Update from DeMint

[NCalif]

Dear Fellow Conservative:

Next week, Republicans in the Senate will meet privately to elect our leaders and to consider changes to our conference rules. I wanted to let you know about two important reforms that will be proposed.

First, I will offer an amendment, with the support of several of my colleagues, to institute a Republican earmark ban in the Senate for the 112th Congress. House Republicans will adopt a similar ban next week under the leadership of Congressman John Boehner, and it's important that everyone in our party unite against wasteful pork-barrel spending.

The Senate earmark ban has been cosponsored by Senators Tom Coburn (OK), John Ensign (NV), Mike Enzi (WY), and John Cornyn (TX) along with Senators-elect Pat Toomey (PA), Marco Rubio (FL), Rand Paul (KY), Mike Lee (UT), Ron Johnson (WI), and Kelly Ayotte (NH).

If adopted, the GOP earmark ban will represent a very important step toward getting our fiscal house in order. While the cost of earmarks is not large compared to the entire budget, they are used to pressure senators into supporting budget-busting spending bills that have buried our nation under a mountain of debt.

As you know, many Republicans are still addicted to earmarks and won't give them up without a fight. I know it's difficult to quit this habit because I used to request earmarks too. But once senators give them up, they're free to fight against excessive spending without fear of retaliation. It's time for Republicans to lead by example on this issue so we can effectively stand together as a party against excessive spending.

Second, Senator John Cornyn and I will offer an amendment to make it the policy of our conference to support a constitutional amendment that forces Congress to balance the budget without raising taxes.

Today, 49 states have balanced budget requirements and families across the nation are forced to make the tough decisions to trim spending to make ends meet. It's time for the federal government to be forced to balance the budget every year.

These two budget reforms -- a ban on earmarks and a balanced budget amendment -- are critical to saving our country from financial collapse. I truly hope Republicans in the Senate will embrace both of these policies and then work toward getting them adopted by the full Senate.

As you may remember, I introduced these two reforms in the Senate this past February and made support for them a determining factor for endorsements through the Senate Conservatives Fund. You will be pleased to know that each of our five victorious candidates are getting right to work to advance these policies now that they've been elected.


Respectfully,
Jim DeMint, United States Senator

 

[NCalif]

Memo from Dick Morris

SMASH THE UNION THUG-OCRACY

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on DickMorris.com on November 8, 2010

One of the first orders of business to come up in the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives will be the demand for bailouts of states where expenditures have been especially profligate - California, New York, Michigan, Illinois, and Connecticut. Throughout 2009 and 2010, these states governments have stayed above water by repeated infusions of federal cash. These one-shot stimulus payments must be repeated each year. They are all non-recurring expenditures requiring separate annual appropriations.

The Republican House must say no and hold the line, stopping this raid on the federal Treasury. The cry in the caucus must ring loud: "No More Bailouts!"

But, as the Republicans demand fiscal discipline and refuse to make the citizens of the other, more responsible states subsidize the wayward finances of California and New York, we need to focus on the union power that has forced states, localities, and school boards to raise taxes, borrow money, and - ultimately - to depend on federal bailouts.

These unions have forced contracts on their states, localities, and school boards which provide for ever higher wages, benefits, and pensions. Even now, teachers are on strike in a suburb of Pittsburgh because they feel a 4.5%annual wage increase is inadequate!

The House must create a federal bankruptcy procedure for states that cannot make ends meet requiring, as happens in corporate bankruptcies, that the state governments abrogate all their union contracts. The new state bankruptcy procedure should offer all states - and through them, their localities, counties, and school boards -- the ability to reorganize their finances free of the demands and constraints of their union agreements.

This measure will return our state and local governments to the sovereignty of the people and take them away from the thug-ocracy of public employee unions.

When states like California and New York come to Washington begging for relief, they will threaten us with the closure of their schools and the release of their prison inmates if we deny them subsidy. Liberals and President Obama will try to portray the battle as school children vs. niggardly Republican legislators.

But the real fight will be between school children and citizens on the one hand and unions on the other. The House must shape the issue so that it exposes the real cause of the state shortfalls: The excessive agreements public employee unions have won over the years.

The unions are about to fall prey to what Margaret Thatcher identified as the terminal drawback of socialism - that eventually one runs out of other people's money!

Such an approach will also have a larger political impact.

Election Day 2010 demonstrated the enormous power of public employee unions and their integral relevance to the Democratic Party. In state after state, the vote totals of Democratic candidates, particularly those running for Senate, exceeded the predictions of all pollsters. This gap between pre-election anticipation and Election Day results had one main cause: the militancy, money, and manpower of public employee unions. It was the combined efforts of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), the NEA (National Education Association), the AFT (American Federation of Teachers), and AFSME (American Federation of State and Municipal Employees) that preserved the Democratic control of the U.S. Senate.

Nate Silver, writing in The New York Times, compared the results of the major public opinion polls for the twenty-one days before the election with the actual results. He found that seven of the eight major polling firms all overestimated the Republican vote, some by as much as an average of four points. Silver's point was to criticize the accuracy of the surveys and, perhaps, to impute a partisan bias to their findings. But it is far more likely that the polls were right and that the election day performance of the Democratic Party's ground game overcame even substantial Republican leads in states like Nevada.

Here are Silver's findings:

Firm Polls Average Error Bias

Rasmussen 105 5.8 R+3.9
CNN/Opinioin Res 17 4.9 R+2.1
Marist 14 4.9 R+4.0
Mason Dixon 20 4.6 D+0.4
Public Policy Polling 45 3.8 R+0.3
You Gov 35 3.5 R+1.1
Survey USA 30 3.5 R+0.8
Quinnipiac 21 3.3 R+0.7

Were all these polls wrong? No way. They were right. But they did not take account of the potency of Democratic unions.

Almost every poll, for example, had Sharron Angle defeating Harry Reid, usually by three or four points. Her six point defeat on Election Day can only be attributed to the union-based Democratic effort.

The fiscal crises facing state and local governments and school boards makes these unions and their political clout vulnerable, potentially at the mercy of a Republican controlled House of Representatives. We may, at long last, have a way to liberate our nation from the domination of those who should be our public servants but instead are frequently our union masters.