According to the Constitution, a bill that gets a majority of votes in the House or Senate passes, and can proceed to become law. However, it doesn’t matter how much support a bill has if there isn’t a vote. 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have the power to decide which bills get voted on and which ones don’t.  Unfortunately, that power is being abused to prevent Republicans from even offering amendments to key bills that are on the floor.  More and more bills are going through the House with no amendments allowed unless they are pre-approved by the Democratic leadership.   There have always been some limits on amendments. But it has never before been done on the all-important appropriations bills that decide how your money is spent.  This week, for the first time ever under the modern appropriations process, Republicans had to get our appropriations amendments pre-approved by Democratic Leaders.  The reason?  They’re scared Democrats will vote with us and our good ideas will become law.

The Congressional Budget Office says the House-passed version of "health reform" (it's not reform, just another entitlement we can't pay for) will cost a little over $1 trillion.  If you add the expensive provisions Speaker Pelosi is trying to hide by passing them seperately, CBO says the cost is about $1.3 trillion.  The Heritage Foundation says $1.5 trillion.  So just how much is a trillion?

• A trillion is a thousand times a billion.
• A trillion is ten times the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.
• It takes 12 years for a million seconds to pass.  It takes almost 32,000 years for a trillion seconds to pass.
• A trillion is just over half the size of this year's federal deficit, if the entire Obama legislative program is passed into law.

We already have a multi-trillion-dollar deficit because we can't afford the programs we have now.  A new trillion-dollar program is something America just can't afford.

The number-one issue in American right now is unemployment.  In Chester County, the unemployment rate is 6.5 percent.  In Lancaster County, it’s 8 percent.  In Berks County, it’s 9.1 percent.  Those are serious numbers.  But unemployment isn’t about numbers.  It’s about people, and we have to remember that we’re not talking about statistics.  We’re talking about real people who are struggling to put food on the table.

What can we do about it?  Jobs don’t come from the government.  Jobs come from businesses and entrepreneurs who act on good ideas, take risks, and invest in people.  Government can make this easier, or government can make this harder.

Government can make it easier by leaving more money in private hands.  High taxes take money out of the economy, hampering job creation.  Government borrowing also hampers economic growth, as money that might be invested in job-creating enterprises goes to government bonds instead.

This Congress is breaking records when it comes to taxing and borrowing.  Letting the 2001 tax cuts expire amounts to the largest tax increase in history, and it will apply to every taxpayer.  The Democrats' health legislation includes large tax increases.  The “cap and trade” national energy tax will amount to a massive tax increase. 

What is driving this?  Spending.  Under this Congress, government spending is simply out of control.

I can remember, as a child, when I first heard the word “trillion.”  It was a word kids used the way they say “zillion” or “kabillion.”  It may as well have been a made-up word.  Like “googolplex” it was a real number, but too big to be used for anything but exaggerating.

Unfortunately, that’s no longer true. 

Back in January, the Congressional Budget Office said the federal deficit would total $1.2 trillion this year, and $3.1 trillion over the next decade.  Those are shocking numbers.  If you started spending $1 million a day—every day—on the day Jesus was born, and kept spending until now, you still would not owe even three-quarters of $1 trillion.

But as shocking as those January numbers were, they didn’t account for the return of tax-and-spend big government liberalism.  This summer, CBO estimated this year’s deficit at $1.6 trillion—the biggest since World War II.  Over the next decade, they say the deficit will grow by $7.1 trillion.  If President Obama gets his entire legislative agenda into law, that number increases to $9 trillion, more than doubling the already huge debt he inherited.

At the end of the Carter presidency (tough economic times!), the national debt was equal to one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product.  The White House predicts the debt will be larger than 100 percent of GDP by the end of President Obama’s four-years in office.

It is hard to comprehend numbers this large.  Imagine, for instance, that you tried to count to a billion.  If you counted one number per second—and that’s pretty fast—it would take you almost 32 years to do it.  How long would it take to count to a trillion?  Almost 32,000 years.  You would have had to start in the Paleolithic Age!

Elections have consequences.  Americans voted for “change” last year.  Unfortunately, the change we got was not the kind we need.

By Chris Barber

At a time when the economy is forcing more people to seek nutritional aid, and fewer people are in a position to help, U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts, R-16, of East Marlborough Township is seeking some answers.

To that end, he is visiting food cupboards in the area to try to determine how they are doing and what he can to do help.

On Tuesday morning, armed with 36 pounds of butter, he and several staff members stopped at the Oxford Area Neighborhood Services building, and talked with case manager Carla Brown. As he hauled the box of butter to the table, he said he had heard that it, along with eggs and milk, are among the greatest needs.

Pitts said he hopes to undertake a survey of stakeholders the food cupboards and find out what their priorities are and if there are certain regional differences in what people consume based on their cultural backgrounds.

He also said he is aiming to modify the Good Samaritan Act, a law that holds blameless someone who is attempting to help but might cause harm in the process. He used as an example enabling food cupboard administrators to place out for consumption canned goods that are past expiration date, but only by a month.

Pitts said food cupboards get some foodstuffs from the federal government and money from the state. He added that Chester County has a large warehouse that acts as a distribution point for federal food.

Another project he spoke of was the Chester County gleaning program through which farmers and gardeners plant extra fresh produce and pass it on to feed those in need.

Brown said the Oxford Neighborhood Services food cupboard gives out food boxes to an average of 66 families a month, or more than 786 a year.

She said that the requests for help have increased dramatically in the past year by almost 40 percent. In the same period of time, fewer people have been able to give, she said.

She added that April, May and June (before the state budget is passed) are the leanest months for the food cupboard. Still, she added, many individuals drop off non-perishable foods that help stock the facility.

For more information on the food cupboard, call 610-932-8557.

The decades-long effort to open a federal courthouse in Lancaster is expected to take a crucial step forward next week.

The federal government plans to launch a site-selection process for a $27 million facility that would be built downtown, judicial and congressional sources said Friday.

Finding and acquiring a suitable property likely will take months, but the feds expect to have a one- or two-courtroom building constructed within three years.

U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence F. Stengel, a former county judge who lives in Lancaster and commutes to Philadelphia, likely would preside at the new courthouse.

In an interview, he said all branches of the government are committed to moving forward the much-anticipated project.

"It's clearly a priority of the East District, and it's clearly a priority for the General Services Administration," said Stengel, 57. "There's a push to get this done. The process of site selection and acquiring and hiring of an architect — once those things are done, construction should proceed rapidly."

U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts announced Friday that the GSA, an agency of the federal government that owns property and leases it to the federal courts, will begin seeking "expressions of interest" for property in the city.

The agency will post the request online at FBO.gov, the government's procurement clearinghouse. FBO stands for Federal Business Opportunities.

The request is a sort of open invitation to the private sector, namely property owners and real estate firms who can help identify a suitable site. The government has appropriated $6.5 million for site acquisition and design.

The remaining $20.5 million would go toward construction of the facility.

The U.S. Senate has authorized spending the $27 million for the courthouse; the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee also must authorize the spending.

Congress must approve of the proposal in the financial services and general government appropriations bill, said Tom Tillett, district chief of staff for Pitts.

Elected officials, local law enforcement and attorneys have been seeking a federal courthouse in Lancaster for more than 20 years.

"A federal courthouse here will aid in the prosecution of gang-related offenses, illegal firearms and other serious criminal cases since police officers will no longer have to travel to Philadelphia in order to testify," Pitts said in a statement.

"I'm going to work closely with my colleagues on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to move the project forward," said Pitts, a Republican who represents Lancaster County. "Lancaster has waited decades for a federal courthouse, and today's action is a concrete step toward beginning construction."

Lancaster's facility is expected to be modeled somewhat after smaller satellite federal courthouses, such as the one in Reading.

It is expected to consist of one or two courtrooms, two judges' chambers, a U.S. Marshals Service office and other offices for court personnel.

Craig Stedman, Lancaster County's district attorney, said the latest development was "encouraging news from a law-enforcement perspective."

"We have a long-standing partnership with the U.S. Attorney's Office in prosecuting some of the worst criminals in the county in federal court," he said. "One of the only drawbacks so far has been the distance police officers, witnesses and prosecutors have to travel in order to take advantage of more serious federal sentencing guidelines.

"Anything which will cut the travel time will lessen the burden on witnesses and give the police more time to work cases rather than sitting in a car to and from Philadelphia," Stedman said.

In April, federal officials confirmed they were looking at sites for a satellite courthouse in Lancaster city.

Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray said there are several possible locations in the city: the vacant Bulova building on Lancaster Square, at North Queen and East Orange streets; the former Sovereign Bank office building at 23 E. King St., owned by the Girard Estate; and the site of the former Gunzenhauser Bakery at 811 N. Prince St.

Gray, who has been involved from the beginning with the plan to bring a federal courthouse to Lancaster, said such a facility would save city police a lot of money they now spend driving to other courthouses.

"Even if you have a pretrial conference, you have to go to Philly or go to Allentown or Reading," Gray said. "It would certainly serve the community of Lancaster — not just the city, but the county — by way of providing an easy, accessible way to get to the federal courts, whether criminal or civil."

Stengel said the courthouse could also handle bankruptcy cases, so litigants wouldn't have to go to Philadelphia.

By: Rep. Joe Pitts

With limited resources, Congress cannot spend money lightly. The Congressional Budget Office estimates this year's deficit will total more than $1.34 trillion. This year, I've voted against a number of bills funding seemingly worthy government programs because they increased our already historic deficit.

I believe that in a time of such large deficits, Congress needs to make tough decisions about how we are spending taxpayer money. The longer we wait to get control of the federal budget, the greater the burden on future generations.

Over the past nine weeks the House has been in session, Republicans have offered more than $120 billion in cuts to wasteful federal government spending. These cuts could have been used to pay for extensions of unemployment compensation, COBRA health insurance assistance and state Medicaid assistance with tens of billions of dollars still remaining to reduce this year's deficit.

All of these cuts were offered as part of the YouCut program, an effort to include the American people in the fight to cut waste. Each week that Congress is in session, Republican Whip Eric Cantor hosts a poll on his website at www.republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut. The poll offers five different government programs that could be considered wasteful.

Participants can vote for the cut they support by voting online or sending a text message from their phone. The cut receiving the most votes is offered as a motion on the House floor and every Member has to decide whether they support the program.

What type of cuts have been winning polls so far?

One of the first cuts offered by the program was a freeze in federal civilian wages that would save $2 billion. Employees in the private sector and seniors on Social Security have seen their wages and benefits remain level because of the recession and low inflation. Even Congressional pay has been frozen for the past two years. However, federal employees received a 3.9 percent raise in 2010 and a 3.5 percent raise in 2009.

Another winning YouCut measure was legislation to require an expedited process for selling unneeded federal property with 80 percent of the revenue going to reduce the deficit. The federal government is the largest property owner in the U.S. While much of this land is valuable wilderness areas, national forests and national parks, the Office of Management and Budget estimates that the federal government is holding $18 billion in real property that it does not need.

The winning cut in week six aimed to stop taxpayer support for union activities. Some federal employees currently spend their entire workweek on union activity. Federal employees should be doing the business of the people, and union membership fees should be used to compensate workers for performing union organizing and lobbying. It's estimated that in a single year $120 million is spent paying federal employees who are doing union work.

The ideas for YouCut don't strictly come from Republican members. The latest winning entry was proposed by four Democratic Congressmen who have started a working group to reduce the deficit. The Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit allows certain taxpayers to receive a portion of their earned income tax credit throughout the year in their paychecks. An audit found that 80 percent of the recipients did not comply with all of the program's requirements and that the program is rarely used. Eliminating it would save $1.1 billion over ten years.

Each of the nine winning cuts has been offered by Republicans as a motion on the House floor. While none of these motions have passed, many have attracted bipartisan support from Democrats who are also concerned about our growing national debt.

Our debt isn't a Republican problem or a Democrat problem. Both parties have increased the deficit in recent years and it will take both parties working together to balance our budget and get our country back on a stable fiscal footing. I've proudly voted for each YouCut measure and so far more than 1.4 million votes have been cast in the weekly polls. A new poll is up on the website right now and I invite you to join the effort to rein in government waste: www.republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut.

Originally Posted Here

By Rep. Joe Pitts

The Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to decide how taxpayer money is spent. It may come as surprise, therefore, that House Republicans voted almost unanimously on March 11 to declare a moratorium on the practice of earmarking funds for specific projects.

I not only voted for the moratorium, I was among the Republicans who called for the move. I stopped asking for earmarks myself more than three years ago.

Why? Because earmarks are out of control. Ronald Reagan once vetoed a highway bill because it contained 152 earmarks. Today, it is not uncommon for one bill to contain thousands. Last year’s omnibus spending bill funded more than 8,000 of them. Most fund good and useful things.

Many, however, do not. Earmarks have been directed for things like migratory loons in Nevada, a museum to commemorate the 1969 Woodstock concert, and a golf school. One earmark spent over $1 billion to reintroduce salmon to a river that had run dry.

The reason for such silly earmarks is that the earmark process seems designed to avoid accountability. Most of the money Congress spends is argued for in hearings, debated in committee, authorized by legislation, and voted on by the House and Senate. Earmarks, on the other hand, are often added to legislation long after most of this process is complete. Some are even added during final House-Senate negotiations when it is too late for the individual chambers to alter the bills. This, of course, is intentional.

Members of Congress have been caught requesting earmarks in exchange for campaign contributions. Members of Congress have been caught earmarking funds for organizations run by friends and family members. Some have even created non-profit organizations through which to funnel money and mask the true beneficiaries of their earmarks.

The process of requesting earmarks is deeply flawed, highly controversial, and clearly prone to abuse. Earmarks have become not only a symbol of what’s wrong with Washington and the current Democratic Congress, but also a symbol of how many Republicans lost their way during the last half of our twelve-year stretch in the majority.

More than anything else, I urged my colleagues to declare this self-imposed moratorium on earmarks because I believe it is an essential step for Republicans as we seek to regain credibility on one of the party’s core goals: limited, frugal government.

When I first got to Congress I asked to serve on the House Budget Committee. Four years in a row, I helped write balanced budgets that actually paid off some of the government’s debt. This was done through sometimes difficult negotiations with the Clinton White House—but it was done. Real bipartisanship works. Balancing the budget is possible. I have done it, both in Washington and in my time in Harrisburg.

But in the latter years of the Republican majority (1995 – 2007), the GOP lost its way. I found myself voting against fully one-third of my party’s annual appropriations bills. I found myself voting against some of President Bush’s top priorities, from No Child Left Behind to the Bank Bailout. Since Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, I have voted for three appropriations bills, but opposed the rest because they spent too much.

When Congress spends beyond its means, it is stealing from our children. Today, Congress is stealing on a scale that would make even Bernie Madoff blush. Most Americans are aware of the government’s $13 trillion debt. Most Americans are not, however, aware that the government has made commitments to spend well over $100 trillion that it does not have and has no prospects of ever being able to raise. Medicare, Social Security, and even our national defense infrastructure will all collapse if Congress does not rein in spending very soon. Some, in fact, say it is too late already.

The Republican earmark moratorium will not balance the budget. It will, however, save far more money than the largely phony earmark moratorium Nancy Pelosi announced the same week. It is a first step, but a crucial one.

Rep. Joe Pitts (R) represents Pennsylvania’s 16th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Click here to read the original article.

Ten Things Congress Should Do to Help the Economy

1. Keep Taxes Consistently Low
2. Balance the Budget
3. Regulate Wisely
4. Make Energy Cheaper
5. Build Infrastructure
6. Open New Markets
7. Encourage Saving
8. Improve Education
9. Reform Healthcare
10. Encourage Strong Families

1. Keep Taxes Consistently Low – Every dollar you spend grows the economy. Every dollar the government takes away in taxes removes money from the economy. High taxes cost jobs. Seesawing tax rates discourage business investment, making businesses unsure of what the future will bring. That also costs jobs.
• In 2001, Congress cut taxes for every American. That law will expire next year. Congress should make it permanent.
• Permanently reducing the capital gains tax will encourage personal and business investment.

2. Balance the Budget – For the fiscal year that ended September 30, 2009, the federal government recorded a deficit of $1.4 trillion, the highest in history and almost $1 trillion more than the previous year. In November, The New York Times reported that because of the huge $12 trillion debt, the government “faces a payment shock similar to those that sent legions of overstretched homeowners into default on their mortgages.” The deficit is a severe threat to our future prosperity.
Congress must stop spending more than it has.

3. Regulate Wisely – If the economy were a football game, it would be government’s job to be the referee. We need clear and consistent rules that rein in greed and foolishness without stifling creativity and the free market.
• Congress was to blame for abuses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress must do a better job of minding the store.
• Bankruptcy laws must be fixed so that no bank or business is “too big to fail.” Corruption and greed must face real consequences. I support legislation to do this, the Consumer Protection and Regulatory Enhancement Act, H.R. 3310.

4. Make Energy Cheaper – Every part of our economy consumes gas, electricity, and other forms of energy. High energy costs mean less growth and fewer jobs.
• The SAFE Nuclear Act, HR 3448. I introduced this bipartisan bill to spur the construction of safe and clean nuclear power plants. This will increase our supply of American-made energy and protect the environment.

5. Build Infrastructure – Better highways and bridges will make a better economy. “Time is money,” as the saying goes, and Americans spend too much time waiting in traffic. This slows down the delivery of goods and services, and that slows our economy down and costs jobs.
• Unfortunately, only 6 percent of the “stimulus” passed last year was spent on infrastructure.

6. Open New Markets – The recession hit farmers and manufacturers especially hard with a 50 percent drop in international demand for our exports. Congressional inaction on pending trade agreements with friendly nations like South Korea, Panama, and Colombia is hurting our economy and inflating unemployment.

7. Encourage Saving – Saving and investing is not only good for the investor, it’s good for the businesses we invest in. Americans need to save more and invest more.
• The Savings for Working Families Act, H.R. 1234 – I introduced this bill to help low income families save for the future with matching contributions from financial institutions, non-profits, and Indian tribes.
• Help Kids Save for College Act, H.R. 2500 – I introduced this bill to make it easier for families to save money for their children’s college tuition by allowing matching contributions from employers.

8. Improve Education – Education levels are directly connected to individual and national prosperity. America’s colleges and universities are the best in the world, but many of our grade schools and high schools are failing.
• The Dollars to the Classroom Act. I have long promoted this bill to guarantee that 95 cents of each federal education dollar will be spent in the classroom instead of on bureaucracy. I will be reintroducing it this month.
• Encourage innovation and competition in public education through charters schools, school choice, and merit-based tenure and promotion.

9. Reform Healthcare – Families, employers, and the government are all spending too much on healthcare. This robs money from other parts of the economy. Real health reform will reduce, rather than increase, what we pay as a nation for health insurance.
• The Small Business CHOICE Act, H.R. 859 – I introduced this bill with Rep. Nydia Velazquez, a Democrat from New York, to make it cheaper and easier for small businesses to provide health insurance for their employees.

10. Encourage Strong Families – Strong and stable families produce more productive citizens and use fewer government services.
• Permanently end the “marriage penalty” in the tax code.
• Preserve the bipartisan 1996 welfare reform law.

By Congressman Joe Pitts

The Democrats’ health legislation has now been forced through Congress and into law despite bipartisan opposition in Congress and widespread public opposition. Three dozen House Democrats opposed it. Every Republican opposed it. Only slightly more than a third of the public supports it.

Democrats were barely able to pass the bill, even though there are 75 more Democrats in the House than Republicans, and an unusually lopsided majority in the Senate as well. Only a year’s worth of cajoling, back-room deals, demonizing of industry, and cooking of the numbers made it possible.

What will the consequences be? It won’t be pretty.

Not counting the new law, the nation’s unfunded liability for entitlements is already $104 trillion dollars. That is seven times the size of the U.S. economy. That’s according to Richard Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The unfunded liability is the difference between promised benefits and the money that will be collected in taxes to pay for them.

The entitlement crisis has arrived. This year, many years before it was projected to, Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it will collect in payroll taxes. Former President Bush, with my support, proposed a plan to change the way Social Security is paid for to put it on a sound footing. After a shameful campaign of scaring seniors, Democrats defeated this plan without ever offering their own. Now, Social Security is well on its way to insolvency.

Medicare’s problems are far worse. Medicare’s unfunded liability is five times that of Social Security. Obamacare doesn’t solve this crisis. It adds to it.

Instead of finding ways to make these programs solvent, Congress and President Obama have hastened their collapse. By adding an entire new entitlement program we cannot afford, the solvency of the government itself is now severely threatened. The math just doesn’t add up. It is no wonder, then, that Moody’s has announced it is likely to downgrade the government’s bond rating soon. The cost of that alone will be dramatic.

What, then should we have done instead?

On my website, I have a detailed memorandum outlining affordable ways to help the uninsured, to cover people with pre-existing conditions, and to achieve the other worthy goals of Obamacare.

The fundamental problem behind our entitlement crisis is the lack of free market forces involved. Already, nearly half of all Americans are on government healthcare programs that compete with no one. Even private insurance sees only limited competition, since the government will not allow insurance companies to compete across state lines.

Beyond economics and business models, however, we need an entirely new way of looking at healthcare. Early in this debate a Republican said, “We don’t have healthcare in this country—we just have sick care.” Americans wait until they are sick to pay attention to their health. The point is, as Ben Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Chester County’s John Emmons works for a company called Mannington Mills. The company is self-insured, so every dollar spent on employee health comes out of the company’s bank account. John is the leader of the company’s wellness initiative.

The program offers free health screenings for early detection, a fitness center, offers health classes, a Weight Watchers program, a smoking cessation program, sports leagues, and wellness coaches.

John reports that “Mannington’s health care costs have fallen both in 2008 and 2009. We’re going for three in a row in 2010.” Clearly, Mannington Mills is doing it right.

John says, “Unfortunately, our president and the Democratic-led Congress just wasted a year, further dividing the country and burdening taxpayers with a new source of debt. … If they are serious about solutions, perhaps they should come and talk with some of us who have done it, rather than twist arms, make deals and mislead the American people.”

Health reform is possible. John Emmons’ company has done it. If Washington had listened to John and the millions of Americans who think like he does, real reform might have happened this year. Real reforms would protect patients while lowering costs. Instead, our problems are now worse.