This week, the House is considering yet another coronavirus spending bill. This will be in addition to the $4 TRILLION that’s already been allocated. Never mind that more than a trillion of that hasn’t even been spent yet – Democrats want to add another $1.9 trillion to the tab. Remember all this coronavirus money is borrowed from our children – we don’t have this sitting around somewhere in a ra... Read more »

It looks like Democrats want to bring back earmarks. Does everyone remember those? Let’s back up just a minute and talk about “appropriations” in Congress, which is the process of allocating your tax dollars to specific government functions. The Constitution places this responsibility directly on Congress. Every year in the House, we’re supposed to craft 12 appropriations bills – each one covering... Read more »

No surprises here. Let’s run through some of President Biden’s executive orders during his first week in office. These are campaign promises he’s making good on – we knew they’d be coming. PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT: It’s basically a sham. There’s no objective standard – each country gets to define what it wants to do. Countries can lie six ways from Sunday about whether they’re actually reaching th... Read more »

You just cannot defend what happened last night in Congress. Yesterday we were literally emailed a 5,600-page PDF that contained one of the largest spending bills in our history – over $2.3 trillion. And NOT ONE Member of Congress had time read it before a vote was called just a few short hours later. This entire thing was negotiated behind closed doors. No hearings. No real debate. No input from... Read more »

Below is a full replay of my telephone town hall, which took place on Thursday, July 30th. During this call, I covered a wide variety of issues including our COVID-19 response, our economy and jobs, our federal spending and national debt, along with several other important topics. Read more »

Within the National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”) is a separate fund known as the Overseas Contingency Operations (“OCO”) fund. Originally used to finance the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, OCO funds are managed by the U.S. Department of Defense and State Department to support the global war on terror and other international military operations. Over the last two decades, Congress has appropriate... Read more »

This Friday afternoon, top-ranking liberals in the House of Representatives are trying to finalize a 5th piece of COVID-19 legislation. They’ve nicknamed it “CARES 2” to coattail on the popularity of the original CARES Act, which passed overwhelmingly in late March. This is unfortunately not the bi-partisan effort it should be. Negotiations are taking place behind the scenes and most of what we’re... Read more »

The recent CARES Act definitely had some spending that shouldn’t have been included as part of a COVID-19 response package. So yesterday, I co-sponsored a bill to claw back over $27 billion from that legislation. Let’s dispense with the obvious first: Every bill is a compromise, and every member of Congress must decide whether – considered in its entirety – the good of that legislation outweighs t... Read more »

Let’s take a married couple with two kids. $36,000 is their family's share of what the federal government will BORROW this quarter alone (April – June). That's based on news released late yesterday from the U.S. Treasury. Obviously in response to this pandemic, significant spending has been required to protect our nation and keep our economy from total collapse. However, we cannot forget EVERY DOL... Read more »

“Unrestricted aid” – remember this phrase, because it’s going to be a major point of contention in the coming weeks. As Congress looks into a possible 5th piece of legislation in response to this pandemic, there’s now a growing push for the federal government to send over half a TRILLION dollars in unrestricted aid to states and local governments. By “unrestricted” I mean no conditions on how that... Read more »