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Daily Archives: Jan. 25, 2011
A House member for president in 2012?
Jan. 25, 201112:30 p.m.
The congressman of the moment in the newly GOP-led House is Rep. Paul Ryan (in photo), R-Wis., the former Brownback aide who now chairs the House Budget Committee and will give the GOP response to the State of the Union address tonight. When asked about presidential ambitions, Ryan has said: “My head isn’t big enough, and my kids are too small.” Then there is the steep hill of history: No member of the House has even won a major party nomination for president since James Garfield in 1880. “The task remains tall for anyone running with only a House background,” noted Washington Post blogger Aaron Blake. But potential candidates Reps. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Mike Pence, R-Ind., and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich “have a lot going for them that their predecessors didn’t. Underestimating any of them, including Bachmann, in a presidential race as wide open as this one would be a mistake given Republican primary voters’ demonstrated willingness to upset the establishment apple cart in 2010.”
Also open up trade with Cuba
Jan. 25, 20116:02 a.m.
Good for President Obama for easing some travel restrictions with Cuba. But as Sen. Jerry Moran (in photo), R-Kan., argued in a letter he sent to Obama last week, Obama now needs to lift some trade restrictions that limit the sale of Kansas wheat. “While I support the recent announcement of changes to U.S.-Cuba travel policy, I am disappointed President Obama did not make executive changes to existing U.S. regulations that restrict the cash sale of agriculture products to Cuba,” Moran said in a statement. Moran contends that such policy changes “would result in an estimated $270 million in new exports.”
Don’t choke on water rate increase
Jan. 25, 20116:00 a.m.
It will be hard to swallow the 8 percent increase to water and sewer rates reflected on next month’s water bill — especially when the increase comes on top of another one last August and was triggered by the city miscalculating the financing of its $550 million aquifer recharge project. Still, the project is needed to safeguard and replenish the region’s water supply. And as an Eagle news article reported Saturday, Wichita still has lower water rates than most large cities.
