In 2006 then Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, commenting on the failure of the Republican controlled House & Senate to conference a budget resolution, quipped “Republicans are now on the cusp of failing to meet the most basic responsibility of governing - enacting a budget.”
Fast-forward a few months and Mr. Hoyer is now catapulted into the seat of power. As the new House Majority Leader, he and the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, promised to present a budget alternative that would be clear, credible and have consensus in their caucus. While he may have missed the mark on the last two, I suppose you could say that he got it right on the “clear” part. Because everyone can see right through his excuses for failing to even pass a budget resolution for the House.
Just so that we are all on the same page, let us acknowledge that budgets matter. This is especially true when you are spending amounts so vast that they end with the word “TRILLIONS.” It has often been said that a government’s failure to budget is tantamount to a failure to govern. After all budgets express the government’s priority for spending, revenue, borrowing and most importantly “TAXES.” Hoyer’s failure to insist on a budget resolution is like you wearing a blindfold while flying a 747 upside down in a hurricane. You may not know where you are going but the end result is highly predictable.
The voters of Maryland’s 5th Congressional District deserve better than a plan to spend it before they know its gone budget resolution. While Mr. Hoyer may not believe that it’s a problem, I certainly do. We can no longer tolerate a Congressman with a “What Me Worry” attitude. Fixing the problems that face our nation begins by doing the simple things first. A written budget that spells out our priorities would certainly qualify as a priority for me.
You’ve probably heard the old line “if it weren’t for bad news I wouldn’t have any”. Well consider the plight of our current Congressman who led the effort to burn through nearly a “TRILLION” dollars in order to prevent the unemployment rate from rising above 8%.
Not only did the unemployment rate eventually hit 10% before backing off to the current rate of 9.7%, Congressman Hoyer has consistently refused to accept responsibility for his failed jobs stimulus package. After all it is Congress, not the President, that controls the nation’s purse strings.
To add insult to injury, the current leadership of Hoyer and Pelosi boasts about creating 431,000 new jobs, failing to mention that 411,000 of them were temporary government census worker jobs paid for with your tax dollars. They are also reluctant to mention that private sector job creation, the ones responsible for paying for all those temporary government jobs, have all but disappeared. By any objective standard the only part of our economy that is growing is government. Imagine what will happen to it once the ocean of deficit spending and rising taxes overwhelm what is left of the private sector. Who will pay for those government jobs then?
Of course the normal response from our Congressman is to blame everything on the former President Bush. While the average unemployment rate under his administration was around 5%, the end of his term in January saw the rate rise to 7.6%. While Hoyer is quick to blame Bush for the increase, he forgets to mention that both he and Nancy Pelosi were in charge of the purse strings during the last two years of Bush’s term. Of course none of that matters since even with a new President in the White House, they continue to blame the previous President for their continued failures. Unfortunately the convenience of that excuse cannot explain how they took a bad situation and made it far worse.
The formula for growing an economy is pretty well known to those who choose to pay attention. Jobs flourish in an environment of vigorous competition, lower taxes and reasonable government regulations. These principles are in direct conflict with the big government, central regulation, higher taxes crew who currently run the Congress. Fixing the unemployment problem can be done, but it will require a leadership change in order do it. The longer we continue down the path that Mr. Hoyer and Speaker Pelosi have chosen for us, the longer it will take to undo the damage and return us to a robust economy.
As the next Congressman for the 5th Congressional District, I can assure you that I have been paying attention. When elected my priority will be to grow our private sector so that real jobs are created, affording everyone the opportunity to build wealth for themselve and their family. The time for blaming others is past. It is time for Congress to take responsibility and do what is necessary to grow our economy and create private sector jobs.
“Doublespeak: language used to deceive usually through concealment or misrepresentation of truth; also :
goobledygook” ~ Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary
“One year ago,...Congress and the new President acted immediately to enact the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which has helped put people back to work rebuilding our economy and has invested in the future of our country and our state.” These are the words of Congressman Steny Hoyer almost two months ago (February 17, 2010). On his Congressional website he further boasts that “thousands of jobs in the state have been created or saved,” and the unemployment rate in the state is below the national average at 7.2%.
Hmmm…let’s look at some of these claims more closely, beginning with the name given to the legislation. With a name like the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” one might expect to find that the country recovered, reinvested and progressed from bad to better. Or in the context of discussing rising unemployment rates, you might leap to the conclusion that the act lowered that rate. Unfortunately you would be wrong on both counts.
According to the government’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate in November of 2008 was 6.7%. During that same time period, Maryland’s unemployment rate was 5.5%. Now let us skip forward to 2009. The economy retreats into a recession, losing 2 million jobs before hitting a national unemployment rate of 10.2%. In response to this Congress passes legislation authorizing the spending of at least 789 billion dollars to halt the recession and restart an economic recovery. So what impact has all that money had on recovering our local economy?
According to the government’s Recovery.gov website, from the bill’s inception date of Feb 17, 2009 through Dec. 31, 2009, 56 billion dollars has been spent in Maryland to create 594,644 jobs. Ignoring for the moment the huge waste and inefficiency of spending $94,174 per job, what impact did the wholesale spending of our national treasure have on unemployment?
Judge for yourself. Today, Maryland’s unemployment rate is 7.5%. The national unemployment rate is 9.7%, with more than 2 million jobs lost in the last year. If this is recovery I’d hate to see failure.
Let’s be honest. Congress, under the leadership of Mr. Hoyer has taken the wrong approach and is engaging in what George Orwell in his novel 1984 called “double-speak.” When Mr. Hoyer can claim with a straight face that the legislation has saved or created half a million jobs, at a cost of 100 thousand dollars per job, while at the same time over two million real jobs have been lost, that’s double-speak. Declaring victory for a Maryland unemployment rate of 7.5%, while at the same time ignoring the fact that only a few years ago it was almost half that rate, that’s double-speak. But using the word “investment” to describe spending 780 billion dollars on a failed stimulus plan…now that’s goobledygook.
The promises they made were, in a word, FANTASTIC! Congress would vote, the cost for health care would plummet, it’s quality would soar and the federal deficit would disappear all by itself. Sound to good to be true? You betcha!!!
As it turns out the promises made were far less truthful than the stories we tell our children about the Easter Bunny. For months congressional leaders Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid promised that if enacted, their legislation would provide affordable health care for all. They were so certain of this fact that they even named the bill “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act.” There’s just one little problem, even by their own twisted accounting practices the new legislation will cost us nearly 1 TRILLION dollars. Now I don’t know about you, but in my opinion the words “affordable” and “trillion dollars” should not appear in the same context. Of course none of this matters if you don’t mind hopping down the bunny trail, spending other people’s money.
To make matters worse, Hoyer and company had to resort to some pretty deceptive tactics in order to make the claim that the new law would reduce the deficit. (Of course that assumes that you believe its rational to spend a TRILLION dollars in order to save 160 billion dollars in the first place.) The most egregious of the deceptions is the fact that the new law requires you and me to pay 10 years of premiums in order to receive 6 years of benefits. Can you imagine what would happen if the tooth fairy worked on those principles? For the first four years you would literally empty your head of teeth. But in the fifth year the kind fairy princess would leave you one silver dollar for all your troubles. Tell that story to your six year old and they’ll never go to sleep with a loose tooth again. Ram it through Congress on a 100% partisan vote and you’re expected to thank them for only cheating you a little bit.
But the biggest fairy tale must be reserved for last. Immediately after the health care reform bill was signed into law, Hoyer, Pelosi and Reid pulled out all the stops to advertise its benefits. For 48 hours straight, they trumpeted the benefits of the new law and proclaimed that children with preexisting conditions were immediately covered. Unfortunately, none of these long serving members of Congress, all of whom led the fight to implement the bill before any had time to read it, had actually checked to see if those provisions were in the bill. As it turns out, they forgot to put in language that would have provided such a benefit prior to 2014.
Somewhere there’s a unicorn laughing its horn off.
“Safe, new nuclear plants are a necessity.” ~ President Barack Obama
Nuclear power is necessary to the economic success and national security of the Unites States and the state of Maryland. Even the President says so. Yet for over thirty years the construction of a new nuclear power plant had been stymied by policies dating back to the Carter administration.
But hope springs eternal. Congress has finally approved 8 billion dollars in loan guarantees, making it possible for two new nuclear power plants to be built, the first in three decades. There is now talk that an additional total of 54 billion dollars in loan guarantees will be approved in 2011, tripling the size of existing guarantee programs. Encouraging rhetoric for a government that had been stuck on full stop with regard to nuclear power.
However, a vital component of safe, reliable nuclear power is the storage or reprocessing of the nuclear fuel used to power it. Right now the federal government has opted to store all nuclear waste in a centralized facility. Yucca Mountain was originally selected in 1987 as the safe repository in which to safely store such nuclear waste. Since that time our government has expended 96 billion dollars to study and build the facility. So why is Congress now considering closing Yucca Mountain?
The recent actions of Congress begs the question, how can we increase the number of nuclear power plants, while at the same time eliminate the only centralized storage facility currently available to receive nuclear waste? Absent a dedicated storage facility, each nuclear power plant would have to store their used nuclear material on-site. A viable option, but one which would duplicate cost at every facility in operation.
The one step forward, two step backwards approach will have an immediate and long term impact on the nuclear power plant located in Calvert Cliffs, Md. Right now the plant uses two reactors and produces over 14,678 kilowatts of electricity to over 400,000 consumers. A third reactor has been approved by the Maryland Public Service Commission which would increase service to 1.3 million homes. If the Congress continues to signal that it is unsure of its stance on Yucca Mountain it might slow or derail the planned expansion. It would certainly require them to take adequate measures to store additional waste material on site.
For once it would be nice if Congress were to take sensible actions without half-steps. Nuclear power is the most efficient, affordable and immediate solution to our energy needs. The sooner we accept and implement the common sense solution, the sooner we will reap the enormous benefits of that action. Yucca mountain has been ready over 20 years. It’s time that we got serious about nuclear energy and put the facility to use. Perhaps then we can make real progress towards energy independence.
They say it’s always darkest before the dawn. I guess that sums up the situation last week when Congress rammed through it’s fatally flawed Health Care Reform legislation. Despite a year of protests, demonstrations and town hall meetings, Congress ignored us and voted in defiance of the will of the people.
When the final vote was taken, the big government, big spender, take it or leave it, politicians were standing tall over “We the people.” They had succeeded in stampeding the Pro-Life Democrat coalition to accept a worthless executive order in exchange for their vote on a law that would enable federal dollars to be used to fund abortions. Billions of dollars in pork-laden earmarks were wasted in order to buy the Blue-dog Democrat votes necessary to pass the bill. More importantly, Congress exceeded their constitutional authority and for the first time passed a law that orders you to buy a specific service. For those of us who believe in no federal funding for abortions, balanced budgets, and defending the Constitution, this was indeed our darkest hour.
Even those who voted for the bill have little reason to celebrate. When all you have to celebrate is the creation of a new TRILLION dollar entitlement program that actually increases cost instead of decreasing them, that is cause to worry. The proof in the pudding will tell when we see how many members of Congress will hold a town hall meeting during their Easter recess to explain their “yes” vote on the health care bill. (Probably not too many takers on that idea.)
Fortunately, the light of day draws closer with each passing moment. Over the next seven months we will examine their handiwork and highlight the hidden taxes, government mandates and special interest giveaways that have been foisted upon us. We will confront them with their record of broken promises, litany of lies and secret deals used to achieve their real goal of creating a larger government at our expense. And lest we forget, we will hold our current Congressman, Steny Hoyer, accountable for his vote and the leadership role he played in defying our will.
Yes, we may have lost the vote on health care, but we will have the final word this coming November when we remove Mr. Hoyer, and those who followed his lead, from Congress. When that happens we really will be able to bask in the light of a new day for Maryland.
By now we should all be familiar with the drill. A prominent political leader makes a poorly thought out statement regarding race that reflects poorly on him. The only remaining question is whether said prominent political leader is forced to step down from office, or can simply apologize for his poor choice of words and endure the late night television jokes which will forever immortalize his foot-in-mouth moment?
Of course the answer to that question will generally depend upon your party affiliation. If you are a Republican, you will be hounded by the press and other partisan forces until you are forced to resign. If you are a Democrat, you will be embraced by the offended party and forgiven by prominent members of the group that your very words maligned in the first place. Understand the rules now?
Prior to the 2008 Presidential election, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was quoted as saying that Mr. Obama could become the country’s first black president because he was “light-skinned” and had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Setting aside for the moment the obvious insult to “dark-skinned” persons who speak with a “Negro dialect” (whatever that is supposed to mean), I believe that it is time for us to move beyond these stupid statements and measure all of our political leaders by the same yardstick. In this case we should use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s suggested benchmark and measure them by the content of their character.
In Senator Harry Reid’s case such a measure would find him lacking in several key areas. For starters he was quick to declare the war in Iraq as “lost”, despite the fact that he voted to authorize it in the first place. Second he compared anyone who opposed his flawed health care reform bill to supporters of slavery. OUCH!!! Not exactly an historically accurate viewpoint from a member of the same party (Democrats) who seceded from the union in order to preserve slavery.
We are all guilty of saying insensitive things from time to time. Doing so doesn’t necessarily make you evil, nor does offering an apology automatically make you a saint. We should all strive to do better and live a life that on balance we can be proud of.
As a darker-skinned, African-American running for political office, I took offense to Harry Reid’s poorly chosen words. Do I hate him because of it…no. Should he step down as Senate Majority Leader…ask the Democrats in the Senate who voted for him in the first place. Because if he’s the best that they can offer for leadership in the Senate then they deserve each other.
Barely two weeks into the new year and Congress has already failed to live up to its word on an important issue. Despite numerous promises made by the President, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to conduct legislative negotiations in an open and transparent process, the proof in the pudding was revealed when private, closed door negotiations were conducted between the White House and members of the Democrats-only Congressional leadership.
Upon emerging from the closed door, private negotiations House leadership members were confronted by an aggressive press corp demanding to know what had happened to the promises of transparency. Flanked by her number #2 in the House, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Speaker Pelosi and other members of the house leadership responded with laughs and grins at the notion that the promises were anything more than a campaign gimmick (You can go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/05/pelosi-on-obama-there-wer_n_412291.html to view the video.)
I suppose this might explain why other promises of an affordable, high quality health care reform were so quickly abandoned by the wayside. Apparently Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer and their current leadership team believe that any promises made on the campaign trail expire on election day.
No word yet on whether our current Congressman Steny Hoyer will take any action to rebuke her on that notion. At this point its safe to say that the eggs in his refrigerator will have a longer shelf life than any campaign promise he makes this year.
This past Wednesday, I was honored to speak at the March On Annapolis. Joining with me were thousands of Marylanders who came to serve notice that the business as usual politics of higher taxes, increased spending and special interest payoffs are over. If you missed the event a video of my speech can be viewed at my You Tube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/Charles-Lollar-for-Congress.
Despite the dark night and chilly temperatures the air was crackling with the energy of citizens from across the state, standing in unison at the steps of the statehouse and governor’s mansion. Everyone could sense that we were part of a bigger movement, one that is growing and building to a political tidal wave of historic proportions. Real change is on the march, and this past Wednesday we got a sneak peek at its dress rehearsal.
My hat’s off to the organizers of the march. They obviously burned the midnight oil in putting this event together, and their hard work and attention to detail proved sufficient to the task. Congratulations to the folks at Americans for Prosperity for taking the lead on the effort. I would also like to salute their coalition partners Campaign for Liberty, Institute for Liberty, Maryland Taxpayers Association, Hagerstown TEA Party, Annapolis TEA Party, Cecil County TEA Party Patriots, Bel Air TEA Party Patriots, Marylanders for Fair Property Taxation, Help Save Maryland and We the People Carroll County.
While the march has ended, its flame of liberty burns brighter than ever. It is now up to us to harness that light and use it as a beacon of real hope in Maryland’s 5th Congressional District. I am more committed than ever to restoring common sense and Constitutional solutions back to our federal government.
The out of control, tax and spend Congress is at it again. As if the almost 2 trillion in additional government spending was not enough, they are now moving forward to raise the total Federal debt cap to as high as 12.4 trillion dollars!
Despite growing evidence that federal government spending is squeezing out private sector jobs, Congress has refused to pull the brake on it’s runaway deficit spending train. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on December 10, 2009, that she would insert the measure into a defense spending bill, thus making it hard for Republicans to vote against it. When asked to comment on the measure Congressman Hoyer was quoted by the New York Post as saying that “We’ve incurred this debt. We have to pay our bills.” No mention was made of the fact that their current spending binge will dramatically raise taxes on everyone in the middle of an economic recession.
So why is Congress intent on adopting such a one track mindset of ruinous spending? Good question! Unfortunately the answers can all be tied to the mid-term elections in November 2010. They know that we are angry about their failed stimulus spending, special interest bailouts and jobless recovery. Having ignored common sense solutions to our numerous problems, they are now forced to raise the debt ceiling just to cover all of their new excess spending. With time running out, Congress has decided to do its dirty work now, hoping that time will erode our memory of their past misdeeds, and stave off the election day punishment they so richly deserve. If successful Congress will once again sell us out to big government, higher taxes and the special interest groups that profit from their spending of our tax dollars.
If we are to avoid the coming crisis, new Congressional leadership will have to be selected. This year I will offer myself as a better choice to the ineffective, misguided and ruinous leadership of our current representative. With your support and vote we can avoid the wreck ahead and chart a new path for a prosperous country, and a new day in Maryland.