The efforts of Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., to curb Federal Aviation Administration cuts under sequestration and keep 149 airport control towers open were highlighted in a Wall Street Journal editorial blasting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Moran “proposed replacing $50 million of FAA sequester cuts with savings from unspent balances, which are a kind of agency slush fund, and by reducing other low-priority spending. Great idea. How did the vote turn out? There wasn’t one. Majority Leader Reid blocked the amendment from ever getting to the Senate floor.” The editorial noted that “Moran also couldn’t get a vote to restore funding for White House tours by cutting $2.5 million for new uniforms for airport screeners.”
“Roberts Racks Up GOP Endorsements, Thwarting Primary in 2014,” declared Roll Call, after Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., released a list of re-election endorsements Thursday from “every top Republican official in Kansas.” Roll Call noted that “the Sunflower State is safe GOP territory, and Republicans are expected to hold the seat in 2014. But earlier this cycle, some quietly wondered if Roberts would face a primary challenge.”
The Boston Globe did an autopsy of the U.S. Senate’s December vote failing to ratify an international treaty on the rights of individuals with disabilities – a measure championed by former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, who appeared in the chamber in a wheelchair for the vote. “The deepest wound – some considered it betrayal – came from a Republican senator from Dole’s home state of Kansas. That senator, Jerry Moran (in photo), had announced he supported the treaty and would be ‘standing up for the rights of those with disabilities,’” the Globe noted. Asked why he voted against it, Moran told the Globe: “I tried to help (the treaty) come to the floor, and had never made a conclusion as to whether I was for or against it, and concluded that it was a bad idea to have the United Nations involved in this.” Dole told the Globe: “The home-schoolers thought the U.N. would be involved in how they dealt with their children. I don’t know how they got there, but once the stampede starts, they notify their leaders to start ringing the phones, sending the e-mails. It’s really effective.”
Sen. Rob Portman (in photo), R-Ohio, created a buzz by announcing a change of heart on same-sex marriage, a decision that followed a son’s announcement that he is gay. But according to ThinkProgress, Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, was dismissive, calling Portman “a senator who couldn’t deliver his own home state in the presidential election” and complaining that “somehow we’re supposed to believe that if we abandon traditional marriage that liberals are going to flock to us.” Speaking at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, Huelskamp also said, “The principle is, traditional marriage and family is the foundation of society.” Asked whether he would re-examine his own position if he had a gay son, the Kansan said: “I support traditional marriage.”
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was characteristically vivid in describing the meeting that he and other Senate Republicans had last week with President Obama. “He’s smothering us with the milk of human kindness and hoping it doesn’t curdle,” Roberts said. The Kansan also said that Republicans “tried to stress that it’s extremely helpful for the president to weigh in on some of these big-time issues. We have to have him if we’re going to get anything done.” After Obama’s previous visit to the Senate GOP caucus in 2010, Roberts famously told reporters that the president needed “to take a Valium” and had some “pretty thin-skinned” moments.
A week after participating in the Senate filibuster on drones, Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., announced that Kansas is one of the top 10 states predicted to benefit the most as production of unmanned aerial systems increases. Moran, who is a member of a Senate UAS caucus (who knew that existed?), cited a new report estimating a projected economic impact in Kansas of $2.9 billion and an estimated 3,716 new jobs between 2015 and 2025. “Kansas already boasts the necessary attributes to manage UAS activities: airspace for UAS operations; multiple airport support facilities; university research and development on sensors, airframes and engines; university flight and operations training; and avionics development and manufacturing capabilities,” Moran said in a statement, adding that “the future for UAS in Kansas – the Air Capital of the World – is bright.” Meanwhile, a bill in the Legislature, House Bill 2394, would prohibit the operation of drones in Kansas while carrying a lethal payload and prohibit law enforcement agencies from using drones to collect evidence.
The Hill newspaper checked in with Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, and other congressmen who were stripped of key committee assignments for not toeing the GOP leadership’s line. How is Huelskamp doing three months later? “One of my colleagues put it interestingly. He said, ‘Well, Tim, they’ve given you a platform that you’ve never had before,’” the Kansan told the Hill, noting he also has been in demand on cable-news shows. Being stripped of committee assignments, he said, “had the opposite effect (of) trying to silence myself and a few others. It’s actually enhanced our ability to speak out and impact the process.” An unidentified lawmaker close to leadership told the Hill that Huelskamp “is just not trustworthy, and if he wants to be up here and a lone wolf and cause problems, he’ll never have any legislative accomplishments.”
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., was among the lawmakers who met with President Obama this week, as the White House tried to ease the partisanship that has paralyzed Capitol Hill. Moran told Politico there was agreement between Obama and Senate Republicans that “there might by an opportunity for common ground” on corporate tax reform, but that when entitlement reform came up, “the president responded with the need for revenues.” Overall, Moran said, “I really think it was rather a bland conversation. No fireworks on either tone. This wasn’t memorable; it was the opposite of that.”
Kansas Sens. Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran and Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, deserve credit for tenacity in protesting the Air Force’s recent decision to pass over Wichita-based Beechcraft and instead give a $427.5 million light-air support contract to Sierra Nevada Corp. and Brazil-based Embraer. That order, which will supply 20 airplanes to Afghanistan’s air force, would have given Beechcraft a big boost post-bankruptcy. The Kansans sent a letter Friday to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel requesting a “thorough, compelling explanation for your decision” and saying the award “raises significant concerns for the entire U.S. defense industrial base.” It’s awkward, however, that just two weeks ago the two Kansas senators voted against Hagel’s confirmation as defense secretary.
How can Congress reach more bipartisan agreements? “We need Ted Kennedy,” Gov. Sam Brownback told Yahoo! Finance. Brownback, who worked with Kennedy (in photo) when they were both in the U.S. Senate, noted how Kennedy would reach across the aisle and work through problems for the good of the country. Brownback said the person most likely to fill that role now is Vice President Joe Biden. One reason Washington seems so disturbing, Brownback said, is that problems are worse than they’ve been for a long time. “There are no good solutions,” he said.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., got a lot of attention Wednesday for mounting an honest-to-God filibuster of President Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan. The nation’s political class marveled at his real-life Mr. Smith act. But it’s worth taking a moment to consider the substance of Paul’s objection. The libertarian and son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul has plenty of views that are far outside the mainstream, but in this case he zeroed in on an issue all Americans should find uncomfortable: Would it be legal for the U.S. government to use a drone strike to kill an American citizen on American soil? In the end, the Obama administration felt compelled to respond, and Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder sent Paul a letter assuring him that the president does not “have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil.” That was good enough for Paul to drop his objection to Brennan’s nomination, which was approved by the Senate, but it still leaves open plenty of questions about the use of drones. – Baltimore Sun
Give Rand Paul credit for theatrical timing. As a snowstorm descended on Washington, D.C., the Kentucky Republican’s old-fashioned filibuster Wednesday filled the attention void on Twitter and cable TV. If only his reasoning matched the showmanship. The U.S. government cannot randomly target American citizens on U.S. soil or anywhere else. What it can do under the laws of war is target an “enemy combatant” anywhere at anytime, including on U.S. soil. This includes a U.S. citizen who is also an enemy combatant. The country needs more senators who care about liberty, but if Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms. He needs to know what he’s talking about. – Wall Street Journal
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., helped relieve Sen. Rand Paul (in photo), R-Ky., during his nearly 13-hour filibuster this week against John Brennan’s nomination as CIA director. The senators were challenging whether the United States could conduct drone strikes against U.S. citizens on American soil (which isn’t happening). Moran pondered how far such a policy might extend. “Most Americans would find it repulsive, unconstitutional, a terrible violation of public duty if a military officer on the streets of Wichita, Kan., pulled a gun and shot an American citizen,” Moran said on the Senate floor. “And, really, is that not the logical extension of the idea that a drone strike from above results in the death of a U.S. citizen without due process?” Others weren’t impressed by the filibuster. A Wall Street Journal editorial said that if Paul “wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms. He needs to know what he’s talking about.” UPDATE: Attorney General Eric Holder sent Paul a letter Thursday assuring him that the president doesn’t have authority to use a drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on U.S. soil. Paul said he was happy with the answer.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., blasted the announcement this week by the U.S. Secret Service and the National Park Service that because of staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, public tours of the White House will be canceled beginning Saturday. “This is perception politics run amok,” Roberts said in a statement. “The White House spends tens of thousands of dollars each year on Christmas decorations and elaborate events, but when asked to trim its budget they opt to close the White House gate to the American people.”
Explaining in a speech last week in Washington, D.C., why he took the job as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., told a story about being approached on the Senate floor shortly after his 2010 election by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. As quoted by the Hill newspaper, Moran said: “Sen. Reid that day, in a casual conversation, asked me, ‘Jerry, how do you like the Senate?’ My response was that I’m very grateful for the opportunity that I’ve been given. But, Leader, we’re not doing anything. Sen. Reid’s response was, ‘Jerry, you need to understand that we’re not going to do anything until after the election.’” Moran also said: “To be told at that stage – almost two years before the next election – that nothing was going to be done, was an eye-opening experience to me and was very troublesome.” Reid’s office did not respond to the Hill’s request for comment.
In an article headlined “Agriculture has slipped from D.C.’s radar screen,” Politico noted that only nine days after the Chrysler ad on the Super Bowl had Americans feeling warm and fuzzy about farming, President Obama “skipped over farmers entirely in his State of the Union address, never mentioning the yearlong farm bill stalemate in Congress nor even including ‘agriculture’ among the thousands of words spoken that night.” Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said, “The president and his people I don’t think even get it.” The office of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack responded: “The president has repeatedly called on Congress to pass the long-term farm bill rural America deserves, and the administration continues to urge action this year.”
The Kansas delegation split evenly on the Violence Against Women Act, which was reauthorized in the House Thursday and sent to the president’s desk. Reps. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, and Kevin Yoder, R-Overland Park, voted with 85 other Republicans to pass it in the House, while Reps. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, and Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, voted “no.” Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., supported reauthorization last month in the Senate, while Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., did not. Huelskamp has said the federal government “should not be in the business of handing out grants conditioned on how states do or do not prosecute criminals.”
It was no surprise that the White House meeting today with congressional leaders didn’t result in any agreement regarding the sequester. President Obama is still pushing for a “balanced approach” involving both spending cuts and revenue increases. But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is having none of it. “The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over,” Boehner said.
Columnist Cal Thomas (in photo) urged GOP lawmakers not to back down on the sequester cuts, which are scheduled to start going into effect Friday. “Whatever the short-term political price, Republicans must stand for the Constitution, the country and the future,” he wrote. “Allowing the president to have his way again risks harming all three.”
Kansas Sens. Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran were among the 27 lawmakers who were part of a losing attempt Tuesday to filibuster the confirmation of Chuck Hagel (in photo) as defense secretary. The Senate went on to confirm Hagel (with Roberts and Moran voting “no” again). Roberts had said that he didn’t want to filibuster. “It is a choice that could lead to a lot more problems,” he told Politico. The senators also went against the advice of former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, who endorsed Hagel last week and said his “wisdom and courage make him uniquely qualified to be secretary of defense and lead the men and women of our armed forces.”
Though he would rather they be distributed differently, U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, is OK with the automatic spending cuts scheduled to go into effect Friday, he told The Eagle recently. He thinks the federal government, including the military, can withstand the cuts. In fact, he wishes that sequestration, which he called a “home run,” would mandate deeper cuts, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. “That’s why it’s only a home run and not a grand slam,” he said. Responding Tuesday to White House criticism of his comments, Pompeo said that “the sequester is a home run not because it is good politics, but because it begins to put America back on the right fiscal track.”
Though much of the public is still tuned out of the sequester debate, 49 percent said they would blame Republicans in Congress if the automatic spending cuts happen, while 31 percent would blame President Obama, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center and USA Today. Also, 49 percent said they would rather see the cuts delayed, while 40 percent said they would prefer having the cuts go into effect rather than delaying them again. Just 19 percent want a deal that includes no tax increases, as the GOP wants, while 76 percent want the deal to include both tax hikes and spending cuts, as Obama wants.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., is backing a new effort to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. “It is time to stop the reckless spending in Washington and restore some fiscal sanity to our country,” he said in a statement. But conservative commentator Ramesh Ponnuru contends that a balanced-budget amendment is a bad idea. “A strict balanced-budget rule would force spending cuts or tax increases at times of economic weakness,” he noted, which could make the economy worse. Another big concern is that the courts likely would be responsible for enforcing the amendment. Ponnuru wrote: “The result would be a major expansion of judicial power over American life, brought to us by the party that has rightly warned against the growth of that very power for decades.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo (in photo), R-Wichita, identified one of the big problems that need to be fixed as part of federal immigration reform: The current legal immigration system is so backlogged and broken that it encourages illegal immigration. “Our immigration policy is completely backward,” Pompeo told the Topeka Capital-Journal. “Today, if you want to come here in a legal way, with proper paperwork, it is very difficult. If you want to come here unlawfully, it’s easier.”
Little evidence exists to suggest that modest increases in the minimum wage lead to job losses, so the battle ahead in Congress is really one between free-market orthodoxy and basic human decency. We would invest our money in decency. In his State of the Union address, President Obama called upon Congress to boost the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour by 2015, up from the current $7.25. The wage would rise in steps and after hitting the maximum in two years would thereafter be indexed to inflation. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage in the late 1960s was about $10 per hour, and it was even higher in the 1980s. President Obama’s call to raise it to $9 is far from excessive. The state of Washington is already higher. Conservatives may argue that the market should set wages, but they argued the feds should let GM fail, too. Working people need a raise. Congress should give them one. – Battle Creek (Mich.) Enquirer
At a time when the U.S. economic recovery has slowed to a standstill, President Obama’s State of the Union speech seemed to come from an alternate universe as he prescribed more tax hikes and costly federal regulations. His call for a 24 percent increase in the minimum wage to $9 an hour would be especially damaging. Hiking the minimum wage discriminates against entry-level workers. The higher it goes, the minimum wage not only raises business costs and reduces the number of available jobs, but also biases the labor force toward workers who already have work experience – or just eliminates jobs altogether. You only need to go back to the last minimum -age hike to see its negative effects. In 2007, Congress passed an ill-timed minimum-wage bump – a two-year, 40 percent, phased-in increase from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour by 2009. The result was a plunge in working youths. To protect entry-level jobs and priceless working experience, Congress should hold off on any new wage increases. – Detroit News
The threat of automatic budget cuts on March 1 has caused the Department of Homeland Security to hold back $40 million for a power plant and $50 million for construction at the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them wait and see what happens,” said Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka. “If the sequester kicks in, they’re going to have to reprioritize.” Kansas may also have to increase its investment in the research facility beyond the $140 million that’s been pledged, but the congressional delegation remains optimistic that the facility will be completed. “Maybe Kansas has to put a little more money in that the original plan didn’t call for,” said Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita. “It makes sense for America, not just Kansas. Ultimately, that will drive us to get NBAF constructed.”
The efforts of Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., to curb Federal Aviation Administration cuts under sequestration and keep 149 airport control towers open were highlighted in a Wall Street Journal editorial blasting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Moran “proposed replacing $50 million of FAA sequester cuts with savings from unspent balances, which are a kind of agency slush fund, and by reducing other low-priority spending. Great idea. How did the vote turn out? There wasn’t one. Majority Leader Reid blocked the amendment from ever getting to the Senate floor.” The editorial noted that “Moran also couldn’t get a vote to restore funding for White House tours by cutting $2.5 million for new uniforms for airport screeners.”
