An excellent response ad by the David Prosser campaign.
That group that helped return you to the majority in the House, you know the Tea Party, is getting a little irritated with your actions lately.
It’s this simple, the House Republican leaders have no plan to cut real federal spending or to repeal ObamaCare. Repealing or defunding ObamaCare was the ONE priority Americans sent the Republicans to do when they were returned to power in the House. I began to sense how things would be when Republicans pledged to cut spending by only $100 billion. $100 billion? Wow. Veni, vidi, durmi! I came, I saw, I yawned! We have a $1.65 TRILLION deficit this year alone! And, of course, Republican leadership has already retreated from the $100 billion to a measly $51 billion. You have to hand it to Republicans, they never fail to disappoint!
Republicans like Boehner and Cantor are making a very grave mistake counting on the continued support of the tea party. The Texas Congressman I met with told me “Republican leadership takes the tea party vote for granted because they believe the tea party will never vote for a Democrat.” That is true in most cases. However, the tea party will vote for more conservative Republicans in the primary! Boehner, Cantor and the rest of Republican leadership needs to face primary challengers back home. Republicans were not returned to power to be Democrat-Lite! Or RINO Republicans. One would think 63 new freshmen Congressmen who were supported by the tea party movement might wake up a few RINOs in Washington.
But you’d be wrong!The RINOs in Congress tell us “You don’t understand. You don’t know how it works up here.” You’re right, we don’t know how it works but have pretty much figured out how it doesn’t work! And it doesn’t work with the clutch of lifetime, bureaucrats we are currently stuck with who cannot find it within themselves to cut any more than $51 billion from a $1.65 TRILLION deficit! Boehner, Cantor and the rest of their cronies should understand the tea party is not loyal to the Republican Party! The tea party is loyal to the Constitution of the United States and the principles of limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual freedom and responsibility, and national sovereignty! Right now, all of those are being trampled on by politicians and the negative effects are becoming more evident each day!
At the end of the day it’s simple. Politics as usual won’t cut it. Compromise isn’t an option when it comes to the basic principles. It’s something that not only Republican leadership in the House needs to understand. It’s something that House members elected last November need to understand as well, if they want to be more than a one-term Representative.
The chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus in Wisconsin was recently elected chair of the Southern Branch of the Milwaukee CountyRepublican Party.
In late January, Murphy won election uncontested after it became clear that he was going to win even if the establishment put up a candidate against him. Murphy and Vice-Chair Alfredo Rios joined several pro-liberty allies on the Milwaukee County GOP Party and, together, have been able to change some minds of members.
Michael Murphy is best known for his discovery of the “unwritten rule” among members of the Wisconsin Congressional delegation. A rule unknown to many Republican party members.
The agreement is that incumbent Members of Wisconsin Congressional Delegation will not campaign against each other. The agreement is between ALL members of the Wisconsin Congressional Delegation. In Wisconsin, there are three Democrat incumbents and five Republican incumbents, none of whom will mention each other by name (except in a positive light) in the 2012 election cycle as a result of this unwritten agreement.
The argument could easily be made that this agreement contributed to this:
Prior to November, an incumbent member of Congress had not lost in the state in over ten years and only four Members of Congress had lost in the Badger State in the last 28 years.
Being chairman of the Southern Branch puts Murphy in the position to bring about change to the Republican Party from within, starting with shedding light on this “unwritten” rule.
As Chairman of the South Branch of the Milwaukee County GOP, Murphy introduced and passed a resolution condemning and disallowing the elected Republican members of Congress to participate in a sweetheart deal with Democrat incumbents.
Shortly before the Milwaukee County GOP Caucus, the Milwaukee County Resolutions Committee shot down Murphy’s resolution. Murphy took the resolution to the floor for delegates to hear. After explaining the “Unwritten Agreement”, he received support from delegates and even from members of the Resolutions Committee who previously discarded the proposal. The resolution was agreed to by the Milwaukee County GOP body.
Thanks to Murphy’s leadership on the issue it will be a topic at the state GOP convention in May.
The WIGOP Convention will occur on May 21, 2011, in Wisconsin Dells, at which time the State Resolutions Committee will consider the proposal. If passed by the Resolution Committee, the proposal will be listed in the WIGOP program for delegates to consider. Should the Resolutions Committee not adopt it, Murphy will introduce the measure from the floor, so delegates will have a say on it.
Many people at the grassroots level believe that changes are needed when it comes to how the GOP in Wisconsin does things. For that change to happen from within, more people need to step up the way Michael Murphy did.
Last week was Sunshine Week, where the openness or lack of it when it comes to government is highlighted. At the federal level with all the hype of transparency it seems there is a great deal of secrecy.
- U.S. senators do not file campaign contributions electronically, because they are not required to. Their reports are printed and mailed to the Secretary of the Senate where they are scanned into nonsearchable images and e-mailed to the Federal Elections Commission. The FEC posts the images on its site and snail-mails the data to a government contractor, which manually inputs the data into a searchable database -– all of which results in unnecessary costs and delays for public review. Proposals to change the antiquated process to comport with House electronic-reporting mandates have failed.
- Voting records are not recorded during congressional “voice votes.”
- Lawmakers are not required to reveal their affiliations with charities and nonprofits, which may receive unlimited funding from corporations.
- There is no standard, one-stop shopping source to obtain information about congressional committee hearing times, agendas, votes, member changes, transcripts and so forth.
- The URLs for committee websites are sometimes altered without notice when the ruling party changes, leaving a trail of broken links around the web.
- Lawmakers do not have to disclose when they’ve met with lobbyists.
- There is a three-to-four-month lag time in publicizing the White House visitor log, and the rules for disclosing the logs are riddled with exceptions.
But that’s not all. Seems there are tremendous shortfalls when it comes to complying with the Freedom of Information Act.
- When the government does comply, the records produced generally are nonsearchable image files, or they are printed documents, making them difficult to sift through and analyze.
- Neither Congress nor the courts are covered by FOIA, nor the president and immediate staff. FOIA basically only covers the executive-branch agencies, and the law does not cover documents surrounding the so-called “deliberative process.”
- FOIA requests often take years to process despite a 20-day rule. Many agencies have not updated their FOIA protocols despite a White House order that they do so.
With all the lack of transparency is it really hard to believe why people don’t trust the government. The perfect example of opaqueness was seen during the debate on ObamaCare.
