Madison Project

Last year’s reauthorization of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which sets policy and funding levels for our military and foreign operations, turned out to be quite contentious.  The main kerfuffle focused on a provision of the bill that critics believed would authorize the military to permanently detain American citizens labeled as enemy combatants caught on American soil.

The House will voted on scores of amendments to the bill today.  Some of those amendments will deal with detainees.

Here is an excerpt from this week’s Madisonian that explains the relevant details for this year’s bill.

Last year’s NDAA caused some pungent divisions within the conservative coalition.  Ambiguous language in the 2012 defense law led many conservatives to believe that the military would have the authority to suspend habeas corpus and indefinitely detain Americans who are suspected of engaging in terrorism for Al Qaeda – even on American soil.  Other conservatives contended that the 2012 law contained no such expansion.  They argued that failure to pass this law would undermine the 2001 use of force law, which grants the president the power to “use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” involved in the September 11 attacks “in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

In order to clear up the confusion and gratuitous infighting within our coalition, Reps. Buck McKeon and Jeff Landry  amended the committee bill to explicitly clarify that “nothing in the Authorization for Use of Military Force … [2001] or the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 shall be construed to deny the availability of the writ of habeas corpus in a court ordained or established by or under Article III of the Constitution for any person who is detained in the United States pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force.”

This is a great unifying bill designed to ensure that our military and intelligence agencies will have wide latitude in fighting out foreign enemies, while preserving basic habeas corpus rights at home.  Some of the hard-core libertarians, like Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) are still trying to combat the NDAA and remove any provision go after enemy combatants caught on American soil.  It is our opinion that the new bill addresses those concerns, but some conservatives might still oppose the bill.

You can read more about this provision from the op-ed at Red State by the bill’s sponsors. It is clear that any attempt to gut this provision will only serve to reerect the walls that hampered our efforts in combating terrorism during the Clinton years.

Continue Reading »

When it comes to free-market fiscal policy, Republicans are always manufacturing excuses to exempt themselves from their own doctrine on numerous issues.  There are always excuses why specific industries must be recipients of government interventions.  They say that exporters cannot function without the Ex-Im Bank; farmers cannot subsist without government welfare despite record high prices; the financial markets cannot survive without bailouts.  The latest exception to free-market doctrine that is being considered in Congress is the flood insurance program.

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in 1968 to provide insurance to those living in flood-risk areas.  Ever since the last long-term NFIP reauthorization expired, Congress has passed 17 stop-gap extensions.  Not surprisingly, the program has racked up $18 billion in debt during that tumultuous time.  The latest extension expires at the end of May.  There will be a need for another short-term extension, but Congress must not pass a long-term extension that does not contain significant reforms.

We must understand that there is an imbalance of power in the political system of any democracy in that the forces of statism have an innate advantage over the defenders of freedom. It takes but one legislative or administrative victory for statism to succeed in guiding society on an indelible path towards dependency.  We cannot perpetuate the free-market, but we can perpetuate statism by creating inveterate dependency constituencies.  Statism enjoys the inherent advantage of self-perpetuation through its own pernicious activities that engender a continued need for the government programs.

Decades’ worth of government incentives to live in flood-prone regions have enticed thousands of homeowners into purchasing houses in areas that will forever necessitate more subsidies.  80 years’ worth of farm subsidies and crop insurance have created near-immutable levels of dependency in our farming communities.  Decades’ worth of housing subsidies have created a reality in which 90% of all mortgages are backed by Fannie and Freddie.

Continue Reading »

Yesterday, the Senate voted on a pair of budgets that would balance by 2017.  The first one offered by Rand Paul would have cut $11.1 trillion in spending from the baseline.  Specifically, it would have eliminated 4 entire departments, enacted premium support Medicare, raised the retirement age of Social Security, block granted Medicaid and welfare programs, and enacted a 17% flat tax.

Mike Lee’s budget cut roughly the same, but put more of an emphasis on entitlement reform than discretionary cuts.  It was modeled after the Heritage Foundation’s plan “Saving the American Dream.”  It would scrap the entire tax system, including the payroll tax, and institute a unified flat income-based tax on consumption for both businesses and individuals.

The point of these budgets was not that every Republican should agree with the precise policy solutions to every issue.  Rather it was an attempt by the part of two stalwarts to show a viable path to limiting government, weaning dependency, and balancing the budget in a timely fashion.   Sadly, they only received 17 and 17 votes respectively.

I am finding the same problem when researching candidates running for Congress.  Every single Republican candidates professes support for a balanced budget.  Yet, when pressed for specific cuts, many of them equivocate.  This is not an enigma.  There are only a few ways to balance the budget within a reasonable time frame.  Lee and Paul presented us with two scenarios.  The fact that the majority of the Republicans Conference opposed those budgets shows that they are not serious about supporting a balanced budget.  Then again, we knew that already.

Here are the the roll calls:

Continue Reading »

The long knives are out for DeMint after the defeat of RINO Jon Bruning.

Johanns said he shared that view with DeMint on Tuesday.

“The question I kept getting asked is why would an individual senator spend all this money out here,” Johanns said. “What’s in it for him? And it just created a level of concern and suspicion and at the end of the day it was a bad deal for a really good guy.”

The answer is very simple, Senator Johanns.  He didn’t want another senator from Nebraska who would vote with the Democrats like you do.

Many of us have taken it for granted that all Republicans would work for full repeal of Obamacare.  After all, not a single Republican voted for it.  However, it is always important to understand the reasons why politicians support or oppose a piece of legislation.

When you listen to many prominent Republicans voicing their disdain for Obamacare, you generally hear the following complaints: it raises taxes, it cuts Medicare, it contains death panels, it is 2,700 pages long – and most notably – the individual mandate.

The problem is that these are all ancillary to the crux of what is so offensive about Obamacare.  The overarching concern about Obamacare is that it harnesses the factors that have already driven up the cost of healthcare and health insurance, most prominently, the mandates and subsidies, and multiplies them to the nth degree.  The tax increases, Medicare cuts, and individual mandate are merely tools to fund those interventions.  Many Republicans never had a problem with them.  This is why they were never repulsed by Romneycare, which doesn’t contain tax hikes and Medicare cuts.  As for the individual mandate of MassCare, they contend that there is nothing wrong with a state mandate.

As such, it comes as no surprise to read these tidbits in Politico:

Continue Reading »

Well, that didn’t take long.  Just one week into the conference committee on the highway bill, Republicans are showing signs of caving on their insistence that the Keystone pipeline be approved as part of the deal.

Throughout the past few months, we have been chronicling how Republicans have been apathetic to the underlying vices of the highway bill (S. 1813).  They basically told the Democrats in committee that they have every intention of passing the Senate bill; they just want a provision approving the Keystone pipeline as part of the agreement.  As any negotiator that lacks the credulousness of a toddler understands, once you take your bargaining chip off the table, the other side has no reason to give in.  Since Republicans have guaranteed Democrats that the tax and spend highway bill is too big to fail, Democrats will wait them out until they agree to jettison the Keystone provision.  And that is exactly what is happening.

Take a look at these quotes from The Hill:

Republicans are pressing for approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in a final House-Senate transportation bill but appear unlikely to draw a line in the sand that jeopardizes the infrastructure legislation.

While the proposed Alberta-to-Texas pipeline is a top GOP and oil-industry priority, Republicans might have incentive to keep the matter unresolved, enabling them to continue using Keystone as a political weapon during the campaign season. [...]

“The overall Republican conference position is not to sink the conference report over [Keystone XL], however, as keeping that issue alive through the elections is also acceptable,” an oil industry source told The Hill.

Continue Reading »

People often ask me what can be done to move the elected officials within the Republican Party rightward.  Well, for one thing, we need to elect more conservatives.  But more importantly, we need those conservatives to obtain positions of power, such as chairmanships of the committees that set our domestic policy agenda.

Not surprisingly, all the relevant committee chairmen are either conduits for leadership or are even more liberal than leadership.  Here is a list of the chairmen along with their respective 2011 scores from Heritage Action:

Continue Reading »

The Mercatus Institute came out with a report detailing how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost taxpayers $170 billion over the past few years.

Senator Tom Coburn told the WashPost’s Ezra Klein: “If President Obama is president again, those problems are still there and we have to solve them. He knows that. We’ve had conversations where he’s told me he’ll go much further than anyone believes he’ll go to solve the entitlement problem if he can get the compromise. And I believe him. I believe he would.”

Sigh.  I’m really not sure what has gotten into the good senator lately; attacking Republicans for being too partisan, voting for NAT-Gas subsidies, voting for Ex-Im Bank, endorsing tax increases – and now this?

Here is the riddle of the day: What is it called when Rinos and donkeys get together for a bipartisan big-government love fest in Washington?  A same-sex marriage.

Yesterday, the Senate approved reauthorization and expansion of the Export-Import Bank by a 78-20 vote.  19 Republicans an Bernie Sanders voted no.  You have to give Bernie Sanders credit for his principled stance against business.  He hates them enough that he won’t vote for subsidies.  In that sense, socialism is not as bad as the crony capitalism espoused by the majority of both parties.

It’s interesting to note that while the House is often regarded as the “Tea Party” branch of government, a higher percentage of Republicans in the Senate, 40%, actually voted against the Bank.  Here are the 19 no votes:

Continue Reading »