The Congress is suggesting giving itself a 5% pay cut. I agree with the move and heartily endorse it. However it does not remotely deal with the budget deficit. The savings is only about $3 million a year. It is an insufficient move.

To give the bill real substance if should be amended to requires Members of Congress to give up their healthcare and live with whatever they mandate for the rest of us. To really add substance to the bill I also call for a provision which gives the same 5% cut to all federal employees who make over $100,000.

One last provision should be that all federal employee pay raises given in the last 18 months should be rolled back. The rest of America has had their pay cut during that same time so why are we being asked to fund pay raises for federal employees.

Another provision should require that the entire savings from this bill should be put into the Social Security Lockbox to redeem IOU’s which Congress has put in the lockbox as they took out every bit of cash that Social Security has generated. We must start to solve the problems with Social Security’s insolvency.

Steve Pearce recently signed the American Family Business Institute “No Death Tax” pledge to support the permanent repeal of the “death tax”. 

Pearce has long supported the efforts to repeal this tax permanently and fought for the repeal while in Congress.  The death tax is especially harmful to small businesses and family farms by making it near impossible financially to hand down their business from generation to generation. This tax unfairly penalizes business and farm owners and puts people out of work in the process.

The current Congressman, Harry Teague voted along with his party leader Nancy Pelosi to pass legislation to set the death tax at a rate up to 45% for any holdings remaining at the time of a person's passing.

These tax and spend policies are going to hurt American workers and result in job loss at a time we cannot afford more loss.

A National Park, the Park Service Is Not Sure It Wants...

The Washington Post wrote recently "Hours before President Obama urged members of Congress to show spending restraint Wednesday, the House voted to authorize spending as much as $50 million to create a national historic site in the U.S. Virgin Islands on beachfront land the National Park Service isn't yet sure it wants.

Republicans had blocked the bill last week, saying it was a bad use of money for a government bleeding cash, but Democrats pushed it through this week, saying they didn't want to lose the chance to acquire the land."

The nation is broke.  We are borrowing money from China to pay for daily operating expenses of the government and the Congress votes to spend $50 million on a park…that the Park Service has not indicated it wants. 

Congressman Votes To Make Death Tax Permanent

Harry Teague joined Nancy Pelosi today by voting to make the death tax permanent. The death tax is widely viewed as punishment on small businesses and family farms.

Teague and his liberal Democrat allies passed legislation by a 225-200 margin to set the death tax at a rate up to 45% for any holdings remaining at the time of a person's passing.

Over the past decade, Steve Pearce and fellow Republicans have fought to permanently eliminate this tax. The death tax punishes small business and farms by preventing them from being handed down to the next generation. This can force family farms to be broken up and sold to major corporations and small business to close and employees lose their jobs just to pay these taxes.

Harry Teague and the Democrats voted for higher taxes in order to fuel their massive expansion of government programs.

Pearce spokesman Paul Ciaramitaro stated, "Harry Teague is fully on board the tax-and-spend train. He seems to view the death of a New Mexican as an opportunity to tax more. The death tax can punish farms and small businesses when the families can afford it the least."
 

NY Times Article Blasts Administration Reporting On Stimulus Package Results

So the reports on just how good the stimulus package has been doing in creating and saving jobs from recovery.gov are raising eyebrows all over the country.  It's not just that there are a few numbers that look a little off, it's that there are a whole slew of entries that are simply out of any frame of reality that is even remotely in the realm of what might be called truthful.

The folks at recovery.gov have attributed the poor data to human error, but that has only led to more questions about the appalling lack of oversight before posting figures as "facts."  And since many of the reports are not just misleading, but "outrageous . . .and ludicrous," (and that's Dem David Obey speaking) representatives on both sides of the isle are understandably upset.

The full NY TImes article can be read Here:  Exclusive: Jobs 'Saved or Created' in Congressional Districts That Don't Exist

You'll find it might just get your ire up as well.