a penalty – the burden of proof is on the government to prove that you ran that red light.  As a tax, the burden of proof is on you to prove that you did not run it.  Anyone who has ever undergone an IRS audit knows exactly what I mean.  This decision fundamentally alters the most cherished principle of our justice system: the presumption of innocence.

There is a second, even more chilling difference between a penalty and a tax.  Under our Constitution, no penalty can be assessed without due process – you cannot be punished until you have had your day in court.  But to challenge a tax, you must pay first pay that tax before you can seek redress through the court.  You are punished first, and then tried. 

This is the madness of Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen brought to life: “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.”

Americans may now be coerced, under threat of seizure of their property, to take any action the federal government decrees without any Constitutional constraint, enforceable in a manner that denies both presumption of innocence and due process of law. 

By this reasoning, we can now tax speech we find offensive, tax people who chose not to go to church – or people who do; tax people who own guns – or people who don’t.  As long as we call it a tax, there are no limits to the power of the Federal government under the decision of this court. 

I believe this decision will go down in history as one of the most deplorable ever rendered, taking a place of infamy next to Dred Scott.   

If the Court has failed to defend our Constitution, what appeal is left?

There is one.  The Constitution does not belong to the Federal government.  Its ownership is made clear in its first three words: “We, The People”.  As Ronald Reagan said, “The Constitution is not the government’s document telling the people what we can and cannot do.  The Constitution is the people’s document, telling our government those things we will allow it to do.” 

Thus, the Supreme Court is not the highest court in the land.  That position is reserved to the rightful owners of the Constitution, the sovereign American people, through the votes they cast every two years.

The infamous Alien and Sedition Acts were never struck down by the Court – the American people did that in the election of 1800.  The Supreme Court declared American slaves outside the protection of the Constitution when it struck down the Missouri Compromise – but the American people reversed that decision in the election of 1860.
 
Let us pray – while we still can – before that, too, is taxed -- that this infamous decision will be repudiated by what is actually and rightfully the highest court in the land -- the American people.

# # #

M. Speaker:

    Obamacare was sold to the American people on three claims, all of which were false.

    First, they said it would bend the cost-curve down.  But the Medicare actuary admitted to the House Budget Committee that it will add at least $300 billion more to our health care costs.

    Second, they said it would be good for the economy.  But the Director of the Congressional Budget Office admitted to the House Budget Committee that in fact, it would cost the economy a net loss of 800,000 jobs.

    Third, they said if you like your plan, you can keep it.  The McKinsey survey of employers now estimates that nearly one third expect to drop their employee’s health plans as a result of this law, like them or not.

    Three strikes and you’re out.  We need a system that puts the patient back in charge – providing tax reforms to put  health care back within the financial reach of every American and restoring to them the freedom to make their own decisions without the interference of government bureaucrats. 

    This is the necessary first step to get us there.

# # #

Congressman McClintock delivered these remarks on July 10, 2012 during House floor debate on Obamacare repeal .
   

The Tuskegee Airmen
Truckee, California
July 6, 2012


Two days ago, we celebrated the 236th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and its proud proclamation that “all men are created equal.” 

In the years that followed, apologists for slavery attempted to rewrite that history, alleging that the Founders didn’t mean exactly what they said in that document – but rather they meant, “all white men are created equal.” 

Lincoln utterly demolished this argument during his debates with Stephen Douglas.  Lincoln correctly held that, as imperfect as the world was when the Founders inherited it, they intended in that document to establish universal principles applicable to all people, all places and all times, and that they founded a government upon those principles that they knew would place the nation upon that course.

Americans of African descent that belonged to the Greatest Generation lived just a single lifespan from emancipation, and dealt every day with the residual attitudes of those times. 

Yet despite the injustices of the day, they could look to that document, they could see the promise it held for the future, and they knew it was worth fighting for and if necessary worth dying for.

The Tuskegee Airmen thus fought for a “double victory.” They knew that by fighting for justice abroad they could also advance justice at home – that by preserving the promise of the Declaration they could ultimately see it fulfilled.

So through the Tuskegee Institute they learned to fly, and went to war for the promise they saw in their country – promise that may have seemed rather distant in those days.

When the fighter group finally arrived in Europe, they were given decrepit equipment and confined to ground strafing.  Despite brilliantly fulfilling these assignments, they were belittled for not shooting down enemy fighters, even though they were assigned to theaters where there were no enemy fighters.

At the time, the Luftwaffe was decimating American bomber forces.  American fighter pilots would take off after the first German fighters they spotted, leaving the bomber formations wide open for attack.

As losses mounted, the Army Air Corps finally sent in the Tuskegee Airmen.

Remember, these pilots had been degraded and demeaned for not shooting down enemy fighters.  But when finally given the chance for self-aggrandizing glory, they demurred.  They adopted the selfless strategy not to rack up victories for themselves, but rather to protect the bombers at all cost.  Bomber losses dropped dramatically under their protection and the bomber crews knew that when they saw the Red Tails on their wings, their odds for survival and a successful mission had just improved dramatically.  Bomber crews began calling them, “Red Tail Angels.” 

Their record speaks for itself: 112 enemy aircraft destroyed in the air; 150 on the ground; 15,533 sorties; 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses; and countless American bomber crews returned home safely.

Tuskegee bomber crews represented by our honorees today were in preparation for what would have been the bloodiest and most horrific phase of the war: the invasion of Japan.

After the victory they had hastened, the Tuskegee Airmen returned home to the same injustice, degradation and segregation they had left.  Their extraordinary story wasn’t widely celebrated.  No one could have blamed them if they felt bitter and betrayed.

But these men didn’t succumb to bitterness.  Their attitude was perhaps best recounted by one Tuskegee veteran who said, “America’s not perfect.  But I’ll hold her hand until she gets well.”

They knew they had planted a seed that, in the full bloom of time, spawned the double victory they had sought.  And God gave many of them the longevity to see that day.  Two of them honor us with their presence today.

In Shakespeare’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, Henry V says of the veterans of Agincourt, “Then shall he strip his sleeve and show his scars and say, these wounds I had on Crispin’s day.  Old men forget yet all shall be forgot, but he’ll remember, with advantage, what feats he did that day.  Then shall our names, as familiar in his mouth as household words…be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.  This story shall the good man teach his son and Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by from this day til the ending of the world that we in it shall be remembered, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

Today, we raise our flowing cups to freshly remember the Tuskegee Airmen and the double victory they won for our nation. 

Through their faith in the founding principles of our nation; through their devotion to a homeland that not always reciprocated; through their nobility and resilience in times of mortal peril abroad and their faith and patience in times of adversity at home, they set in motion the progress of the past 70 years and proved to the world that in this nation, there is only one race -- it is the American race.

God bless you gentlemen.

# # #

Congressman McClintock delivered the attached remarks at the Truckee Air Fair.  The Congressman spoke at a dinner held in honor of the Tuskegee Airmen, July 6, 2012.

The Subway to Nowhere
House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
June 27, 2012

Mr. Chairman:

    This amendment forbids further federal expenditures for the Central Subway project in San Francisco.

    The project is a 1.7 mile subway that is estimated to cost $1.6 billion –– and those cost estimates continue to rise.  Its baseline budget has more than doubled in nine years and shows no signs of slowing.  The current estimate brings the cost to nearly $1 billion per mile.  That’s five times the cost per lane mile of Boston’s scandalous “Big Dig.”

    It was supposed to link local light rail and bus lines with CalTrain and Bay Area Rapid Transit, but it’s so badly designed that it bypasses 25 of the 30 light rail and bus lines that it crosses.  To add insult to insanity, it dismantles the seamless light-rail to BART connection currently available to passengers at Market Street, requiring them instead to walk nearly a quarter mile to make the new connection.  Experts estimate it will cost commuters between five and ten minutes of additional commuting time on every segment of the route.

    The Wall Street Journal calls it “a case study in government incompetence and wasted taxpayer money.”
     
    They’re not alone.  The Civil Grand Jury in San Francisco has vigorously recommended the project be scrapped, warning that maintenance alone could ultimately bankrupt San Francisco’s Muni.  The former Chairman of the San Francisco Transportation Agency has called it, “one of the costliest mistakes in the city’s history.” 

    Even the sponsors estimate that it will increase ridership by less than one percent, and there is vigorous debate that this projection is far too optimistic.   

    I think Margaret Okuzumi, the Executive Director of the Bay Rail Alliance put it best when she said,

    “Too many times, we’ve seen money for public transit used to primarily benefit people who would profit financially, while making transit less convenient for actual transit riders.  Voters approve money for public transit because they want transit to be more convenient and available…it would be tragic if billions of dollars were spent on something that made Muni more time consuming, costly and unable to sustain its overall transit service.”

    This administration is attempting to put federal taxpayers – our constituents -- on the hook for nearly a billion dollars of the cost of this folly through the “New Starts” program – or more than 60 percent.  We have already squandered $123 million on it.  This amendment forbids another dime of our constituents’ money being wasted on this boondoggle.

    Now here is an important question that members may wish to ponder:  “Why should your constituents pay nearly a billion dollars for a purely local transportation project in San Francisco that is opposed by a broad, bi-partisan coalition of San Franciscans, including the Sierra Club, Save Muni (a grassroots organization of Muni Riders), the Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods, and three of the four local newspapers serving San Francisco?

    Why, indeed.

    I’m sorry, I don’t have a good answer to that question.  But those who vote against this amendment had better have one when their constituents ask, “What in the world were you thinking?”

# # #

This amendment to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act (HR 5972) was approved by the House on June 29th.  The legislation next goes to the Senate.

DRAINING A SLUSH FUND: COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANTS
House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
June 27, 2012


Mr. Chairman:

    This amendment saves $3.4 billion by eliminating funding for the Community Development Block Grant program.

    This program was created in 1974 with the stated objective of eliminating blight and providing affordable housing.  In the nearly four decades since then, it has degenerated into a federal slush fund for pet projects of local politicians and politically connected businesses.  It is plagued by profligate waste and outright fraud.  

    This is an unauthorized expenditure – the legal authority for it expired in 1994 – 18 years ago – and Congress has not bothered to renew it ever since.  But we keep shoveling money at it.

    Three and a half billion dollars averages to almost $50 from the earnings of a family of four, and they have a right to know where the $50 taken from their family budgets is going.   Senator Coburn gave some examples in his “Back in Black” report:

    “Summit County, Ohio spent $100,000 of CDBG funds to create a “doggie day care” and kennel last year and Nyack, New York directed $10,000 of CDBG funds to Amazing Grace Circus, inc. in 2009 to put on “A Day at the Circus.”  CDBG funds are being spent creating a hip atmosphere for employees of an LA architectural firm, providing decorate sidewalks in a wealthy Virginia community and upgrading Victorian cottages in Alabama.”

    Indeed, some communities use these funds to pay off federal loans they have taken out on projects that are now defaulting because they have failed to produce the promised benefits.  

    Even in the best of circumstances, these are all projects that exclusively benefit local communities or private interests and ought to be paid for exclusively by those local communities or private interests.  They are of such questionable merit that no city council is willing to face its constituents and say, this is how we’ve spent your local taxes.  But they are more than happy to spend somebody else’s federal taxes. 

    So we end up robbing St. Petersburg to pay St. Paul for projects so dubious that the purported beneficiaries won’t pay for them.  

    And that’s all before we enter the realm of fraud.  This program is replete with individuals directing six figure sums to their personal bank accounts or political activities. 

    The Office of Management and Budget has repeatedly branded the program as “ineffective,” its official designation for government programs that cannot ascertain how their funds are spent. 

    HUD’s own Inspector General found that in relatively short two-year time span, over one hundred fifty criminal indictments were issued for false claims, bribery, fraudulent contracts, theft, embezzlement and corruption in connection with this program.

    This slush fund cries is a give-away for abolition, and should be one of the first places we look to bring spending under control and stop wasting our constituents’ money. 

    Once again, though, this unauthorized program is not targeted for elimination by the Appropriations committee.  It is not even targeted for even a token reduction in spending. 

    No, the Appropriations committee proposes spending $400 million more than we spent last year – indeed, $400 million more than even the President requested. 

    Let’s be very clear on this.  The House Appropriations Committee, with a Republican majority that has a clear mandate to stop wasting money, is about to appropriate $400 million more than requested by the most spendthrift administration in our nation’s history on a program with no federal nexus, with a sullied history of fraud, and that funds the most unworthy of local projects and special-interest hand-outs.

    The rules of the House were specifically written to prevent this type of unauthorized expenditure – and they provide for a point of order to be raised if it’s included in an appropriations bill.  That’s exactly what we have here.  But alas, that rule is routinely waived when these measures are brought to the floor, making this amendment necessary. 

    Mr. Chairman, this is another critical test of the Republican majority’s intention to stand by the promises it made to the American people in the most dangerous fiscal crisis in our nation’s history. 

    I pray we rise to the occasion.

# # #
 

Essential Air Service
House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
June 26, 2012

Mr. Chairman:

    If the House is to live up to the promises the Republican majority made to the American people to bring spending under control, some tough choices are going to have to be made. 

    But this amendment isn’t one of them.  This is about the easiest choice the House could possibly make: to put an end to the so-called “Essential Air Service” that lavishly subsidizes some of the least essential air services in the country.

    This program shells out nearly $200 million a year – including $114 million of direct taxpayer subsidies – to support empty and near-empty flights from selected airports in tiny communities – most of which are just a few hours’ drive from major airports. 

    A reporter recently investigating this waste took one of these flights from Ely Nevada and was the only passenger on the flight.  Our constituents paid $1.8 million for this air service that carried just 227 passengers during the entire year!  Ely is a three and a half hour drive from Salt Lake City International Airport. 

    Thief River Falls, Minnesota is considered an Essential Air Service airport, despite the fact it is just an hour and nine minutes drive to Grand Forks International Airport in North Dakota.  Hagerstown is just 75 miles from Baltimore, but subsidizing their flights is considered an “Essential Air Service.” 

    It is true there are a few tiny communities in Alaska – like Kake’s 700 hearty souls -- that have no highway connections to hub airports, but they have plenty of alternatives.  In the case of Kake, they enjoy year-round ferry service to Juneau.  In addition, Alaska is well served by a thriving general aviation market and the ubiquitous bush pilot.  Rural life has both great advantages and great disadvantages, and it is not the job of hardworking taxpayers who chose to live elsewhere to level out the differences.

    Apologists for this wasteful spending tell us it is an important economic driver for these small towns – and I’m sure that’s so – whenever you give away money, the folks you’re giving it to are always better off.  But the folks you’re taking it from are always worse off to exactly the same extent.  Indeed, it is economic drivers like this that have driven Greece’s economy right off a cliff.

    An airline so reckless with its funds as to manage its affairs in such a ludicrous way would quickly bankrupt itself.  As we can plainly see, the same principal holds true for governments.

    This was a temporary program set up when we deregulated commercial aviation.  It was supposed to last a few years to give rural communities a chance to adjust.  That was 34 years ago.

    In 2010, in one of the most decisive Congressional elections in American history, voters entrusted the House to Republicans with a crystal clear mandate: STOP WASTING MONEY.

    Last year, the House responded to this mandate by voting to eliminate EAS subsidies in the FAA re-authorization bill.

    What is the response of the House appropriators?  They do not eliminate funding.  They do not reduce funding. 

    No, they increase funding by 11 percent in a single year, to a new historic high. 

    Our nation is borrowing 40-cents of every dollar it is spending; it has lost its triple-A credit rating; its taxpayers are exhausted; its treasury is empty; its children are staggering under a mountain of debt that will impoverish them for years to come – and yet the House Appropriations Committee, in defiance of last year’s decision by the House to eliminate this program, has just voted a double-digit percentage increase for a program that flies near-empty planes around the country! 

    I think we can do better than that.  I offer instead this amendment to stop fleecing taxpayers for this expensive folly.  

     I believe that House Republicans will prove themselves worthy of the trust the American people have given them in this perilous hour in our nation’s history.  I believe that House Republicans can summon the fortitude to save our country from financial wreck and ruin.  And I offer this amendment to put that faith to a most modest test.