On the House Floor
This week, the House approved the conference report for H.R. 1591, making emergency supplemental appropriations, by a narrow margin of 218 to 208. This bill contains much needed funding to support U.S. forces waging the War on Terror. Yet, it also includes provisions requiring the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, beginning in October, regardless of conditions on the ground or the counsel of our military commanders. The President has already pledged to veto the bill should it arrive on his desk.
Entitlement Trouble
On Monday, the annual Social Security and Medicare Trustees reports were released, and they strike a resounding warning about America’s fiscal future. Both reports note the changes in the programs that have occurred over the past year. While already bleak, the financial condition of both programs worsened significantly after another year of failing to make desperately needed course changes. The most notable fact is that the Social Security’s financial pit deepened by $200 billion during the past year, while Medicare’s abyss worsened by $3.8 trillion. And, the $4 trillion increase in the unfunded obligations in these programs is about one-third the size of our total economy.
In 2005, the Congress passed and President Bush signed the Deficit Reduction Act. This one item of legislation shaved almost $51 billion off the growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending over 10 years. This shows that progress can be made. However, each year that passes without further improvement only compounds the problem in the future. While Social Security revenues, for example, are expected to surpass expenditures by $88 billion in 2007, within a decade, outflows will outpace inflows. Even modest congressional action now can greatly minimize the funding shortfall years down the road. The key is to halt delay in solving this problem. As the old adage says, time is money. In this case, it is money belonging to our children and grandchildren.
D.C.’s Pseudo-Statehood
In March, House Republicans successfully used a motion to recommit to force Democrat leaders to stop debate on the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act, which would grant the congressional representation reserved for states to a non-state. Unfortunately, the House passed this problematic measure last week. President Bush has announced his intention to veto the legislation should the Senate follow the House’s action. He would be right to do so for several reasons.
First, leaders of the District of Columbia have often attempted to have their cake and eat it too. They wish for state-like representation in Congress without being as self sufficient as states are required to be. Second, as George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley testified before the House Judiciary Committee last month, this bill is “the most premeditated unconstitutional act of Congress in decades” (The Washington Post, March 15, 2007). For a non-state to be given the highest power of a state is to dilute the very significance of what it means to be a state. Congress simply does not have the power to do that. Finally, this bill counteracts the very intent of creating the District of Columbia to become the seat of federal power. The Founders, by design, located the nation’s capital in a special district not residing within any one state. The purpose was to house the capital on neutral ground. Fortunately, due to a president who understands history and the Constitution, that is the way it will remain.
Reid’s White Flag
“I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and — you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows — (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq (Wednesday).” – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) declaring that United States and coalition forces has already lost at the main front of the War on Terror, April 19, 2007.
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