Currently viewing the tag: “Rep.”
Rep. Michele Bachmann
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was on Hannity’s show last night to talk about the upcoming 2012 race and when she’ll make her decision.
Just today, numbers came out and Bachmann raised more money than Romney this first quarter.
Representative Mike Pence spoke with Tea Party members in a rally in Washington promising to fight for the budget cuts they want to see from the GOP.
Representative Mike Pence spoke with Tea Party members in a rally in Washington promising to fight for the budget cuts they want to see from the GOP.
Representative Mike Pence spoke with Tea Party members in a rally in Washington promising to fight for the budget cuts they want to see from the GOP.
Last week, Rep. Rob Woodall held a tele-town hall meeting with his constituents, allowing them to call in and ask questions. At one point, a constituent called in and challenged Woodall’s belief that all we need is spending cuts to move towards a more balanced budget. The caller pointed out that closing corporate tax loopholes on big companies like Exxon Mobil — which paid zero federal corporate income taxes in 2009 — and Google, which only paid a 4.2 percent rate in taxes, would do a lot to help balance the budget as well.
Woodall replied by saying he’s “not a fan of class warfare” and that the only people who’ve ever employed him are rich people. He then went on to say that corporate taxes are really taxes on the customers of these companies and that we need to get “corporate taxes as low as we can in this country”:
CALLER: I have a quick comment and then a question. I certainly agree with moving towards a balanced budget, and containing costs, and cutting where we can, including the Defense Department, which I think is terribly bloated, but I just don’t think it’s feasible to balance the budget with cuts alone. I think you’ve got to also include income and place a fair tax on the wealthiest two percent and closing corporate loopholes that allow huge corporations like Exxon to pay no taxes. For example, Google earned eleven billion dollars last year overseas and paid 4.2 percent in taxes. So I think a fair tax on the wealthy and those who can chip in a little more has to be part of the bigger picture.
WOODALL: Bill, I absolutely agree with you that we can’t do it on spending cuts alone. […] Now you talk about raising taxes. Now I’m not a fan of class warfare. Now the only people who’ve given me a job in my life is rich people. I’ve never had a poor man offer me a job. […] At the end of the day, it’s going to be one of us, individuals, that pays every nickel in corporate taxes. I want use to get corporate taxes as low as we can in this country. Which means businesses don’t want to be here, they don’t want to provide jobs here. […] We have to attract new businesses to our shores, the way to do that is with the lowest corporate tax rate we can get, to make sure folks want to come here.
Listen to it:
One has to wonder how we can possibly get taxes any lower when massive corporations like Exxon Mobil and Bank of America are paying nothing in federal corporate income taxes. Perhaps Woodall would prefer that these companies were like General Electric, which not only paid zero in income taxes in 2009 and 2010, but also received a $ 3.2 billion tax benefit. When Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) was asked about GE’s tax dodging, his response was also that we need to cut corporate taxes.
Next week, the House Budget Committee will consider the fiscal year 2012 budget resolution in what is expected to be a marathon committee markup. The committee faces a dire budget reality; with entitlement spending that is absorbing essentially all of our federal income, while non-security discretionary spending is dramatically increasing. We now borrow roughly forty cents of every dollar we spend. In this grim budget situation, we must dramatically cut federal spending and reform entitlements. However, I do not believe that all government spending is equal. Instead, I believe that the Constitution lays out certain responsibilities that are essential and can only be accomplished by the federal government—primarily providing for a common defense.
Next week, I expect to see amendments in the Budget Committee that will cut defense spending-either to transfer defense funds to domestic spending priorities, or simply to reduce the size of our deficit. I believe reducing defense spending right now is a bad idea—let me explain why.
First, our military is already stretched thin. Today we have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are doing humanitarian relief in Japan, we are enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya and we are fighting piracy off of Somalia and more. Our soldiers and Marines are facing rapid and repeated deployments. While we may not agree that all of these missions are essential, it would be irresponsible to cut funds for troops that are in harms’ way. While some may think that downsizing defense is as simple as cutting funding for futuristic weapons technology or changing our foreign policy posture, the reality is that most defense funding is paying for the military we have today, including fuel, maintenance, health care and salaries. Cutting defense spending will have a serious impact on the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines that are serving our country today as well as in the future.
Secondly, many who propose defense cuts argue that there must be waste in a budget the size of the Department of Defense, so cutting the defense budget is reasonable. I agree that there is waste, but simply chopping a percentage off the top of defense funding is an inefficient and irresponsible way of trying to eliminate wasteful spending. Congress is part of the problem, with funding levels that are unpredictable and oversight that is often weak or lacking. Getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse is necessary but it is a wholly inadequate budget strategy because these cuts represent a small percentage of the defense budget.
Thirdly, we must be clear about the fact that our budget crisis is driven primarily by entitlement spending. The Heritage Foundation has a chart that lays the problem out clearly (http://www.heritage.org/budgetchartbook/defense-entitlement-spending). The chart would look even worse if interest on our debt, which functions much like an entitlement, is included. In 2010, total federal revenue was consumed by entitlement programs and interest on our debt. This will only get worse unless we seriously consider reforming these entitlements. The only way to address our budget situation long term is through entitlement reform.
Lastly, the preamble of our Constitution talks about providing for a common defense and promoting the general welfare. I believe the distinction between those words is important. The Constitution gives Congress the specific responsibility “to raise and support armies” as well as “provide and maintain a navy.” In contrast, the constitutionality of much entitlement spending is debatable. Should we cut what may be the most basic constitutional function of the government to pay for a function that is of a questionable constitutional nature?
Defense spending may be an attractive target in the Budget Committee markup and on the House floor shortly thereafter, but the Constitution prioritizes providing for a common defense and spending on defense should not be treated as equal to other portions of federal spending. There is no question we need to make sure we get every penny’s worth of value out of defense spending, but simply slashing defense is not the answer. Not only are there serious risks associated with cutting defense, it also would mean that we are cutting a constitutional priority of the government to pay for a series of programs of questionable constitutional merit.
Rep. Todd Akin serves on the Armed Services Committee. He represents Missouri’s 2nd congressional district.
The views expressed by guest bloggers on the Foundry do not necessarily reflect the views of The Heritage Foundation.
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| Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) |
Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) is taking the lead in fighting a stealth unionization drive, one that of course is being encouraged by the Obama administration. A union organizing voting rule effecting the railway and airline industries that has been in place for 75 years was changed by a little-known government panel, the National Mediation Board.
When the Democrats took over Congress in 2007, they tried to enact Big Labor’s Holy Grail, card check, which would replace secret ballot elections when workers decide on joining a union with a “free to peek” petition drive. The bosses never got their grail, but in a blogger conference call yesterday, Gingrey called the NMB maneuver an “end-around card check.”
As I reported on Monday, the machinists’ union “won” an election to represent AirTran Airways reservations and fleet employees. A majority of those who voted-but not a majority of these workers-voted for the union. This may not seem like a big deal, current law covering airline and railway union members makes it almost impossible to decertify their union.
Which is why Gingrey and other members of Congress are urging a “Yes” vote on the FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2011 which will, get this, allow the lawmakers write laws. Specifically, it will reverse the NMB decision. Of the “unelected bureaucrats” on the NMB, in the conference call the Georgian told us, “It’s not their job to make law or usurp law.”
The vote on what Gingrey says is a “hugely important bill” will probably occur today or tomorrow.
Related post:
Obama union payback continues: This time it’s the National Mediation Board
Technorati tags: 
labor unions organized laborDemocrats Obama business phil gingrey georgia efca card check
Speaking with the Scranton Times-Tribune on Tuesday, freshman lawmaker Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA) expressed mixed opinions about the Obama administration’s actions in Libya. He told the paper that he “supports” the intervention, but wishes that the administration had consulted with Congress first.
Marino, a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee and the House subcommittee on issues related to African foreign policy, then posed an odd question:
“Where does it stop?” he said. “Do we go into Africa next? I don’t want to sound callous or cold, but this could go on indefinitely around the world.”
Competing for the most confused assertion on Libya, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA), Marino’s colleague in the House and the other lawmaker quoted in the Times-Tribune article, echoed an argument made by Libya strongman Muammar Qaddafi by floating the idea that the idea that al Qaeda may be in control of the rebel forces in Libya. As the paper noted, “At the moment, there are no indications of al-Qaida influence among the rebels.”
Last week, the New York Times reported that General Electric (GE), the world’s largest corporation paid nothing in federal corporate income taxes in 2010. In fact, the company made over $ 14 billion in profits and actually received a $ 3.2 billion tax benefit.
Yesterday, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) spoke at a CAP event titled “Measuring Our Progress in Reducing U.S. Poverty,” where he discussed adequate benchmarks for measuring poverty in the United States. He sat down with ThinkProgress for an interview, where we asked him about GE’s corporate tax dodging. The congressman told us that it’s absolutely irritating that a company as rich as GE could be paying less in taxes than a secretary at our workplace, the Center for American Progress:
THINKPROGRESS: Congressman, last week we saw a front page New York Times story about General Electric, which is the largest corporation in our country, it actually didn’t pay anything, in taxes, it actually received billions of dollars in tax benefits —
MCDERMOTT: $ 3.2 billion –
THINKPROGRESS: Yes, 3.2 billion, exactly. Don’t you see a contradiction here between asking low-income people, middle-income people, working class people, students, paying with their services and benefits, while big corporations like this are getting away with nothing or even getting benefits? […]
MCDERMOTT: Everybody in a civilized society should pay their fair share, according to their ability to pay. You don’t expect poor people to pay half their salary for the society in which they live. But this society lives, and people make money in it and do very well in it because we’ve created this society. And it costs money to do that. And for General Electric to fool around and not pay anything, that’s where the Alternative Minimum Tax came from, a long time ago. Because it’s absolutely irritating that General Electric pays less than the secretary at the front desk of this agency, this organization. It is simply not fair.
Watch it:
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart has been repeatedly skewering GE for its tax avoidance. On Monday, Stewart asked rhetorically, “I thought the corporate tax rate needed to be lower. How can you lower it from nothing?” The Washington Post — echoing reporting by ThinkProgress — notes that the story of GE’s taxes has been “conspicuously absent from the reportage of one news organization: NBC [which is owned by GE].”
Unfortunately, GE is not alone in its tax avoidance. It joins Bank of America, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, Wells Fargo, Boeing, and many other major corporations have gone quarters or or entire years without paying any federal corporate income taxes. That’s part of the reason that there is a Main Street Movement erupted across America demanding fair sacrifice that doesn’t shoulder the burdens of an economic crisis on those who didn’t cause it.
The nationwide war on a woman’s right to choose secured significant victories this week. Yesterday, Arizona became the first state in the nation to criminalize abortions based on a problem that doesn’t exist. Virginia will now force 80 percent of its clinics to close. Not to be outdone, the Kansas legislature swiftly approved not one, but two anti-abortion bills yesterday. HB 2218, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, strictly limits abortions after 22 weeks “based on disputed research that fetuses can feel pain at that point of development.” Though only 1.5 percent of abortions are performed after this period, the bill marks a significant victory for anti-choice activists who “have turned fetal pain into a new front in their battle to restrict or ban abortion.”
But not all Republicans bought the Republican argument that “this is a significant advancement” and “a more appropriate benchmark for late-term abortions.” “It’s based on false research,” said GOP Rep. Barbara Bollier who joined 8 other Republicans who voted against the bill:
“No one really knows and it’s based on false research,” said Rep. Barbara Bollier, R-Mission Hills. “It’s not universally held and I would be embarrassed to be a state that bases its laws on untruths.”
Bollier’s skepticism is shared by many in the medical profession. Though debate exists, a thorough review of the medical evidence in the Journal of the American Medical Association determined that “pain perception probably does not function before the third trimester.” Before then, “the fetus’s higher pain pathways are not yet fully developed and functional.”
But why worry about “untruths” when right-wing lawmakers can use “false research” to challenge Roe v. Wade? This bill, a twin of Nebraska’s “first in the nation” fetal pain law, challenges the ruling’s key viability standard — “the point at which the fetus can live outside the womb” — as the point when states can ban abortions. These laws could submit fetal pain as “a new dividing line at which abortions could be banned.” Nebraska’s law, enacted last year, has already had drastic consequences — just ask Danielle Deaver.
Kansas’s second anti-abortion bill, HB 2035, would require parental consent for anyone under 18 to have an abortion. Current law requires that one parent be notified, but neither parent can veto a daughter’s abortion. Unsatisfied with tightening parental control, the GOP included provisions that allow family members to sue doctors and force women to agree that they’re terminating a human being:
* Allow a woman’s close family members to sue if they believe an illegal abortion was performed.
* Require providers of abortions to provide patients with a newly revised informed consent statement including wording that abortion “terminates the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”
Both bills go directly to Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R). Brownback, “who is pro-life, has promised to sign” the fetal pain measure into law. Florida, Arkansas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, and Kentucky are mulling similar “fetal pain” bills.
One of the mantras of congressional Republicans over the past two years has been to ask, “Where are the jobs?” House GOP leader John Boehner (OH) made this into a theme of the campaign last fall. As then-GOP chairman Michael Steele summarized the argument: “Americans are still asking, ‘Where are the jobs?’ … Washington Democrats still have no answers.”
This afternoon, Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and other progressives took to the floor of the House of Representatives to turn this question back on their Republican colleagues. Ellison and the others asked where all the jobs-creation legislation was, excoriating their conservative colleagues for focusing on legislation like terminating the HAMP program, which would do nothing to create jobs:
– Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN): “The Republicans’ no-jobs agenda has been exposed, Mr. Chair. The majority has done nothing to create jobs or protect homes. All they do is criticize programs that could use some improvement. Rather, they would get rid of them altogether.”
– Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY): “[The Republicans] have no plans of their own to address the foreclosure crisis that is hurting neighborhoods and disrupting lives throughout their country. Like the jobs bills they said they would have. We have yet to see them.”
– Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX): “Your cities have been impacted positively by the HAMP program. Job growth is picking up. Investing and growing jobs should be the mindset of the American Congress for that’s what we were sent back to Washington to do.”
At one point, Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL) took to the floor to respond to the progressives. She attacked the HAMP program, urging her colleagues to end it, and signaled that she would oppose progressive amendments to the GOP’s bill for ending the mortgage modification program. Then, she incredulously told her colleagues to stop talking about jobs and focus rather on the substance of the amendments:
BIGGERT: I would urge my colleagues to support — oppose this amendment. And stop talking about jobs, let’s focus on the substance of these amendments.
Watch it:
One would have to wonder what a certain congresswoman who asked at a hearing — on February 25, 2010 — “Where are the jobs?” would think about Biggert’s statement. That congresswoman was Biggert herself. Watch it:
One of the mantras of congressional Republicans over the past two years has been to ask, “Where are the jobs?” House GOP leader John Boehner (OH) made this into a theme of the campaign last fall. As then-GOP chairman Michael Steele summarized the argument: “Americans are still asking, ‘Where are the jobs?’ … Washington Democrats still have no answers.”
This afternoon, Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and other progressives took to the floor of the House of Representatives to turn this question back on their Republican colleagues. Ellison and the others asked where all the jobs-creation legislation was, excoriating their conservative colleagues for focusing on legislation like terminating the HAMP program, which would do nothing to create jobs:
– Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN): “The Republicans’ no-jobs agenda has been exposed, Mr. Chair. The majority has done nothing to create jobs or protect homes. All they do is criticize programs that could use some improvement. Rather, they would get rid of them altogether.”
– Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY): “[The Republicans] have no plans of their own to address the foreclosure crisis that is hurting neighborhoods and disrupting lives throughout their country. Like the jobs bills they said they would have. We have yet to see them.”
– Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX): “Your cities have been impacted positively by the HAMP program. Job growth is picking up. Investing and growing jobs should be the mindset of the American Congress for that’s what we were sent back to Washington to do.”
At one point, Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL) took to the floor to respond to the progressives. She attacked the HAMP program, urging her colleagues to end it, and signaled that she would oppose progressive amendments to the GOP’s bill for ending the mortgage modification program. Then, she incredulously told her colleagues to stop talking about jobs and focus rather on the substance of the amendments:
BIGGERT: I would urge my colleagues to support — oppose this amendment. And stop talking about jobs, let’s focus on the substance of these amendments.
Watch it:
One would have to wonder what a certain congresswoman who asked at a hearing — on February 25, 2010 — “Where are the jobs?” would think about Biggert’s statement. That congresswoman was Biggert herself. Watch it:
ThinkProgress filed this report from the NICHE Homeschool Day in Des Moines, IA.
One of the most powerful lines in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech was his call for racial unity even in Alabama, a state with “its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification.” Indeed, following the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, nearly every southern congressman signed the “Southern Manifesto,” which asserted that states were free to ignore federal laws and directives. Now, 48 years later, the unconstitutional idea that states can invalidate federal laws which they don’t like is making a comeback in conservative circles.
This week, the nullification camp, led by right-wing historian Thomas Woods, got a boost from a sitting congressman: Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).
Speaking at an Iowa homeschool event, Paul told the crowd that “in principle, nullification is proper and moral and constitutional.” “That is why,” Paul declared, “I am a strong endorser of the nullification movement, that states like this should just nullify these laws”:
PAUL: The chances of us getting things changed around soon through the legislative process is not all the good. And that is why I am a strong endorser of the nullification movement, that states like this should just nullify these laws. And in principle, nullification is proper and moral and constitutional, which I believe it is, there is no reason in the world why this country can’t look at the process of, say, not only should we not belong to the United Nations, the United Nations comes down hard on us, telling us what we should do to our families and family values, education and medical care and gun rights and environmentalism. Let’s nullify what the UN tries to tell us to do as well.
Watch it:
Despite Paul’s insistence that nullification is proper and constitutional, Article 6 of the Constitution clearly states that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land…anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” That’s why one of our founding fathers, James Madison, argued that nullification would “speedily put an end to the Union itself” by allowing federal laws to be freely ignored by states.
ThinkProgress legal expert Ian Millhiser noted that nullification isn’t just blatantly unconstitutional, it’s “nothing less than a plan to remove the word ‘United’ from the United States of America.”
ThinkProgress filed this report from the NICHE Homeschool Day in Des Moines, IA.
One of the most powerful lines in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech was his call for racial unity even in Alabama, a state with “its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification.” Indeed, following the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, nearly every southern congressman signed the “Southern Manifesto,” which asserted that states were free to ignore federal laws and directives. Now, 48 years later, the unconstitutional idea that states can invalidate federal laws which they don’t like is making a comeback in conservative circles.
This week, the nullification camp, led by right-wing historian Thomas Woods, got a boost from a sitting congressman: Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).
Speaking at an Iowa homeschool event, Paul told the crowd that “in principle, nullification is proper and moral and constitutional.” “That is why,” Paul declared, “I am a strong endorser of the nullification movement, that states like this should just nullify these laws”:
PAUL: The chances of us getting things changed around soon through the legislative process is not all the good. And that is why I am a strong endorser of the nullification movement, that states like this should just nullify these laws. And in principle, nullification is proper and moral and constitutional, which I believe it is, there is no reason in the world why this country can’t look at the process of, say, not only should we not belong to the United Nations, the United Nations comes down hard on us, telling us what we should do to our families and family values, education and medical care and gun rights and environmentalism. Let’s nullify what the UN tries to tell us to do as well.
Watch it:
Despite Paul’s insistence that nullification is proper and constitutional, Article 6 of the Constitution clearly states that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land…anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” That’s why one of our founding fathers, James Madison, argued that nullification would “speedily put an end to the Union itself” by allowing federal laws to be freely ignored by states.
ThinkProgress legal expert Ian Millhiser noted that nullification isn’t just blatantly unconstitutional, it’s “nothing less than a plan to remove the word ‘United’ from the United States of America.”
At a townhall meeting in Amery, Wisconsin last week, the “Real World’s” Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) exposed just how out of touch with ordinary Americans he is. According to progressive blog Rightguardia, one constituent — an underemployed construction worker — explained that his wife, a teacher, may have to take a cut in wages if Wisconsin’s draconian budget bill goes through. “I’m just wondering what your wage is and if you guys would be willing to take a cut,” he asked Duffy.
Displaying that delicate sense of empathy characteristic of conservatives, Duffy whined about his $ 174,000 congressional salary and his “used minivan.” When the man pointed out his salary was “three times what I make,” Duffy reassured him that “I have more debt than you.” “I’m not living high off the hog,” he added:
Constituent: But a hundred and seventy-four thousand, that’s three times — that’s three of my family’s — three times what I make.
Duffy: Well our budget…I moved to cut by 5 percent. I did. You know what, I have no problem..let’s have a movement afoot. I walked into this job 6 weeks ago..um that I worked incredibly hard for. And I can guarantee you or most of you, I guarantee that I have more debt than all of you.
With 6 kids, I still pay off my student loans. I still pay my mortgage. I drive a used minivan. If you think I’m living high off the hog, I’ve got one paycheck. So I..I struggle to meet my bills right now. Would it be easier for me if I get more paychecks? Maybe, but at this point I’m not living high off the hog.
Duffy is certainly no Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), a multimillionaire car alarm mogul. Like many Wisconsinites, he has several kids and, according to his financial disclosure statement, student loans and a mortgage to pay off. But Duffy’s salary is indeed about three times Wisconsin’s (and the national) median income. What’s more, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate is 7.4 percent statewide, and 8.2 percent in Wausau, a city Duffy represents.
But if Duffy wants to “start getting real” and relieve some of that financial burden, he could sell that second home in Iron River, WI he owns.
