The Obama Spoils System

Published: July 1, 2010

Publication: National Review Online

In using government positions to reward loyalty to the Democratic party, the Obama administration broke the law.

What's Past Is Prologue

Published: June 24, 2010

Publication: The Huffington Post

As of late, there has been much speculation about what Congressional oversight would look like under the leadership of a Republican Congress. As the Ranking Republican Member of the House's chief oversight committee, I'm frequently asked what the agenda of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform would be if I were fortunate enough to be its Chairman.

The answer is simple. Work Republicans have already done in the minority already demonstrates that oversight of BOTH the bureaucracy and corporate America can be done simultaneously, vigorously and effectively. I have made no secret of my desire to bolster the efforts of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee by calling for an increase in the number of Committee investigators so that we can aggressively oversee a bureaucracy that has grown in size, scope and responsibility.

Unsurprisingly, partisan Democrats such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) have embarked on what can only be described as a smear campaign, seeking to manipulate the American people into believing some fictitious scenario exists where corporate America gets a free pass for wrongdoing while the Committee besieges the defenseless Obama White House with, as they put it, "subpoenas and an eighty person staff to launch tax payer funded witch hunts against the President."

In a fundraising solicitation sent on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) tried to appeal to supporters by warning of the "endless investigations against President Obama, while continuing to put corporate special interests first." Obviously, Speaker Pelosi believes that a Democratic Congress should give this administration immunity from legitimate questions and appropriate accountability. Her statements are indicative of the desperate state her Majority is in and if the best case she can make is to caution the American people against the dangers of conducting legitimate and vigorous oversight, she is welcome to make that case.

The reality is we have a government that is spending us into oblivion (and has crested few jobs to show for it) and has over-run private enterprise - even going so far as to seize control of some corporations. For the moment, we'll let the Democrats and their operatives explain why they don't see the need for more oversight and accountability from the Federal government.

If it's a debate on oversight they want, I welcome it with open arms. Let them defend why this Administration or any other Administration should not be subject to vigilant oversight. Let the Democrats defend why the bureaucracy they grew should be free from scrutiny.

In the meantime, for a real indication of what the Oversight Committee's agenda would look like in a Republican majority, what's past is prologue.

The last time Republicans had subpoena power was in 2006, where as a subcommittee Chairman I used it to compel the testimony of oil executives and their cozy relationship with the Minerals Management Service (MMS) - the federal entity charged with over-seeing oil companies and their drilling activities. I brought the oil executives before my subcommittee outraged that their pockets were being lined with billions of dollars that rightfully belonged to taxpayers that had been lost due to a failure of management and leadership at MMS. This investigation, however, was never completed. Why? Because upon taking control of the Congress, then-Chairman Henry Waxman, shut the investigation down. Score one for big oil.

In September of 2008, when Congressional Democrats and some Republicans joined the Bush Administration's misadventure into bailing out corporate America, I fought against it and said at the time: "As disturbing as the volatility and turmoil on Wall Street are, the prospect of transferring trillions of dollars of risk and losses to taxpayers is appalling. How can any American look their neighbor in the eye and suggest that they should bear the losses for the mistakes and greed of America's wealthiest financial firms? I am emphatically against it."

When the Committee began investigating AIG's backdoor bailout of its counterparties in March of 2009, I said, "The taxpayers essentially own AIG and deserve answers about how leadership at AIG and in the Federal Government is running their company."

In April of this year, when General Motors launched a series of deceitful ads mis-representing their obligation to the American taxpayers, I said, "[GM's] false statements may expose GM to millions of dollars in damages, further reducing the value of the taxpayer-owned company. The American people, as the majority shareholders of GM, have a right to know the truth behind the cost of the GM bailout and GM's genuine financial condition."

When it became clear that Toyota had put the priority of profit above the safety of America's drivers, I demanded that they be subpoenaed and that their President, Akio Toyoda, appear and testify at a public hearing. On February 18th, I said, "If we are not receiving the cooperation and transparency this Committee and the American people are demanding from Toyota, I would fully support the issuance of a subpoena. Whether it is for a microprocessor engineer or the top executive, we have a duty to determine what Toyota knew, when they knew it and if they met their full obligation of disclosure to U.S. regulators and the American people."

The bottom line is, Congressional oversight of private enterprise will never replace the need for oversight of government, however, when there are legitimate questions and clear cases of wrong-doing by corporations, we should not hesitate to pursue a course of action that brings the truth to light and holds people accountable.

At the same time, the primary purpose of the Oversight & Government Reform Committee is to shed disinfecting sunlight on waste and abuse in government and push for reform so that government better serves main street Americans. Failure to do so can result in some very real, sobering and irreversible consequences. The catastrophe in the Gulf could have been averted had vigilant oversight of both industry and government regulators been pursued. The bottom line is no President, political party or private enterprise should dictate the level of our commitment to oversight. The human cost of allowing such interference is too great.

Political and Economic Suicide

Published: June 21, 2010

Publication: The American Spectator

President Lincoln once warned that our greatest danger, "if it ever reaches us, must spring up from among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot," Lincoln said, "we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live throughout all time, or die by suicide."

Regrettably, that is what many of the Obama administration's policies amount to: political and economic suicide.

Economically, the president and the Democrat-controlled Congress have pursued reckless deficit spending sprees that have left generations of Americans holding the bill for the deepest national debt in our history. If the president's budget goes through this year, we will be locked in for huge tax increases, more borrowing from the Chinese, and a swollen centralized bureaucracy foreign to the American experience.

Last year, the administration pushed through a $787 billion stimulus that was supposed to keep unemployment below 8 percent. Yet today, more Americans are out of work than at any time in the last quarter century, and President Obama's policies have even managed to eclipse the economic disaster of the Jimmy Carter years.

When it comes to our national security, this administration has squandered opportunities to keep Iran and North Korea in check, yet it has worked overtime to give foreign-born terrorists the constitutional rights of American citizens, complete with the right to remain silent and open access to our civilian courts. In fact, at every turn, this administration is hell-bent on stripping the freedoms of everyday Americans and giving those freedoms to those who want to kill us.

Whether we're talking energy policy, foreign policy, fiscal policy, or environmental policy, Americans are now being subjected to the ideological novelties of an imperial president and an all-too-complicit Congress. These trends leave many Americans wondering what has happened. From Tea Parties to Town Halls, the people are demanding their country back.

Indeed, the nation looks very different from the experiment in liberty that men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton conceived 230 years ago. They believed that the only way to economic prosperity and national security was democracy, the consent of the governed, and the strong check on federal power that comes from protecting individual liberty. Today, too many politicians have forgotten those truths.

Today, there are two very different and competing visions for America, and two very different results.
One approach is to assume that the people -- left to themselves -- are incapable of making the right decisions about how to spend their money, or what kind of health insurance they need, or how to educate their children and provide for their families. The only solution, if you think like that, is bigger government, higher taxes, more regulations, greater federal control -- and always, less transparency.

The other way -- which is at the heart of our democratic experiment -- is to let the people make their own choices about how they live their lives, spend their money, and provide for their families. And when the government must tax the people to pursue a limited constitutional responsibility, the people have a right to know how their tax dollars are being spent.

In Federalist 51, James Madison recognized that "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."

But today, the government is out of control. From health care to housing policy, from bailouts to budget gimmicks, Washington is overextending its authority and overspending our tax dollars.

In the past, the American people have mobilized to act in the face of threats to our future when those threats have come from distant shores. Whether it was European fascism, Soviet communism, or Islamic jihadism, the United States has summoned the resources and resolve to defend freedom.

Today, as never before, we are experiencing what President Lincoln foresaw -- a suicide pact built on reckless congressional spending and President Obama's imperious policies. The American people, however, still have it within their power to put a stop to it.

The only question remains: do we have the resolve?

Published: May 28, 2010

Publication: Politico

By REP. DARRELL ISSA

President Richard Nixon uttered one of the most infamous quotes in U.S. political history on April 6, 1977, defiantly declaring, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

This sentiment embodies all that is wrong with politics. It explains why, more than 30 years later, the political establishment struggles with the image that Nixon’s misguided statement creates.

Since February, questions have swirled around allegations first made by Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.). He is now the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, but he said that someone inside the Obama White House had offered him a job in exchange for dropping out of the primary against Arlen Specter.

Title 18 U.S.C. Section 600 clearly says: “Whoever directly or indirectly promises any employment position, compensation, contract, appointment or other benefit provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, in favor or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office ... shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

Aside from the obvious legal issues that offering someone what amounts to a bribe in an effort to manipulate an election could present, there is a broader and symbolic issue at heart.

After winning the South Carolina Democratic primary, then-candidate Barack Obama proclaimed: “We’re looking to fundamentally change the status quo in Washington.  It’s a status quo that extends beyond any particular party, and right now that status quo is fighting back with everything it’s got, with the same old tactics that divide and distract us from solving the problems people face ... that’s the kind of politics that is bad for our party, it is bad for our country and this is our chance to end it once and for all. ... We’re up against the idea that it’s acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election.”

Flash-forward. Sestak has said, without equivocation and on numerous occasions on network TV, that he was offered a job. The White House, after refusing to answer questions about the matter for weeks, finally relented and, through press secretary Robert Gibbs and senior adviser David Axelrod, said that, according to their administration lawyers, nothing “problematic” or “inappropriate” had occurred.

Mind you, they didn’t deny Sestak’s allegation. They spoke to the potential illegality of his claim.

But given the movement that swept Obama into office and the assault on the status quo he promised, doesn’t this implication and the White House’s refusal to deny Sestak’s account equate to a betrayal of the standards set by the president himself?

For weeks, this issue has been the topic on Sunday shows and cable programs. The one thing that I’ve heard to justify what may or may not have happened is the rationale, “this sort of thing happens all the time.”

Is there any wonder why the people of this nation are screaming for change and establishment candidates are losing — regardless of whether they have a “D” or an “R” next to their name?

Maybe if we held people accountable, this status quo of trading positions for political gain wouldn’t be so easily accepted by the Washington establishment. Maybe if politicians lived up to their promises of transparency and change, the American people’s faith in their elected representatives wouldn’t be so easily shaken.

Obama led a movement that shook the very foundation of Washington. He stood on the cusp of an unparalleled moment of opportunity to transform the politics of greed and opportunism, to usher in a new era of cooperation, transparency and fundamental change. He assailed against those who would “say anything and do anything to win an election.”

Yet, from inside his White House, someone thought it was OK to try to maneuver Sestak out of the Pennsylvania Senate primary — effectively betraying the promises that candidate Obama made.

Gibbs and Axelrod say nothing “inappropriate” or “problematic” happened. But they have yet to disclose what was said and by whom. Even if no laws were broken, Obama’s pledge to change the status quo has been.

But don’t worry, this sort of thing happens all the time.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) serves as ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Obama: The New Nixon?

Richard Nixon is back. Or so it seems from much recent press coverage and punditry.

In December, John Feffer of the Institute for Policy Studies argued in The Huffington Post that the current administration’s professed commitment to realism in international relations meant that Barack Obama is “shaping up to be a true heir of Richard Nixon.” Time’s Peter Beinart echoed that sentiment last month when he declared “Obama’s foreign policy, in fact, looks a lot like Richard Nixon’s.”

Months earlier, a Foreign Policy article entitled “Obama, the Great Wall, and Nixon’s Ghost” cast Obama’s 2009 visit to Beijing as a whimper alongside his predecessor’s historic 1972 mission. USA Today’s headline declared that “Obama follows in the footsteps of Richard Nixon.” And, when the president decided to host the leader of China’s regional rival at the administration’s first state dinner, pundits writing for The Daily Beast noted that “Richard Nixon must be turning in his grave.”

On the domestic front, President Obama has been called “the most environmentally attuned . . . in a generation.” But in recognition of the fact that it was Richard Nixon who established the Environmental Protection Agency and gave us Earth Day 40 years ago, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorialist Paul Steinberg has written, “Not since the Nixon administration have green concerns enjoyed such a high profile in the Oval Office.”

NPR political editor Ken Rudin has also declared “almost Nixonesque” the Obama administration’s efforts to delineate groups and individuals unsupportive of its policy preferences. Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, reacting to what she believed were the Obama White House’s efforts to influence the media, asserted last June that even “Nixon didn’t try to do that.” The list of comparisons goes on.

The prospect of Nixon’s shadow falling across his administration must surely unsettle Barack Obama. The legacy of Richard Nixon has suffered for decades whenever an instance of political dishonor required historic quantification. Every time the ubiquitous suffix “gate” is applied to political scandals both great and small — from Clinton-era Travelgate to today’s Climategate — we are forced to think in terms of Richard Nixon.

In the minds of the American people, the Nixon years were fraught with criminal conspiracies, dirty tricks, and Machiavellian political machinations. Yet there are some lessons that President Obama would do well to learn from Nixon, particularly when it comes to our nation’s approach to the global terrorist threat.

In his 1985 book No More Vietnams, President Nixon identified the political and diplomatic framework that made inevitable this nation’s engagement in the protracted, costly war in Indochina. Drawing on his personal experience as commander-in-chief and an indisputably vast understanding of geopolitical reality, the president wrote much that could be instructive to the Obama administration as it seeks to counter the menace of militant international terrorism.

First, Nixon recognized both the necessity and the limitations of American military power. “While we cannot act in every instance of terrorism,” Nixon argued, “we should always act decisively when we know who is responsible and where they are. Otherwise we give carte blanche to these international outlaws to strike again.” Once the commander-in-chief identifies a threat and receives sufficient intelligence to locate the terrorists, “swift, timely retaliation” is in order “even if there is some risk to innocent people.”

Second, Nixon — a first-rate diplomat himself — knew the constraints of diplomacy. He understood that the State Department cannot win at the negotiating table what the Defense Department cannot win on the battlefield. A direct correlation exists between America’s ability to fight and win wars and our ability to impose effective sanctions, elicit needed concessions from our adversaries, and secure peaceful resolutions to international disagreements.

If Barack Obama seeks to be heralded for his approach to national security, Richard Nixon provides a better guide than does Jimmy Carter, whose policies in this area many are likening to Obama’s. A failure to understand the purpose of American military power and to deploy it wisely is precisely what provided the basis for Carter’s disastrously anemic response to the Iranian hostage crisis, for instance. Moreover, a naïve worldview was the primary reason that Carter misunderstood the real threat in the Middle East. Richard Nixon, on the other hand, correctly identified the threat as a movement of “Moslem fundamentalist revolutionaries egged on by Khomeini and Qaddafi.”

Walls Can Fall

Published:

Publication: The American Spectator

Twenty years ago, at 6:53 PM on November 9, 1989, a spokesman for the East German government announced the Politburo's long overdue decision to allow unrestricted travel between East and West Germany. Within hours, thousands of East Germans converged on Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate. By midnight, they were pulling one another over the twelve-foot-high reinforced concrete slabs, joining loved ones from the West whose embrace they had been denied for more than forty years of Stalinist totalitarian isolation.

The world watched in astonishment the night the wall began to crumble. Many of us knew it would fall in time, but none of us thought it would fall so soon. Just earlier that day, things were normal -- or as normal as things could be while 87 miles of Soviet barbed wire was strangling freedom and democracy. But as the sledgehammers began to bust the wall and the pickaxes began to chip away its graffiti-covered face, the world changed. That Soviet dreams were demolished with the swing of a hammer is poetic indeed.

President Reagan knew the wall would crumble because he understood, in the uncompromised core of his soul, that communism was destined for the ash heap of history. He knew that freedom was the birthright of every human being, and that eventually a generation of Germans would see the dawn break at last over a free and reunited Berlin. Today, five years after his death, it is a reminder of God's eternal justice that President Reagan was granted the blessing to behold the fall with an undimmed eye.

My fear, however, is that too many of us have begun to forget the world that existed behind the Iron Curtain. In 1989, entire generations had lived and died under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. They'd heard the firsthand accounts of the Soviet gulags from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. They'd known of Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky, Vaclav Havel and other dissidents and exiles. They'd seen the Red Army marching through Budapest and Prague. They'd lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis. And they'd watched as the bodies of American troops returned home, shot through with bullets supplied to the North Vietnamese by the Soviet Union.

Yet today the menacing threat of Marxist ideology seems increasingly distant. Fewer and fewer college students can identify the road to serfdom, or even recognize the reference. There exists a growing degree of naïveté about the evils of communism and ignorance about the victims who suffered its full force. In fact, some were naïve about the Soviet threat even when it was credible and constant.

One is left wondering, for instance, how different the world's course might have been had Jimmy Carter won re-election in 1980 and Ronald Reagan not arisen to inspire American confidence in the goodness and rightness of our system of government. There is little doubt that communism was rotting from within and preparing to collapse under its own weight, but there is even less doubt that President Reagan's firm refusal to weaken our defenses or negotiate away our national security applied the necessary pressure.

When President Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate in 1987 and instructed Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," the Soviets knew that the President's resolve was equal to his rhetoric. They knew that he would negotiate when possible, but never capitulate. Some Americans, on the other hand, thought the President was crazy, and others thought he was reckless.

On this side of 1989, however, the voices of Reagan's critics have grown silent.

The twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is a tremendous opportunity to remember that the enemies of freedom are never permanently vanquished. It's an opportunity to reflect on the kind of Reaganesque leadership that refuses to cede moral equivalence to terrorist regimes with global aspirations. And it's an opportunity to honor the sacrifice made by millions of freedom-loving dissidents whose blood was shed for the liberty of successive generations.

Presidential Lipservice to Choice and Competition

Published: September 15, 2009

Publication: National Review

President Obama wanted to set the record straight on his health-care agenda, so he made a trip to Capitol Hill last week. During his primetime address to a joint session of Congress, the president explained that his “guiding principle is, and has always been, that customers do better when there is choice and competition.”

I couldn’t agree more. The integrity of American democracy rests on customer choice and market competition. But many Americans are having a tough time believing President Obama when he announces his so-called “guiding principle.” And if his “guiding principle” sets his health-care agenda the same way it has his education policy, then there’s reason to anticipate a one-size fits all government program that doubles the cost to taxpayers, benefits liberal special interests almost exclusively, and delivers an inferior product to those it was designed to serve. Allow me to explain.

Earlier this year, President Obama signaled his intention to end the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, a program that affords low-income children in high-crime, substandard public schools the chance to choose a quality education. By awarding up to $7,500 per student, the scholarship program has made it possible for 3,000 disadvantaged kids to attend private schools in the District of Columbia. In spite of the program’s demonstrated success and the overall satisfaction reported by both parents and students, President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress want to kill it.

Why? Because the president believes that private schools are a threat to public education. Never mind that the taxpayers’ annual bill is $14,800 per student in the D.C. public school system — nearly twice the cost of the scholarship program. And forget that 75 percent of District residents support the program. And it doesn’t matter that the children are safer and better educated in the schools of their choice. And it’s irrelevant that the Department of Education’s analysis of the program gave it favorable reviews (the report was withheld by the Obama administration until after Congress axed the program).

The message is clear. The president and the teachers’ unions that support him don’t want choices for D.C. schoolchildren or competition for government-run schools. So much for his “guiding principle.”

In May, I joined House Republican Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) and Rep. Buck McKeon (R., Calif.) in legislation to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. In July, Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I., Conn) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) introduced similar legislation and called for an increase in funding. There is clearly bipartisan Congressional support for reauthorization, and intense support among D.C. families and respected community leaders.

When the president tells the American people that he’s for “choice” and “competition” in health-care reform, they should look very carefully at how he’s treated the most vulnerable children in his own back yard. No, the president isn’t really interested in choice and competition, in spite of his televised finger-wagging lectures to the contrary.

And if the president won’t support the opportunity for children to attend schools of their choice, what makes anyone think he supports the right of all Americans to be treated by doctors of their choice?

— Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), is the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Ronald Reagan reconsidered

Published: June 16, 2009

Publication: The Washington Times

Political irony has experienced a profound illustration in the early days of the Obama administration. Seldom has a president rendered such thoughtful tribute to a predecessor whose values his every legislative effort was certain to undermine.

Case in point: Two events on Capitol Hill earlier this month were coordinated to honor the life and legacy of Ronald Reagan. At a signing ceremony in the White House Diplomatic Room, President Obama authorized a centennial commission to plan for the former president's 100th birthday celebration in 2011. The very next day, hundreds of members of Congress were on hand for the unveiling of a statue of Mr. Reagan that will grace the Capitol Rotunda.

"President Reagan helped as much as any president to restore a sense of optimism in our country, a spirit that transcended politics," Mr. Obama said. "It was this optimism that the American people sorely needed during a difficult period - a period of economic and global challenges that tested us in unprecedented ways."

But the instructive lessons of the Reagan era are not as much about the former president's style and charm as about his ideas. They are more substantive, more enduring. Mr. Reagan embodied a firm commitment to a simple political idea expressed in a straightforward syllogism: "Man is not free unless government is limited; as government expands, liberty contracts."

In the past few months, the country has witnessed an alarming expansion of the federal government and its unprecedented power grab in whole sectors of the economy. American taxpayers are the not-so-proud owners of bankrupt auto manufacturers, mortgage lenders, investment banks and insurance providers.

The impulse toward federal control is ever present in a system such as ours, but it is especially aggressive during times of protracted economic crisis. Well-intentioned politicians, feeling pressure to harness the free market and direct the economy away from a second Great Depression, fall prey to the erroneous notion that government is better equipped than the private sector to create jobs, facilitate entrepreneurial innovation and generate wealth.

In contrast to Mr. Reagan, they think government is the solution to the problem.

Consider the way the federal government has been reporting and tracking stimulus expenditures. Once in office, Mr. Obama pushed for a record $787 billion with the promise of an "unprecedented level of transparency." If the president discovered taxpayer money was misspent, he promised to "call it out and publicize it."

So the administration launched a Web site, www.recovery.gov, and the president appointed Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to lead a task force designed for efficient reporting and maximum transparency. Now in its third month, the site is a major disappointment. Reports are lagging behind, and taxpayers are complaining that they cannot track recovery funds from beginning to end as the Obama administration pledged.

The cost for this failure? A whopping $84 million, not including the potential cost of waste, fraud and abuse that inadequate reporting encourages, an amount government officials say could reach $55 billion.

The private sector, on the other hand, is faring better than the Washington bureaucracy. For instance, a Seattle-based company, Onvia Inc., launched its own site, www.recovery.org, using an Internet search technology 10 years in the making that tracks and publishes government spending in up-to-the-minute detail. Onvia's success - seen in the fact that 13 of its top 15 site visitors come from government agencies - has again proved one of Mr. Reagan's dictums: "The best minds are not in government ... if any were, business would hire them away."

If the federal government can't keep pace with the private sector in something as simple as building a Web site to track stimulus spending, how can we expect it to run billion-dollar multinational insurance giants, the American auto industry and the world's largest investment banks to boot?

Mr. Reagan knew too well the power of the private sector and the corollary inadequacies of government. He also knew that federal programs, once launched, have a nasty way of expanding in perpetuity. "A government bureau," the Gipper once quipped, "is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on earth."

Today's leaders would do well to mirror Mr. Reagan's principles as much as they memorialize his legacy.

Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, is the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Remembering Reagan and D-Day

Published: June 6, 2009

Publication: The American Chronicle

Five years ago today, Ronald Reagan´s long goodbye came to an end. The former president who lifted the disheartened American people to their feet and brought the Soviet Union to its knees exited the darkness of a decade-long fight with Alzheimer´s in a perfect picture show ending – with his leading lady by his side.

This week, Nancy Reagan was greeted in the Capitol Rotunda by a cheering, standing-room only crowd on hand for the ceremonial unveiling of a bronze statue of her husband. Two of the Reagan´s closest advisors, Ed Meese and James Baker, were there. Henry Kissinger was there. They were all there: old warriors of the Reagan revolution and young conservatives who never had the privilege of living in a country when character was king.

This week also marks the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landing. On the windswept shores of Omaha beach the sixth day of June, 225 brave young men of the greatest generation stormed the cliffs and began the drive to liberate Paris, and ultimately Berlin, from the dread grip of Nazi terror. Atop those same cliffs 40 years later, President Reagan delivered one of his most memorable speeches.

As a Republican Congressman from California, I´ve drawn strength from the example of President Reagan. I´ve learned what it means to stand for principle in the face of incredible opposition, to follow your instincts instead of the polls.

It is, to borrow a phrase from our first Republican president, altogether fitting and proper that these three events coincide: the anniversary of D-Day, a bipartisan tribute to Ronald Reagan, and the fifth year that we´ve been without him.

There are those in the Republican Party who say that we need to get beyond Reagan, that we need to stop looking back to his leadership and start looking forward. That’s like saying we should stop thinking about D-Day. There’s something permanent, however, about America’s past. Something powerful about our history.

We are the people with the courage and compassion to liberate the oppressed. We are the people with the strength to stand unflinching against the evil empire. We are the men and women whose law-making happens in the light of Abraham Lincoln’s immortal gaze – whose President wakes up every morning under the watchful eye of Thomas Jefferson.

Every American should be proud that the world has looked to us as a beacon of freedom, that our strength has been used to bring liberty and not tyranny. We should be proud that the smile of providence has given us leaders – like Ronald Reagan – who look to the Constitution for guidance in dealing with international conflict or domestic crisis.

President Reagan ended his D-Day speech by calling upon us to “make a vow to our dead . . . by our actions that we understand what they died for.” Perhaps today’s conservatives should make a vow of our own to President Reagan:

Strengthened by his courage, heartened by his valor, and borne by his memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which he lived.

DC children deserve better

In 1954, a unanimous Supreme Court rendered its opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, effectively closing a tragic chapter in American public education that had confined disadvantaged minority students in substandard schools. Yet today – more than fifty years later – the Obama administration is erecting new roadblocks on the path of equal opportunity paved by this landmark decision.

The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program was launched in January 2004 with bipartisan support to give district schoolchildren the chance for a quality education rather than force them into classrooms known more for violent crime than academic achievement. According to current test scores, two-thirds of children in the DC public school system lack basic reading proficiency, and a recent study of DC school violence found an astounding 846 incidences of violent crime, armed robbery and aggravated sexual assault last year alone.

On the other hand, the Department of Education released last month an annual report of the program that demonstrates how scholarship recipients are statistically outperforming their public school counterparts in reading skills by impressive margins.

But in spite of the program’s measured success, President Obama wants to kill it.

Ironically, the President recognizes that the program has been a success and offered a compromise earlier this month to continue funding for the existing 1,700 low-income students currently enrolled. But to the thousands of other children who are trapped in dead-end DC schools, the “Yes We Can” president has defiantly said, “No You Can’t.”

The reasons to continue funding the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program are convincing – just ask the children who receive them, their parents, members of the DC State Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court who affirmed the constitutionality of such programs and the independent board appointed by Congress to oversee them.

First, the program is working. More than 3,000 underprivileged students have received the opportunity to pursue their dream of a better education since 2004. When asked why they wanted their children to attend private schools of their choice, parents cited safety and higher academic standards as primary factors. A recent study by The Heritage Foundation found that when scholarship recipients are given the chance to learn in safer schools, they achieve higher test scores.

Second, the scholarships serve to mitigate the many cultural and economic pressures that keep the majority of disadvantaged students in failing public schools. It’s true that public education in America needs comprehensive reform, but there is no reason why deserving children in the worst schools should continue to suffer while President Obama dreams up other ways to solve the systemic problems.

Third, the bipartisan support that the program has received demonstrates its popular appeal. Senators from Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) to Jim DeMint (R-SC) are standing together to oppose the administration in favor of the reauthorization. Former DC Mayor Anthony Williams called the program “a lifeline to hope for thousands of families,” and the head of Sidwell Friends – the private school where President Obama sends his daughters – has urged Congress to “keep the windows open…and unlock even more.” Surely the president is willing to give these voices as much consideration as he does the powerful teachers’ unions who vehemently oppose school choice.

It is troubling that the Obama administration wants to end a $13 million program that benefits thousands of children and exhibits considerable success. It is appalling that he is willing to do so while dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into failing insurance giants, bankrupt auto manufacturers and the mortgage lenders who caused the current economic crisis.

One wonders where, exactly, this president’s priorities lie.

Justice Clarence Thomas has noted that “the failure to provide education to poor urban children perpetuates a vicious cycle of poverty, dependence, criminality, and alienation that continues for the rest of their lives.”

This passed week, Republican Leader Boehner, Education and Labor Ranking Member McKeon and I have introduced legislation to reauthorize the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program and invest taxpayer dollars in the promise of quality education for America’s children. The children who have benefited from this successful program deserve to be heard and receive an up-or-down vote on continuing this educational opportunity. To do otherwise is a direct threat to our own future.