It’s another week in the Senate, and there’s another battle over earmarks. Senators Toomey and McCaskill are proposing an amendment to the STOCK Act (“insider trading bill”S. 2038) to permanently ban earmarks in the Senate. Not surprisingly, there is pushback from Harry Reid…and a number of Republicans as well. As always, there are those who argue that earmarks are just inconsequential “drop in the bucket” expenditures; that we must focus on more impactful issues. This from Senator Cornyn : He continued, “I wish we would focus on what the American people are most concerned about rather than some of these other issues that have their importance but are tangential to the main issues we ought to be focused on.” “I think we ought to [instead] be looking at other ways to … address people’s concerns about jobs and the debt,” Cornyn said. Yes, there are more pressing issues, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can spend a half hour voting on one amendment to scrub earmarks from the Senate once and for all. Moreover, it is precisely because eliminating earmarks is such an easy, low-hanging fruit that we should deal with it immediately. If senators are unwilling to relinquish millions in pork projects, how will they have the courage to cut billions from welfare programs and reform entitlements? There are also the usual suspects who hold earmarks to be a moral and constitutional responsibility. “It’s just stupid, it’s childish, it’s demagoguery,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said. “There is not a lot of courage in our conference [on the issue.] They all know better. They all know by banning earmarks … they are just giving the authority to the president. But they are afraid of it because people don’t understand the issue out there.” “We have an obligation as Members of Congress to fulfill our Constitutional duty. One of those duties is to make sure that we do Congressionally directed spending. I object and do not believe that all these decisions should be made at the White House,” Reid said. Then there’s this gem from the esteemed Majority Leader : “I’ve done earmarks all my career, and I’m happy I’ve done earmarks all my career. They’ve helped my state and they’ve helped different projects around the country.” Toomey’s amendment would permanently ban all earmarks, defined as any congressionally directed spending item, limited tax benefit, or limited tariff benefit. It would also create a point of order against any legislation containing an earmark, requiring a two-thirds vote to waive the point of order. If this is really such a small issue, then we should bury it this week – once and for all. Find out if your senator is supporting the bipartisan amendment to ban earmarks. Cross-posted from The Madison Project
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The Earmarxists are Back
Yesterday, the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced it would stop giving money to Planned Parenthood. Conservatives have been pushing on this issue for a while. As a result of the announcement, the left has gone on the attack. It is important that you who wanted Komen to do this say thank you. You can email them at news@Komen.org . More importantly, you can donate to them . If you are not willing to support an organization that takes a stand you want when they come under attack, you cannot be surprised when less organizations listen to you. So say thank you .
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Susan G. Komen Listened. Have You Responded?
The newest attack on Mitt Romney by a Newt Gingrich-supporting Super PAC is a nearly 8-minute documentary entitled “Blood Money” which purports to describe Mitt Romney’s profiting from Medicare fraud perpetrated by Damon Corporation during the time that Romney was on its board of directors, representing Bain Capital’s majority stake in the company. In fact, the PAC has made a website just to discuss the issue: mittsbloodmoney.com One of the nation’s largest public sector unions, AFSCME, has spent about a million dollars in Florida running an ad with a similar message. Separate from the issue of what the revival of the Damon Corp. story might mean for Romney’s fortunes, the fact that AFSCME is spending their money during the primary election instead of during the general election implies that they (as major supporters of Barack Obama) would much rather run against Gingrich than against Romney. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman “Who is more annoying than I am?” Schultz is sending out a memo with the same message, and other liberal and groups are running anti-Romney radio ads in Florida. The Damon Corp. story certainly reads like — and probably is — an episode of corporate greed and fraud. It’s an old story, which Massachusetts voters have heard before, but most Americans haven’t. The reason that it could be a problem for Romney is that despite the fact that neither he nor Bain was ever charged with wrongdoing in the case, the coming narrative is that Romney has given two different answers regarding his involvement — which Obama supporters will try to use to mask the basic facts of the case. In one answer, he discovered that the company was overbilling Medicare for blood tests and called for an investigation. Some reports say that prosecutors gave credit for ending the fraud to Corning Inc. which purchased Damon in 1993 . But ABC News notes, in the most balanced report I’ve found on the topic, that “Romney and the Damon board did, however, contact Damon’s lawyers, seek their counsel, and change Damon’s policies.” In another answer, Romney said he was unaware of any criminal investigation into the matter. To be sure, those two claims are not mutually exclusive; Romney could easily have both asked for an internal investigation and been unaware of a federal investigation. The real question here is whether anybody cares about a “scandal” which occurred two decades ago. It’s potentially damaging to Romney by going after his aura of being honest and upstanding. And that’s just what the Democrats will try to do, especially trying to tie Romney to a Medicare scandal which might impact Romney’s appeal to older voters. Romney will likely say “If I had done anything wrong, don’t you think I or my firm would have been charged with something? Furthermore, here are copies of the documents I had sent to the company’s lawyers to ask them to investigate this issue, and we implemented all the changes the lawyers instructed.” ABC News believes that “We can expect Romney’s opponents to keep surfacing one key number, however: the $473,000 Romney reportedly gained from the sale of Damon Corp.” I’m skeptical of that, or at least of the effectiveness of that tactic. After people have heard repeatedly that Romney is worth a quarter billion dollars, and that he’s made $40 million just in the last two years, they may be numb to a number which ends with the word “thousand” when it comes to thinking about Romney. It will be interesting to see if this newest attack on Romney gains any traction. His ability to defuse the Damon bomb will say a lot about his ability to take on Barack Obama and the David Axelrod-led attack machine in a general election. One point Romney should make (with a smile) is that “Obama and his friends must really be afraid of me to work to help Newt Gingrich with this particular smear campaign.”
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Romney and Damon Corp.: A Bomb or a Dud?
Egyptian government officials promised the US ambassador in Cairo that material seized in last week’s raids on non-governmental organizations, including US democracy-building groups, would be returned. That hasn’t happened : Egyptian officials still have not returned property or cash seized in a December 29 police raid on the Cairo offices of U.S. non-governmental organizations, according to two U.S.-based NGOs. The actions by the Egyptian police contradict assurances the State Department says were given to the U.S. ambassador by Egyptian authorities. “We had been assured by leaders in the Egyptian government that this issue would be resolved, that harassment would end, that NGOs would be allowed to go back to business as usual and that their property would be returned. It is, frankly, unacceptable to us that that situation has not been returned to normal,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in her daily press briefing Tuesday. Leslie Campbell, director of the National Democratic Institute’s programs in the Middle East and North Africa, told CNN there has been “no change at all – nothing returned.” Campbell says there have been “mixed signals” from the Egyptian government about whether the group’s offices can be used, “but we are being cautious until there is a definitive statement from the government.” Another U.S. NGO targeted in the raids, the International Republican Institute, told CNN that promises to the U.S. ambassador that the offices would be re-opened and possessions returned have not been kept. Speaking by phone from Cairo, IRI President Lorne Craner said his group was promised on Friday that their material would be returned, but that hasn’t happened. “The agreement that we understood to have been made last Friday has not been undertaken and, in fact, we’re being told there will be an investigation of us,” he said. “Today (Wednesday) we had an Egyptian citizen and a U.S. citizen from our staff called in by the police, by the prosecutors, for questioning.” As I argued Thursday, it’s asking for trouble to allow this to stand without some tangible affect on the $1.3 billion in military aid the US sends to Egypt annually. Elliot Abrams puts it more starkly: “[W]e must let the army know that if it is their policy to crush democracy activists, there is a price they will pay. It’s $1.3 billion a year.” Virginia Republican Congressman Frank Wolf, who sits on the Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, is pressing the administration of this issue.
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Time to Cut Aid to Egypt
Both the Democrats and Republicans have their share of ‘One Issue Voters’ (actually every Party does). But in general the approach each Party takes to dealing with them is very different. The modern Democrat Party IS the Party of the ‘One Issue Voter’. Groups and people that have nothing in common, and in some cases
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Two Perspectives on the ‘One Issue Voter’
