Congressman Roy Blunt's blog
Posted at 12:44pm on Apr. 9, 2008 On Housing: First, Do No Harm
By Congressman Roy Blunt
The code of conduct and ethics used by medical doctors today is based on the Hippocratic Oath written by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, who is known as the father of medicine. Members of Congress take an oath when they are elected, too. Unfortunately, the one we take leaves out one of the major tenets of the Hippocrates’s – “first, do no harm.”
But despite not being sworn to it such as a doctor might, the instruction of “do no harm” is one we would all do well to remember when dealing with our country’s current economic situation. The Senate is working on a bill to address the instability in the housing market and several members of the House have ideas as well. However, some of these proposals being floated around the hallowed halls of the Capitol flagrantly violate the exhortations of Hippocrates. And the Democratic majority has several ideas that I believe could actually do serious harm to our economic future.
Republicans believe the best way forward is to reward those who have acted responsibly, and take action to further promote the American Dream of reliable home ownership. The Republican leadership met with the Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke prior to his testimony before Congress last week. During our meeting and his testimony, he repeatedly stressed that raising taxes would only exacerbate the problems our economy is already facing.
Democrats apparently believe that the 94 percent of Americans tightening their belts to pay their mortgages should be on the hook for their neighbor’s house note, even though he may have lied about his income to secure the note – and even if he may have lived well beyond his means.
Read on . . .
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Posted at 3:24pm on Dec. 7, 2007 Democrats’ Flawed Policies Threaten America’s Economic Future
By Congressman Roy Blunt
If history has shown us one thing, it’s that an ever-expanding federal government financed by an ever-increasing tax agenda is absolutely the wrong way to grow our economy and create new jobs. But now almost a year into this new majority, we’ve seen time and again that Democrats are willing to impose that reckless agenda on the taxpaying public at the risk of surrendering tens of millions of good-paying American jobs.
This week, House Republicans unveiled a report (Death by a Thousand Cuts: Democrats’ War on American Jobs) that demonstrates the real cost of these misguided policies – costs that represent a real threat to hard-working families. According to this analysis, this year alone, this Congress has passed $203.9 billion in tax increases that could threaten 16 million American jobs.
Read on . . .
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Posted at 11:31am on Nov. 16, 2007 Judgment Day
By Congressman Roy Blunt
Democrats’ continued delay on AMT will cost millions of Americans billions of dollars. Starting right now.
If there’s wisdom in the old saying “neither a borrower nor a lender be,” at least half of it appears to have been lost on Democrats in this Congress.
Yesterday, by “doing something,” they hurried through a sub-prime mortgage bill that will make it tougher for millions of American to secure a home loan. And today, by doing nothing, they’ve effectively converted another 50 million Americans into money lenders. The only problem? Their sole client will be the federal government, and the highest interest rate they can expect to receive on their money is zero. Oh, and they have no choice in the matter.
Much has been made about how the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) is set to ensnare six-times as many taxpayers this year as were forced to pay it in 2006. And for good reason. After all, the tax was conceived by Democrats in the 1960s as a way to make sure a couple wealthy families paid their fair share. That the tax’s original architects chose not to account for inflation and wage growth in creating the formula wasn’t seen as a big deal then. Nearly 40 years later, a tax originally designed to target 155 households is set to swallow up 25 million Americans.
Read on...
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Posted at 5:30pm on Oct. 17, 2007 Stalking the Un-Fairness Doctrine
By Congressman Roy Blunt
Earlier today, I had the pleasure of standing alongside a group of colleagues with whom I’ve worked plenty in the past, and for whom I have the deepest respect – not only because of their dedication to principle, but for their deep respect for diverse viewpoints and a full, robust debate.
And so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the issue bringing us together was the so-called Fairness Doctrine – a 1970s-era government mandate that achieved precisely the opposite effect of what its authors intended it to do. Instead of greater variety of opinion on the airwaves, we got less. Instead of more voices on the radio, we got fewer. And instead of richer, more genuine debate, we got a stale recitation of talking points – when, that is, stations could even afford to stay on the air long enough to deliver them.
Read on...
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Posted at 7:23pm on Oct. 3, 2007 Feigned Democrat Outrage
By Congressman Roy Blunt
Two weeks after the Senate overwhelmingly condemned Moveon.org’s attack against General Petraeus without the majority leader’s support, Sen. Reid has suddenly found his voice. His feigned outrage at Rush Limbaugh seems remarkably misplaced at best, and part of a larger, more cynical attempt to pander to his party’s radical and open-handed financial supporters at worst. It’s a stratagem that’s especially unfortunate considering that “phony soldiers” actually do exist – men and women of no conscience and no respect who perpetrate the most heinous lies imaginable, just to provide themselves a platform to make a political statement about Iraq.
This could’ve been an opportunity for Democrats to demonstrate real leadership by standing shoulder to shoulder with those of us who support our men and women in uniform, and condemn the reprehensible actions of people like Jesse MacBeth. Rush Limbaugh is clearly one of these men. His support for our troops is incontrovertible; his respect for the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way for this country a core element of his personality. Any reasonably objective analysis of the audio tape from his program last week would’ve made that point abundantly clear. But if this reaction from Democrats is any indication, it doesn’t appear that any of them actually listened.
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Posted at 5:40pm on Sep. 6, 2007 Democrats Can’t Shake Those Lazy Days of Summer
By Congressman Roy Blunt
With the last hours of Labor Day – long considered the unofficial end of summer – having come and gone, one would have expected House Democrats to come back to work with a renewed commitment to finding real solutions to real problems facing real Americans. Unfortunately, three full days into this fall session, this Congress seems to be suffering from a legislative paralysis that plagued the majority since they arrived.
Read on ...
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Posted at 5:23pm on Jun. 29, 2007 Democrats’ Double Speak on Fairness Doctrine
By Congressman Roy Blunt
A generation ago President Reagan derailed an attempt by Congress – controlled by Democrats at the time – to revive the so-called “fairness doctrine,” recognizing rightly that attaching arbitrary limits to free speech in the hope of silencing one particular point of view would, before long, end up silencing them all.
Yesterday on the House floor, Mike Pence of Indiana offered an amendment to make sure not a single penny of taxpayer money would be spent to enforce that policy should the current crop of Democrats seek to bring it back. I was proud to speak out in support of it on the House floor, and happy that more than 300 of my colleagues joined me later that night to ensure the Pence amendment was made part of the underlying bill.
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Posted at 3:05pm on Apr. 25, 2007 Speaker does a disservice to troops by skipping out on Petraeus briefing
By Congressman Roy Blunt
Later this afternoon, members of Congress will gather in a House committee room to receive an update on our progress in Iraq. But the classified briefing won’t be conducted by committee staff, counsel, or outside experts – it’ll be run by two four-star generals who also happen to be the commander of our Multinational Forces in Iraq and the highest-ranking military officer in our country.
Trust me: It’s not every day that sees this level of expertise and operational knowledge assembled in the same room at the same time for the same purpose. And best I can tell, it’s not as if General David Petraeus and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace have nothing better to do today.
Read on...
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Posted at 11:11am on Mar. 15, 2007 Democrats’ “omni-mental” heavy on spending, even heavier on our troops
By Congressman Roy Blunt
The spinach field, that is. And the peanut plot too.
House Republicans asked Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha to craft and deliver a clean bill of resources to support and secure our troops in harm’s way. Instead, after weeks of public recriminations and a few heated hours of private horse-trading, they came up with a package that could have just as easily been written by Popeye and Jimmy Carter as the speaker of the House and the chairman of the Defense appropriations panel.
But to be fair, it appears that Democrats had more on their minds in writing this bill than legumes and roughage. Also included in the “omni-mental,” as I’ve come to call it, are $5 million for fish importers around the Great Lakes, a minimum wage mandate on all U.S. territories except the one that does business with a major firm in San Francisco, and a full $50 million to remove asbestos paneling in the Capitol.
Read on . . .
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Posted at 7:59am on Mar. 1, 2007 Democrats’ Big Labor ‘Calculation’
By Congressman Roy Blunt
Students in math are often taught from an early age that the best way to solve the most complicated problems they encounter is to “work backwards,” essentially identifying the desired result and then manipulating the inputs along the way so that everything matches up nicely.
As a former teacher, I can attest that such a strategy works well in the realm of mathematics. But when it comes to the business of policy-making, more often than not it leads to a product that ignores basic principles of democracy and common sense so that parochial political interests can be served.
Case in point, the euphemistically named “Employee Free Choice Act,” a bill that seeks to abolish – not defend – a fundamental prerequisite of democratic society: free and fair elections.
Read on...
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Posted at 3:21pm on Feb. 13, 2007 We are in a War Against a Hostile and Ferocious Enemy that will Stop at Nothing
By Congressman Roy Blunt
Author's Note: This is a speech I gave today on the House floor during the opening minutes of debate on the Democrats’ non-binding resolution on Iraq. You can also watch the video at my youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=RepRoyBlunt
Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to this resolution. General Petraeus said a resolution like this would discourage the troops, and the Secretary of Defense said a resolution like this would embolden the enemy. This Congress should be doing neither of these things.
What this resolution will not do is take a position on what we should do as we face the challenge of our generation.
Read on below the fold.
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Posted at 10:00am on Feb. 6, 2007 Democrat Budget: Hold on to your wallet
By Congressman Roy Blunt
The president’s budget submission makes clear that we can balance the budget in five years without sticking the long arm of the federal government into your wallet by raising taxes or allowing the tax relief that has fueled our economic growth to expire. The president understands, as do House Republicans, that tax increases on individuals or businesses would slow the economy, reduce take-home pay and job creation, and limit revenues to the federal government.
Over the last several years, we have made tremendous progress reducing the deficit. The president’s budget submission is a good starting point, but we can and should do more. By continuing to hold the line on spending, and keeping pro-growth tax initiatives in place, we can surely balance the budget even sooner.
Read on . . .
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