Weekly Columns
More than eight months ago on September 11, the nation was shaken by the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Claiming the lives of four innocent Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, that horrific night still demands further investigation before it can be laid to rest. Due to an uncooperative Administration and State Department who attempted to downplay the terrorist attack just eight weeks before the presidential election, we still don’t know the truth.
If it sounded too good to be true, that’s because it was. Before the Affordable Care Act was signed into law on March 23, 2010, President Obama painted an unreal, impossible picture of how this reform would affect hardworking Americans and job creators. Three years later, the true cost of Obamacare is still becoming known, but it is evident that the losses far outweigh any benefits—now or ever.
Time is a precious commodity. Last week, you might have been one of many airline travelers who lost unnecessary time due to flight delays and cancellations resulting from staffing reductions within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Claiming compliance with required cuts due to sequestration, FAA actions that upset travelers and hardworking personnel should ultimately be recognized as an attempt by the Obama Administration to make a dramatic political statement.
Tax day and the stress that comes along with it has come and gone at last. The annual drill of gathering all those necessary income documents, navigating complicated instructions, completing numerous tax forms and finally filing our taxes is over—at least for now.
Two months late and $8.2 trillion short, President Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget blueprint finally arrived on Capitol Hill. While the unveiling of the White House budget is usually the first event of the yearly budget season, its arrival well after passage of the House Republican budget makes the contrast between the two plans even more dramatic.
If only President Obama would take his approach to energy production and apply it to the national debt, we’d be down to 2007 levels in no time. According to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), his administration’s policies have caused production on federal lands to plummet.
One of the first questions reporters asked House Republicans when we unveiled our “Path to Prosperity” budget plan is “Why does the plan repeal Obamacare?” The answer is simple: Obamacare is an economic disaster.
It may be March Madness in the NCAA, but a rare burst of sanity played out this month on Capitol Hill. House Republicans passed an important funding measure well in advance of the deadline. This is not an unusual occurrence since we have done the same with previous government funding legislation, as well as multiple bills to address the fiscal cliff, sequester and a number of other contentious issues. The twist this time is that the Democratic Senate actually took up the bill in a timely manner, made amendments and sent it back to the House for final passage.
House Republicans presented our annual budget blueprint last week, followed the next day by Senate Democrats. The contrast between the two plans could not be more stark.
Much like the Mayan Apocalypse, the dreaded beginning of sequestration came and went without much fanfare. After the $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts went into effect on March 1, President Obama’s doomsday prophecies were exposed as politically motivated exaggerations and, in some cases, outright fallacies. Claims from the Obama administration that teachers are beginning to receive “pink slips” and Capitol Hill janitors are facing pay cuts were both awarded “Four Pinocchios” -- the highest score on the Washington Post fact checkers’ dishonesty scale.