Weekly Columns
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.
The "Accountability Review Board" assembled by the State Department to investigate security failures leading to the Benghazi terror attack has released a report that fails to hold any senior officials accountable for the assault that claimed four American lives.
The media coverage of the fiscal cliff misses the point so consistently, it's enough to provoke a James Carville-esque outburst to remind them: "It's the spending, Stupid." The fixation with the tax side of the equation obscures that the real solution to the fiscal cliff involves spending cuts and entitlement reform.
Days after President Obama presented his opening offer in the fiscal cliff negotiations, House Republicans presented our counterproposal as the next step in the process toward reaching consensus before the December 31st deadline. Unlike President Obama's proposal, which reads like a Christmas wish list of liberals' most extreme ideas, the Republican plan is based on both reality and on common ground the two parties have established in previous discussions.
With less than a month to go before the fiscal cliff deadline, there is no time for political posturing or rigid demands. Yet President Obama's opening offer in the fiscal cliff negotiations is so extreme and irresponsible that it has significantly undermined the process before discussions have even gotten off the ground.
Whether or not one agrees with his policies and political philosophy, it is irrefutable that President Obama's administration has been characterized by a noticeable tendency to go outside the legislative process to enact his policy priorities via regulation. Even the New York Times has noted "an increasingly deliberate pattern by the administration to circumvent lawmakers." The Wall Street Journal explained this pattern simply: "Mr. Obama proposes, Congress refuses, he does it anyway."
Even in a year of severe drought, continued high unemployment, economic struggle, natural disaster, and a negative and divisive election, Americans have much to be thankful for.
Whether your side won or lost, all Americans can still feel pride and appreciation for a peaceful democratic system that remains a model for the world. Although many may have been inconvenienced by long lines or inefficient voting processes, no one had to risk his or her life to vote.