About Steve Chabot

Well, the Biden Show has come and gone.  According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Vice President “praised Rep. Steve Driehaus for his support of last year’s economic stimulus package.”  How Biden can, with a straight face, continue to try to push the line that that huge $787 billion waste of our tax dollars has been a success is amazing.  The only thing that bloated bill stimulated was bigger government, not jobs in the private sector.  Eventually the economy will turn around, but when it does, it will be in spite of the so-called economic stimulus package, not because of it.

When Biden was last in town back in July of 2009, he was pushing the same line – that the stimulus package would be a great success – and create lots of jobs.  He even held his press conference back then with the American Can Building in Northside as his backdrop, claiming that at least 100 people would be working there soon thanks to stimulus package money.  That was 8 months ago.  What’s been accomplished?  Nothing.  Where are those 100 jobs?  Not there.

According to a Cincinnati Enquirer article about the American Can Building project that appeared just last Saturday, “financing remains uncertain.”  An interesting sidebar is that even though financing is still up in the air, and no one is working at the site, apparently someone in the Democrat-controlled city hall bureaucracy realized that all this might be somewhat embarrassing to Joe Biden (and to Steve Driehaus who’s been joined at the hip to Biden when he’s in town), so they issued a building permit for the project – three days before Biden comes to town!  (Is politics great or what?)

Of course the 800 pound elephant (donkey) in the room at the Biden fundraiser was how would Driehaus vote on the latest version of the Democrats’ so-called healthcare reform bill.  He voted for the House version already (which was a terrible, hugely expensive bill), but he’s being cagey about where he’ll be the second time around (and as the election draws closer).  He wants the Obama/Pelosi/Biden money, but he’s afraid he’s being too closely identified with them (and their horrible policies).  Well, it’s a little late for that when you consider that he’s voted with this liberal crew a shocking 94% of the time!

Let me conclude by thanking all of you who responded so generously by contributing to my campaign to offset the Biden-cash raised as a result of the Vice President’s visit here.  If you have not yet responded, it’s not too late, and you can do so by clicking here.

And just remember, no matter how many arms are twisted by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, no matter how many corrupt deals are struck behind closed doors, no matter how many bills go unread, no matter how many procedural shenanigans are tried (deeming), no matter how many rules are broken to ram through bad legislation, the people will have the final word come this November.  And they WILL be heard.

Vice President Joe Biden is coming to town next week to raise campaign money for Steve Driehaus.  With all the embarrassments Democrats have had lately, from one Democratic Congressman resigning after allegedly sexually harassing his own male staff members, to the Democratic Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee having to give up his gavel because he accepted corporate paid Caribbean trips and failed to pay his own taxes, to the Democratic Governor of New York being forced to drop out of the race for Governor due to his pressuring a domestic violence victim not to testify against the perpetrator (who happened to be on the Governor’s staff), it’s probably appropriate (and certainly ironic) that the gaffe-prone Joe Biden would be coming to Cincinnati for the Driehaus campaign.

Biden himself has had some of the most amazing gaffes over the years.  Who can forget the time he urged a wheelchair-bound man to “stand up” and then had to apologize profusely for his insensitivity.  Or the time he declared that the campaign would be about a 3 letter work, J-O-B-S.  (I think that’s 4).  Or the time Biden said that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt went on television in 1929 to talk about the stock market crash when, A. FDR didn’t become President until 3 years later, 1932, and B. TVs weren’t around yet in 1929.  (Oops)

Unfortunately, not only is Joe Biden gaffe-prone (which is, after all, pretty harmless), but his policies are lousy for the country.  For example, it’s not bad enough that he apparently believes that “JOBS” has only 3 letters, but the Obama/Biden Administration seems to be making all the wrong moves when it comes to creating them.  During a deep recession with far too many Americans out of work, rather than focus on getting the economy moving again and creating jobs, the Obama/Biden Administration has spent more than a year now focused on the peripheral issues like global warming (cap and trade); unionizing more businesses at any cost (card check); pushing a flawed stimulus package which stimulated more government, but no jobs in the private sector; and attempting to force through so-called healthcare reform which is opposed by most Americans, for good reason.  And government spending by the Obama/Biden Administration and the Pelosi/Reid Congress is so out-of-control that the national debt is rising alarmingly, and higher taxes on most Americans is all but inevitable.

Even with Biden’s fingerprints all over these failures, Steve Driehaus has decided to bring Biden to our community to raise money for his campaign.  Make no mistake, a  sitting Vice President attracts a lot of campaign cash, and Steve Driehaus hopes to benefit from it.

You can help to neutralize any benefit Driehaus will get from the Vice President’s visit.  I usually don’t ask for political contributions on this blog, but I hope you’ll forgive me if I make an exception in this case.  If you’d like to say NO to Joe Biden and/or Steve Driehaus, please consider making a contribution to my campaign of $25, $50, $100, $500 or even $1,000, or whatever amount is comfortable for you.  You can do it online by clicking here or you can send a contribution by mail to: Chabot for Congress at 3339 Harrison Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45211.  Send Steve Driehaus and Joe Biden the message that you’ve had enough of their liberal agenda.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read my blog, and I look forward to visiting with you again next week.  (By then Biden will have come and gone from Cincinnati, and will probably be in some other liberal Democrat candidate’s district raising money for them.)

Driehaus can have Biden on his side.  I’d much rather have hard-working, great Americans like yourself on my side. 

Thanks again,
Steve

Remember when Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House and she promised to “restore integrity and honesty to Washington, D.C.” and that the Democratic Congress would be “the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history?”  Right.  What a joke.  Yes, Republicans have had their share of scoundrels and embarrassments (Mark Foley), but the level of dishonesty, incompetence, cronyism and downright corruption under Pelosi and Reid is unprecedented.  No wonder the people’s faith in this Congress is down to an all time low of 14%.  (And what in the world are those 14% thinking?) 

The latest example is Charlie Rangel, the Chairman of Congress’s powerful Ways and Means Committee.  The House Ethics Committee has just announced that he is being admonished for breaking House rules by taking a number of trips to the Caribbean that were illegally paid for by corporate sponsors.  He also remains under ethics investigation for a variety of other misdeeds, such as failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars of income and assets, and failure to pay taxes.  The tax charge is particularly ironic when one considers Rangel is Chairman of the committee (Ways and Means) which is responsible for the entire U.S. tax code.  It reminds me a little (actually a lot) of President Obama appointing Timothy Geithner to head the Department of the Treasury, which is in charge of the IRS, when Geithner admitted that he hadn’t paid his own taxes! 

When Rangel’s foibles first came to light last year, a resolution was brought before Congress to strip Chairman Rangel of his gavel.  Seems logical – shouldn’t the Chairman of the tax-writing committee have to pay his own taxes, just like every other American is expected to do?  Well, not according to our Congressman, Steve Driehaus.  He voted to allow Rangel to stay on as Chairman.  I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that Charlie Rangel and his PAC had given Driehaus $14,000. 

By the way, Nancy Pelosi, whom Steve Driehaus has voted with a slavish 94% of the time, is sticking by Charlie Rangel, at least for the time being.  And this from the Speaker who was going to give us the most honest and ethical Congress in history. 

America deserves better. 

Well, tomorrow’s the big day.  After failing to convince the American people, and enough in Congress, that what America needs is a government takeover of healthcare, the Obama Administration is inviting Democratic and Republican members of Congress to the White House for a “bi-partisan healthcare summit.” 

In advance of the big pow-wow, President Obama released his own healthcare plan, which, surprise surprise, is a lot like the Democrat bills already considered in the House and the Senate.  A couple of new twists:  the Obama plan imposes even bigger job-killing penalties on businesses (so much for lip-service about creating more jobs in these tough economic times), his plan costs more than the Senate plan but less than the House’s, and he adds another new bureaucracy to impose government price controls on healthcare.  And not surprisingly, despite the fact that the President said he’d be open to Republican ideas, he completely left out Republican ideas, like medical malpractice reform, association health plans, and allowing individuals to purchase healthcare across state lines (to increase competition and keep healthcare costs down).  Let’s face it, the Obama Administration and the Democrat Congress couldn’t care less about keeping healthcare costs to the consumer down, they just want more government control of our healthcare, and of our lives for that matter.

Republicans must be very wary at this so-called summit, which is in reality just a mechanism for the Obama Administration and Pelosi/Reid to use their allies in the mainstream media to browbeat Republicans, and try to convince the public that Republicans are just “the party of NO.”  Well, there’s nothing wrong with saying NO to policies which will hurt the American people, and which the American people have said they are opposed to time after time.  (Massachusetts)

The Democrats in Congress are so desperate for what they consider would be a political win, that they don’t care that the American people would suffer a huge loss.  And they seem determined to even change (break) the rules that Congress has operated under for generations.  All major legislation in the Senate has traditionally required 60 votes for passage.  The Democrats had 60 votes until the people of Massachusetts, the bluest of blue states, were so disgusted with the Democrats’ healthcare plan that they elected a Republican, Scott Brown, to the late Teddy Kennedy’s seat, principally on the promise that he would oppose the Democratic healthcare bill.  There went their 60 votes, so the Democrats are apparently seriously considering a parliamentary trick which would require a mere 51 votes (Reconciliation) even though this is traditionally used only for relatively minor adjustments to budget items, etc.  The government takeover of one sixth of our economy, is clearly far more than a minor adjustment of a budget item, and thus the Democrats are willing to sacrifice the Constitution and the rules of fair play for a political victory.  If they decide to go this route, they may win a pyrrhic victory now, but the American people will make them pay this November.

Unfortunately, the damage to our country would already be done.  Ronald Reagan once said “there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.”  If Pelosi and Reid and their allies in Congress are successful in imposing their big government healthcare takeover on the American people, it will be very difficult to undo the damage.  That’s why we must stop it before it happens.  And not be suckered in by a so-called “bi-partisan healthcare summit. “ 

I held a news conference this morning at the National Flag Company on Freeman Avenue in Cincinnati, officially announcing that I am a candidate for Ohio’s First Congressional District seat.  National Flag is a family-owned small business, and I chose this location to emphasize the importance of getting this economy moving again, and creating jobs – IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR.  After all, 70% of the new jobs created in the United States over the last several decades have been created by small businesses.

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration and the Pelosi/Reid Congress (with Steve Driehaus’s support) decided to ignore small businesses, and instead pass a $787 billion so-called economic stimulus package which only stimulated growth in government, and did virtually nothing to create jobs in the private sector. 

Then they spent the rest of the year trying to pass anti-business, anti-job-creating measures like cap and trade, card-check, and the healthcare debacle.  Each of these bills would have burdened small businesses with higher costs, more regulation, more red tape, and thus made it less likely that they’d be able to hire anybody.

Americans across the country, and here at home, are fed up with perhaps the worst Congress in history.  They’re fed up with government bailouts, government takeovers, and spending in Washington which is so out-of-control that we’re now looking at annual deficits not in the billions, but in the trillions.  They’re fed up with huge bills being voted on with members of Congress not even taking the time to read them.  And they’re fed up with being promised that there will be such transparency, that negotiations on key bills will be on CSPAN, but instead get members of Congress’s votes being bought, behind closed doors.

Unfortunately, Steve Driehaus, who promised he’d be an independent, fiscal conservative has been anything but.  He has essentially done whatever Nancy Pelosi, the most liberal Speaker in American history, tells him to do.  In fact, he has voted with her 94% of the time.  That might be okay if you represent San Francisco (as she does), but Driehaus is clearly out of step with the people of the First Congressional District of Ohio.

Driehaus and Pelosi sort of remind me of an old TV commercial a few years back.  The guy in the commercial would walk around with his cell phone saying “can you hear me, can you hear me now?”  Well, not only do Driehaus and Pelosi not hear us, they’re not even listening.  Although there are many examples, perhaps the worst example was their insistence on passing a very flawed healthcare bill, even though at town hall meetings and Tea Party rallies they were clearly told “we the people oppose this expensive, big government power grab of a plan.”  Pelosi pushed it anyway, and Driehaus voted for it anyway. 

Well, this year a change is coming.  We saw strong evidence of it in New Jersey and Virginia a few months back, in Massachusetts a few weeks back, and in Indiana just a couple days back.  The people are tired of being ignored by their own government.  They’re tired of having policies they oppose rammed down their throats.  They’re tired of having their elected representatives tell them one thing and then do another.  Yes, change is coming.  And I plan to be part of that change. 

A startling revelation was just made by the Congressional Budget Office this week, but has been all but ignored by the mainstream media.  Social Security is going into the red.  For the last 25 years, Social Security has taken in more than it paid out every year.  This is commonly referred to as the Social Security surplus; it keeps the system basically solvent.  Last year however, the surplus virtually disappeared, dropping from $63 billion to only $3 billion, and it’s now projected that this year Social Security will go into the red.  Social Security will begin paying out more than it takes in, and this puts Social Security itself at risk.

How did we get into this potentially disastrous situation?  You guessed it, our leaders in Washington can’t control their profligate spending. 

It began back in the 1960’s, during the LBJ Administration.  President Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Congress were trying to fight the Vietnam War, and pay for a whole slew of new, expensive government programs – the Great Society.  Prior to this, Social Security funds had always been kept separate from the rest of the general funds, thus keeping Social Security safe from politicians in Washington spending it.  The liberals controlling Washington at the time (today we’d call them “progressives”) combined the Social Security Trust Fund with the general fund and started spending Social Security money on anything they wanted to spend it on: the War, anti-poverty social programs, welfare, public housing, you name it.  And it’s been that way ever since.

Later, some in Washington tried to change this to protect Social Security.  The most serious attempt was legislation called the Social Security Preservation Act.  This bill, if passed, would have required that every penny taken out of a person’s paycheck for Social Security, could only be spent on Social Security, and nothing else.  (I was a strong supporter of passing this legislation, and I co-sponsored the bill a number of times.)  Unfortunately, the big-spenders in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, prevented the bill from being passed, and thus the spending continued. 

Another attempt to put Social Security on sounder footing was President Bush’s proposal, shortly after he was re-elected in 2004, to allow persons to self invest, in a personal savings account, a portion of their Social Security contribution.  It’s important to point out that these personal savings accounts were voluntary, and thus if a person didn’t feel confident in investing, he or she could continue to have all their contributions go to Social Security.  It was projected that the additional money going into investments would have boosted the stock market and the economy, created more jobs, and most importantly helped to put Social Security on firmer fiscal ground.  (There were some things I liked about the plan, others I did not.) 

You remember the tumultuous town hall meetings many Democratic members of Congress faced this past summer over their healthcare plan; well, Moveon.org and other left-wing organizations had packed town meetings back in 2005, principally to oppose the Bush Social Security plan.  They were successful, and the plan went nowhere. 

The bottom line is, that since Social Security has been thrown into the same pot with the rest of the budget, the more out-of-balance the federal budget is, the more danger there is to Social Security.  Even though Congresses in the past have failed to exercise sufficient fiscal discipline to ensure that we have a balanced budget, and therefore are not spending Social Security funds for other purposes, the present Congress has been without doubt, the most fiscally irresponsible in U.S. history, now having to borrow 45 cents for every dollar it spends.  And what many of us warned would someday happen, that Social Security itself would be endangered by the out-of-control spending in Washington, is now happening.  Our seniors deserve better than they’re getting out of Washington nowadays, and so do future generations of seniors.  It’s time for a change. 

Imagine that your family’s budget was so out of whack that for every dollar you spent, you had to borrow 45 cents.  Well, that’s what’s happening in Washington right now.  Congress and the Obama Administration are so outspending what we have, that for every dollar spent, they’re adding another 45 cents to our national debt.  The 45 cents is borrowed (much of it from our good friends, the Chinese who always have our best interests at heart).  Despite Obama happy talk at the State of the Union Address to do something about the out-of-control spending, Obama’s budget for the next year, which was released just yesterday, is even worse than many feared.  It calls for $3.8 trillion in spending, and since it projects only $2.2 trillion coming in, that means a staggering $1.6 trillion will be added to our children and our grandchildren’s debt burden.  That’s by far the worst year ever. 

President Obama gives lip service to a spending freeze, which of course doesn’t kick in until next year.  And, oh by the way, it amounts to less than one tenth of 1% of the spending, and probably won’t happen anyway.  President Obama also calls for another economic stimulus bill.  (The last one worked so well.)

If you really want a perfect example of the mindset prevailing in Washington nowadays, you need look no further than what the number three Democrat in the House said earlier this week.  James Clyburn, the Democratic Whip, said (with a straight face) that “we must spend our way out of this recession.”  He really said that!  This is the same guy who came to Cincinnati last campaign and raised thousands of dollars for Candidate Steve Driehaus, and has already contributed  $14,000 to Congressman Steve Driehaus this election cycle.  Not surprisingly, Driehaus has been voting with the liberal Democratic leadership (Pelosi, Hoyer, and Clyburn) virtually every time.  No wonder a Washington political news journal Politico called Driehaus a “reliable backer of party leadership.”

One of the more interesting (and ironic) things that President Obama said when he announced his budget this week was that Washington could no longer afford to spend money “as if it were monopoly money.”  (Then he proceeded to offer a budget that spent our money as if it were monopoly money.)  It reminded me a lot of when he said “what I am not doing, what I have no interest in doing , is running GM.”  (Then he proceeded to takeover GM and Chrysler.)  It’s almost as if he forgets that what he says is being recorded, and we might actually go back and compare what he says with what he does.

One particularly wasteful item in the President’s budget that jumped out at me was $237 million to be spent on a prison in Obama’s home state of Illinois, intended to house the dangerous terrorists now being safely kept away from us at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Why we’d even consider bringing them here and housing them on U.S. soil, with all the inherent risks involved (and the added expense) is just nuts.  And as I’ve been saying from the start, it’s just lunacy to risk that the virulent hatred these terrorists carry in their souls be allowed to spread to other inmates in our U.S. prison system. 

In conclusion, Congress is now considering the most irresponsible budget – since the one they passed last year.  It spends too much, raises taxes, and digs us all deeper and deeper into debt.  It’s awful.  Unfortunately, it’s what we’ve come to expect from our current leadership in Washington.  It’s time for a change.