FederalRepublic.net

From Newsmax.com

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Friday rejected calls in Congress for a tax on oil company profits, saying the industry should reinvest its recent windfalls in finding and producing more energy.

“The temptation in Washington is to tax everything,” Bush said in an exchange with reporters in the White House Rose Garden. Rather than for the government to reap the benefit from oil company profits driven by the recent surge in global oil prices, he said, “The answer is for there to be strong re-investment.”

“These oil prices are a wakeup call,” Bush said. “We’re dependent on oil. We need to get off oil.”

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President Bush is certainly right in that the Congress believes taxation is the only solution to national problems. The reality is that if Congress passes and President Bush signs legislation to raise taxes on oil company profits, oil companies most certainly will pass the costs onto consumers in the form of higher prices. There must be a change in mindset in Washington, from a “penalize oil companies” prospective to a recognition that government must promote an environment that reduces regulations and allows new refinaries to be built and new drilling in commence.

By Fred Barbash and Bill Brubaker

The nation’s economy regained momentum in the first quarter of the year as it recovered from the hurricanes of 2005, the Commerce Department reported yesterday, growing at a rate of 4.8 percent, compared with 1.7 percent in the previous quarter.

It was the hottest annualized pace for the gross domestic product in 2 1/2 years, with robust spending by consumers, business and government all doing their part.
 
“This rapid growth is another sign that our economy is on the fast track,” President Bush said.

But the Commerce Department report was no surprise to economists, who expected a bounce-back from the slowdown following the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico region, including Hurricane Katrina. The rate announced yesterday was more in line with the pre-hurricane quarterly pace.

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While Bush trumpeted the Commerce Department results, he also said: “This good news cannot be taken for granted. With gas prices on the minds of Americans, we need to keep our foot on the pedal of this strong economy.”

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“The surest way to put the brakes on our economic growth would be to raise taxes or spend too much of the people’s money here in Washington,” Bush said. “That’s why I’m going to continue to work with Congress to make the tax relief that helped spur this economic growth permanent . . . [and] to make this country less dependent on foreign sources of oil.”

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As a result of the Bush tax cuts and federal spending to compensate for the damage from Hurricane Katrina and the wars in the Middle East, the economy is rolling along at a respectable 4.8%, which is definately far better than any country in the European Union. However good the economy is at this point in time, the Congress and the president would be wise to work toward long term economic growth.

Long term economic strategies include making many provisions of the Bush tax cuts that are set to expire permanent and cutting federal spending. Social Security must be reformed into a system of taxpayer ownership, allowing Americans to invest a portion of Social Security into the stock market. There must be more focus on cutting business regulation and red tape, allowing citizens to easily start businesses or invest back into their own. Finally, Congress must work with the president to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by providing legislation to build new refinaries and allow more oil exploration and drilling (especially in ANWR) and secure our borders to reduce illegal immigration.

The Miami Herald has published an opinion piece explaining the irresponsible actions of Congress in trying to fund unneeded earmark appropriations:

It’s time for President Bush to brush the cobwebs off the veto stamp that has been gathering dust in his desk drawer ever since he became chief executive. The federal budget process is complicated, but the issue here is simple: An emergency supplemental appropriation — using federal money to pay for an emergency — should deal only with emergency issues. Until now, Republicans have insisted that there is no higher priority than funding to support our troops.

But with its approval levels approaching record lows and elections looming on the horizon, Congress is apparently trying to buy the public’s affection, even at the cost of imperiling the Iraq funding bill. The president requested $92 billion for war-fighting expenditures and some hurricane relief, but at last report the amount being voted on stood at $106.5 billion. Congress added provisions for still more hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast and a variety of so-called earmarks.

One of the ‘’earmarks'’ deserves special attention because it stands as a metaphor of Congress’ wild spending habits. It wasn’t too long ago that lawmakers approved a payment of $250 million to rebuild a railway line along the Mississippi coast after it was destroyed by Katrina. Now Congress wants taxpayers to spend another $700 million to relocate this same, privately owned rail line in order to build an east-west highway to spur economic development.

The president is right to threaten a veto of any bill that exceeds his request. The irrelevant add-ons may deserve consideration by Congress, but turning this bill into a Christmas tree is irresponsible.

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The more Congress is not responsible with the people’s money, the more anger it produces in the body politic. Out of control spending, unneeded regulation, and liberal political philosophy continue to make conservatives like me uneasy about where this country is going after the midterm elections.

Congress must return to fiscal sanity if it is ever to balance the budget or decrease the national debt in my lifetime. It seems politicians are more concerned about putting politics in front of true American priorities like entitlement reform, fiscal responsibility, and a strong defense. No wonder Congress has low approval ratings.

By Dana Bash

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Most American taxpayers would get $100 rebate checks to offset the pain of higher pump prices for gasoline, under an amendment Senate Republicans hope to bring to a vote soon.

However, the GOP energy package may face tough sledding because it also includes a controversial proposal to open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration, which most Democrats and some moderate Republicans oppose.

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“Our plan would give taxpayers a hundred dollar gas tax holiday rebate check to help ease the pain that they’re feeling at the pump,” Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced Thursday.

“It also includes strong federal anti-price gouging protection to protect consumers against anti-competitive behavior by oil companies or other suppliers of gasoline. Our free market system works, but it works best when there’s full accountability and full transparency.”

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It is said democratic nations don’t last because at some point, the people will discover they can vote themselves money out of the public treasury. Though this country is not a democracy, it seems politicians are attempting to win our hearts by bribing us with one time rebate checks.

Not only is this plan absurd, it also does not make sense. Instead of doing the logical thing like cut regulation, pass legislation to drill in ANWR and build new refineries, or ease gas taxes, our government seems to think the American people will be pleased with a $100 for gas - a one time deal.

Real reform must be sought and fought for in Congress by bringing back market incentives to the oil industry, instead of tying it down with needless regulation. Though a large portion of the blame for high gas prices go to supply and demand, government can and should promote a free market when it comes to our oil supply.

From the website of Mike Pence:

“With a record deficit and national debt, now is the time for Congress to practice fiscal discipline, even where funding the war on terror is concerned.

“While I’ve supported our troops and funding the rebuilding and reconstruction efforts along the Gulf Coast, I could not bring myself to support recent emergency funding legislation that left this House of Representatives at some $92 billion, including many elements that the President of the United States thought were unnecessary.

“Well, if things were bad before, they just got worse. The Senate is working on the emergency supplemental bill, and it is now at $106.5 billion and rising, including such unrelated measures as $3 million for southern and eastern Kentucky tourism and $900,000 for Dartmouth College, to name a few.

“Let’s support funding the war on terror and support the families and communities affected by the Gulf Coast, but let’s do it in a fiscally responsible way.

“This legislation has become a fruit basket of spending unrelated to our war effort and Katrina, and I say plainly, ‘Mr. President, veto this bill.’”

Couldn’t have said it better. Mike Pence - my representative from Indiana!

Townhall.com is carrying a piece by Herman Cain communicating the importance of tax reform in the United States. Mr. Cain advocates replacing our 60,000 page progressive tax system with the more equal and less confusing Fair Tax:

The first good news is that the 2003 tax rate cuts on income, capital gains and dividends have produced historical economic growth, and that growth is projected to last into 2006. Gross Domestic Product has grown for 17 consecutive quarters, the unemployment rate is lower than the decade rates of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s and manufacturing productivity is rising. These and numerous other measures of economic growth have caused tax revenue from businesses and individuals to increase over 10 percent from the same period last year.

Second, many states are considering tax and spending limitation legislation to rein in out-of-control spending and return wasted tax dollars to the taxpayers. Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia and Texas are just a few of the states where taxpayers have finally said enough is enough. Constituent-led grassroots movements in these and other states are shining the light on decades of wasteful spending at the state level and demanding accountability.

The third piece of good news is that support is growing for complete replacement of the tax code with a national consumption tax. More and more taxpayers are demanding action from their representatives in Congress, and their representatives are listening.

Further, Americans for Fair Taxation argue the Fair Tax would help to streamline the tax process:

The FairTax: 

• Abolishes the IRS
• Closes all tax loopholes and brings fairness to taxation
• Maintains our current Social Security and Medicare benefits
• Brings transparency and accountability to tax policy
• Allows American products to compete fairly
• Reimburses the tax on purchases of basic necessities
• Enables retirees to keep their entire pension
• Enables workers to keep their entire paycheck

The idea of a Fair Tax or consumption tax on goods and services produced in the United States is a logical step in the right direction. If a Fair Tax was accepted and created as law, the United States government would have no choice but to focus on the well-being of the economy by cutting back regulation and promoting an environment of economic stability. A Fair Fax would also allow the government to bring in more revenue to cut the deficit and balance the federal budget, while promoting fiscal sanity by putting the power of government back into the people’s hands.

From Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Americans face a deadline for filing taxes, President George W. Bush on Saturday pressed Congress to extend tax cuts, saying they create jobs and economic growth.

A push by House and Senate Republicans for $70 billion in tax cuts was derailed earlier this month before lawmakers went on a two-week spring recess.

The tax cuts would have extended the maximum 15 percent tax rate on capital gains and dividends beyond 2008. Without congressional action, capital gains taxes would jump to 20 percent and dividends would be taxed as regular income.

“Tax relief has done exactly what it was designed to do: It has created jobs and growth for the American people,” Bush said in his weekly radio address.

“Yet some here in Washington are now proposing that we raise taxes, either by repealing the tax cuts or letting them expire,” he said. “To keep our economy creating jobs and opportunity, Congress needs to make the tax relief permanent.”

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To help allow the United States to have economic prosperity into the end of the decade, it would be wise for Congress to extend and/or make permanent the Bush tax cuts of 2003. By extending the tax cuts, Congress allows the potential for millions of citizens and businesses to have more money in their own pockets, allowing them additional capital to invest and plenty more to spend.

While tax cuts are wholly beneficial for the economy, we must work to do more. Congress must become fiscally conservative, cutting spending and programs which are no longer needed. Congress must also work to eliminate overlapping programs that have the same job or programs that are not needed anymore. Not only will cutting spending help the Congress move toward balancing the federal budget, it will also help to offset federal budget deficits and long term debt.

By Lee Hamilton

Even among those who are aware of it, the current account deficit ranks low on the list of America’s top concerns. Yet our growing debt to the rest of the world is a serious problem, and threatens the long-term prosperity of the U.S. economy and the ordinary American.
 
America is saving too little and spending too much, just as we produce far less than we consume. The U.S. current account deficit — the difference between what we export and what we import — stands at $805 billion, well over 6 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP). In 2005, our trade deficit, which accounts for most of our current account deficit, rose to $723 billion, nearly double what it was in 2001, and a 19 percent increase from 2004. To use one bilateral example, the Chinese now export nearly six times as much to the U.S. as we export to China.

These imbalances are worrisome. To begin with, the U.S. economy could become less competitive. Already, good jobs that support a high standard of living have been lost to other countries in sectors ranging from manufacturing to high-technology services, and the trade deficit has pushed down wages across the manufacturing sector. Meanwhile, individual Americans and the U.S. government are borrowing more and more money to purchase goods and services that keep our country running and economy growing.

Another result is a dangerous dependence on foreign investors, principally from China, Japan and oil-rich Persian Gulf states. Together, foreign investors own more than half of U.S. government bonds. These foreign investors buy U.S. dollars (and bonds) to keep the value of their own currencies down and their exports to U.S. markets up. As a result, our government can run an annual budget deficit of nearly $400 billion, while enabling low interest rates and home mortgage costs for Americans. Warren Buffet, the influential American investor, recently summed up these concerns by warning that the U.S. is moving away from an “ownership society” and is instead becoming a “sharecropper’s society.”

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Yet we have been spared the gravest consequences of debt thus far only because foreigners have been willing to take our IOU’s; that means the fate of our own economy is out of our own hands at a time when we face rising competitors like China and India, and volatility in international energy markets. We must significantly reduce our budget deficits, so government revenues are more in line with spending. We need to save more and spend less. And we should bolster American competitiveness through investments in education, science and technology and the development of American productivity, particularly in 21st-century industries.

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This author is indeed correct by concluding America is living on borrowed time, not to mention borrowed money. By allowing our budget deficits to become quasi-permanent fixtures on the federal budget, the United States government allows itself to depend more and more on foreign markets and investors, at the expense of American taxpayers.

By being fiscally irresponsible with the budget, the Congress and the president have slowly given our economy to foreign markets and stockholders, increasing our dependence on foreign sources of investment and capital. There may be a time when foreign investment dollars dry up, allowing the United States to default on its debts. This would have a large impact on the American economy, leading to an increased risk of recession, higher interest rates, and higher taxes. It is only in the interest of the United States to get back to being fiscally conservative, while giving the principle of a balanced budget another look.

By Andrew Taylor

President Bush said Friday he would use his power to veto spending bills if Congress does not cut the federal budget as he has asked.

In over five years in office, Bush has never vetoed any bill. But he said that restraining spending was crucial to cutting the deficit in half by 2009 as he has promised. “If necessary, I will enforce spending restraint through the exercise of the veto,” the president said.

Bush’s brief statement from the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room came a day after feuds among rival Republican factions led House GOP leaders to pull a $2.8 trillion budget blueprint from the floor. The collapse of the measure threatens to send Republicans into the fall election season with deficits on the rise and no plan in place to contain them.

In addition, separate talks aimed at extending Bush’s previously passed tax cuts for capital gains and dividends stalled. With lawmakers headed home for a two-week recess with few accomplishments to show constituents, the president said Congress must break the logjam.

“Our economy grows when the American people make the decisions about how to save, spend and invest their money,” he said. “To keep our economy creating jobs and opportunity, Congress needs to show its trust in the American people and make the tax relief permanent.”

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The current political environment in Washington has proven the GOP and Congress in general, will definately encounter difficulty in passing a fiscally conservative budget. At $2.8 trillion dollars, the budget is filled with pork-laden projects and social programs this country does not need.

While many say talk is cheap, President Bush must make his veto threat real to the Congress and the American people. As many times as Bush has threatened to veto bills passed by Congress, he’s made good on none of those threats. Thus, government spending and debt have surpassed well beyond fiscally responsible levels.

The president and conservatives around the country must realize being a so-called “compassionate conservative” does not give Congress nor the president a blank check to enact all types of unneeded federal programs or give permission to enact legislation on a national level, which should be up to the states to decide. These unconstitutional programs include education, healthcare, abortion, gun laws, and many others.

By Andrew Taylor

A bill exceeding by more than $15 billion President Bush’s request for the war in Iraq and new hurricane aid could grow even larger, much to the dismay of GOP conservatives hoping to improve their record on spending.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the bill Tuesday after adding about $10 billion for everything from rebuilding highways to enhancing port security.

Farmers suffering from drought, storms and high energy costs got $4 billion in aid, while $594 million would be sprinkled across 30 states to repair highways damaged by earlier disasters but put off after aid was focused on the Gulf Coast.

The extras are sure to provoke a reaction from GOP conservatives already complaining about their party’s free-spending ways. But the temptation to use the must-pass bill containing $67.8 billion for the Pentagon’s mission in Iraq _ and some $27 billion in additional hurricane relief along the Gulf Coast _ as a locomotive to drive even more spending proved too irresistible for senators to pass up.

Overall, the bill would cost about $107 billion.

That’s still not enough for Gulf Coast senators like Mary Landrieu, D-La., who marched from the Senate Appropriations Committee vote to the Senate Press Gallery to demand an additional $5 billion-plus to reflect new Army Corps of Engineers estimates of what will be needed for Louisiana levees.

Landrieu vows to block Senate confirmation of every Bush administration appointment until the president supports the new and higher figure.

Senators piled the extra money into the bill on a series of voice votes _ at a pace of almost $100 million per minute of debate _ with high-ranking Republicans such as Majority Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sitting by in silence.

The additional funding includes:

-$4 billion for farmers hit by drought, floods and high energy costs. Top supporters were Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Conrad Burns, R-Mont. Burns faces a difficult re-election battle.

-$2.3 billion to combat the avian flu. It was offered by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, as championed but not officially requested by the White House.

-$1.1 billion for various projects to bring back Gulf Coast fisheries, replace fishing equipment and facilities and provide aid to workers and fishing companies. The funding, pushed by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., includes $100 million to rehabilitate damaged oyster and shrimp beds.

-$648 million for port security projects, obtained by the top panel Democrat, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., cast the only “nay” vote, in absentia. Even before the $10 billion in add-ons, Gregg said the $96.7 billion version drafted by Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran, R-Miss., had “ballooned out of control.”

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This is another blatant example of conservative backstabbing when it comes to fiscal responsibility and taking care of the people’s money. Bill after bill leaving committees these days are filled with pork-barrel projects, while our respresentatives reject anything resembling fiscal discipline.

While both conservatives and liberals denounce the ballooning federal deficit and speak out against pork-filled legislation, their actions speak much louder than their words. To force our Congressmen to turn away from fiscally irresponsible practices, we must do two things. First, we must vote for change. Only a rough election or the loss of one will put politicians in their place. Their responsibility lies with the people, not lobbyists. Second, we must promote a society of personal responsibility and remove the lazy, “blame someone else first” mentality in America.

In today’s trying times, we must work to give politicians a reality check, while changing the mindsets of millions of Americans back toward classic American values like individual responsibility and work ethic.