Weekly Columns

Most State of the Union addresses offer more empty promises than substantive policy. Even by that low standard, President Obama's latest annual address to Congress was a disappointment.

President Obama's decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline was met with near universal outrage from both ends of the political spectrum. With good reason. The construction and operation of the Keystone pipeline would create 20,000 direct jobs and as many as 118,000 related jobs.

In a recent speech at the Pentagon, President Obama announced his plans to make significant changes to the size and strategies of U.S. military forces. Under the new strategy, Army and Marine Corps forces will be reduced and our military presence in Europe will be scaled back.

With the start of a new year, the White House is wasting no time setting the stage for more of the same regulatory overreach that has bedeviled employers and stifled job creation since President Obama took office.

It's official: This Congress is the least popular in history. The 17 percent average yearly approval rating for the 112th Congress is the lowest recorded in the 30 years Gallup has been tracking congressional ratings.

The appropriations process of the first session of the 112th Congress ended on a surprisingly positive note with passage of a 2012 funding bill that cut government spending for the second year in a row.

As with most things in Washington, this year's appropriations process was slow and frustrating, but the end result is a major victory for fiscal sanity.

Concerns about government overreach and overregulation are among the the most common complaints I've heard in town hall meetings this year. And no government regulation has inspired more justified outrage recently among Oklahomans than the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed new rules controlling farm dust.