Those of us who have spent our political careers trying to keep taxes low and rein in government overspending are often called “heartless” by the opposition. I remember a time in the California Assembly when a Democratic colleague went to the floor and accused me of killing children, an accusation which she was forced to retract. Another time on that same floor, a different Democrat inquired how blood ran through my body since I clearly had no heart to pump it.

It is unfortunate that many in society seem to find fiscal responsibility and caring for the needy to be mutually exclusive objectives. It is so unfortunate because it is not true. In fact, I firmly believe that one is necessary to do the other.

As regular readers of this missive know, I believe that it is our moral imperative to care for those in need around us. But, where I differ from some of our more liberal friends is on the means to accomplish that goal. President Lyndon Johnson declared “war on poverty” back in the 60s. Tons of new programs were set up and tens of trillions of dollars have been spent on this “war” in the intervening 40+ years. And,… Read More

Sing again: The last laptop report, entitled “Song of the Shopkeeper”, engendered more positive responses than anything I have written in a couple of years. It wound up being published as a front section editorial in The Washington Times, and received some radio coverage as well. It seems that almost everyone has a “shopkeeper” in their family’s past or present or knows of one. I thank you all for your comments and stories. I am honored to give voice to all you shopkeepers out there. One regular reader of these missives suggested a quote that I should have put in the original tome. Napoleon Bonaparte is said to have once derisively described England as, “a nation of shopkeepers”. It was meant as an insult. I wonder if Napoleon remembered these words when his army was later defeated by those very same “shopkeepers” at the Battle of Waterloo?

The Numbers are In: The federal deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2012 was $1.298 trillion. That is the second highest deficit ever. Here is a chart of the deficits for the last 5 years, in billions of dollars:… Read More

During the August recess, the captivating Mrs. Campbell and I always go to Carmel for the annual car show. Early one morning up there, I watched several shopkeepers sweeping the sidewalk in front of their stores. I got to thinking that shopkeepers must have been doing this for centuries, if not millennia. Several weeks later, I was down in Fredericksburg, Virginia and watched another shopkeeper carefully rearranging a display in the window. It struck me that these acts represented pride in one’s work and one’s place of work. No work rules made them do it. They just did it because those shops were theirs and they take pride in what is theirs. And, I thought, it has ever been thus.

When Mr. Obama talks about the economy and jobs, he invariably mentions teachers and firefighters. Fine. Those are noble professions. But, I can’t help but think that he does so because teachers and firefighters almost always are employees of some government entity and are almost always compelled by law to join a union as a condition of having the job. And, they pay forced union dues, some of which will be involuntarily sent to the campaign… Read More

We all are familiar with the rest of the variations on this phrase describing the dedication of the US Postal Service (USPS) in delivering the mail. Well, snow and rain may not be keeping the Post Office from delivering the mail, but financial problems within the USPS may soon halt delivery.

This has not gotten much publicity, but the USPS is in real trouble. The USPS is an independent, but wholly-owned entity of the federal government. It is designed to be self-supporting such that the rates it charges will cover the costs of delivering the mail. This worked for a long time. Obviously, for over 200 years. But, not so now. After earning modest profits from 2004-2006, the agency started hemorrhaging money in 2007. Between 2007 and 2010, it has lost over $20 billion. These losses are now accelerating in 2011 with a loss, in the first 3 quarters of this year, amounting to $5.7 billion. The USPS has already borrowed the maximum $15 billion it is allowed to borrow under the law and has already deferred another $4 billion in payments to its employee retirement fund to cover these losses. The Continuing Resolution adopted by the House last week… Read More

The President’s latest proposal to make “the rich pay their fair share” is just another awful idea in a series of awful ideas from this Administration. First of all, it again defines a taxpayer making $200,000 as “rich”. I know a number of such people and I suspect you do too. They live comfortable lives, but I don’t think they deserve the suddenly pejorative term “rich”, particularly if they come to that income by way of 2 working spouses and some investment income because they have saved money over time.

But, the new wrinkle here is the so-called “Millionaires” tax on incomes over $1 million. Obama’s rhetoric explains that he will only require that these incomes pay the same tax rate as “middle class families”. Well, obviously, the tax rate on these incomes is already much higher than for lower tax brackets. Most deductions for higher income people have already been largely eliminated through the alternative minimum tax and other tax laws over the last 20 years. There are really only 2 ways to get the tax rate on your $1 million income down. The first is if a bunch of that income is derived… Read More

As regular readers of this missive know, I am a lifelong Republican. Accordingly, I have never been to a Democrat campaign rally. That is to say at least until last week. Last Thursday, I attended one…..on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. President Obama made a special request to speak to a Joint Session of Congress and I assumed it would be a major policy address. Far from it. It was a campaign speech. There was scarcely little serious policy content present. The first indicator of this was when Obama asked us to “pass this right away”, a line which appears on the first page of an 8 page speech, before saying what was in his plan. That’s like demanding that someone buy something inside a box without telling them what is in the box. Another indicator of lack of substance was his repeated assertions that the $450 billion one-year cost of the bill would be “paid for”. He also made this assertion on the first page of his address. Three pages later he says, “It will be paid for. And here’s how: The agreement we passed in July will cut government spending by about $1 trillion over the next 10 years.… Read More

Any of you of my generation or older remembers where you were and what you were doing when you heard that President Kennedy had been shot. I think all of us, including two younger generations now, will always remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard about the attacks on 9/11/01. I was not yet in Congress, but was in my first year as a freshman Assemblyman in the California Legislature. I was at my home in Sacramento that morning reading the paper and quietly doing e-mails and preparing to write one of these missives, which I had already been regularly writing for a year to that point. My then Chief-of Staff called me at home to ask if I was watching the news. “No”, I replied. He said, “A plane crashed into the world Trade Center in New York”. “You mean like a Cessna or something?” I asked. “No”, he responded, “a big plane. You should turn on the TV”. I did. The State Capitol was closed that day as they assessed attack risks there. My house was under the flight pattern for Sacramento Airport and it was eerily quiet as all planes stopped flying for several days. When we went into the State Capitol the next day, I, along with a Democratic… Read More

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of its blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of its miseries.” – Sir Winston Churchill

Socialism Has Failed………Again: The last month has not been a good one for the now highly interconnected world economy. Certainly, we have many problems in the US, with crushing debts and deficits and no job growth or really any growth in the economy at all. Expectations that the future looks bleak add to a lack of investment and risk-taking as more and more people stick their financial heads in the sand. But, it’s even worse in Europe and other places around the world. The huge fiscal problems in countries like Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain may result in debt defaults and are affecting not just their growth, but ours as well.

If you look at the problems in this country and those in Europe, you find that they are really just differing degrees of the same problem. Our governments (federal, state and local) in the US have spent too much money and borrowed too much money and now don’t have enough… Read More