Reps. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, and Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, were among the GOP House freshmen who held news conferences this week to demand that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (in photo), D-Nev., pass a current-year budget bill, preferably the House-passed version with $61 billion in domestic spending cuts. “We don’t need senators defending cowboy poets,” Pompeo said — referring to Reid’s recent complaint that the “mean-spirited” House budget would end funding for a Nevada poetry festival. “We need them taking seriously the financial crisis that the 111th Congress left for the folks who came here in January.” Huelskamp counseled Reid: “It’s time to stop stalling.”
Having presented his case against raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling on Sunday’s Opinion pages, Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., is being called the “first official ‘no’ vote” on the issue, which could come to Congress between mid-April and late May. But Moran won’t be the last. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has predicted that most Senate Republicans would oppose a higher debt ceiling without “some credible effort to do something about our debt,” and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said he won’t even hold a House vote to increase the debt ceiling “without real spending cuts and real changes to the way we spend the people’s money.”
It’s the end of March, and a Kansas school is playing for a national basketball title. And it’s Wichita State University, not the University of Kansas. Be honest — how many people predicted that? Still, the Shockers’ success in reaching tonight’s championship game of the National Invitation Tournament isn’t too surprising. After all, they’ve won 28 games this year, and two of their defeats were close losses to the University of Connecticut and Virginia Commonwealth University, two teams in this year’s NCAA Final Four.
Reps. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, and Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, were among the GOP House freshmen who held news conferences this week to demand that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (in photo), D-Nev., pass a current-year budget bill, preferably the House-passed version with $61 billion in domestic spending cuts. “We don’t need senators defending cowboy poets,” Pompeo said — referring to Reid’s recent complaint that the “mean-spirited” House budget would end funding for a Nevada poetry festival. “We need them taking seriously the financial crisis that the 111th Congress left for the folks who came here in January.” Huelskamp counseled Reid: “It’s time to stop stalling.”
