Tag Archives: reform

Broken Branch of Government Is Legislative

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | NOV 19, 2019

Last week was an important one in the House of Representatives. No, it wasn’t because of impeachment hearings.

While former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was putting in a command performance in the Longworth Building, across the street in the Capitol the House of Representatives was voting to extend the life of its Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.

I know what you’re thinking. In a desperate attempt to focus your attention on mundane news about the Modernization Committee I used a well-worn attention grabber to focus your attention on modernizing Congress. Continue reading →

Congress: When Success Is Still Failure

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON | OCT 5, 2018

The movement to reform the U.S. Congress is like a G-rated flick that would make Walt Disney yawn. There’s no sex, no violence, no scandal, no crime, comparatively little political intrigue, and no big-time stars, just a lot of risqué talk about filibustering the motion to proceed.

It is doubtful the subject will come up in campaigns, either, beyond the patronizing and often hypocritical blather about running against Washington.

Several weeks ago the House Rules Committee held a hearing on about 40 reforms that members wanted to see brought up on the opening day of the next Congress in January 2019. The attention to it was, as you would expect, silence.

There wasn’t any news coverage, except from Paul Krawzak at Congressional Quarterly, who understands the subject matter.

The need for reform couldn’t be clearer, or more critical, or more timely.

Continue reading →

Cruz & McCarthy: Yes, No, Maybe So

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON

When Harold H. Velde took the chair of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1953, he vowed to “weed out the communists and their fellow travelers, the pinkos, as they are called” from the departments of State and Defense and promised to serve as a watchdog for “commies” infiltrating the Eisenhower Administration.

The Committee had already made a name for itself. Five years earlier, a young member of the committee from California named Richard Nixon claimed fame by subpoenaing records that led to the imprisonment of Alger Hiss, the prominent and popular wunderkind of the Roosevelt era, who was accused of turning over government secrets to the Soviet Union.

In fact, since its founding in 1938, the Committee was on the leading edge of the anti-communist movement in the United States, a movement founded on legitimate national and international concerns about the global spread of Marxist-Leninism to China and across Russia into Eastern Europe and beyond. The spread of Communism would have profound, lasting ramifications for the free world and especially for the United States, the post-war protector of democracy and policeman of the planet. Continue reading →

Tread Carefully on E-Verify

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Republicans have rightly condemned both the costs and the intrusiveness of Obamacare. They believe, and I agree with them, that the new law will increase health premiums, hurt innovation, cost a boatload of money (actually, more than a couple boatloads), drive down quality, and put the power of health care decisions in the hands of government bureaucrats.

Republicans have a healthy skepticism of an overbearing and expensive government, and they have consistently voted to defund it or repeal it on dozens of occasions.

If too much government is a bad thing when it comes health care, why is it suddenly a good thing when it comes to hiring a nanny, getting some help with the lawn, or hiring a short-order cook at the local deli. Continue reading →

Cruz Doing Cornyn No Favors

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

There are 26 million people living in Texas. About 40 percent of them are Hispanic. About 44 percent of them are White and not Hispanic. About 11 percent of them are Black.

When you live in Texas, you gain an appreciation for Mexican culture and the Mexican people. You have no choice. They are your neighbors.

I worked for a Texas member of Congress once. Tom DeLay had a great appreciation for the Hispanics in his state. He spoke Spanish. He lived in Latin America for a while when he was a kid. Continue reading →

Still Leading From Behind

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

In another example of his highly developed strategy of “leading from behind,” President Barack Obama gave a speech in Las Vegas coming out in favor of Immigration Reform just a day after a group of Senators announced the outlines of a bipartisan plan for … Immigration Reform.

Get used to this. In his first four years in office, President Obama pretended he had nothing to do with almost anything going on with the economy or in foreign policy. If it was going badly – whatever “it” might have been – it was all George W’s fault. Or the Republicans in Congress. Or both.

If it was going well – whatever “it” might have been – it was a first person victory “I did it,” or “My administration did it.” Continue reading →

Regulations Wipe-Out U.S. Productivity

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

Americans produce more regulatory paperwork than manufacturered goods. You heard that ‘torectly as they say (sometimes) in the South.

Americans spent enough time and effort complying with government regulations to total $1.8 trillion of our roughly $15 trillion national GDP. (Source: Small Business Administration)

During the same year, the entire American manufacturing industry made $1.7 trillion worth of: airplanes, cars, furniture, clothes, upholstery, widgets, gadgets, wingnuts, and Sidewinder missiles. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Industry Economic Accounts (2009))

This is why the current ‘debate’ (mud-slinging) by the Obama Administration over ‘out-sourcing’ and ‘Bain Capital’ is so maddening, mind-numbing and quite honestly, ‘dishonest’. Continue reading →