Yesterday, the House Financial Services Committee passed my ACORN amendment that will prevent organizations, or employees of organizations, that have been indicted for voter fraud from being eligible for the housing counseling grants and legal assistance grants authorized under the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act.

Chairman Barney Frank accepted the amendment right there in front of the whole committee -- I assumed because it was his very own language as passed under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA) of 2008 --  and the amendment was then passed by unanimous voice vote.

Later that day, Chairman Frank said he had reservations about my amendment and would discuss them with me.  His staff approached mine with specific changes he would like to make -- changes which eviscerate the meaning of the amendment and were clearly not acceptable.  Again, this was puzzling given that it is identical to the language Chairman Frank included in HERA just last year.

Their changes include:  Raising the bar from indictment to conviction to preclude an organization from getting taxpayer dollars, limiting the time the ban is in effect, and applying the standard to only senior employees.  We're talking about giving tax dollars to organizations that could be mixed up in criminal actions.  Are we expected to keep forking over tax dollars to these organization when they're under the cloud of suspicion of a public criminal indictment? 

Who's side are we on:  The taxpayer or ACORN's?

If nothing else, this shows us just how much influence ACORN and others have over Chairman Frank and the Democrat party. Your tax dollars are being abused.

With the health care debate looming on the horizon, it's imperative that Americans understand not only what this reform entails, but also comprehend the process by which the Democrats hope it will pass.

John Sununu, a former United States Senator from New Hampshire, has penned an excellent and informative piece in the Wall Street Journal laying out the process of "budget reconciliation" – a parliamentary maneuver that President Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders are expected to use to push through their massive health care plan.

"The power of a reconciliation bill is this: Senate rules allow only 20 hours of debate and then passage with a simple majority of 51 votes. This represents a lightning strike in the normal deliberative time-frame of the Senate. The historic precedent of open debate, and the requirement of 60 votes to close debate, are completely short-circuited.

"Budget reconciliation was never intended to push through dramatic and expansive new programs. It was created as a way to help a reluctant Congress curb spending, reduce deficits, and cut the debt. Moreover, changes made under reconciliation expire after five or 10 years, depending on the budget. This is clearly not the appropriate process for implementing significant new policies."

Not only is this abuse of the legislative process a probable reality, the legislation they are looking to ram though is hurtful to all of us as America will take on the likes of a socialized, government-run health care system.

To see the perils of what government-run health care can do for a nation, check out this link here.

From Canada to Cuba to countries across Europe, the results are all the same: a lack of doctors and nurses (particularly well-trained ones), bed shortages and long waiting lists for treatments and surgeries, and rationed care.

While our current system is not perfect, it's the best there is. We should work to give Americans more choices in health care; not less.  We should work to make health care more portable and more affordable; not subject all health consumers to a singular government bureaucracy.  The Democrat plan is an extreme makeover for which we already know the ugly outcome. The examples of countries who went down this path exist all around us and the results are in - it's bad policy, plain and simple.

For Americans from coast to coast, Sunday, April 26 marked our nation's Debt Day. Debt Day is the day during the fiscal year – which runs from October 1, 2008 to September 30, 2009 this year – on which government spending exceeds revenue for the first time during the year.

Last year's Debt Day fell more than three months later, on Aug. 5.

Judging by the penchant for spending we've seen from Congress and the White House, I think it's safe to say that this infamous day will be creeping earlier and earlier for the next several years. It's simply another symptom of a government that spends too much, borrows too much, and taxes too much.

I come from the strong Minnesota culture of thrift, spending only what I truly can and eschewing debt.  But, the trend in Washington is just the opposite.  It’s very much a “spend now, and our children will pay later” attitude.  That’s why I voted against the trillion-dollar-plus so-called stimulus bill, the nearly-half-a-trillion “omnibus” spending bill, and the multi-hundred billion-dollar Wall Street bailouts.
 
It’s high-time your family budget took priority here in Washington – and that means not just looking out for your finances today, but also looking out for your children’s futures.
 

Today, several of my colleagues and I sent a letter to Budget conferees asking them to include language in the final budget resolution that calls for the Federal Reserve to identify banks and other financial institutions that have received more than $2.2 trillion in taxpayer-backed loans and other financial assistance since March 24, 2008.

Simultaneously, Mark Pittman of Bloomberg reported that the Federal Reserve has lost $9.6 billion on the assets it purchased from Bear Stearns and AIG last year. 

Americans deserve to know which banks are receiving taxpayer money, what they are doing with the money, and the credit risk taxpayers are taking on through the Federal Reserve’s actions.  This language encourages such transparency, allowing for audits and public disclosure of secret loans and financial assistance from the Federal Reserve to these large institutions.

It's your money, and you deserve to know what's happening with it.

Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration said it will acquiesce to a New York federal court's order to allow 17-year-old girls access to the “morning after pill.”  The FDA’s decision reverses a restriction put in place by the FDA under President Bush that prohibited girls under the age of 18 from accessing so-called Plan B birth-control pills.

What this means is that 17-year-old girls will now be able to obtain “morning after pills” over the counter with just an ID displaying their date of birth -- and nothing else.

What's even more troubling is that the judge also told the FDA to reconsider making the drug available to girls of all ages without a prescription.

Regardless of your views on the issue of abortion, the FDA decision and the judge's ruling raise some giant red flags.

One, the FDA has never approved that a high-dose of a drug be available non-prescription when a low dose of the same drug requires a prescription. The low-dose I refer to here is regular birth control pills. Birth control requires a prescription, yet this judge is urging the FDA to allow use of a more heavily concentrated dose with no prescription at all. Does that make any sense?

The reason why birth control requires a prescription is because women need medical oversight when taking it. The same holds true for the “morning after pill” – to say nothing of the parental oversight needed for girls accessing the pills.

According to Wendy Wright with the CWA:

"It can cause blood clots, heart attacks and strokes. Women who are sexually active should be regularly tested for conditions that may not produce symptoms. And under-age, sexually-active girls deserve counseling and help in case they are in a coerced or abusive relationship.

"Making the morning-after pill over-the-counter for teenagers denies medical counseling and testing to girls who need mature guidance. A thirteen-year-old who may be pregnant is also a girl who may be sexually abused and at risk of contracting a sexually-transmitted disease."

Two, the FDA may be trampling the will of states and localities and what they feel is best to monitor birth control distribution and regulation. In the United States, each state has different laws and policies about whether or not minors — anyone under the age of 18 — may get contraceptive prescriptions and counseling from a health care professional.

But in those states in which minors can not receive even a prescription for birth control without parental consent, minors will now be allowed to receive the "morning after pill" without not only parental consent, but also without a prescription.

This ruling blatently steps on parents' ability to protect the health and well-being of their minor daughters. 

As Wright further notes:

"Minors need permission to go on a field trip, get a piercing, or use a tanning booth. But now, by one judge’s order, girls will be encouraged to rely on an ineffective drug without medical oversight or parental involvement."

Another great example of putting politics before common sense.

It is absolutely shocking to see what's taking place at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

President Obama’s new Secretary, Janet Napolitano, has recently been criticized for issuing a nine-page memo prior to the nationwide “Tea Parties” last week, warning of right-wing political extremism, referring to United States citizens with "dangerous" political leanings.

An official document of the DHS  lists right-wing extremists as "groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration," and includes those "rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority." So, apparently, according to Homeland Security Department, the American ideal of federalism is a threat to American ideals.

In the case of the tea parties, these dangerous extremists were American citizens – Moms and Dads, Children and Grandchildren, Husbands and Wives -who were upset with how the federal government was spending their money. They were fed up with what they saw as massive and excessive government spending.  They were peaceably assembled, yet were deemed a "threat" by our federal government. This is a dangerous line of thinking and reasoning from our government leaders and a direct infringement on First Amendment rights.

We're not talking about wire-tapping calls of suspected terrorists to foreign countries to protect our nation against acts of violence like we saw on 9/11 – though the New York Times has reported that domestic wire-tapping is now at an unheard-of high level, we're talking about the government watching you, your family, your neighbor because your political views differ from those of the people in control in Washington.

Congressman Thaddeus McCotter points out in a piece with the American Spectator that despite the Department of Homeland Security having "'no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,' the memo specifically smears returning veterans and a host of other sovereign citizens who may hold conservative views; and generally smears conservatism by equating it with 'Right-wing extremism."

To me, it looks like the extremists are those running the DHS.

I have made no secret of my objections to a proposed cap-and-trade energy tax that will result in increased costs for every single American. The tax would require energy producers and businesses to pay to emit carbon emissions in the hope of reducing greenhouse gases.  You, the consumer, would be footing the bill.

I published an op-ed in the Star Tribune earlier this month highlighting the dangers of this piece of legislation and what it means for Americans. In the piece, I cited an MIT study that found the average American household would experience increased bills of $3,128 per year if this legislation became law.

This statistic has drawn much criticism in the local news and around the nation because the MIT professor involved with the study, John Reilly, questioned the validity of the interpretation used by myself and many Republicans.

But in an interview with the Weekly Standard, Professor Reilly clarified his critique and accepted the Republican use of the statistic. 

As reported in the Weekly Standard, “MIT professor John Reilly admitted that his original estimate of cap and trade’s cost was inaccurate…’I made a boneheaded mistake in an excel spread sheet.  I have sent a new letter to Republicans correcting my error.’”

Interestingly, Professor Reilly also assumes that Washington’s better angels will prevail over its need for revenue to pay for its expensive spending habits. 

"Reilly assumes that the $3,128 will be 'returned' to each household. Without that assumption, Reilly wrote, 'the cost would then be the Republican estimate [$3,128] plus the cost I estimate [$800].'"

Reilly continued, "If the Republicans were to focus on that revenue, and their message was to rally the public to make sure all this money was returned in a check to each household rather than spent on other public services then I would have no problem with their use of our number.'"

I am more skeptical of Washington’s intentions and I believe that the Democrats have no intention of using a cap-and-trade system to deliver rebates to consumers; they want the tax revenue to fund more government spending.  Key Democrats – including President Obama and Senators Reid & Conrad – have even said they want to use cap-and-trade to fund their government-run health care plan.

The reality is, it's anybody's guess as to how the cap-and-trade revenues would end up getting spent. What we do know is that you’ll be paying them but it will be the government spending them -- not you -- and that's the problem.

I hope the press is just as quick and eager to correct the report that the GOP's estimate of cap-and-trade's cost is a "pants on fire" falsehood as they were in claiming it.

(Cross-posted at the Hill's Congress Blog)

At a time when our President is telling us that "we all have to make sacrifices" given the economic hardships, Washington continues to carry on with its misplaced priorities.  Instead of pursuing commonsense legislation to right our economic ship, Congress is pursuing its recklessly irresponsible spending habits.

After a two week recess, Congress returns today, and among the pieces of legislation we will be taking up this evening are:

H.Res. 254 - Recognizing the designation of March 2009 as Irish American Heritage Month (Yes, it is April -- it's not a typo, but I guess Democrat leadership couldn't find the time to fit that one in last month. At least it doesn't cost anything.)

H.R. 388 - Crane Conservation Act of 2009

H.R. 411 - Great Cats and Rare Canids Act of 2009

With regard to the last two, last year I posted on identical legislation passed last Congress, but I guess we still haven't learned our lesson.

The Crane Conservation Act would establish a new grant program to provide money to individuals or groups that work to conserve crane species in Africa, Asia, Europe, or North America. A noble goal, but one that will cost tax payers $25 million over 5 years and focuses largely on overseas programs. Similarly, the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act expands government with your money by creating new grant programs authorizing $25 million over five years to fund rare cat and dog conservation in foreign countries.

With our economy in the condition that it's in, Congress’ time could certainly be better spent than on $50-million legislation like this.

Today, President Obama made his best attempt to date at espousing fiscal responsibility by requesting that his Cabinet secretaries cut $100 million total – that’s government-wide – from their respective agencies. While $100 million is by no means a small number in and of itself, when considering it in relation to President Obama's $3.5 trillion budget outline for 2010 passed by both Chambers of Congress, that number represents a cut of just 0.003%.

While it's certainly a laudable move, it's akin to shooting a giant hole in the side of a cruise ship and then bailing the sinking ship out with a dixie cup. Moreover, trimming millions of dollars means absolutely nothing if Congress and the President continue to add billions to the national debt.

Greg Mankiw, Harvard University professor of economics, broke it down this way:

“To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had be cut? By $3 over the course of the year--approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.”

What’s more, according to Associated Press reports,

“Even among budget cuts cited in a newly released White House summary, a considerable proportion of the savings would occur over a period of years.”

When you hear the President talk about cuts to spending and fiscal responsibility, always remember to examine the long-term picture. Saving money today means nothing if your future plans and goals require spending more than you have. It's that simple, and I’m pretty sure the American people understand the difference between real cuts and political sleight of hand.

If what we've heard about cap-and-trade isn't bad enough already, wait until you hear this. Contained within the 600-plus pages of the Waxman-Markey global warming/cap-and-trade bill that was recently introduced in the House is language making it legal to sue the federal government and private companies if you "suffer" from “Global Warming.”

According to the Washington Times, "the measure sets grounds for anyone 'who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part,' to government inaction to file a 'citizen suit.' The term 'harm' is broadly defined as 'any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring.'

"Under the House bill, if a judge rules against the government, new rules would have to be drafted to alleviate the problems associated with climate change. If a judge rules against a company, the company would have to purchase additional 'carbon emission allowances' through a cap-and-trade program that is to be created by Congress."

You may think that lawsuits like this would be few and far between, but let's consider some past cases that sound a little bit peculiar,  but are unfortunately commonplace:

- A women hit by a New York City subway train while lying on the tracks attempting to commit suicide was awarded $9.9 million dollars.

- A woman who sued McDonalds for gross negligence after spilling hot coffee on herself was initially awarded $3 million in damages before a settlement produced a smaller amount.

-A judge sued a Washington, D.C. dry cleaner for losing his pants to the tune of $67 million.

This cap- and-trade bill "would allow citizens to seek up to $75,000 in damages from the government each year, but would cap the total amount paid out each year at $1.5 million."

Whether the plaintiff wins his case or not, this provision as-is is a trial lawyer’s nirvana. Even if they don't win, they'll tie up the courts and force these companies to disrupt there business, even without merit, and force them to put their time and resources into legal costs.

Just another troubling cog to this cap-and-trade machine that is barreling through Washington.

That's is what non-partisan economists are independently saying and what The Hill newspaper is reporting when crunching the budget numbers in the FY 2010 budget put forth by the White House and Democrat Congressional leaders.

Here are some more of the money quotes from the story:

“You just simply can’t tax the rich enough to make this all up,” said Martin A. Sullivan, a former economic aide in the Reagan administration who said he backed Obama last fall.
“Especially just for getting the budget to a sustainable level, there needs to be a broad-based tax increase,” said Sullivan, now a contributing editor at Tax Analysts publications. “If you want to do healthcare on top of that, almost certainly, it just makes [a middle-class tax increase] all the more certain.”

As we plunge into the debate on cap-and-trade here in Washington and around the country, our nation can learn some lessons from Spain which adopted an energy policy that many in the U.S. point to "as a model for how government subsidies can create "green jobs."

A study directed by Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, concluded that every "green job" created in Spain resulted in 2.2 other jobs being destroyed.

The study emphasized that only 10% of the "green jobs" created could be considered permanent - such as maintenance of renewable power systems. The remaining jobs consisted of temporary jobs in construction, fabrication and installation jobs; along with administrative positions, marketing, and engineering projects.

The study also finds that:

"If U.S. subsidies to renewable producers achieve the same result -- and President Obama has held Spain up as a model for how to subsidize renewables -- the U.S. could lose 6.6 million to 11 million jobs while it creates three million largely temporary 'green jobs.'"

Furthermore, Dr. Calzada stated that “the loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices.”

President Obama and his Congressional allies have stated an August goal for passing cap-and-trade legislation.  Our government needs to slow down and think twice about enacting an energy policy that will clearly hurt our already struggling economy and financially impact every single American.

For more information on the study, click here.

To read the study, click here.

It's a little troubling when the U.S. Treasury and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) aren’t on the same page when it comes to how many billions of your tax dollars have been or have yet to be used as part of the federal government’s financial service sector bailout packages.

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos this week, Secretary Geithner told him that there was about $135 billion of uncommitted funds left in the federal government's TARP program. However, GAO reports were in direct contrast to this figure - reporting that there was only $32 billion. The GAO later put that number closer $109 billion after considering the unexpected parameters that the Treasury used in arriving at its figure. However, GAO flat-out refuses to accept the $25 billion estimate that the Treasury expects to come from financial institutions returning TARP money.

We're talking billion of dollars here, yet the folks overseeing it aren't even operating from the same set of guidelines.  A billion here, a billion there-- this is truly frightening.  Talk about fiscal irresponsibility.

The more we get to know about our new Treasury Secretary, the more obvious it's becoming that he has a serious problem with numbers.

Today, the budget battle really begins to heat up on Capitol Hill, and the Republicans are readying to present their alternative budget proposal later today.

But to give you a preview of how the GOP budget stacks up to the President's proposal that spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much, take a look at this graph. Without a doubt, there's a very clear and distinct difference.