Op-Eds and Blogs

In an affront to openness and representative government, the IRS is attempting to rewrite the president’s health-care law to overrule states that lawfully opted out of vast new taxpayer-funded subsidies to insurance companies. Fortunately, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has stepped forward with a resolution, S.J. Res. 48, that would overturn the IRS power grab. If enough of his Senate colleagues sign on, he can force a Senate floor vote, giving the American people an opportunity to see where every senator stands. It might be the only health-care vote in the Senate before the November elections. Insurance exchanges are a central feature of the president’s health-care law. These exchanges are tightly regulated bureaucracies through which the law’s new subsidies and employer tax penalties flow. Throughout the entire tumultuous debate — both before and since the bill was enacted — proponents have responded to charges that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) represents a federal takeover of health care by stressing that its exchanges are state-based.

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators DeMint (R-South Carolina), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) are introducing the Pay for Printing Act, which would require senators to pay for celebratory or commemorative resolutions out of their own budgets, rather than using taxpayer funds. “The printing of symbolic, nonbinding resolutions has gotten out of hand and it’s costing taxpayers more of their hard-earned dollars,” DeMint said. “This bipartisan legislation simply requires senators to take responsibility for paying for the cost of printing these symbolic resolutions out of their own office budgets. This will require senators to be more judicious with taxpayer dollars and hopefully cut down on many of these unnecessary resolutions.”

Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), along with several other colleagues in the Senate, are advocating the Department of Defense create a financial audit itemizing its spending habits. The proposal, called Audit the Pentagon Act, would give DoD new incentives and enforcement mechanisms to help it pass an audit, according to an Aug. 2 news release. "By failing to pass an audit, the Pentagon has undermined our national security. This bill ends the culture of 'don't ask, don't tell' budgeting within the Pentagon that says, 'don't ask us how we're spending money because we can't tell you,'" Coburn said. "When the Pentagon can't tell Congress, or itself, how it is spending money, good programs face cuts along with wasteful programs, which is the situation in which we find ourselves today under sequestration."

A bipartisan group of senators led by South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint introduced the Pay for Printing Act Thursday, which would require senators to pay for celebratory “simple resolutions” with money from their own budgets. During the 112th Congress, the Senate has already passed over 350 simple resolutions, and introduced over a 100 more. They have mostly been symbolic, feel-good declarations including, as The Daily Caller reported in June: “National Chess Day,” “National Safe Digging Month,” “Year of Water,” “National Inventors Month,” “Collector Car Appreciation Day,” and “The Year of the Family Caregiver.” DeMint’s office points out that each resolution page costs an estimated $1,200. A Daily Caller investigation in June revealed that the 318 simple resolutions passed since January 2011 cost taxpayers $381,600. Dozens of additional simple resolutions have been passed since then, and their total price tag in this Congress now amounts to more than $400,000.