STOP THE ENERGY TAX
Last week three House members (two Democrats and one Republican) launched yet another congressional effort to block the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The members include Collin Peterson (D-MN), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee; Ike Skelton (D-MO), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee; and Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO). Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) has a similar bill that would block EPA from regulating GHGs unless it received direct permission from Congress.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski's resolution of disapproval of the EPA's authority to regulate GHGs is tentatively scheduled to be voted upon in March. Although the measure would not in itself block the EPA from regulating CO2, if passed it would launch a series of floor debates in the Senate with no time limit... more »
American Solutions has been working the last several months with the help of the Freedom of Information Act (more background about those efforts here) to get to the bottom of "Drillgate," the continuing saga of trying to find out from the Department of the Interior (DOI) what were the results of the six month long public comment period on the five year plan for new offshore oil and gas development.
Finally, as reported today in the Wall Street Journal, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the DOI delivered some indirect confirmation in its response to our FOIA request that pro-drilling comments surpassed anti-drilling comments by a 2-1 margin.
Notwithstanding this new information, it's now over four months after the close of the comment period (in which 530,000 comments were received) and still no official public announcement by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar about the final results, who had said in April 2009 that President Obama directed him in respect of the comment period to "to make sure that we have an open and transparent government" and make sure that DOI was "maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do" because "these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors."
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UPDATE 2/5: Here are some quick links to recap last night's event in Irvine, CA which had over 1,200 people.
OC Register editorial: Newt on jobs
OC Register on our small business proposals
Newt on Hannity live from the jobs summit
A special thanks to Chip Hanlon of www.RedCounty.com for live blogging last night. See below for his blog. --Dan Kotman
Hello, everyone... I'm Chip Hanlon, CEO of www.RedCounty.com. The event with Newt will begin in a few moments...
6:33pm: Anaheim Mayor, Curt Pringle, takes the stage to intro Newt. In a state with the craziest of elected officials (Cirque du Sacramento), Pringle, the former Speaker of the State Assembly, is a real star-- a rare repository of common sense and conservatism.
more »A post yesterday at Think Progress, a blog run by the Center for American Progress (CAP), criticized Newt Gingrich and his Jobs First plan to start creating new jobs. Their criticism: the plan calls for tax cuts rather than tax increases. That's right, over at the Center for American Progress, closely aligned with President Obama and the Democrat Party, they think the way to create jobs is to raise taxes on savings and investment ("the rich"), and to maintain the second highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world on American businesses.
They also think that President Obama should drop his campaign pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 per year, in order to raise the revenues they say are necessary to balance the budget, after the Big Government spending spree adopted by President Obama and Congressional Democrats. They go on to criticize Newt Gingrich as "a deficit peacock who prefers scoring political points to solving problems."
But unlike anyone at the Center for American Progress, Newt Gingrich actually led a successful effort to balance the federal budget, when he served as Speaker of the House.
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On February 1, 2010, the President submitted his budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which includes trillions of dollars in new taxes on Americans and businesses alike, as well as $10 trillion in spending, all over the next decade. For 2010 alone, the deficit will reach nearly $1.6 trillion.
The following are a sampling of steps the Obama administration should consider if it wants to take far more aggressive actions to reduce spending and lower the deficit:
1. Seek Impoundment Power from the Congress. Impoundment is the ability of the President to refuse to or delay spending money appropriated by Congress. This power was actually considered inherent to the office until the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974, which stripped much of that power away and divided impoundment into deferrals and rescissions (defined below).
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Good news from America's manufacturing firms reported this week by the Institute for Supply Management index. Reaching its highest level since 2004, the index rose to 58.4% in January from 54.9% in December. What does this mean? The index is a bellwether for economic activity in the manufacturing sector; it tracks production, employment, prices-paid, inventories and new export orders.
Market Watch breaks the index down:
