NAME: Aaron Schock OCCUPATION: Member of Congress, 18th District of Illinois HOMETOWN: Peoria, Illinois Congressman Aaron Schock was elected in 2008 and is currently the youngest member of Congress. A title Schock is all too familiar with. In 2001, Schock was elected to the Peoria Public Schools District 150 school board at age 19, making him the youngest school board member in Illinois. Only three years later, he became the youngest member of the Illinois House of Representatives. Schock is a staunch conservative who has big shoes to fill, as …
A Down Payment on Nationalization Trillion Dollars Down: In less than two months, the President has already budgeted nearly $1 TRILLION on his health care proposals—SCHIP, the stimulus, and now the budget. A Bottomless Well: President Obama’s FY 10 budget proposal offers a $634 billion “down payment” on health care reform. The only truth to this number is that it will continue to grow, and they openly admit it in the President’s budget proposal: “The budget calls for an effort beyond this down payment, to put the nation on a …
Senate Rejected an Economic Disaster Bleak Cap and Trade Future: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said she planned to move the country toward a “carbon constrained future.” Any scheme, whether cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, that raises the price on carbon dioxide will raise energy costs while generating enormous sums of tax revenue for the government that American families and workers will ultimately pay for. They will be left with high energy costs, high prices, and low incomes. Lieberman-Warner: Last year, the Senate rejected cap-and-tax legislation that would have capped CO2 emissions …
Classic Tax and Spend Budget Increase, Raise and Hike: The President’s budget proposal increases taxes by $1.3 trillion; raises entitlement spending by $700 billion (including the health care fund), and hikes discretionary spending by a steep 12%. Creating Deficits, Not Eliminating Them: Given the budget deficit has already quadrupled in one year, the President’s pledge to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. Even with the assumption of peace and prosperity, the 2013 budget deficit target of $533 billion would exceed any under President Bush. Taxes Spent: Before the recession, …
Blocking Children’s Path to a Better Future Omnibus Spending Bill Eliminates Opportunity: As it stands now, the House omnibus bill will eliminate the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP). Since the program’s inception in 2004, the DCOSP has given thousands of low-income students in the District of Columbia access to a better education. For Children in Need: About 1,700 children currently attend private school using opportunity scholarships. The average household income of a DCOSP family is $23,000. Safe and Effective Learning Environments: DCOSP has yielded positive results for its participants. Studies …
“Helping Families Save Their Homes Act”? Or Neighborhood Destabilization Act: Allows bankruptcy judges to reduce the principal owed on a mortgage, a practice often referred to as a “cramdown.” Judges would be able to reduce interest rates or lengthen the term of the mortgage. H.R. 1106: It actually achieves opposite results by putting millions of homeowners or potential buyers at greater risk of an unstable credit and housing market and creating high interest rates in the future. Temporary? No. Weak? Yes: The simple rule on Capitol Hill when a bill …
The Constitution of the United States of America Congress Doesn’t Have the Authority: Congress lacks the constitutional authority to simply grant the District a voting representative, as the Constitution explicitly limits such representation to states alone. Members of Congress are bound by their oath to reject proposals that violate the Constitution. Article I, Section 2: “Representatives…shall be apportioned among the several States.” The District, as courts and Congress have long agreed, is not a state. Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have power … To exercise exclusive legislation in …
The anticipated vote in the House of Representatives on the “stimulus” bill has been delayed, and will not occur today as scheduled. Reasons for the delay were not given but the decision does follow a morning of debate, where Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) complained that Members were being asked to vote on a bill they had still not seen. Speaker Pelosi had distributed an overview, but not the actual bill text, and to our knowledge, still has not shared the details of the bill with her Republican colleagues. The text …
MEET THE NEW STIMULUS, SAME AS THE OLD STIMULUS This weekend, a small group of Senators emerged from two days of negotiations to announce they had developed a compromise “stimulus” package that would eliminate wasteful spending and deliver on the original promise of the legislation. Unfortunately, not only is this not true, but the bill actually got bigger, with a final price tag $19 Billion more than the discredited House version; and it still does not contain any real stimulus. Here are the facts: SAME OLD SPENDING I Can’t Help Myself: …
Just like the Senate stimulus bill, the more time we examine President Obama’s Cabinet nominees, the more ‘honest mistakes’ are revealed. Congresswoman Solis is having a particularly bad week. Earlier this afternoon, we told you about USA Today’s revelation that Ms. Solis and her husband were experiencing similar tax problems (i.e. not paying them) that got three of President Obama’s other nominees in trouble. That was literally two hours ago. Earlier this week, we told you about her involvement with the group Americans Right to Work (ARW) which may have …
