Interview With Melody Scalley, Host of “Politics on the Edge,” 103.3 WESR FM, Over Her Support for Scott Rigell for Congress

Dustin Siggins: You’re a talk show host- your reputation is important. Why pick this guy?

Melody Scalley: I ran for the House of Delegates last year in the 100th District of Virginia, and I got to know all six of the candidates who were running for the Republican nomination for Congress in 2010. Scott Rigell is a business leader (he was just inducted in the Hampton Roades Hall of Fame for his business leadership), he’s a graduate of Regent University, he and his wife home-schooled all four of their kids and he served in the Marines (as does his son- and his father is an Iwo Jima veteran).

DS: What are the top two issues he addresses?

MS: He’s actually created jobs- his business is Freedom Automotives, and he’s hired more people than the Blue Dog/Yellow Dog/Lap Dog incumbent, Glenn Nye (VA-O2). Jobs and the killing by government of the free market and jobs, as well as the debt that is putting us, our children and grand-children in debt.

DS: Where does he stand on Iraq and Afghanistan?

MS: He believes we need a strong national defense, and if we are going to send our boys into harm’s way, we should declare war. [DS: Ms. Scalley did not wish to convey Mr. Rigell's convictions on Iraq and Afghanistan, since she does not speak for the campaign.]

DS: What does he think of Fed’s actions thus far in the recession?

MS: He has said we should audit the Fed, and signed the Tea Party Agreement for auditing the Fed.

Profiles in Courage in Georgia

Originally published at The Daily Caller.

I was recently speaking with one of my teachers from high school, reflecting on her summer reading assignment, JFK’s Profiles in Courage.  If you have never read the book, it can be summarized quite simply in that it follows the actions of statesmen throughout the history of our country which took serious resolve and unwavering confidence.  That’s not to say that these individuals who were profiled did not face fear in their hearts, fear for their jobs, and possibly fear for their lives.  Fear is an emotion and it is understandable to have felt such emotion being placed in the situations that these men were embroiled.

Emotions however are not actions, and actions are not words.  Words are funny things.  They form sentences and go on to form speeches.  Speeches stir emotions and cause people to talk about issues.  Sometimes this causes people to become involved and take action, which is good.  However the difference between words and actions is that a word may or may not cause an action, while an action will always be the process of doing.  And the men of Kennedy’s most renowned work were doers.

In February of this year, my Congressman, John Linder, announced his retirement from public office.  I’ve always liked Mr. Linder even though I was turned down for a position at his state office when I was 20 and looking for work while in college.  It has always given me a sense of pride for some reason that my congressman introduced the Fair Tax legislation, even though I obviously had nothing to do with it.  So now Linder will take his leave, and Georgia’s 7^th District looks for new leadership.  The heart of the 7^th is Gwinnett County, a suburb of Atlanta, home of the Tripple-A Gwinnett Braves and 800,000 of your closest friends (except during rush hour).  The district also contains other metro counties including Forsyth, Barrow, Newton, and Walton.

The district will be won by a Republican.  That’s not a prediction, it is a statement.

So the question many are asking in the 7^th at this moment is, “Who can be as good as Linder?”  That’s the wrong question.  Let’s ask who can be better than Linder.  And that’s not a knock on Linder.  That’s simply American to raise the bar and our expectations of our leaders.  And to Linder’s credit, he set the bar rather high.

In the past months we’ve seen a lot of candidates in the 7^th.  Some have come late and some have gone early.  Some even left the race to return to houses of waffles only to wind back up in state politics.  There are many candidates for the seventh.  Most of them have words.  Some of them have even had years of career political words.

There is one candidate, however, who is a candidate of action and most certainly can raise the bar.

Some of you will recognize the name Jody Hice from The Jody Hice Show, a nationally syndicated talk show featured on over 400 stations across the country.  Others of you will recognize the name from his courageous battle with the American Civil Liberties Union.  Several years ago, the ACLU journeyed to Georgia to force the Ten Commandments out of the Barrow County courthouse. Jody formed an organization which raised money to fund the county’s defense, standing toe to toe against one of the most anti-American institutions of the last hundred years.

Ultimately, this fight against the ACLU later led to legislation that was passed in Georgia allowing the display of the Ten Commandments in front of government buildings as long as it was displayed in historical context along with the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

In the Fall of 2008, Dr. Hice stood with 33 other pastors across the country to challenge an IRS code that strips pastors of their right to freedom of speech by way of threatening the removal of the tax-exemption status of the churches they pastor.  Get this: He mailed a copy of his speech to the IRS daring them to come after him.  They didn’t.  Probably a good decision on their part.

Earlier this year in January, Hice decided to step down from the pulpit.  He felt strongly that his current call was in defense of his nation and he had determined that he would make a bigger push with his radio show.  Now before dollars start clouding your vision, understand that Hice is not paid to run his radio program.  He stepped down from a paying gig in order to do a non-paying gig full time having no idea how he would support his family all for the sake of restoring the Republic.  Take a second with that in this economy.  Don’t brush over that fact.

In March of this year Hice was approached and recruited to run for Congress and was made aware he could retain his radio show while representing the people of Georgia.  So Hice accepted being tapped to run.

In case you didn’t catch that, I’ll write it again. The Jody Hice Show will be retained in some fashion even if Dr. Hice is elected to Congress.

Hice will be the only member in Congress who can walk out the door of the assembly chamber and walk into a radio station and sit there and tell you exactly what is going on in your government.  We aren’t talking about members of Congress getting 30 seconds here and there on your favorite news network.  We are talking about a radio show of several hours for a Representative to sit down and hash out with the public what is actually happening in the chamber.

That’s political Direct Media at its finest.

In the coming weeks, individuals will begin to pull levers here in Georgia during early voting leading up to the 20^th of July.  The vote will be of vital importance for the second most populated district in Georgia.

I have personally endorsed Dr. Jody Hice.  And in full transparency so has ConservativeCongress.com, a conservative candidate evaluation platform of which I am a co-founder.  But that group has also endorsed other candidates in the district who met organizational criteria as well.  I was not paid to write this, I don’t work for Hice, and I have not donated to any primary campaign.  Rules of which all members of ConservativeCongress.com agreed to abide by at the projects onset.

The simple truth is that I am of the conviction that actions speak louder than words.  And the profiles in courage of Dr. Jody Hice putting his feet to the fire speaks for itself as the representative leadership that we need in Washington, D.C.

thelobbyist Interviews Congressman Ed Royce

thelobbyists’ Dustin Siggins had the pleasure to interview Congressman Ed Royce this past week.  You can find the transcript of the interview below and the audio file (Click to stream or Right-Click, Save as.. to download the .mp3) here: Siggins-Royce Interview.

Representative Ed Royce (R-CA) is a nine-term Congressman who serves on the House Foreign Affairs and Financial Services Committees. For more than a decade Royce has called for a stronger federal regulator to limit Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s excessive risk taking at the expense of taxpayers. In 2003, he offered the first legislation that sought to bring Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank System under a strong federal regulator.

Siggins: So I don’t know if you remember but I asked one or two questions when you spoke at the Heritage Bloggers Briefing?

Royce: I do. I do remember.

Siggins: I asked you about mark-to-market Accounting.

Royce: Yes.

Siggins: So that’s really the basis of some of the questions I wanted to ask you about. Obviously the financial reform is one of the biggest deals going through Congress right now.  And it’s going to have very many, long term consequences if the current bill passes…mostly negative.

You had talked a lot about Freddie and Fannie.  And I know the Gregg bill was shot down in the Senate.  And I read an opinion online that said it was a bill that people on the right and the left agreed would have very negative effects because it wound Freddie and Fannie down too quickly.

So I didn’t know if you might be able to explain what your House Republican view is on winding down Freddie and Fannie in an appropriate way so that it wouldn’t hurt the housing market but would allow better lending standards so that we don’t have a repeat of ’08.

Royce: Well it wasn’t just the lending standards that were the problem.  That was part of the problem.  But just to recap very quickly, the other aspect to the problem was that Fannie and Freddie were pushed off of their primary line of business which was very safe 30-year fixed mortgages into a virtually unknown portion of the market at the time.  And that was subprime and ULTA loans.  It’s important to remember that it was Congress that passed that legislation in 1992. That was the Government Sponsored Enterprise Act which the Democrats passed.  And it was that legislation that put in place the current regulatory structure over the GOC’s, and basically had them going into the business of arbitraging and overleveraging and 100 to 1, and placed on them mandates that eventually led to 50% of their portfolio being subprime and ULTA loans. Those portfolios exceeded $1.6 trillion.

As a consequence Fannie and Freddie took this decisive step into the junk loan market to meet their affordable housing mandates instituted in the early 1990s on them by Congress.  Once the government backed Fannie and Freddie got into the junk loan market it was believed throughout the financial system that there was little risk associated with these types of mortgages. And that false assumption was exactly what Fannie and Freddie and their allies in Congress were hoping for. They were eager to signal to the rest of the financial sector that the junk mortgage loans were actually safe investments.  What we are dealing with now is the aftermath of the meltdown where a trillion dollars in value was lost as a consequence.

So certainly there were other mistakes made along the way.  But the distortions of the mortgage market caused by Fannie and Freddie along with the excessively low interest rates pursued by central banks; the FED and the European central banks, were at the heart of the inflated housing bubble; and the financial collapse that followed.  What we are now trying to do is to slowly, slowly un-wind this catastrophe.  Deleveraging is always very painful and it’s going to take awhile for this to work its way out in the marketplace.  So it is not possible right now to convince investors to go back into the mortgage market.  One of the additional reasons investors are on the sidelines, is because you also have legislation advocated by Chairman Barney Frank to reduce the principle amounts on loans. There is legislation on what is called a mortgage cram down which would allow those that borrow money to simply come back and have part of the principle that they borrowed removed.

And so the very actions Congress is taking right now, or at least actions of the House, this passed in the Senate, have created this apprehension on the part of investors.  And so as a corollary to that, the market is going to be very slow to respond because investors don’t know what additional surprises Congress may have in store for them.  And certainly removing the protection of the sanctity of contract is one thing that is being pursued with gusto.  We find ourselves in a very tough predicament without investment capital coming back in the housing.

Siggins: How would you wind them down though?  Obviously, you have talked about the difficulty in doing so and their involvement in the 2008 crash. Republicans who comment verbally, their rhetoric, and what you said at the Heritage Bloggers Briefing, was that we have to get rid of them.  And I happen to agree with you.

Royce: Long term we have to basically privatize them.  Long term we have to create a situation where they evolve into businesses that don’t operate with the mandates that Congress put on them to put them into arbitrage.  To put them into a situation where they go into arbitrage and over leverage in order to compensate for the risk that they take on because of mandates from Congress.  In other words we need to allow them to be run like a business rather than to be run on the basis of whims of Congressmen who decide that 3% or zero down payment loans would be nice rather than 20%, and mandating that half of their portfolio be in sub-prime and all-day loans. It would be an advantageous step for affordable housing. We cannot have them run as an experiment in government intervention into the economy- where we introduce that sort of moral hazard and systemic risk. Instead, they should be converted into businesses that operate on market principles. The problem is that when Freddie and Fannie were finally taken over by the government, they had more than ten million subprime and other weak loans- either on their books or in the form of mortgage-backed securities that they had guaranteed. So it is going to take a while to handle this situation, and I think the first step is for people to really comprehend how much difficulty we are in right now, as well as the reasons for it- because almost 2/3 of all the bad mortgages in our financial system, many of which are now defaulting at unprecedented rates, were bought by government agencies or required, basically, by government regulation. So this is the crux of the problem.

Siggins: So how long- in a one, two-word answer- how long would this take if we did it efficiently?

Royce: It’s gonna take the return of the private market.

Siggins: Oh. So that could be decades.

Royce: Well, not necessarily. If we take the right steps, a market will return, but at this point it’s gonna require a return of investors into the market. And it’s gonna take careening, or moving away, from the government policies that create the moral hazard to begin with.

Siggins: I think I’ll have about two minutes more to your time. Two final questions. The first one is: you had mentioned, I believe, at the Bloggers Briefing, that the Federal Reserve was really at the crux of the problem.

Royce: Right.

Siggins: Artificially-low interest rates and other issues with it. I happen to agree with you, as well. But, what do you think of the Senate, the very weak audit of the Fed. Do you think Rep. Paul- Rep. Paul wrote an opinion piece on The Daily Caller the other day saying it was basically a worthless audit, because a one-time deal and then forever nothing else happens. What do you think of the audit and, just very briefly, how do you think we should be looking at the Fed?

Royce: Well, in the first place, there is little question that excessively-low interest rates resulted in an excess of credit throughout the economy, and I think- the theory behind allowing the Federal Reserve to manipulate interest rates is that, if used correctly, the central bank can ease ups and downs that are natural in an economy. But unfortunately, because it is politically unpopular to slow what appears to be a strong economy, the Federal Reserve tends to err toward interest rates that are lower than appropriate, and this was one rationale behind the Federal Reserve and other nations’ central banks setting real interest rates at a negative level from 2002 through 2006, so when adjusted for inflation those interest rates are negative. And the effect of these negative interest rates were [sic] devastating; and if we go through this cycle again, it will have similar consequences. Instead of mitigating the ups and downs of the economy, the Fed’s actions often lead to the opposite effect. So what Ron Paul would like to get to, and what I would like to see as well, is an understanding on the part of the Fed governors that, for example, Ben Bernanke’s agitation in 2002 for negative real interest rates- we’d like to see an understanding on their part that that intensified the boom-and-bust cycle, and encouraged excessive risk-taking throughout the economy, and an understanding of what that means in terms of the effect of that balloon on the financial sector and on housing. And we don’t see an admission out of the Fed as to the nature- that would indicate they understand what economists understand. And we don’t see an admission on the part of the Federal Reserve as to this problem. This is why we want to see an auditing of the Fed and a real understanding as to the consequences of these perennial policies that compound the boom-bust…help create a boom-bust cycle in real estate and the marketplace. So this is, and again, there were other mistakes made along the way. I think we need to point that out. There were speculators in the mortgage market, and large banks on Wall Street-

Siggins: Well, plus mark-to-market accounting.

Royce: And mark-to-market accounting. But these were symptoms of a much deeper illness. The distortion of the mortgage market caused by Fannie and Freddie, and the excessively low interest rates pursued by central banks- as I said- were at the heart of the inflated housing bubble, and the financial collapse that followed, and it’s the inability of participants in the Fed for the culpability of the Fed with the low interest rates or in Congress- in terms of the abilities of Members of Congress to admit their mistakes in terms of the 1992 GSE ACT that caused Ron Paul and me great concern.

A great concern over the ability of people in government to learn from mistakes that were so recently made.

Siggins: OK, I guess I have one last question, which is: I’m sure you’re involved with the program coming out of the Whip’s office?  YouCut- where Americans tell Republicans what programs they want to cut out of the federal budget. Steve Benen is a writer for PoliticalAnimal.com, calculates $1.1 Billion a year in cuts (I think it’s closer to three billion, personally) but I don’t know the exact number. But, of the five cuts, they include a half a million here, $600 million there, $2.5 billion- none of it is really getting at the systemic problem of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, perhaps high defense spending (depending on who you talk to). I was wondering, briefly, about what your thoughts were about the YouCut program, and second of all, if you think it will lead to real systemic reform in Congress?

Royce: Well, first, remember that in addition to the unfunded liabilities and Social Security and Medicare, and that will come about as a result of the passage of the Health Care entitlement, you also are facing a situation where we have deficits that will, this year, will total over $1.5 trillion. So in terms of focusing on the ongoing growth of these appropriations, we see these double-digit increases in appropriations bills- that’s where you see the increases in the deficits over recent years. When the Democrats took over Congress the budget deficit was $162 billion, and at the time I and other fiscal hawks were decrying the $162 billion deficit. Today it’s ten times that. And so, the spending bills  coming out of Congress are increasing government agency funding by double-digits and I think that one of the advantages of the YouCut program is getting the American public to better understand that aspect of the problem, which is half of the problem. The current deficits are half of the problem. The other half of the problem, as you correctly point out, is the unsustainability of Medicare and Social Security, long term; because the debt held by the public is going to double over five years, and it’s growing to triple over 10 years, at this rate of growth and the consequences of that are not unlike what we see in Greece today. So at some point we are going to have to come together with a Base Commission type of procedure, or a more recent example would be the Base Closure Commission process. We are going to have to- I would argue- everything would have to be on the table. You would have to get both Democrats and Republicans involved in the process, with an eye toward sustainability, or an eye toward the requirement that we reform these entitlement programs. I would also argue that if Republicans do retake the majority in the House or the Senate, I expect the first order of business to be the repeal of the Health Care entitlement legislation that passed, so at least that portion of the problem would be removed in the future but that still leaves….and at some point we are going to have to have a President elected that would sign it.

Siggins: I was going to say the Senate has too many Democrats to over-turn a Presidential Veto…

Royce: Right, right, so at some point after we pass it initially, and then we are going to have to wait until we have a Republican or a New Democrat (and I don’t see a lot of those around recently), or a New Democrat as president who is going to take a different tact, and move back to the issue of fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets. But, the first half of that is getting the budgets balanced- that is essential. The second half of it is doing something about the long-term legacy costs, or the long-term entitlement costs; we have to do that sooner than later, because as you see in Greece today if you put it off, if you continue to put it off, and continue to build entitlements, it’s…

Siggins: Devastating.

Royce: Yeah, it’s devastating and eventual government expands to a point where, how many people are working a 32 hour work week in Greece and are expecting to retire at age 52? So you set up this expectation for early retirement, for basically part-time work, and you create an entitlement mentality on top of the entitlement itself. So when you go and try to go in, and address the entitlement, the entitlement mentality floods out into the streets of the capital, as you see in Athens, with “No Compromise” as the rallying cry. I think that this tells us why it is so important to address this immediately rather than putting it off.  We are not going to get Speaker Pelosi’s attention on this because she is busy building entitlements. But come the aftermath of November’s election, I think it has to be addressed immediately.

The Rand-Slide… and Other Tuesday Lessons

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) Puts Liberal Reporter In His Place

The Cure for The Common Republican-A Pedagogical Argument Against Healthcare Reform

Republican resistance to healthcare reform (or, more appropriately, a federal takeover of the healthcare industry) has been, and continues to be strategically ambiguous, if not just plain quirky.  Their latest tactic, as reported by Bloomberg, is “telling House Democrats they can’t rely on the Senate to approve the [desired] changes [in the healthcare bill], which congressional leaders are trying to navigate through a process called budget reconciliation.”  By painting their constituents in the senate as untrustworthy, Republicans hope to … convince house democrats to give up healthcare reform altogether?  Maybe?  The problem with such political tactics is a lack of vision; Republican leadership has failed to effectively communicate what should be its central message–that any healthcare reform legislation that expands federal control of the healthcare industry, be it through regulations, subsidies, or social programs, is bad policy and will, inevitably, increase costs and stifle innovation.  It’s a simple, empirically backed argument that speaks truth to the common sense of even the most uneducated american.  Of course, taking such a position to its logical extreme would require opposition to not only healthcare reform, but Medicare as it now stands.  And, like Social Security, many Republicans see Medicare as politically untouchable.  Why?  Who knows.  The last true dismantling of a federal social program, in the form of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, worked wonders.  The same could, and should be done for Medicare.  De-regulation–now that’s a strategy.

The Principled Pragmatist-Palin’s Advice to The Tea Party

In an interview with Fox News, Sarah Palin suggested that the Tea Party “take over the Republican Party … Get them to see the light.”  While such a statement carries a certain air of hypocrisy considering Palin’s endorsement of Senator John Mc’Cain over his far more conservative rivals, its inherent wisdom should not be overlooked.

The two-party division that dominates our political world was born only years after the ratification of The Constitution.  The Federalist Party, led by Alexander Hamilton, propounded a larger Federal Government that took a more expansive role in the lives of its citizens.  Ironically, it was the Democratic Party, led by Thomas Jefferson, that opposed the expansion of the Federal Government, and insisted, rather, that social programs and regulations be left to the control of state governments.  While the modern political parties have swapped ideologies, the classical alignment still exists, though, perhaps, somewhat muddled in the minds of individual americans.  It is that confusion–the ignorance of fundamental principles–that is to blame for today’s bloated expansion of the Federal Government.  Unable to articulate what they believe, modern conservatives, or those who would have allied themselves with the Democrats (or classical liberals) of Jefferson’s day, have, for over eighty years, found themselves voting into office leaders who have actually succeeded in increasing, rather than decreasing the size of the Federal Government.  The claim that there exists little difference between Democrats and Republicans is far more axiomatic than many realize.  The ideology of Jefferson’s Democratic party–the belief that the Federal Government should be limited to the express powers dictated by the Constitution and that social programs and regulations should be left to state governments–has all but disappeared from the political arena.  However, in an age were information is readily accessible, where the average american, by and through the aid of libraries and the internet, can obtain an education far superior to that offered by the university, Jefferson’s voice is heard once more in the mouth of the Tea Party.

As the Tea Party seeks to restore the principles of limited government, it has found its closest allies within the Republican Party.  And while many Republicans still believe in the expansion of the Federal Government, the movement would be wise to stay the course, and focus on reforming the party from within, rather than rejecting it from without.  Of course, when forced to decide between loyalty to party or loyalty to principle, the movement must remain true, even if it requires voting Democrat or Independent over Republican.

Standing For Something-Why Bipartisan Politics Are Bad For America

Bloomberg reports that “President Barack Obama began yesterday’s health-care summit saying he wanted to find bipartisan ways to fix the health-care system.”  But, “By the end, he said he might be left with a partisan path forward.”  In other words, President Obama and the Democratic Party may be ready to concede bipartisan defeat, as increasing pressure from Conservatives forces Republican leaders to, once and for all, declare their ideological allegiance.  It seems that it is no longer enough to simply smile and kiss babies.  The modern politician must believe in something, and vote accordingly.  As Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for Salon explains, “[o]ne of the strangest prongs of conventional Beltway wisdom is the lament that there is not enough bipartisanship.  The opposite is true:  many of the most damaging acts inflicted on the country by Washington are enacted on a fully bipartisan basis.”  Politicians must accept that they will disagree with their colleagues.  Oftentimes, such disagreements will be irreconcilable, as differences in principle are bound to produce differences in opinion.  However, disagreement is not destructive.  Rather, it encourages intellectual discussion and debate, and, by forcing politicians to stand firm in their convictions, provides an opportunity for true leaders to prove themselves worthy of their elected office.

Dividing Lines-The Aftermath of Brown’s Stimulus Vote, Jeb Bush on Charlie Crist’s Socialist Policies

In an article published this morning, The Washington Post details the political backlash against Senator Scott Brown’s (R-MA) decision to vote for increased stimulus spending in the form of the ‘jobs bill’.

A month after being crowned the darling of national conservatives, Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts is being branded “Benedict Brown” for siding with Democrats in favor of a jobs bill endorsed by the Obama administration.

However, according to the Post,

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky wasn’t particularly perturbed about Brown’s vote, saying his election last month has “made a huge, positive difference for us and for the whole legislative agenda.

In other news, Politico reports that Jeb Bush has openly condemned his successor, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and his decision to support last year’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  A bold move, considering that Bush’s own brother was responsible for signing The Economic Stimulus Act of the previous year into law.  “”I know I’m supposed to be politically correct and I said I was neutral and all that,” Bush said, but added of Crist’s move: “I got a problem with that.” While the former governor called Crist “about the nicest guy I’ve ever met in politics,” Bush called Crist’s support for the stimulus bill a critical “mistake.””  Bush’s words provide a superb example of both diplomacy and leadership, and a sharp contrast to McConnell’s slippery appeal to party politics.

While some may question the significance of drawing fine lines in the political sand, it is nevertheless of the utmost importance that we stand firm on those principles necessary to our country’s success and survival.  Any and all votes for federal stimulus and subsidies, the expansion of federal social programs, and increases in federal regulation of private enterprises must be strongly opposed regardless of their source.

However, it is also important that we distinguish between sin and sinner.  Although All proponents of socialist legislation, whether Republican or Democrat–Scott Brown or Barack Obama–inhibit progress through their acts, there is no reason why we must question their intentions.  Nevertheless, playing nice does not require that we cease to play, but rather, that we play with grace and style.  Kindness is not Compromise.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) Holds The Line

The guy just won’t let up. According to The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Coburn has identified at least 640 programs that can be consolidated in order to allow Congress to stay its hand on lifting the debt ceiling. As WSJ puts it:

One message Massachusetts voters sent last week is concern over runaway federal spending. Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is offering Democrats a chance to show they heard that message.

Coburn is doing exactly what every Republican and Democrat should- making sure Congress does not spend beyond its means. That is one of the messages sent by Massachusetts residents last week, and I am grateful to Coburn for holding true to his responsibilities as a United States senator.

Next Page »