Government Shutdown Day 6: Today is the Lord’s Day in my Christian faith. That calls for a little more introspection and a little less fact telling.

In the last week, I and my Republican House colleagues have been called “terrorists with bombs strapped to our chests” by President Obama’s press secretary. Harry Reid said we are “anarchists”. A New York Times reporter said we were just like the terrorist group, Hezbollah. Congressman George Miller, Democrat of California, called us “jihadists” on the floor of the House.

These are not terms that should be thrown around lightly. They are the modern equivalent of calling someone Hitler or a Nazi Storm Trooper. Real terrorists, jihadists and suicide bombers are out there right now doing terrible things that bear no equivalency to the desire to repeal ObamaCare.

A Republican colleague of mine, from a swing district, had to pull his children out of a public elementary school last week because they were being threatened…….by their teachers!!! His wife called him crying at the terrible things the teachers said about… Read More

Government Shutdown Day 5: More factoids for your edification:

The House just passed and sent the 13th bill to the Senate over the last 10 days to fully or partially re-open the government. The president and Harry Reid have said that they will not “pick winners and losers” by passing any of these bills that only fund parts of the government and not all. But, like much of what they say, that’s not true. Last Monday, the Senate passed and the president signed a House bill that ensured that all uniformed military personnel and civilian support personnel were not furloughed. This morning, we just passed a bill that assures furloughed workers that they will be paid in full whenever the shutdown is over. The president said he will sign it. So why, Mr. President and Mr. Reid, have you chosen to sign bills for the military and largely-unionized federal employees’ pay, but not for children’s cancer research, veteran’s benefits or national parks? A common response to these writings from the left is that ObamaCare is the law of the land, upheld by the Supreme Court and therefore we must follow it and implement it. The … Read More

Government Shutdown Day 4: This morning, with no let-up in sight on the part of the House, Senate or President Obama, here are some new factoids about the matters at hand…with only a little commentary added (-:

The House has now passed and sent 9 bills to the Senate that would either completely or partially re-open the government. Harry Reid has refused to let the Senate vote on a single one of them. Harry Reid has sent the House one single proposal in all that time. 57 House Democrats have joined every House Republican in voting for all or some of those 9 bills. That’s over one-quarter of all the House Democrats that have supported all or at least one of the Republican proposed solutions. Similar support from Senate Democrats would guarantee passage in the Senate. But, votes have not been allowed in the Senate on these bills. Speaking of Democratic support for Republican solutions, click HERE to view a chart that tracks party defections vote-by-vote on each funding bill before the … Read More

Government Shutdown – Day 2: Last night, we voted on three bills on the floor of the House. Each allowed one aspect of the shut down government to reopen until December 15th. The first one allowed the processing of veterans’ health claims. The money for these claims is entitlement spending and is not affected by the shutdown. But, the processing and paying of these claims stopped because of the shutdown and this bill fixed that. The second bill allowed locally derived revenues in the city of Washington, DC (revenue from things like parking meters and local taxes), which have nothing to do with the federal government, to be distributed to the city so it can continue normal operations with normal revenue. By the way, this is a quirk in the law specific only to the “federal city”. Thirdly, it would fund the U.S. Park Service in order to reopen the national parks.

All 3 of these bills were brought up under an expedited process in the House called “suspension of the rules”. This process enables quick action, but it requires a 2/3rds vote of the House to pass a bill. That means it is within the power of the minority party to… Read More

“Well, I won’t back down. No, I won’t back down. You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down.” – Tom Petty

“I have always figured that half a loaf is better than none, and I know that in the democratic process you’re not always going to get everything you want.” – President Ronald Reagan, February 9, 1983.

Government Shutdown – Day 1: Back in March of 2010, I wrote a daily “Laptop Report” during the weeks leading up to the passage of ObamaCare through the House by the slimmest of margins. I recounted all of our attempts to convince enough Democrats of the folly of this miserable law. Not a single Republican voted for it and a number of Democrats opposed it – but, not enough.

Today, I will again begin a daily “Laptop Report” series for the length of this government shutdown. I have no idea how long this will last. No one does. But, I will give you a few of my thoughts and update you as this process moves along.

The two quotes at… Read More