EPA Spilled Milk

Spilled milk is well-known for its place in the old lesson against indulging in regret. In recent years, it's become shorthand for one of the unnecessarily burdensome and nonsensical regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, wanted to place on American agriculture. Crazy as it sounds, the EPA actually wanted to apply regulations designed to prevent oil from discharging into U.S. waterways to the spilled milk from containers used in dairy production. The good news is that this week, after more than two years of contemplating an exemption for milk... Read more

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Seeing the World, Stiffing Uncle Sam

Certain jet-setting gamblers, Ponzi schemers, executives, doctors and lawyers have something in common: multi-million-dollar tax debts to the U.S. government and U.S. passports that enable their travel around the globe. A report out this week, prepared at my request with a fellow senator, offered just a snapshot of the link between high levels of tax debt and passport holder-ship. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the State Department issued passports to more than 224,000 individuals who together owed more than $5.8 billion in known unpaid federal... Read more

Making Representative Government Work

The Senate is in recess for two weeks. Today I went to Mapleton and Early to meet with local residents and see the tornado damage and encourage the recovery effort. I've also planned meetings with constituents in 33 Iowa counties. More than half of these meetings will be town meetings. I'm also going to tour and meet with employees at a manufacturing plant, speak with service club members in six communities and discuss issues with Iowa students in seven local high schools. A week from Wednesday, I will receive the National Association of... Read more

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Americans Are Not Under-taxed, Washington Over-spends

The President gave a budget speech this week in response to efforts by Republicans to get control of government spending in Washington, for job creation today, and for the quality of life of the next generation of Americans. It's good that the President is finally getting engaged in the fiscal crisis that faces our country. As the budget debate moves forward, there are important lessons from history that need to be understood. Unfortunately, those lessons were not reflected in the President's speech. From World War II through 2009, every dollar of new federal tax revenue resulted in $1.17 in new spending. Tax reductions in 2001 and 2003 resulted in more revenue to the federal Treasury. The expanding economy spurred by this tax relief helped to reduce the annual budget deficit from $412.7 billion in 2004 to $160.7 billion in 2007. So, even the most sincere argument... Read more