Blog Archives
Live from Congress: Frivolous Lawsuits!
The man who speaks to aliens, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), is now suing the U.S. House Cafeteria for $150,000 over an olive pit he found in his sandwich. Really?!?? An olive pit…what next? Suing over a hair in your sandwich?
Perhaps, the Congressman should have been more careful. After all, an olive pit would be noticeable, especially after the initial crunch. The Congressman is suing for dental damages.
Meanwhile, it is time for Congress to address something more pressing…tort reform. Tort reform might prevent wasteful lawsuits from being heard. I think chipping a tooth on an olive pit could have been prevented by checking your sandwich carefully.
Congress to Open with Reading of the Constitution
The Washington Times reports that the 112th Congress will commence with a reading of the U.S. Constitution. This is great news, as it reminds Congress of the principles of limited government.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) proposed the reading:
“It stems from the debate that we’ve had for the last two years about things like the exercise of authority in a whole host of different areas by the EPA, we’ve had this debate in relation to the health care bill, the cap-and-trade legislation,” said Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte, Virginia Republican, who proposed the reading. “This Congress has been very aggressive in expanding the power of the federal government, and there’s been a big backlash to that.”
This is a good move on behalf of the new majority in Congress. Hopefully, they will not stray from these principles.
Survey says we are headed the wrong way
You know, I hate being a naysayer. I hate it, especially during this time of year. According to a recent Rasmussen Reports survey, 71% of voters believe our country is headed on the wrong track.
Why doesn’t this surprise me? The President and Congress continually pass legislation that places our economy in harms way. Unemployment numbers are at an all-time high and the government seems to be consumed by wasting the taxpayers dollar (rather than putting it to good use by giving it back to them). Add to this, the fact that Americans are also concerned with how the Obama Administration is dealing with the Muslim world and they recognize that U.S. relations with Israel will continue to worsen over time.
If anything, it will take a long time to get the country back in the right direction with the Obama Administration. The only way we can see a possible turnaround might be in 2012. In the meantime, the incoming Congress needs to address the unemployment crisis, focusing on lowering taxes across the board, and cutting all unnecessary expenditures.
Tax Increases are Not the Way to Rebuild our Economy
Guest Post by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)
The American people continue to face one of the most challenging times in our nation’s history. The latest unemployment numbers mark the 16th consecutive month that our nation’s unemployment rate has been at or above 9.5 percent – the longest period since the Great Depression. Unfortunately, these are numbers that the American people are all too familiar with and yet the Democrats in Congress continue to pursue an agenda that will further threaten American job creators and families. This week House Democrats pushed through legislation, without my support, which includes massive tax increases on American families and small businesses who are already struggling to make ends meet. While the legislation would make permanent some of the tax relief provisions from the 2001 and 2003 tax laws such as the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit, it allows other existing tax cuts to expire, resulting in tax increases on January 1, 2011.
While it is common-sense that you should not raise taxes on employers at a time when unemployment is so high, this point seems lost on the Democrats in Congress who aredetermined to raise taxes on America’s job creators. Small business owners across the country want to invest in their firms and hire new workers, but instead they are bracing for costly new tax increases. It’s been estimated that these tax increases will hit 750,000 small business owners who employ more than 25 percent of our total workforce.
Additionally, American families will be hit hard with the reinstatement of the estate tax, also known as the death tax. The Democrats’ legislation allows the death tax relief fromthe 2001 tax law to expire which means that the tax will return with a 55% tax rate which will penalize many small business owners including farmers. These folks have spent a lifetime building a business and creating jobs only to have their families hit with confiscatory taxes often requiring the family business or farm to be sold.
The only way to help rebuild our struggling economy is to ensure American families and small businesses are not confronted with these oppressive tax hikes. For this reason I am a strong supporter of the Tax Relief Certainty Act, which would permanently extend the current tax rates, provide a permanent repeal of the death tax and implement permanent relief for the Alternative Minimum Tax.
The American people are demanding that Congress abandon its job-killing, tax-and-spend policies and instead focus on real solutions that will create jobs, putting Americans back to work and restore economic prosperity to our nation. If Democrats are serious about job creation,there’s one clear way forward, and that’s for us to come together in a bipartisan way and passlegislation immediately that cuts spending and stops all of the approaching tax hikes.Congress must focus on passing legislation which puts money back into the hands ofthose who can really turn our economy around – the American people and small businesses.
This is Why They Threw You Out…
Will the Democrats ever learn? At least, Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) has the balls to challenge the Democrats’ tactics on the floor of the House.
Robert Hurt at the RPV Advance Luncheon
After being introduced by 5th District Chairman, Bill Stanley, Congressman-elect Robert Hurt spoke to the audience at the Republican Party of Virginia Advance Luncheon. Hurt thanked everyone for their support. Hurt began his speech saying that his fellow Freshmen in Congress also are thankful…that he picked 85 out of 85 in the office lottery yesterday.
Hurt mentioned that we must continue to push for accountability and transparency in Congress. Hurt also mentioned that this past election was a very costly election, but he mentioned that it would be those who worked hard on the grassroots front that produced victory during this election cycle.
During the campaign, Hurt said he learned a lot as he traveled to meet with residents in the 22 counties and cities that comprise the 5th District. Hurt mentioned that there was a lot of anger with the excessive government spending at the federal level. Hurt said that there is a need for fewer regulations and lower taxes. Hurt mentioned that common sense legislation is needed now more than ever in Washington.
Cross posted at Bearing Drift
Cybersecurity is Critical to Our National Security
Guest Post by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)
This week the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission issued their annual report to Congress. The report, which details all aspects of the relationship between the United States and China, contained disturbing but not unsuspected revelations that the Chinese government is behind the numerous computer hacking incidents involving many U.S. government and military sites.
Specifically, the report highlights an incident from April 2010, when for 18 minutes nearly 15 percent of the world’s Internet traffic was redirected through computer servers in China. Emails and Internet traffic to and from such vital government sites as the U.S. Senate, the Department of Commerce, NASA, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Departments of the Army, Navy, and the Air Force as well as commercial sites such as Dell, Yahoo, Microsoft and IBM were hijacked and manipulated by China Telecom, a state-controlled Internet carrier.
This report follows recent testimony by the General Accounting Office (GAO) that the U.S. information technology infrastructure is vulnerable to attack. It has been estimated that the Pentagon’s computer system gets 360 million unauthorized scans or attacks a day. Cybersecurity is without a doubt a homeland security threat and our government must take the appropriate steps to protect our vulnerable systems. This week Defense Secretary Gates announced that the Department of Defense and National Security Agency will be working together more closely to address the growing cybersecurity threats faced by the federal government.
In addition, folks must realize just how important it is for individual Americans to take cybersecurity seriously, not just as a matter of personal safety, but as a matter of our country’s security as well. Those who take it upon themselves to implement relatively simple security measures are not only protecting themselves and their families, but are in effect contributing to our national efforts to secure critical infrastructures like telecommunications, energy, manufacturing, water, health care, transportation, and emergency and financial services. Weaknesses in your personal computer systems can affect the entire country. In fact, 90 percent of the nation’s critical information infrastructure is operated by the private sector.
While technology has brought tremendous improvement to our quality of life, these advances have also brought significant vulnerability. These recent attacks on government networks have served to increase awareness that cybersecurity is not just about protecting computers, but also has implications for our national security and economic well-being. Just as the federal government heavily relies upon computers to carry out their business, so do our local hospitals, firefighters and police, just to name a few. Computers are vital to the safety of the American people and as Co-Chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus and Chairman of the House Republican High Tech Working Group, I will continue working with the Administration and the leadership in Congress to see that our nation’s information networks are protected from future cyber attacks.
Republican Liberty Caucus Rejects TSA's Assault on Passenger Privacy Rights
I received this release from the Republican Liberty Caucus on TSA violating the passenger’s right to privacy before boarding a flight.
AUSTIN, TX — The Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) denounces the recent changes in the airport passenger screening practices of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
RLC Chairman Dave Nalle said the intrusive nature of new TSA procedures draws attention to the fundamental flaws in the government’s strategy of attempting to address the threat of terrorism through increasingly draconian domestic security measures.
“In the name of public safety, government agencies have been given more and more power at great cost to our civil liberties and in violation of the Bill of Rights,” Nalle said. “The emergence of an unaccountable state security apparatus in America is a reminder of Ben Franklin’s maxim that ‘they who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety’.”
“The new TSA procedures of giving randomly selected passengers a choice between a full body, backscatter x-ray scan and an intrusive, hands-on body search are unacceptable,” Nalle contends. “These searches are a clear violation of our 4th Amendment rights, because they are not reasonable and are carried out with no probable cause. The increase in security at airports with more technology and more violation of the privacy rights of passengers cannot be justified on the basis of any increase in the threat of terrorism, because there has been no such increase,” Nalle explained.
The Republican Liberty Caucus believes that Americans have seen enough abuses of the Constitution and calls on the federal government to curb abuses by the TSA and other agencies. We recommend putting control of passenger security in the hands of the airlines, which have a vested interest in making sure that flights are safe. We also support Representative Ron Paul’s “American Traveler Dignity Act” (H.R. 6416), which would make TSA employees accountable for their actions.
Nalle observed, “With the increasing level of government intrusion into our lives in the name of security, America reminds me too much of what I saw in the Soviet Union, where I lived as a teenager. How long will it be before police will be stopping us in the street at random to ask for our identity papers?”
The Republican Liberty Caucus, founded in 1991, exists to promote individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise within the Republican Party.
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One thing particularly interesting is how Congress is addressing this issue. Many of our elected officials are just as outraged. Recently, Rep. Ron Paul introduced H.R. 6416: American Traveler Dignity Act. This bill will ensure that certain Federal employees would be subject to the same screenings as everyone else.
During a recent floor speech introducing the bill, Paul said:
In one recent well-publicized case, a TSA official is recorded during an attempted body search saying, “By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights.” I strongly disagree and am sure I am not alone in believing that we Americans should never give up our rights in order to travel. As our Declaration of Independence states, our rights are inalienable. This TSA version of our rights looks more like the “rights” granted in the old Soviet Constitutions, where freedoms were granted to Soviet citizens — right up to the moment the state decided to remove those freedoms.
The incident of the so-called “underwear bomber” last Christmas is given as justification for the billions of dollars the federal government is spending on the new full-body imaging machines, but a Government Accountability Office study earlier this year concluded that had these scanners been in use they may not have detected the explosive material that was allegedly brought onto the airplane. Additionally, there have been recent press reports calling into question the accuracy and adequacy of these potentially dangerous machines.
Source: Daily Paul
Hasn’t this gone on for far too long? Hopefully, Congress will end this treatment, but it looks highly unlikely at this point with the Democrats applauding the assaults.
Cleaning House
Guest Post by Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)
In recent years, Congress has disappointed the American people. It has enacted policies without providing sufficient advance notice and transparency to the people. It has forgotten that the money Washington spends is not government money but rather the hard-earned money of the taxpayers. It has also expanded the finite authority the U.S. Constitution grants to the federal government into seemingly infinite authority and blurred the distinction between the public and private sectors and the federal and state governments. The federal government has simply grown too big and too powerful.
These are just some of the reasons why our citizens have lost confidence in many of
our elected leaders in Washington. Last week House Republicans renewed our commitment to the people and the fundamental principles that make our country great by announcing the formation of the Republican Majority Transition Team. The goal of this Transition Team, on which I serve as a Team Leader, is to review all House procedures and work to implement the Congressional reforms included in the House Republicans’ Pledge to America. In order to rein in the unprecedented levels of government spending that have only exacerbated our current economic woes, we must begin by getting our own House in order, ensuring the Congress runs as openly and efficiently as possible.
We want the House of Representatives to be more accountable to the people and open to public scrutiny. Therefore, the Republican Majority Transition Team will work to implement a requirement that legislation be available online for 3 days before a vote so that members of Congress and the American people can read the bill. We will also require that all bills include a citation of constitutional authority so that Congress respects the limits imposed on it by our founding document. Changes to House rules will make it harder to increase spending and easier to cut it so that we begin a new era of fiscal responsibility in Washington and end the practice of passing “comprehensive” or “omnibus” bills that package unrelated legislation together in an effort to avoid public scrutiny. In fact, Republicans have already started making changes, such as moving to install public cameras in the powerful Rules Committee, which decides which bills and amendments come to the floor for a vote.
In addition to serving on the Republican Majority Transition Team, I have been named
the Team Leader for the House Operations Working Group. We will have oversight over all House operations including many House support organizations such as the Library of Congress, the House Clerk’s office, Capitol Police and the Congressional Budget Office. We will work to put in place new guiding principles for these groups, with the overarching goals of transparency, accountability and cost savings.
The American people are demanding accountability and results and that is what House
Republicans are offering. We have pledged to run the House differently than it has been run by both Democrats and Republicans in the past. House Republicans will work to ensure that the people’s House is transparent and open to help build the trust so vital in a democracy.
To contact me about this or any other matter, please visit my website at
www.goodlatte.house.gov. To submit ideas for how Congress can work better for all Americans please visit http://gopleader.gov/NewMajority.
The Push for Government Transparency is Growing
Today, Sunshine Review launched a new website called Sunshine Standard, which is a new online platform designed for legislators and activists that will become a national model for launching transparency reforms across the country and will assist Americans in holding their legislators accountable.
Mike Barnhart, President of Sunshine Review, said in a statement:
“Most state and local governments do not embrace transparency. Even fewer proactively share information.”
Transparency exists largely at the munificence of officials, with the burden of negotiating complex and costly FOIA petitions resting squarely on the shoulders of citizens and journalists.
Barnhart stressed that “state and local governments, and school districts, have an affirmative obligation to transparency reforms that proactively share the information people need to hold officials accountable for how tax money is spent and how the people’s business is conducted. We must set the bar for state and local government transparency.
Sunshine Standard is a guide to these reforms being implemented across the country.”
Sunshine Standard model transparency legislation was endorsed by state legislators, who attended the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Annual Meeting earlier this year.
Transparency, at the local, state, and federal levels, is needed now more than ever. When Barack Obama was campaigning for President in 2008, he promised the nation that he would allow people to access a more transparent government. Unfortunately, this has been a promise that has been mostly unfulfilled by the President and Congress.
Cross posted at Bearing Drift
