Tim Bishop is in a tough spot. He can’t rely on earmarks to get himself reelected, those have been banned. He has a reputation of strong constituent service but if you peel back that onion you will see that the service is based on helping folks deal with the massive regulatory programs he typically votes for. Run on his record? His record consists of voting with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time; in return the leadership gave him his share of pork to pass around and “buy” votes.

So I wrote to him to ask him to support Paul Ryan’s budget plan. I didn’t suspect that he would. However, I would expect a member of Congress who might disagree with one approach or position, to put forth an alternative approach or position. We are facing yawning budget deficits for as far as the eye can see. Is it too much to ask of your representative in Congress how he plans to deal with that? Republicans have put forth plan after plan, many passing the House but dying in the Democrat controlled Congress. Tim Bishop doesn’t like those plans but other than a minor tax loophole for five oil companies, his only actions are how to restore any cuts made by the Republicans. Don’t cut this. Don’t cut that. That will hurt this constituency and so on. The deficit only gets bigger. Here is Mr. Bishop’s response to my letter and you can read the full text by clicking here.

There is nothing like warming up with a little class warfare:

I share many Long Islanders’ concern over the unsustainable growth of our nation’s budget deficits and the ballooning national debt. Unfortunately, the Republican FY 2012 budget attempts to address our fiscal problems at the expense of seniors, the middle class, and American competitiveness.

Now in the Ryan plan, anyone over the age of 55 will not be impacted by any changes in Social Security or Medicare. So Mr. Bishop, please explain that one, other than that you watched the commercial of the Paul Ryan lookalike pushing granny over the cliff.  Also please explain how cutting back on Washington’s tentacles into every aspect of our lives would hurt competitiveness. I offer you exhibit I.

 Since 1960 the number of pages of federal regulations has grown by over 700%, and that’s supposed to make us more competitive?

Misplaced priorities and failed economic policies over the past decade eviscerated budget surpluses and contributed to the recent economic collapse. Now, these same policies are being espoused as the guide to balancing the budget. For these reasons, I voted against the Republican budget.

It is interesting how Mr. Bishop pegs the problem at “over the last decade.” I guess it is another tired attempt to blame it all on Bush. But when Congressman Bishop comes up for reelection he will have spent exactly a decade in office. What does he have to show for it? During that time there were both Republican and Democrat administrations. Congress was controlled by both Republicans and Democrats. It seems that the failed economic policies that he describes occurred during his entire tenure. But instead of pointing to what he would do differently, he merely points the finger away, hoping we won’t notice that as the others came and went, Bishop remained. As for the failed economic policies, let me offer exhibit II.

The above chart compares the unemployment by month in office between Obama and his predecessor. The failed economic policies look pretty good in comparison to what we are dealing with now. I make no apologies for the increases in spending that occurred under Bush, but if the bad policies were too much spending, how is spending trillions more being responsible? And as I explain in my book Liberty’s Lifeline, the fiscal crisis was a direct result of decades of Democrat policies that pushed the housing bubble until it burst.

Bishop goes on to say how he fights to promote job growth on Long Island. How is saddling Long Island families with a $3 billion share of the stimulus dollars that they have to pay back, promoting job growth? He proudly points out in another press release how he had funding restored to save 1,000 – 1,500 jobs at Brookhaven National Labs. While it is laudable to save jobs, let’s not forget these are public sector jobs paid for by the taxes of private sector workers. Tens of thousands of people who typically work in the private sector are unemployed so, while I feel for the folks at BNL, saving their jobs means that we didn’t cut the deficit, saving their jobs means that those who work in the private sector will have to continue to shoulder that burden. But if you ask Congressman Bishop what else he is going to cut to not only make up for the BNL funding but to find other areas to cut that will equal that funding and a lot more all you get is silence.

But if you ask that question as I did, you will get an e-mail that entirely dodges the point and says nothing about working to get out of this mess that Tim Bishop was part of for the past decade. Perhaps if he faces his constituents in the upcoming town halls and he can’t dodge the questions with e-mails we may get answers.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

The newly elected majority in the House of Representatives has an opportunity to prove that what they campaigned on was not just talk.  In the next week or so the Republicans will choose their committee chairman.  We will have the opportunity to see if the Republican old bulls lead the party back to the same old, same old, or if the young bulls lead the charge to change.

We all know that the root of the current economic problem is too much spending.  We are spending our way to perdition.  It has to stop and there is no better place to stop it than in the Appropriations Committee.  Will John Boehner fall back on the old seniority system or will he inject some new blood?  Currently in the running, in order of seniority, are Jerry Lewis (no joke), Hal Rogers, and Jack Kingston.  Lewis and Rogers are old school spenders who loved the earmark process. 

Lewis was a former Appropriations Chairman who set the record for earmarks in 2006-2007.  The Republicans were tossed from the majority in the next election.  Rogers earned the sobriquet of “Oinker of the Year,” from Citizens Against Government Waste.  Jack Kingston, while not a spending purist, seems to have found religion and has a plan to get spending under control which is worthy of consideration.

So the selection will set the tone of how serious the Republican majority is about listening to the Tea Party supporters who got them their big wins, or if they will return to the old inside the beltway mentality.  If they choose the former, we may be on the path to getting our government under control.  If they choose the latter, they will face getting tossed out in 2012, or greatly diminished and Obama will sail to victory.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money – Unknown (often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville)

That, in my mind, pretty much sums up earmarks.  It is a way for Congress to bribe the public with the public’s money.  As Tip O’Neill once said, “all politics is local,” and the way it is made local is that the members of Congress get money from the Treasury, put there by their constituents (the public) to show what a great job the member is doing at bringing home the bacon (bribe).

 It is almost guaranteed that you will see an example of this in any piece of campaign literature from a member’s office.  At election time, we will hear, once again, all about how Senator So-and-So or Congresswoman Smith, got $X thousands or millions for the “folks back home.”  The actual recipients for this largesse will loudly proclaim the praises of the said member easing their re-election fears.

We’ve heard the arguments about bad earmarks (Murtha’s airport, the bridge to nowhere) but they are not bad earmarks to the employees at that airport or the construction workers on that bridge.  To them it is local and to them it is good and they will work their butts off to get the member re-elected.  For years we have heard about how poorly the citizenry regards the job Congress is doing, but when asked how their own Representative or Senator is doing, they like him just fine.  How do you square those two other than to point to the earmarks used to bribe the public for their vote?

While it is true that earmarks don’t add up to a lot of money, they do add up to a lot of influence in keeping ineffective members of Congress in place long after they have forgotten why they went there in the first place.  We have an historical moment before us where the Congress can demonstrate that their first priority is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and if they do that well, get reelected.  If their first priority is to get reelected, then I can only recall the fateful words of Dick Armey.  “Every week we come to town and do things we ought not to do in order to keep the majority so we can do the things we ought to do but never get around to doing.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has thrown his support behind Senator DeMint and Leader Boehner to ban earmarks in the upcoming Congress.  The time to stop the earmarks has come.  Follow the Constitution. Shrink the federal government down to its enumerated powers. Leave everything else to the states or the people.  Do that and our elected representatives will be remembered long after that airport has shuttered and that bridge has collapsed. 

This is great moment in the history of the republic, where those inside the Congress are working hand in hand with the grass roots outside the Congress to bring about change that will put us back on the path to the ideal the Founders envisioned.

American Citizen Learning of the Latest Spending Bill

How does one find the words to describe the complete and utter disconnect between the American people and their so-called representatives in Washington?  Mere days after passing an enormous $800 billion spending bill, Congress fires up another $400 billion worth of spending as a follow-on.  To their credit, at least this time they didn’t try to hide the 9,000 earmarks of pork in the bill.

Open Bar

"I think I'll have a double earmark"

It seems as if someone just shouted “Open Bar” and the members of Congress are trying wrap their sweaty fists around as many drinks as they can carry.  They slam down the libations, and then head back to the bar for more.  The frenzy is out of control.  As any drunk knows, the first thing that you lose when you start drinking is your inhibition to drink more.

This new spending bill includes an increase in 8% in spending over last year.  There is currently no inflation. ZERO.  Prices are actually falling.  So any sober person would think that if you spent the same amount this year as last, you could buy more just because of lower prices.  So while every American is trying mightily to make ends meet, Congress is spending our money like drunken sailors.  Since she probably knew what was in the bill on Tuesday night, it explains why Nancy Pelosi kept popping out of her chair like a crazed jack-in-the-box during President Obama’s speech.  I thought maybe she sat on a tack, but in reality she couldn’t control her glee at being able to spend our money without any adult Republicans around to say, “NO, bad girl!”

Can Two Years of Unbridled Damage Be Rolled Back?

The only question seems to be just how much damage can they do in two years before Americans go back to the polls?  Can the damage be undone?  Or are there enough members of Congress who still want to be there after 2010 so that they might start listening to the people who sent them there when they say, “Knock it off!”