Archives for September 2015

General Electric has been bailed out by taxpayers and been stuffing its coffers out of Americans’ pockets ever since, but the corporate giant is shipping 500 jobs overseas after not getting its way on a major policy debate.

As reported by energy policy expert and free market advocate Tom Borelli in Conservative Review and in the Wall Street Journal, GE threatened to relocate 500 American-based jobs overseas if Congress did not reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.  Congress let the bank expire at the end of June and General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt appears to be following through on that vow.

“It looks like Immelt is following through on his retaliation by claiming to move jobs overseas,” said Borelli.

Immelt has been a very public supporter of President Obama’s economic policies and even served on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.  He later was tapped as one of Obama’s key economic advisers from outside the administration.

Borelli says Immelt is guilty of a very short memory.

“We the people bailed out General Electric during the market crash in 2008.  In fact, they got a $16 billion loan from the federal reserve.  The FDIC also tweaked its requirements that allowed General Electric to be qualified as a bank so that some of GE’s loans would be backed again by we the people,” said Borelli.

“With Immelt, it’s a one way street.  We the taxpayers have all the burden while he wants all the benefit,” added Borelli.

Borelli says GE was not as pushy at the government trough before the 2008 financial crisis.  Since then, he says the company is the poster child of what’s wrong with crony capitalism.

“It’s a model, really, of corporatism, where he used government to boost profits of General Electric products,” said Borelli.

He says this relationship between government and business is not how an economy grows.

“A free market is great as long as it’s free.  General Electric uses its lobbying force to try to get government favors in order to boost sales of their products.  And the Export-Import Bank is just one of those examples,” said Borelli.

Borelli says the problem has gotten much worse under President Obama, especially in his pet sectors of the economy, and the collusion is getting very ugly.

“The way corporatism has developed through the Obama years, whether you look at Obamacare or green energy, as government has grown, big business has become more and more cozy with big government.  They have a great little network of DC insiders who lobby for the laws so they end up benefiting big government and also boosting their sales,” said Borelli.

Getting back to free market principles is key for Borelli, but time is of the essence.  He says the longer business leaders prop up their balance sheets by holding out their hands to government, the harder it will be to convince them to give up the easy money.

“There is a growing dependency of big business on big government.  Remember, it’s not like individual people who may be on individual subsidies like food stamps or some sort of welfare program.  Big business has a lot of money to spread around Congress to get special favors,” said Borelli.

The best way to shake up the system, according to Borelli, is to pursue an issue both parties say is a major priority but never seem to get to:  tax reform.

“I think fundamental tax reform would be a great way to advance really free markets along with (reducing) corporate taxes as well, bringing a lot of money that’s overseas back here.  If you really had a simplified tax code or even a flat tax or even a zero flat tax for corporations, they’d have every incentive to keep employees here and grow here, rather than trying to manipulate this system for an individual company’s benefit,” said Borelli.

But before than can happen, he says one important thing must change.

“It’s going to take a new administration, that’s for sure,” said Borelli.

He says it will also require lawmakers to find the courage to pull away the feeding dish from some of their highest donors.

“A number of elected officials benefit as well from these special interests because they get the money to try to really tweak the laws to the favor of big business.  That’s why every individual needs to be engaged, watch what their representative is doing and then really push for a smaller government.  That’s really the only answer,” said Borelli.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review are pleased to learn the FBI expects to recover many of Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.  They also sigh at reports that the few Syrian rebels who did actually get trained immediately surrendered and gave their weapons to Al Qaeda.  And they rip Obama for his blatant hypocrisy and selective praise of Pope Francis.

Conservative activist Kay Daly is taking aim at incumbent GOP Rep. Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., declaring that she is taking aim at RINOs (Republicans in Name Only).

At stake is the Republican nomination in the Tar Heel State’s second congressional district.  Ellmers scored a major upset to win the seat as a tea party candidate in 2010, but Daly says Ellmers quickly abandoned the principles she espoused while running for office.

“She’s the gift that keeps on giving,” said Daly, before listing the issue she thinks ought to disqualify Ellmers from serving another term.

“She’s a tax and borrow liberal.  In her first year in Congress alone, Ellmers voted to increase the debt by more than Hillary Clinton did in eight years as a senator.  She refuses to exercise Congress’s purse power to defund Obamacare.  She’s an open borders, pro-amnesty apologist for illegals,” said Daly.  “She’s the one who tried to kill the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.”

After exploring a congressional bid by traveling throughout the district, Daly says the GOP-heavy district is ready for a change.

“They cannot wait to get a conservative, a real conservative, into office.  They can’t wait for the election.  Most of them, when they found out I was even considering it, they were saying, ‘Please run. Please.’  [Ellmers] is someone who comes back to the district and gets in arguments with her constituents.  It’s all over YouTube,” said Daly.

Daly, whose first ad shows her firing a gun and saying ‘I’m hunting RINOs’ says the recent actions by the Republican Congress show there needs to be new blood in the majority.

“What we have too many of in Congress are millionaires who don’t do their job.  What we have too few of are folks with titanium spines and political courage.  What we need are folks who can go to Washington and actually remember they’re conservatives and actually vote their districts,” said Daly.

There’s more than one challenger to Ellmers from the conservative side.  Jim Duncan entered the race earlier this year, touting himself as the antidote to Ellmers.  Daly says she looks forward to a spirited campaign and hopes Duncan will endorse her in the run-off against Ellmers following the March 2016 primary.

Daly says she can better make the case as the conservative challenger to Ellmers because of a lifetime of principled activism.

“I’ve got 30 years worth of a conservative record that I don’t think Jim has if one looks closely at his record,” said Daly.  “I’ve worked for (former Texas Sen.) Phil Gramm.  I’ve got the support of people like Jim Dobson and Alan Keyes and Gary Bauer.”

“It’s like Ted Cruz said, ‘Where have you led and where have you bled?’ said Daly.

Daly calls her time in Gramm’s office a Ph.D-level experience in understanding what public service is all about.  She says the lessons learned there stand in stark contrast to the way Ellmers views her job.

“He told me time and time again, ‘Remember who you work for.’  What I’m remembering first and foremost is ‘Remember who your boss is.’  It’s the people of the second district.  What my opponent said was after she got there was, ‘Oh, my boss is John Boehner,” said Daly.

Daly flatly refuses to back Boehner or other members of the current House leadership for re-election, and she says they will have no influence on her votes.

“I’m going to go to Washington.  I’m going to stand on principle.  John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy and the rest of them aren’t going to change my mind for anything,” said Daly, insisting she will not play their game of voting on bills minutes after they are made available for review.

“If a thousand-page bill is handed to me half an hour before the vote, I’m going to use the Sen. Mike Lee rule and vote no,” said Daly.

Several issues will be front and center for Daly if she is elected to Congress, starting with government spending.

“When I look at my three children, it’s something that is untenable.  That’s something that has to be gotten into hand right away,” said Daly.

Immigration is another front-burner issue.

“We can’t afford to take in everybody anymore.  This is the greatest country in the world and we are the most generous country in this world.  But the answers Washington has come up with are just completely out of touch with what the rest of the world is feeling.  Too many people are out of work too many people are in trouble out there.  We have to take care of our own right now,” she said.

Social issues also matter a great deal to her, especially protecting the unborn and traditional marriage.

“These issues are near and dear to my heart.  I’ll be fighting for the unborn and fighting to get our courts back in line,” she said.

More information on Daly’s campaign can be found at kaydaly.com.

 

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review split Scott Walker’s departure from the 2016 race into three martinis.  They’re glad Wisconsin will keep a great governor, that Walker had the courage to realize it wasn’t going to happen and that he appears to be a man who doesn’t feel like he needs to be president.  They also shake their heads that Walker fell victim to a GOP voter mentality that any politician, even an accomplished conservative, is unacceptable this year.  And they scratch their heads over Walker’s call for lots of other candidates to drop out so conservatives can rally around one person to defeat Trump  – four months before the first votes are cast.

The Obama administration is just weeks away from imposing a new ozone particulate standard that manufacturers say will cripple jobs and productivity in the U.S and leave some firms and industries clinging to life.

The National Association of Manufacturers released a study suggesting the standard would cost the U.S. 1.4 million jobs and $1.7 trillion in productivity by 2040 the standard is lowered from 75 parts per billion to 65 parts per billion.  The EPA could bring it as low as 60 parts per billion, which the study projects would be catastrophic.

For business owners like Summitville Tiles CEO David Johnson, the change would be devastating.  The firm is based in Ohio, which relies heavily on manufacturing for jobs and economic growth.  Johnson recently wrote a column explaining what’s at stake if the Obama administration get’s it’s way.

“We have 88 counties in this state and under this new ozone standard, all 88 of these counties would be out of compliance, just by the stroke of the pen of this executive order of the president,” said Johnson.

In addition to burdening existing manufacturers, Johnson says the new ozone standard would stifle new business.

“It would essentially stop any new projects from going forward unless there were reductions in emissions in other plants in other areas.  In other words, there’s a trade-off.  If you’re going to add new emissions, you’d have to reduce emissions somewhere else.  So (if you) shut down a factory or a company goes out of business, then and only then would you have a permit to expand your particular operations,” said Johnson.

According to Johnson, American manufacturing has never received a gut punch like this from its own government.

“This is not a bill that’s been passed by Congress, hasn’t been vetted, hasn’t been studied.  It’s simply President Obama and his EPA’s effort to combat what they believe is global warming.  So yeah, it would be the most expensive regulation in the history of regulations,” said Johnson.

Johnson says the looming change is especially maddening when the EPA admits ozone levels are vastly improving over the past few decades.

“By EPA’s own public admission, concentrations of ozone have actually declined by 33 percent from 1980 to 2013, during the same period of time when the U.S. population had increased by 40 percent  and the economy had more than doubled in size,” said Johnson.

Summitville Tiles has been in business for four generations and for over a century.  In recent years, however, Johnson says a 700-member workforce has been trimmed considerably just to stay afloat.  The firm is the only remaining member of its national trade association from the ceramic tile industry because most cannot compete with cheaper materials flooding the market from China and Mexico.

Johnson says the ozone regulations are part of a looming double whammy that could leave manufacturing in dire straits.

“This new Pacific trade agreement is a perfect example of another whole new category of countries that will be given preferential treatment to ship product into the United States to undermine and undercut our products,” said Johnson.

He added, “At the same time, we’re being hammered by these new regulations and those will be very costly to comply with.”

A public comment period is open before the ozone standard goes into effect, but Johnson thinks voicing opposition to the EPA is a waste of oxygen.  He says the only way to fight back is at the ballot box.

“Another four years of Obama thinking could do irreparable harm to this country’s ability to compete and its ability to provide jobs,” said Johnson.

He says 2016 must be a change election for the sake of American jobs.

“I urge people to get involved in this next election and make sure that there’s a change in the White House.  That’s where it’s coming from.  This is government by fiat, not government by deliberative democratic process,” said Johnson.

Before getting to the martinis, Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss the tragic death of Jake Brewer, husband of conservative commentator and author Mary Katherine Ham.  Later, they applaud House Republicans for advancing legislation to defund Planned Parenthood and impose criminal penalties on medical personnel who refuse to help babies who survive attempted abortions.  They also unload on the U.S. military for ordering service members not to report or intervene as Afghan police officials regularly rape boys – and severely punish those who do.  And we discuss the stunning collapse of support for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s 2016 campaign.

The House of Representatives passed two pro-life bills on Friday, one to freeze funding for Planned Parenthood pending a thorough investigation and the other to uphold the rights of babies who survive attempted abortions.

The House voted 241-187 to withhold funding for Planned Parenthood and passed the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act 248-177.

“It’s a historic day,” said Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., lead sponsor of the latter legislation.

He says both pieces of legislation were inspired by undercover videos from the Center for Medical Progress, which accuses Planned Parenthood of profiting from the body parts sales of aborted children.  One video includes the testimony of a former fetal tissue procurement specialist describing how abortionists will cut through the face of a baby whose heart was still beating and whose limbs were still moving in order to procure parts of the brain.

“A lot of people have seen the videos.  For those who haven’t, it’s so important that they do because our collective response to these videos is very important to us as a nation.  The reality there is so stark, that if we don;t have the courage to respond accordingly, I’m afraid that all the things that all the men and women out in Arlington National Cemetery died for is at risk,” said Franks.

Federal law already includes the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, calling for medical care to be administered to any child outside the womb.  Franks says the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act has more teeth to it.

“There’s no federal penalty in the other legislation at all.  Under this legislation, if a doctor just callously ignores the child’s life and ignores this bill, then he’s up to five years in prison.  If he deliberately kills the child or cuts up the child to get the body parts while the child is alive, then that’s the same as murder,” said Franks.

But he says the legislation also carries penalties in other instances.

“Also, this gives the mother the right of private action because there are instances where mothers have gone in and delivered a live baby and wanted to have medical care for that baby and the clinic personnel literally wouldn’t call for an ambulance or anything and the baby would die,” said Franks.

President Obama has vowed to veto both bills if they make it to his desk.  Franks is especially appalled that Obama refuses to respect the lives of babies outside the womb.

“It is hard to put into words the disgust I would hold for that position, that the president of the United States would become the most powerful enemy that the most helpless of all human beings have in this world,” said Franks.

He didn’t stop there.

“He certainly is doing everything he can to cement his position in history as the abortion president.  But I’ve got to tell you, nothing will mar his legacy and completely vitiate any claim he ever had on wanting to suggest he would protect the little guy than saying he will make sure we can’t protect little born-alive children.  It is a disgrace that I don’t have words for,” said Franks.

He says opposition to his bill from Obama and scores of other Democrats exposes the rank hypocrisy of many in the pro-choice movement.

“For years, the abortion industry has tried to make us separate unborn children and born children in our minds.  On the one hand, they said the born child is protectable but the unborn child isn’t worthy of protection.  Now they’re in the unenviable position of trying to rejoin these babies by saying neither of them are persons and neither of them are worthy of protection,” said Franks.

“If Democrats and this president, their leader, can say we no longer protect born children because somehow they weren’t wanted, I will tell you they have then made the statement that there is nothing that’s wrong.  There’s nothing too far for them in terms of gaining short term political gain if they have to sell out not only the country but future generations,” he added.

Franks urges voters to pay attention to which lawmakers oppose mandating medical care for babies outside of the womb and make sure their next election is their last.

“If they vote against protecting a born-alive child, I am hoping the voters will send them packing for the remainder of their lives,” said Franks.  “I think the American people at some point are going to say, ‘That’s enough.  If you don’t have the courage to protect a little child, then you’ve forgotten the whole purpose of government in the first place and we don’t want you anywhere near the Capitol.”

He says voters are the key to making sure government respects life.

“There’s only two ways to change policy in this country.  That is either to elect the right people or beg the wrong ones to do the right thing.  Right now, we’re begging the president of the United States to protect the most helpless of all children.  If he does not heed that request, I guess the only thing one could do on his part would be to pray that there is no God,” said Franks.

Franks believes his legislation can find enough support in the U.S. Senate to break a Democratic filibuster.  He also endorses GOP efforts to advance the defunding of Planned Parenthood through budget tactics that will not require 60 votes to proceed.

Senate Conservatives Fund President Ken Cuccinelli says the next president needs to be a rock-solid conservative who will “rip the place out by the roots” when they come to Washington, but he says the leadership of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner still amounts to nothing more than pre-emptive surrender.

Speaking from Mount Vernon on Constitution Day , Cuccinelli says he thought there was plenty of substance in the three-hour CNN Republican presidential debate but that it could have done without the incessant questions asking candidates to respond to statements their rivals made.

“They had talked about making it Lincoln-Douglas style.  CNN’s idea of Lincoln-Douglas style is just the fact that candidates talk to each other.  You know there was no moderator turning to Senator (Stephen) Douglas saying, ‘You know, Lincoln says you’re short and fat like a fireplug.  What do you think of that?  Hey Lincoln, Senator Douglas says you’re a big, tall, ugly gorilla.  What do you think of that?” mused Cuccinelli.

The former Virginia attorney general says an actual Lincoln-Douglas style debate would have been much better.

“It would be nice to transport them back there and maybe get a little peek at it,” said Cuccinelli.  “Eventually [the Wednesday debate] got to substance, thankfully, but I think the candidates have a legitimate criticism there.”

Cuccinelli says he’s encouraged by the quality of candidates in the GOP field, but he says the nominee needs to embrace a concept many Republicans don’t think about much.

“One thing that I have been telling people in Virginia that I think needs to be a very important new consideration is we need a president who will show up and rip the place out by the roots, without apology,” said Cuccinelli.

He says that sentiment is rampant among conservatives and explains the popularity of the the Republican front-runner.

“It’s amazing now to see the Trump phenomenon, which is based very much on that, at least the people who are supporting him want that.  He’s not a conservative but he is very anti-establishment, so he is really generating his support on the anti-establishment side.  He’s ticking all the right people off,” said Cuccinelli.

But Cuccinelli says it’s still vital for Republicans to nominate a principled conservative.

“You can wreck the place but what are you going to build afterwards?  Is it going to be something based on the vision of this country and first principles,” said Cuccinelli.  “That’s what I want to see out of the next president and I think we have a very high quality field on the Republican side and there are many candidates who might fit that bill.”

Cuccinelli says the Senate Conservatives Fund will not be getting involved in the presidential race and he declined to give his personal preferences.  However, when asked to list the candidates that did a good job of articulating conservative principles on Wednesday, he mentioned Sens. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, along with Carly Fiorina and, to some extent, Gov. Chris Christie.

While the 2016 presidential race plays out, Cuccinelli is keeping a very close eye on the 2016 appropriations process.  A new fiscal year starts Oct. 1 and insistence from Democrats and President Obama on higher spending in many areas has GOP leaders believing a short-term continuing resolution at existing spending levels is the best option.

Cuccinelli is thoroughly unimpressed.

“That’s silly.  The habit by Boehner and McConnell of preemptive surrender is really devastating to America and to the people who helped to elect these majorities,” said Cuccinelli, who also fumes over McConnell’s comments in recent weeks that fights over Planned Parenthood funding and other Republican priorities would have to wait until we have a different president.

“How about if you just fight for what’s right?  How about that?  It doesn’t even occur to him to do the right thing.  I’m a litigator, a negotiator by profession.  President Obama, as we’ve seen with Iran, is an awful negotiator.  He’s just terrible at it.  But John Boehner and Mitch McConnell make him look brilliant by comparison,” said Cuccinelli.

He believes GOP leaders could be much tougher, from actually passing bills and forcing Obama to veto popular legislation to making Democrats filibuster the old fashioned way by defending their position on Planned Parenthood or Iran for hours on the floor.

“Make the Democrats stand up there for hour after hour and defend Iran.  Defending Iran!  Can you believe we’re saying this.  Make them do it.  Where’s the guts on this and, frankly, where are the brains?” said Cuccinelli, who says the public is overwhelmingly supportive of Republican positions on these issues.

Republican leaders dismiss Cuccinelli’s approach, saying the party will badly lose the public relations battle if there is a government shutdown and President Obama will never back down on issues like funding Planned Parenthood, sanctuary cities and the implementation of the Iran deal.

Cuccinelli says the strategy should be much more aggressive.

“If it were me and I sent him a budget that defunded Planned Parenthood and he vetoed it and he came back, I’d then send a budget that defunded Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities.  If he vetoed that, I’d send him a budget that defunded sanctuary cities, Planned Parenthood and the Iran deal.  You get the idea,” said Cuccinelli.

He also says McConnell could have effectively killed the Iran nuclear deal.

“If a senator put in a resolution to approve the Iran deal as a treaty and McConnell brought it to the floor, of course it wouldn’t get two-thirds of the vote (for ratification).  I would like to see Sen. (Tom) Cotton do that.  Of course I would then expect him to vote against his own resolution to approve it as a treaty,” said Cuccinelli.

“Then it will be identified by both houses as a treaty and rejected by the Senate, which has [jurisdiction] over treaties.  You could immediately be in court with the president for a preliminary injunction to stop the implementation of the Iran deal immediately.  That’s easy.  You don’t even have to win any votes.  You just have to hold them.  Even if it’s filibustered, it would put the Senate in the posture where that litigation is available,” said Cuccinelli.

Despite his frustrations with what he sees as a lack of boldness from the GOP leaders of a congressional majority, Cuccinelli says he still holds out hope that Republicans will fight back against Obama in these critical upcoming voted.  However, he says there’s only one way that will happen.

“I do think tactics can change but they aren’t going to change unless the people of this country call their Republican senators and Mitch McConnell and beat them over the head to get change,” he said.

Thursday afternoon, Republicans unveiled a new push to end taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.  They call for a short-term continuing resolution and a separate vote on defunding Planned Parenthood that would not require the 60-vote threshold.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review shake their heads at CNN holding a three-hour debate and barely using two of the questioners.  They also rip John Kasich for being critical of Planned Parenthood funding and the Iran deal but making it clear he wouldn’t do much to stop it.  And they applaud several candidates for making strong conservative points.

Nearly two dozen House Republicans are already on board an effort to impeach Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy for allegedly committing perjury and making false statements to Congress as part of her effort to push  a controversial new rule on water.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.  He says McCarthy broke the law multiple times before the committee while advocating for the Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, standard.  The rule is lauded by environmentalists but critics say it gives the feds power to regulate everything as small as a puddle.

“One of the responsibilities of Congress is the power of the purse but there is also oversight.  In order to have proper oversight, you have to have agency administrators, directors and secretaries of those agencies speak frankly and about the facts,” said Gosar.

Despite the EPA’s controversial proposals on water, ozone and power plant rules, Gosar says the impeachment is explicitly in response to McCarthy deliberately misleading Congress.

Known officially as House Resolution 417, the articles of impeachment drafted by Gosar specifically call three instances into question.

 

It alleges that McCarthy lied to the House Space, Science and Technology Committee when she said that the scientific rationale for proposing government regulation of any water found within 4,000 feet of navigable waters was included in materials provided to the committee.

“It is available in the docket…and that’s what we relied on, both the knowledge and expertise of our staff, the information that we received from the public and comments and the science that’s available to us,” testified McCarthy, who said her policy had the support of the Army Corps of Engineers.

However, Gosar and his allies point to an April 27 memo from Major General John Peabody of the Army Corps of Engineers that describes the EPA wavering between a 4,000 and 5,000 foot boundary and neither number being grounded in sound policy.

“EPA staff never provided any scientific support or justification for either a 5,000-foot or 4,000-foot cutoff.” said the Peabody memo.

In late July, McCarthy appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where she assured lawmakers that any differences with the Army Corps of Engineers about the rule had been cleared up.

“I individually had conversations with [Assistant Secretary of the Army Jo-Ellen Darcy] about the changes that the Army Corps was interested in making, and as the proposal moved through the interagency process I understood that everything had been fully satisfied,” testified McCarthy.

But document from the Army Corps of Engineers offered a much different version.

“In the Corps’ judgment, the documents contain numerous inappropriate assumptions with no connection to the data provided, misapplied data, analytical deficiencies, and logical inconsistencies. As a result, the Corps’ review could not find a justifiable basis in the analysis for many of the documents’ conclusions,” the Corps reported.

The final incident occurred in McCarthy’s testimony before a joint hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, in which McCarthy insisted that WOTUS would not increase the amount of waters regulated by the government.  Yet, the EPA’s own reports showed the rule would increase jurisdiction by 3.2 percent.

Gosar says that kind of deception must be addressed by Congress.

“The magic of the American experience is that we’ve upheld the rule of law for everybody, everybody treated equally beneath the law.  If you’re not going to have consequences to a bad decision or to mislead Congress or any other aspect of life, that only incubates people to hatch bigger ideas that are not forthright and not abiding by the law,” said Gosar.

Often times, public officials under oath will make corrections to the record if they give inaccurate testimony or do not have specific information available.  Gosar says those sorts of corrections still have not happened.

“She said nothing,” said Gosar, who says his case is further strengthened by a federal judge hearing a water dispute case in North Dakota.

“The judge cited almost exclusively what we put forward in that application, which is that they have put forth false science and the fact there is no science that bases this,” said Gosar.

In addition to having flimsy or nonexistant science to back up the proposed water rule, Gosar says McCarthy is directly violating the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling on the Clean Water Act that says bodies of water with no significant connection to other navigable waters do not fall under the Clean Water Act and cannot be regulated by the government.

Gosar says Congress has two options but only one seems to make sense.

“We have the power of the purse.  That’s been a hard and arduous way when we can’t even get the Senate to take up any type of budgetary process.  So your second one is impeachment or holding accountable.  These are high crimes and misdeameanors, including lying under oath to Congress.  The facts speak for themselves,” said Gosar, stressing this allegation is not a matter of opinion.

“It’s hardly my word versus hers.  This is the Army Corps of Engineers versus her.  She’s got problems,” he added.

Gosar says it’s now time for GOP leadership to move on this impeachment effort.

“It is time to go on the offense.  Hold people accountable for the wrongdoings they do and commit against the American people, use the vestiges of the Constitution which gives us the outline of how we hold them accountable and make the Justice Department do their job.  In this case, we make the Senate do their job,” said Gosar.

If the House were to approve the articles of impeachment, the Senate would be unlikely to find 60 votes to reach a final vote, much less the two-thirds majority to convict and remove.

Those facts lead some to conclude that pursuing McCarthy’s impeachment is a fool’s errand.  Gosar vehemently disagrees.

“It is time for the cloture rule to go away.  It is time for the modern day filibuster to go away.  If you want to put your body and soul and sit on the floor and give everything you’ve got until you’re done, that may be fine.  There’s nothing in the Constitution that talks about the 60 (votes needed to cut off debate).  These are modern rules,” said Gosar.

The congressman says our founders never meant for rules like this to gum up the works.

“Our framers only wanted the ability to debate their fellow man with facts in public arenas with freedom of speech and to use the power of persuasion to persuade why they’re right,” said Gosar.  “We need to see the Senate stop hiding behind the 60-vote threshold and get back to how the rules of the Senate once were framed, and that is simple majorities.”