About Steve Chabot

Once again, a lot happened over the last week that I’d like to touch on; so here it goes.

FIRST, the head of America’s space program, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, informs us that the number one priority of NASA is now – drumroll please – making sure that people in predominantly Muslim countries have high self esteem. Not getting to the moon, or to mars, or advancing our scientific knowledge, or creating more space-connected jobs or products on earth (remember Tang), but making sure Muslims around the world feel better about themselves. I’m not making this up.

Referring to President Obama’s instructions to him, Bolden stated as follows: “Foremost, he (Obama) wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, and math, and engineering.” As usual, the mainstream press all but ignored this gaffe, so you may well not have heard about this new, ridiculous policy, by an Administration that seems to be losing more and more credibility every week.

SECOND, President Obama decided to skip the normal Senate confirmation process and just appoint Donald Berwick to head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Why? Well, this is the government agency that will oversee “Obamacare,” which was rammed through Congress by Obama/Pelosi/Reid back in March. And some of the radical quotes this guy has made about health care over the years are the polar opposite of what Obama promised.

Remember the Democrats’ promise that there would be no rationing of health care? Here’s Berwick: “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care – the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” And remember the assurance that our new health care would be nothing like Britain’s socialized health care system? Once again here’s Berwick: “I am a romantic about the British National Health Service. I love it because it is generous, hopeful, confident, joyous, and just.” No wonder the Obama Administration wanted to avoid any tough questions that might have been asked as a result of such inconsistencies.

And listen to this quote by Berwick, “Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must – must – redistribute wealthfrom the richer among us to the poorer and less fortunate.” This sounds a lot like candidate Obama’s off-the-cuff remarks that got him into trouble when he told Joe the Plumber that we need to “spread the wealth around.” No wonder a recent poll done by Democracy Corps (a polling outfit run by Democrats James Carville and Stan Greenberg) found that 55% of likely voters say they believe the term “socialist” describes the Obama Administration “well” or “very well.”

Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the Administration for trying to “Sneak him through without public scrutiny.” And even Democratic Senator Max Baucus said he was troubled by the recess appointment since “Senate confirmation of Presidential appointees is an essential process prescribed by the Constitution that serves as a check on Executive power.”

THIRD, Politico reports that the Obama White House is trying to fight the perception that they are anti-business. How could anyone possibly have that impression? (Cap and Trade, health care, higher taxes, more regulations…) And oh by the way, virtually all Obama’s Cabinet choices have little or no business experience – they overwhelmingly come from a community organizer, academic, or government background. No wonder they can’t get the economy moving again, or start creating jobs in the private sector.

FOURTH, pollster Frank Luntz now says that the Democrats in Congress are in more trouble today than they were back in 1994, when they lost 53 seats in the House of Representatives, and thus lost control of the House for the first time in 40 years. (I was one of the 53. And this time we only need to pick up 39 to take Nancy Pelosi’s gavel away.) Luntz’s exact quote is as follows: “On every statistical measurement, the Democrats are in more trouble today than they were in July 1994 when they lost control of the House and Senate.”

FIFTH, the latest Washington Post – ABC News Poll indicates that the American people by 51% to 43% would prefer to see Republicans in control of Congress rather than Democrats. This eight point Republican edge shows a huge turnaround from the fifteen point Democrat edge before the last election. But, as I always say, not a single vote has been cast in the election yet, and we must continue to work hard, and not get overconfident or cocky.

SIXTH, there are rumors filtering out of Washington that the Democrats realize they are going to take a shellacking this Fall, and intend to try to push through the remaining parts of their un-passed liberal agenda in a lame duck session of Congress (the time between election day November 2nd,and the new Congress being sworn in two months later in the first week of January.) This liberal laundry list of unfinished business could include an immigration amnesty bill, Cap and Trade, even more stimulus spending, even higher taxes, and God knows what else. Frank Luntz, the pollster I previously mentioned, says that if the Democrats did this, and thus in effect ignored the will of the American people as expressed in the November election, they would take a pounding in the next election, the Presidential election of 2012. He noted that Americans polled on this issue oppose such action three to one, and even a plurality of Democrats oppose it.

And on a final note, congratulations to the National League, especially Scott Rolen, Brandon Phillips, Arthur Rhodes and Joey Votto, for their big win in the All-Star Game last night! 

In this week’s blog, I’ll touch on a number of stories that caught my attention, and I think are worth commenting on.

First, two headlines in the Cincinnati Enquirer were of particular concern: “Recovery Is Fizzling, Reports Suggest,” and “U.S. Loses 125,000 Jobs In June.”  Despite Congress throwing hundreds of billions of our tax dollars into a so-called economic stimulus package, the American economy continues to limp along, and unemployment remains at unacceptable levels.  Fiscal conservatives warned that this was likely to happen, but were shunted aside by the Obama Administration and by Pelosi’s followers in Congress, and the American people are paying the price.

In an attempt to try to convince the public that the economy is just swell, and getting sweller, Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are on their much heralded “Recovery Tour” traveling across the country this summer trying to convince the American people that everything’s great.  The American people aren’t buying it.  President Obama had the nerve to say at a town hall meeting in Wisconsin last week that “every economist who’s looked at it has said that the Recovery Act (the $787 billion stimulus bill) did its job.”  Now that’s just ridiculous.  Economists are at best split on whether the Stimulus has been a marginal success or a total failure – but it’s clear that they don’t all think “it did its job.” 

So where was the mainstream press coverage of this whopper.  Virtually absent.  FOX News mentioned it.  But the rest of the mainstream press ignored it altogether.  Let’s face it, there’s a double standard when Republicans and Democrats say dumb or controversial things.  Look at the glee shown by the mainstream press in covering Republicans Joe Barton, Rand Paul, John Boehner, and Michael Steele. 

But just as there was virtually no coverage of President Obama claiming that all economists agree the so-called economic stimulus package is working, where was the coverage of Bill Clinton at Democratic Senator Robert Byrd’s funeral just a couple days ago in essence justifying Byrd’s membership in the KKK, saying he was just “a country boy in the hills of West Virginia just trying to get elected.”  He also said Byrd’s association with the clan was “fleeting” when in fact Byrd had worked his way up to being what they call a Kleagle (a recruiter) for this despicable organization.  He also failed to mention that Byrd voted against not only the Civil Rights Act, but also against the Voting Rights Act, and that Byrd used the “N word” in an interview (for which he later apologized) a few years back.  Where was the coverage of this?  Virtually absent.

And perhaps most outrageously, where was the mainstream press coverage of Democratic Congressman Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, just a few weeks back, when discussing more government assistance money, claimed that it wouldn’t just go to “minorities and defective people, it would go to average, good American people.”  FOX News covered the racist comments, but the rest of the media ignored it.  What if he’d been a Republican?  I wonder. 

Another headline which caught my attention in the Cincinnati Enquirer, on July 3rd, read, “Expect ER Wait Times to Lengthen.”  Remember the health care legislation that Obama/Pelosi/Reid rammed down our throats a few months back?  They claimed it would improve health care delivery, reduce the deficit, basically improve our lives.  Well, let me quote from the article: “Emergency rooms, the only choice for patients who can’t find care elsewhere, may grow even more crowded with longer wait times under the nation’s new health law.”  This is just one more bad thing we’ve learned about the health care legislation since it’s been passed into law.  Remember when we were promised it would cost less than $1 trillion, and then after passage the cost estimates were revised up by $115 billion, putting the cost well over $1 trillion?  And remember when we were promised that people who had health care plans they liked could keep them and wouldn’t be affected, and it was later revealed that it’s now estimated that over one-half of the people currently covered and satisfied with their plans will have to change?  No wonder most Americans remain opposed to the federal health care takeover. 

And no wonder so many Americans are skeptical of giving the federal government more power, and more control over our lives, and over our money.  A July 3rd Enquirer headline read “Federal Program Bilked Out of More Than $100 Million.”  Here’s the first paragraph of the story: “A federal program designed to help impoverished families heat and cool their homes wasted more than $100 million paying the electric bills of thousands of applicants who were dead, in prison or living in million dollar mansions, according to a government investigation.” 

And finally a July 2nd Enquirer headline read “Millions of Doses of Flu Vaccine to be Burned.”  Once again, I’ll just quote from the article:

Now the article begs the question, should the federal government have ramped up and prepared the nation for the possible swine flu onslaught? In my view, yes.  But can we trust the federal government to be reasonably efficient with our tax dollars when it spends them?  And to that I would argue, emphatically – NO. 

There is way too much waste at the federal level, in fact at all levels of government.  Millions, in fact billions of our tax dollars are wasted every year.  And as our government has been allowed, in fact encouraged to grow since this Administration and this Congress took over approximately one-and-a-half years ago, it has grown from bad to worse.  We’ll have the opportunity to reverse that trend in a little less than four months.  Remember in November. 

P.S. on an unrelated note, I’d like to encourage you to join me in helping Cincinnati Red, Joey Votto make it to the All-Star Game, by voting for him here.  Good luck Joey!

Well, we’re only 4 months away from what could be the most significant election in recent American history.  Do the American people want more of the same – bigger government, more power in Washington, red ink as far as the eye can see, more government takeovers and bailouts, and more power for Nancy “we have to pass the bill to see what’s in it” Pelosi?  Or are the American people more than ready for change from The Change?  I’m betting on the latter.

A few interesting things happened over the last week which demonstrate how truly arrogant and out of touch with the American people this Administration and this Congress are.

First, Vice President Joe Biden, while doing a PR tour in Glendale, Wisconsin, angrily called the manager of Kopp’s Frozen Custard a “smartass” when the poor guy had the audacity to ask Biden to “lower his taxes.”  (To Biden this is apparently one of the “small people” that that arrogant BP executive was referring to.)

Then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (the guy who didn’t pay his own taxes, but expects the rest of us “small people” to do so) says that the world “cannot depend on the United States as it did in the past.”  So much for American Exceptionalism.  Geithner’s downgrading of the U.S. role in today’s world reminds me a lot of what President Obama said when he was asked whether he believed in American Exceptionalism (the belief that America is uniquely qualified to lead the world.)  Obama’s response: “I believe in American Exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British Exceptionalism, and the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism.”  (Translation: no, he does not believe in American Exceptionalism.  We’re just one more country – no better or worse than any other.)  Thank God Woodrow Wilson, and FDR, and Ronald Reagan didn’t see it that way.

At the G-20 meeting in Toronto, it became very clear, very quickly, that President Obama is to the left of what we used to think of as leftist “Old Europe.”  Most of the European leaders, as well as Canada, and even China, are worried about out-of-control government spending and the resulting debt burden on countries around the world.  They see Greece as a warning sign of what will happen if they don’t get their fiscal houses in order.  President Obama says nothing to worry about here, just keep spending like there’s no tomorrow.  They’re right – he’s wrong.

And finally, Nancy Pelosi, the most liberal, big-spending Speaker of the House in our nation’s history, was in town Saturday to raise money in Indian Hill for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).  The DCCC spent $1.6 million on Steve Driehaus’s campaign last time, and will spend a ton this time too.  Why not, he votes with Nancy Pelosi virtually every time.  (94.8% to be exact.)  However, she’s so unpopular with the American people due to her leftist policies, that they wanted to slide her into town below the radar screen, raise their cash, and slide back out of town without anyone realizing she was ever here. 

No doubt they raised a lot of money which will go towards the effort to keep the liberals’ stranglehold on all levers of power in Washington after November 2nd.  If you would like to counter the benefit Steve Driehaus will get from Pelosi’s visit, you can make a contribution to my campaign by clicking here.  Coincidentally, today, Wednesday, June 30th, is the last day of the second quarter of this year, and we have to report what we’ve raised by midnight today.  So a contribution today is particularly helpful to my campaign.

As I’ve mentioned before, we are well positioned to win this race.  There have been three polls done so far: one shows us up by 14 points, one by 17 points, and the third poll was done by the Driehaus Campaign, and they won’t release the results of it (you can draw your own conclusions why!)

But we’re taking nothing for granted.  We’re not going to rest on our laurels, or get overconfident.  We are going to continue to work very hard, fight the good fight, and win.  It’s critical that conservatives like myself do, if we are to have any chance of changing the dangerous course that Pelosi, Reid, and Obama have set for this nation.

Please, act now.  And, Remember in November!

Nancy Pelosi, the most liberal, biggest spending, most fiscally irresponsible Speaker of the House in our nation’s history is coming to town – this Saturday, June 26th; to raise money for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – the DCCC.

The DCCC spent well over $1.6 million in the last election on behalf of Steve Driehaus. The DCCC gave thousands directly to the Driehaus Campaign – and spent more than a million dollars on TV ads alone.

Why would they have spent so much in the campaign last time? Because they knew, despite what Driehaus was telling the people here at home, that he would be a reliable vote for their liberal policies: big spending, big government, a government takeover of our health care, and all the rest. In fact, he has voted with Pelosi almost 95% of the time.

Why is Nancy Pelosi coming to Cincinnati to raise money for the DCCC which will benefit Driehaus again? Because if they can get him re-elected, he’ll continue to be what National Journal called “A reliable backer of party leadership.”

It’s ironic that Pelosi is coming to Cincinnati to raise campaign cash, because this week the Democrats finally announced officially, that they’re giving up on even trying to pass a budget for this year – no limits on what they spend at all. So while they’re raising big bucks from their political allies here in Cincinnati, they’ll be spending your money like there’s no tomorrow in Washington.

If you’re as outraged as I am about this, there’s a way you can weigh in. Please help us to offset, at least in part, the big bucks Pelosi will be raising to benefit Driehaus. You can make a contribution to my campaign by clicking here, or you can volunteer to help, or get a yard sign, by signing up on my homepage.

I’m sure you know where I stand on the liberal, out-of-control spending spree going on in Washington right now, and this is a way to join with me in doing something about it. Defeating Driehaus and Pelosi in this Congressional District, this Fall, will result in us being one seat closer to the 39 seats we need to pick up in the House this year to topple Pelosi as Speaker. And as I’ve mentioned before, we picked up 53 seats when I was first elected to Congress back in 1994 (Newt Gingrich, the Contract with America, etc.) so it is well within our reach, if we all work together.

I know people often say “this is the most important election ever.” It’s almost become a cliché. But this time I think it’s true.

Our nation is at a crossroads. We can continue down the road Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are leading us to bigger government, bigger debt, higher taxes, a stagnant economy and high unemployment. Or we can change the way we’re going, and put us on the path of Freedom, personal responsibility, lower taxes, a re-energized economy and job creation.

The choice is yours. The stakes couldn’t be higher. The time for action is now.

Well it’s official – the Congress will pass no budget this year. Congressman Steny Hoyer, the Democratic Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, second in line behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi, made it official yesterday, the Democrats who control Congress aren’t even going to try to pass a budget.

This is the first time since the law requiring a budget was passed back in 1974 that this has happened – the first time in 37 years!

So what does it really mean? It means that there are no limits at all as to how much of our money they can spend. And it’s been a spending orgy in Washington since the Democrats took control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Congress and the White House.

We’ve had deficits and red ink as far as the eye can see. Their own Congressional Budget Office projects over $1 trillion in deficit spending every year for the next 10 years (that’s as far out as they go in their projections).

Democratic Congressman John Spratt had once criticized Republicans who were struggling to pass a budget, (Republicans did pass one), saying “If you can’t budget, you can’t govern.” Now those words are coming back to bite him, because John Spratt is now the Democratic Chairman of the Budget Committee!

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who made the announcement that there would be no budget, once said that “Passing a budget is the most basic responsibility of governing.” And he was right. But now they’ve given up any semblance of fiscal responsibility and sound governing.

The American people deserve better than this. They deserve leadership in Washington that will be careful with their hard-earned tax dollars. And they’re sure not getting that right now.

That’s why so many people are demanding that Washington change its ways, that it change the failed big-spending policies which are leading us down the road towards financial ruin. It’s not too late, but it’s getting awfully close.

A little over four months from now, Americans will be going to the polls. And they will be mad. There will be a price to be paid for the utter failure of this Congress to meet even the minimal responsibility of passing a budget. There will be an accounting. It’s only a matter of time.

It’s always there.  Night after night.  Turn on your TV, and there it is.  Oil spewing into the Gulf from that damaged pipe.  The environmental devastation.  The spoiled beaches.  The oil-soaked pelicans, the dead turtles.  Families no longer sure how they’re going to make a living.  The pain seems unending. 

The press, for good reason, has been focused on this story for two months now, almost to the exclusion of anything else that’s going on.  It’s a lot like the media coverage of the health care debate not too long ago.  It was all they talked about.  Now they’ve all but dropped any mention of it. 

But the Cincinnati Enquirer, to its credit, last Saturday ran an Associated Press story headlined: “Health Overhaul to Force Employer Plans to Change.”  I’ll quote from the article:

President Obama couldn’t have been clearer during the health care debate; he said time and again that if you already had health care coverage, there was nothing to worry about; this new legislation wouldn’t change your coverage at all.  Here’s Obama back on July 28th of 2009: “But keep in mind – I mean, this is something that I can’t emphasize enough … if you are happy with the health care that you’ve got, then keep it… nobody is going to go out there and say, you’ve got to change your health care plan.”

Now we find out that that wasn’t true at all.  In fact, it’s estimated that as many as four out of five small businesses will no longer be able to cover their employees under their current plans.  That’s going to affect an awful lot of people.  James Gelfand, Health Policy Director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that “what we are getting here is a clear indication that most plans will have to change… these changes are most certainly going to be accompanied by costs.”

I guess it really shouldn’t surprise us that the health care legislation pedaled by Obama/Pelosi/Reid, and supported by liberals like Steve Driehaus, isn’t what they led us to believe it was.  They also said over and over again that the total cost would be under $1 trillion, and then we learned recently that it was now projected to cost at least $115 billion more than they promised, pushing the cost to well over $1 trillion.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really tired of being deceived by the people who are supposed to be looking out for us in Washington.  It’s bad enough that they’re incompetent.  But we at least deserve to be told the truth. 

That’s one of the reasons so many people can’t wait to voice their frustration this November at the ballot box.  They’re tired of being ignored, misled, and taken for granted.  Change is coming.  And it may well be even bigger than anyone now imagines. 

It’s been 50 days now.  Night after night we see images of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.  We all feel compassion for those who lost loved ones in the initial explosion; for the fishermen whose means of supporting their families has been taken away; for the wildlife, especially the birds, smothered by the encroaching oil.  From the vantage point of a plane above, the oil on the surface of the Gulf looks a lot like miles and miles of red ink. 

I’m reminded of another ongoing threat to America – the hole in our nation’s budget, with spending and our tax dollars spewing out uncontrollably, and red ink as far as the eye can see; and no realistic plan for plugging the hole in the budget.  In fact, this year will be the first year since 1974 that the House of Representatives will, in all likelihood, not even pass a budget.  (1974 was the year Congress enacted legislation requiring that it pass a budget every year.)  They’re giving up.  Thrown in the towel.  Cried uncle.  It’s too hard.  Just can’t do it. 

What this means is that there will be no limits on how much of our money Congress can spend.  The budget is supposed to be a guidepost, a roadmap for how Congress will spend our money.  They usually don’t stay within those self-imposed limits, but it’s at least a goal.  This year, the sky’s the limit.  They’re not even going through the motions of trying to be fiscally restrained.  They’re spending whatever they feel like, on whatever they feel like.  And it’s your money.  It’s outrageous.  And the mainstream press has all but ignored the story. 

In these tough economic times, when real families are watching their budgets even more closely, the government ought to be watching the nation’s budget more closely.  The growing national debt, (it’s now hit an all time high of $13 trillion), makes it that much harder for the economy to bounce back.  No wonder the jobs report which came out last Friday was so disappointing, with national unemployment remaining at a way-to-high 9.7% (17-20% if you count the underemployed and those who have been so discouraged that they’ve just stopped looking), and nearly 11% in Ohio.  And of those jobs which were created last month, 95% of them were temporary government Census workers. 

So is there any hope of the Democrats who control Congress passing a budget?  Not according to the Washington Post’s David Broder who wrote this past Sunday that “In an ideal world, the President and his party would respond by passing a budget resolution… but as they talked among themselves before the Memorial Day recess, the Democrats could not muster the will, or the courage, even to attempt to pass a budget resolution.” 

Democratic Congressman John Spratt, who is now the Chairman of the Budget Committee, said a few years back when Republicans were having trouble passing a budget (Republicans did pass one), “If you can’t budget, you can’t govern.”

This Congress’s inability to pass a budget, or to govern, is a perfect example of why more and more people are coming to the conclusion that it is critical that we dramatically change Congress this year.  Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid’s leadership has been abysmal.  They either can’t get things done, like pass a budget and get spending under control, or when they do get things done, it’s the wrong things, like a government takeover of health care, and a stimulus which stimulated the growth of government, but not jobs. 

The American people will get their chance to express their frustration with Washington this fall.  And they WILL be heard.