Weekly Columns
The rate of domestic violence and sexual assault for Native American women has reached epidemic proportions due in large part to a stunning legal loophole that severely limits tribal ability to prosecute these crimes. Until recently, non-Indians accused of misdemeanor domestic violence crimes against tribal members could only be prosecuted by the federal government and some states – not by the local tribal courts.
It's not hard to find examples of wasteful government spending. The IRS has its own television studio that costs taxpayers $4 million per year to operate. The National Science Foundation paid seniors $1.2 million to play video games for a study. Just last year, the government shelled out an estimated $115 billion in payments to ineligible individuals. Not to mention the 90 different green energy programs across 11 different federal agencies that are eating up government resources, according to the Washington Post.
President Obama's State of the Union address was even more disappointing than his inauguration speech. Once again, the president disregarded the gravity of our economic challenges and outlined an old-school liberal agenda that is utterly out of step with our problems.
It's officially budget season in Washington -- the period from January to April when the president, House and Senate are all legally required to produce a budget plan to establish spending priorities for the coming year and beyond. As it has for four of the past five years, the process formally commenced with President Obama failing to submit his budget blueprint by the statutory deadline.
In his second inaugural address, President Obama did not utter the word "debt" a single time. While the president had no hesitation discussing policies to increase spending, he remained virtually silent regarding the most important and urgent challenge currently threatening the nation's future.
Much of the recent coverage of 11th-hour legislative deals and partisan stalemates focuses on negotiations between House Republican leadership and the White House. Yet the most underreported factor in the habitual Washington gridlock of the past two years is the failure of the Democratic Senate to do its job.
President Obama spent the last press briefing of his first term lecturing Congress to "pay the bills they have already racked up." "They" is a curious choice of pronoun for a president who has accumulated more debt than any chief executive in history.
After the 113th Congress was officially sworn in on January 3, one of the first orders of business was to approve new rules under which the legislative process will operate during this session of Congress. House Resolution 5, the House Rules Package for the 113th Congress, not only outlines procedural guidelines for the legislative session but establishes a framework for scaling back the size and scope of the federal government.
During the 2011 debt ceiling debate, President Obama famously declared that the government should "eat our peas" and raise the debt ceiling with no strings attached. But it is the president who needs to get comfortable with the idea of eating not only peas but carrots and spinach, as well. Now that Congress has made the Bush-era tax cuts permanent for 98 percent of American workers, tax rate increases are off the menu. The president's only options for reducing the deficit are spending cuts, entitlement reform and tax reform.
The fiscal cliff fiasco has been perhaps a fitting end to a year and a legislative session full of frustrating, down-to-the-wire legislative battles. Passing major legislation is often such a contentious, eleventh-hour process, it seems as if all of Washington is hopelessly dysfunctional. While this is largely true, there are a few congressional success stories worth highlighting.