Tuesday, November 3, 2015

FREEDOMWORKS 11/03/2015

1. Tell Congress: Support Disapproval Resolutions to Halt Devastating EPA Regulations - by Adam Brandon
 
As one of our more than 6.9 million FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your congressman and senators today and ask them to support the resolutions disapproving of the EPA's new power plant regulations, H.J.Res. 71 & 72, and S.J.Res. 23 & 24, and to co-sponsor the resolutions if they have not already done so.

The EPA rules in question would impose draconian changes on the U.S. energy sector. In addition to enforcing regulatory cap-and-trade requirements and renewable energy mandates on existing power plants, these rules would also set unreasonable CO2 standards for new coal-fired power plants; standards which even existing plants wouldn't be able to comply with. As a result, these regulations would essentially act as a ban on the construction of new coal-fired plants, because there would be no commercial or economic viability in building them. Read more here... 


House/Transportation: The House will spend the greater portion of this week considering H.R. 22, which will be the legislative vehicle for long-term funding of federal transportation projects. This bill funds highway projects in the states for six years, at a cost of $325 billion. Most importantly, this bill does not fix the structural problems with the current federal Highway Trust Fund, meaning that the fund will continue to require periodic bailouts. The offsets to the new spending in the bill are also very questionable.

A more rational way of dealing with highway funding would be the Transportation Empowerment Act, introduced by Rep. Ron DeSantis in the House as H.R. 2716 (also in the Senate by Mike Lee, S. 1541). The TEA act would devolve transportation funding back to the states of several years, leaving states to decide how best to fund their highway infrastructure without a federal bureaucracy taking their own slice of the pie.

In any case, the House will vote on many amendments to the transportation deal on Tuesday and Wednesday, so stay tuned for possible key votes regarding the amendments. Read more here...


3. Tax Reform on the Comeback - by FreedomWorks Senior Economic Contributor Stephen Moore via the Washington Times

The Budget Control Act of 2011 was the one real victory for fiscal conservatives since President Obama has been in office. Modest though they were, the BCA's across-the board cuts at least slowed down the government's ever-increasing spending.

This bill increases spending over the next two fiscal years by $80 billion in on-budget spending, along with an additional $16 billion in new off-budget wartime military spending. The bill's supporters claim that the spending is fully offset by cuts and reforms elsewhere, but just like the Ryan-Murray deal of 2013, the new spending happens now while the cuts take place much later. Read more here...


Much of the recent news covering the failures of ObamaCare have focused on the collapse of the nonprofit cooperatives authorized by the law. Just last week, for example, Utah's cooperative became the tenth to fail. Billions of taxpayer dollars were spent to get these insurance cooperatives off the ground, a compromise for Democrats who wanted a single-payer option, and they have proven to be unsustainable. But another failure of the law is rising insurance premiums on the individual health insurance market.

In June 2007, during in his first campaign for the White House, Senator Barack Obama, promised that insurance premiums would fall by $2,500. Promise broken. Premium hikes on the individual market have been well documented since before the first ObamaCare open enrollment period began in 2013. Read more here...


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Following President Barack Obama's approval of a two-year budget deal that blows through the spending caps he previously supported, FreedomWorks commented:

"This White House has proven, once again, that its promises are meaningless. More than four years ago, President Obama signed the Budget Control Act into law and pledged to veto any attempt to undermine the spending caps. In fact, the spending caps were proposed by his advisers."

"Congressional Republicans also deserve criticism for their complete surrender on the Budget Control Act. Republican leaders like to pat themselves on the back for restraining spending under this White House, but the days of $1 trillion deficits are not behind us, as entitlement programs and debt service begin to consume greater shares of the federal budget." Read more here...

Adam Brandon
President & CEO, FreedomWorks

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