LEGISLATIVE UPDATE FEBRUARY 27, 2012

Compliments of Tea Party Patriots


Week of February 27, 2012

PASSION TO ACTION

Saturday, March 24 is the Road to Repeal Rally, and we’ve just found out that the unions are already planning to counter protest our rally. Please get the word out to your groups and let people know how important it is that we make a strong showing! Send them to http://www.roadtorepeal.com!/
 
Federal Budget & Spending


No Budget: Tuesday, February 28 marks the 1035th day since the Senate has passed a budget under Harry Reid’s (D-NV) leadership. Remember – the Democrats are trying hard to make it seem like they passed a budget when they passed the debt ceiling deal – but they did not! All the debt ceiling deal did was to place a cap on discretionary spending for a certain amount of time. A budget would require going through discretionary and mandatory spending, taking a look at incoming revenue and making decisions about where the money would be spent, based on priorities. The debt deal did none of that.

Buying Votes from House Democrats: The Heritage Foundation studied the grants doled out in the early years by the Obama Administration, and found that the districts of moderate House Democrats – who were vital to pushing through Obama’s agenda those first two years – received large sums right around the passage of three key pieces of legislation: Obamacare, Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and the cap-and-trade bill! Check out this chart.

Federal Employees: A report released by the CBO in January confirmed that federal workers enjoy advantages over their private sector counterparts – and Obama wants to give government bureaucrats a raise this year!

President’s Budget: Again, here are the highlights of President Obama’s recently proposed budget.

• Fourth Trillion-Dollar Deficit in a Row: The President’s budget proposes a $1.33 trillion deficit in FY 2012. This follows a $1.30 trillion deficit in FY 2011, a $1.29 trillion deficit in FY 2010, and a record-breaking $1.41 trillion deficit in FY 2009, which followed a then record-breaking $459 billion deficit in FY 2008.
• Fifty-Seventh Deficit in Sixty-Two Years: Under the President’s plan, the federal government will have balanced the budget in only five years from 1961 to 2022 (1969, 1998-2001). By contrast, the deficit was balanced in 26 of 60 years from 1901 to 1960 (a period covering two world wars and the Great Depression, among other things).
• Federal Budget Would NEVER Balance Again: The President’s budget does not just propose large deficits in the short-term, but they actually start increasing again from 2018 to 2022 (as shown above). Beyond that point, the President’s proposal to keep entitlement spending unreformed would ensure that the long-term budget outlook is worse. Under the policies proposed by the President’s FY 2013 budget, the federal budget would never balance again.
• 27.5% Spending Increase Since FY 2008: Under the President’s proposal, total federal spending would increase from $2.98 trillion in FY 2008 to $3.82 trillion in FY 2013. This is an increase of $820 billion or 27.5%.
• $10.59 Trillion of New Debt: The President’s budget proposes to increase the national debt from today’s level of $15.35 trillion to $25.90 trillion in FY 2022—an increase of $10.59 trillion or 68.9%. The amount of new debt proposed by this budget is almost identical to where the entire national debt stood on January 20, 2009.
• Unprecedented Spending: The President’s budget proposes federal spending of 24.3% of GDP in FY 2012. Prior to the Obama Administration, the highest peacetime figure was 23.5% of GDP in 1983 (federal spending was also higher from 1942 to 1946 because of World War II). Under the President’s budget, the federal government would spend $50.7 trillion from FY 2012 to FY 2022.
• Increasing Tax Burden: The President’s budget would increase the tax burden from 15.4% of GDP in 2011 to 20.1% of GDP in 2022. For the 2012-2022 period, revenue would average 18.9% of GDP, which—despite the large deficits—is notably above the 40-year average (18.0% of GDP).

Budget Process Reforms: All three of the House GOP’s budget reform bills. Read about all three here. What do you think about these bills?

Equal: The national debt is now equal in size to our entire economy. And it the politicians keep up the overspending, we will surely exceed it soon.

Debt Crisis: Read about the Mercatus Center’s symposium titled, “U.S. Sovereign Debt Crisis: Tipping Point Scenarios and Crash Dynamics.”

Disappearing Tax Dollars: Check out the Mercatus Center’s analysis of the stimulus and read about what actually happened to our tax dollars.

NOT a Recovery: Check out this chart from HotAir.com that shows just how bad Obama’s “recovery” really is.

Obamacare

ROAD TO REPEAL RALLY – March 24 in DC from noon to two! Be there!!!
Unions are planning a counter rally so we MUST show our strength!
Medical Freedom Zones - podcast
Sign the Virginia Tea Party Federation’s petition to repeal Obamacare!
Primary Care doctor shortage looming
New poll: Majority still wants repeal!
Despotism, Thy Name is Obamacare
Feds loaning money to health “co-ops” in 8 states
Obamacare versus individual freedom
Alinskyites reap millions from Obamacare
Why Obamacare exceeds commerce clause interpretation
Anti-conscience mandate is just the beginning
No ruling until 2016???
Senate MUST repeal the CLASS Act!!
How Obamacare is already failing
America’s heritage of independence & Obamacare don’t mix
Obamacare’s threat to medical breakthroughs
ACO’s deeply flawed
More on “millions for Alinskyites”
Anti-conscience mandate draws seven lawsuits
The $4 billion Obamacare slush fund for progressives (related to “co-ops”)


Jobs, Economic Growth & Regulations

Declaration of Dependence: Dependency on government has risen 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million people now relying on some sort of federal program. And at the same time, fewer Americans pay federal income taxes. 49.5% of Americans escaped income taxes in 2009, while in the late 1960’s, only 12% did not pay income taxes.

Stimulus Failure: The White House claims that because of the stimulus that payroll employment is up to 137,550,000, when in reality it is actually 132,409,000. See below for more examples of stimulus failure.

• The unemployment rate has stayed above 8% for more than 36 months.
• The CBO projects that unemployment will stay above 8% until at least 2014.
• Remember when the White House claimed that unemployment would not go above 8% with the stimulus?

Constitutional Issues

• Sec. 1074 of NDAA allows for military drones to be used in domestic airspace
• Tennessee fights back against NDAA
• Coalition forms in opposition to NDAA
• Find sample resolutions and bills opposing NDAA at theintolerableacts.org
• Did Obama just give away seven oil-rich Alaskan islands to Russia?
• Bribery at the DOJ
• ACTA: The international treaty that is similar to SOPA and PIPA

Education

Unions: In a slap in the face to all parents, union leader admits that educators, not parents, know what is best for children. This story is yet another indication of how the teachers’ unions, bureaucrats and their indentured politicians really feel about parents: too dumb to know what is best for your own children. Don’t believe this could happen in your school system? Then, go to your child’s school and question the teacher and administrators on curriculum content and see their reactions and subsequent treatment of your child.

Get Involved: If you really want to make a difference and truly reform education, then I encourage you to visit our website at http://www.teaforeducation.com/ to learn more.
House

Weekly wrap up & the week ahead provided by the RSC.

Weekly Wrap Up:  The House was not in session last week.

The Week Ahead

Transportation – There is a possibility that the transportation bill could be on the floor during the upcoming two-week work period. As you may remember, the energy portion of the legislation—as well as the pension reform pay-for—was split from the initial H.R. 7 legislation and passed separately. The remaining portion of the bill contains the reauthorization of federal highway and transportation programs. While we don’t have any details yet, media reports indicate that a scaled-back version of the bill may be unveiled, with an authorization of 1-2 years instead of 5, and at a marginally lower level of spending. Transit (i.e. non-highway) spending would reportedly be linked back into the Highway Trust Fund, and new energy-drilling revenues would still be partially diverted to support higher highway spending. We will keep you posted with the latest details.

Protecting Academic Freedom – Next week, we will consider H.R. 2117, the Protecting Academic Freedom in Higher Education Act, introduced by RSC Member Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC). Over the past decade as college costs have skyrocketed, so has federal regulation of higher education—including new programs, mandates, and possible price controls. Two such regulations released by the Department of Education in 2010—the credit hour and state authorization regulations—intrude on areas that have historically been left to states and academic institutions. The credit hour regulation establishes a federal definition of a credit hour. This attempt to measure student learning at the federal level will restrict innovation, limit flexibility, and obstruct innovative teaching methods that could help students save money by graduating early. The state authorization regulation forces states to follow federal requirements when deciding whether to grant a college or university permission to operate within the state. The one-size-fits-all requirement piles unnecessary costs on states, colleges, and students. H.R. 2117 simply repeals both of these onerous regulations to prevent this unprecedented and unnecessary overreach by the federal government into higher education.

Repealing Absurd Environment Regulations – Next week, we will also consider H.R. 1837, the San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act, introduced by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA). Earlier this week, the Obama Administration announced that farmers in California’s San Joaquin Valley would only receive 30% of their allocated water supplies for 2012. Even after near-record rainfall last year, farmers and communities in this valley face the threat of another man-made drought due to federal regulations that divert water supplies away from farmers and communities in order to protect a three-inch fish. This absurd regulation has cost thousands of jobs—causing 40% unemployment in some areas—and has fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farm land. This legislation would repeal the regulation and bring water supply certainty to this part of the country, protecting some 30,000 jobs and helping families, farmers, and communities in the region.

Other legislation that may be considered: H.R. 1433 - Private Property Rights Protection Act of 2012 (Sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner / Judiciary Committee).

Senate

The Senate was not in session last week and no updated news about the week ahead has been sent out as of Sunday, February 26. (Also, the Senate just doesn’t do much because Harry Reid is trying to help re-elect President Obama, and Obama wants to run against a “do nothing Congress,” so Reid is happy to oblige.)