Radio America Online News Bureau

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Record Spending Spending Again in Washington

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The latest report from the Treasury Department shows a record level of spending for the first nine months of the current fiscal year, and the U.S. is on it’s way to a one trillion dollar deficit by the time the year is through.

According to Treasury, expenditures from October through June totaled nearly $3.356 trillion.  Revenues came in at just over $2.6 trillion, leaving the nation with a deficit of more than $747 billion with three more months to go.

One of the nation’s top financial watchdogs says this is a bipartisan problem, noting the deficit was $5.4 trillion when George W. Bush left office.  That number jumped to $19.9 trillion when Barack Obama’s presidency ended.  Our debt is now headed towards $23 trillion just two-and-a-half years into the Trump administration.

OpentheBooks.com CEO Adam Andrzejewski says the current budget deficit is particularly bad considering the strength of our economy.

“Right now, we’re in a period of great economic expansion.  We shouldn’t be running one trillion dollar budget deficits.  You run budget deficits during an economic cycle when you slip into recession.  You don’t want to run them when you’re in economic growth and expansion,” said Andrzejewski.

Andrzejewski warns Republicans that running against the big government agenda of Democrats is going to be a tougher sell because of their own lack of fiscal discipline.

But with neither party wanting to remove funding for their friends and priorities, is there any room for common ground.  Andrzejewski says some ways to trim the fat ought to be obvious.

“The 20 largest federal agencies since 2003, they admit to $1.4 trillion going out the door in improper payments.  Just last year, our auditors at OpentheBooks.com found a billion dollars went out the door from these federal agencies to dead people,” said Andrzejewski.

It gets worse.  Andrzejewski says another six billion dollars went out in overpayments in student loans and grants and Medicare and Medicaid combined for $80-85 billion in improper payments.

Listen to the full podcast as Andrzejewski lists more wasteful spending projects that are wasting taxpayer dollars and how he encourages citizens to make their representatives pay attention to our soaring deficits and debt.

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Congressional Border Battles

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The House and Senate will need to reconcile vastly different bills designed to provide billions of dollars in emergency aid for the humanitarian crisis building on our southern border.

On Wednesday, The Senate rejected legislation passed by House Democrats and approved its own $4.6 billion measure.  House Democrats say the Senate bill is a non-starter.

While the two chambers head to the reconciliation process, Florida Rep. Ted Yoho says lawmakers cannot embrace what he considers an abandonment of law enforcement personnel along the border.

“It limits the authority of the Department of Homeland Security to surge employees at the border.  [The House bill] cuts overtime hours cuts overtime for the exhausted officers that we have working overtime.  They want to cut this.  These are the very people doing what we hired them to do,” said Yoho.

Yoho says Democrats also want to cut funding for the National Guard at the border and voted down funding for enhanced border technology that could not only detect illegal entry into the country but also protect migrants from sexual assault and trafficking by drug cartels.

He says the partisan bickering on this issue needs to stop.

“The border crisis is not a political crisis.  Well, it is a political crisis because Congress has failed to act.  But we should not be Republicans or Democrats.  We should come together to have a border security bill that solves this problem,” said Yoho.

“If we were doing what we were supposed to with border security and enforced the laws on the books, we wouldn’t have a crisis down there,” said Yoho.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Yoho discuss whether the House and Senate can find common ground in the border funding bill.  He also details why he believes the Freedom Caucus deserves credit for forcing a fight on this issue and how his forthcoming bill to reform policy for immigrant workers in the agriculture, hospitality, and construction sectors can help address the larger need for immigration reform.

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Brat Breaks Down Congress

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Former Virginia Rep. Dave Brat is now thoroughly enjoying the private sector as dean of the business school at Liberty University. However, the prominent conservative and former member of the House Freedom Caucus has plenty to say about the first few months of this Congress.

What is the role of the Freedom Caucus in the new Congress? How does he respond to accusations that the Freedom Caucus is now more devoted to defending President Trump than promoting limited government?

In the podcast, Brat addresses all of these questions and also tells House Republicans what they need to start doing right now to improve their chances of being back in the majority after the 2020 elections.

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The Inequality of the Equality Act

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Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed the Equality Act.  Supporters say they want to add anti-discrimination protections for sexual orientation and gender identity similar to the existing provisions for people based on sex, race, ethnicity, and religion.  However, critics contend the legislation would ramp up inequality for Americans who do not agree with the LGBT agenda.

Emilie Kao directs the Devos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation.  She says the Equality Act actually leads to more inequality.

“We don’t think anybody should be discriminated against simply because they are gay or transgender.  Everyone should be treated with respect.  But the problem with the Equality Act is that it doesn’t treat everyone with respect.  It basically codifies ideologies about sexual orientation and sex differences into civil rights law.  That will lead to the punishment of people who don’t agree with those viewpoints,” said Kao.

Kao says the bill would lead to an erosion of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and parental rights.

To begin, the Equality Act would trump the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, meaning wedding vendors such as bakers and florists who feel servicing a same-sex wedding would violate their consciences would not be able to cite their sincerely-held religious beliefs when sued under this law.

Kao says it would also strip legal protections for people who simply disagree with same-sex marriage or the transgender agenda.  She says teachers have been fired for refusing to use the preferred pronouns of a student identifying as a different gender and hospitals have been targeted for refusing to perform gender reassignment surgery.

According to Kao, the Equality Act would also gut parental rights.  And she cited a transgender case in Ohio as a preview for what the Equality Act would do nationwide.

“A Catholic family lost custody of their daughter when the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital said that she should be taking testosterone for gender dysphoria.  When the parents disagreed, the state charged the parents with child abuse and a judge terminated their custody,” said Kao.

Parents would also find themselves powerless in confronting an increasingly activist curriculum on these matters.

“In many cases, the parents are not even informed that children as young as kindergarten are being read stories in which they are told something that is a fallacy, which is that a person can transition from one sex to the other sex,” said Kao.

Listen to the full podcast to hear Kao explain how the Equality Act would lead to greater inequality and why the promoters of the legislation are determined to criminalize those who disagree with their agenda.

She says there is a lot more at stake here than most Americans realize.

“I think what people should be aware of is the endangerment of religious freedom – it’s already happening at the state level – the endangerment of parental rights, and the endangerment of women and girls’ safety and privacy, not to mention fairness in sports,” she said.

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Dems Launch ‘Medicare for All’ Push

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House Democrats are launching a serious effort to create a single-payer health care system branded as ‘Medicare for All,’ but a leading health care policy expert says the idea is a Utopian fantasy that is unaffordable and will lead to far worse care.

Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner joined experts from multiple perspectives testifying Tuesday before the House Rules Committee.  Chairman James McGovern is an enthusiastic supporter of eliminating private health insurance and tasking the federal government with running health care on the U.S.

“People aren’t going to lose their healthcare with Medicare for All.  You would actually get to keep your doctors and go to the hospitals you currently have.  The only difference is you wouldn’t have to deal with insurance companies,” said McGovern.

Turner told McGovern we’ve heard promises before about keeping doctors that were not true.

But while three House committees are pushing forward on Medicare for All, Turner says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems less convinced it is a good idea.

“Even Speaker Pelosi has been reluctant to get behind Medicare for All, I think because she sees how incredibly disruptive this would be to our health sector.  Everybody, except people in the VA and Indian Health Service, everybody else would lose their coverage.

“That means 173 million Americans with coverage through the workplace would lose their coverage.  People on Medicare would lose Medicare because this will be a new program replacing it.  People on Obamacare, people on the Children’s Health Insurance Plan; all of that would be wiped out,” said Turner.

In addition to imploring lawmakers to have less government involvement in the health care sector, Turner says a single payer program is impossible, with estimates suggesting a $32-38 trillion price tag over ten years.  She says Democrats are promising excellent care, quick access, and low costs and Medicare for All simply won’t achieve those goals.

“That’s not the way the world works.  Resources are limited.  Doctors will leave.  We can’t afford the Medicare program we have now.  In other countries, we see the vulnerable, people who are the sickest are the ones who are put at the back of the list for care.  That’s not the kind of system we want,” said Turner.

Listen to the full podcast to hear what Turner detail what life is like for patients in single payer systems and what approach she thinks would bring us quality, affordable, accessible care.

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Why Is The Border Crisis Getting So Much Worse?

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Just a few weeks ago, a fierce debate raged over President Trump’s call for a national emergency to direct billions of taxpayer dollars to build a wall along strategic points of the U.S. Mexico border, and while the controversy over Trump’s action persists, all sides now agree there is a humanitarian urgency as the number of people attempting to enter the U.S. continues to swell.

According to government statistics, some 58,000 border apprehensions occurred in January.  There were 76,000 in February and the figures for March could reach 100,000.

And the surge is taxing the already stretched manpower and resources along our southern border.

“The system has broken down because it’s so overwhelmed by the number of people we see entering the United States illegally,” said Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies.

“The border patrol just doesn’t have the facilities to process those individuals in a timely manner.  We lack the detention facilities to hold them and [Health and Human Services], which is supposed to take custody of unaccompanied alien children within 48 hours, is now out of space as well,” said Arthur.

Arthur says one of the reasons for so many people being allowed into the U.S. despite coming illegally is because the Obama administration loosened the terms by which the migrants can ask for protection based on claims of “credible fear” if they return to their home countries.

As a result, 97,000 people in the past year claim credible fear as opposed to 5,000 per year when Obama took office.  Those 97,000 claims are then processed by just a few hundred case officers and immigration judges.

Listen to the full podcast to learn about other factors triggering this wave of humanity across the southern border, what President Trump can do to address it and what actions have to come from Congress.

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What’s Behind the Left’s Aggressive Abortion Push?

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Lawmakers in New York and Vermont passed sweeping legislation removing abortion restrictions and are trying to do the same in Illinois, Rhode Island, and New Mexico.  Similar efforts failed in Virginia.  Even an infanticide ban failed to advance in the U.S. Senate.

But why is this push happening now and do conservatives see a win coming anywhere?  We ask Patrina Mosley of the Family Research Council.  Listen to the full podcast as Mosley explains the urgency on the left to get this done, what efforts are still underway to ban infanticide on Capitol Hill, and why there is strong evidence Democrats are vastly overreaching on this issue.

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What’s Really in the Universal Background Check Bill

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This week, the House of Representatives passed legislation requiring universal background checks for any gun purchase, but one of the leading defenders of the second amendment says there a whole lot more in the bill than meets the eye.

Universal background checks sound simple.  The idea is that if you want to buy a firearm, you must go through a background check to make sure you don’t have a criminal record or present a threat to those around you.  But Gun Owners of America Legislative Counsel Mike Hammond says there are all sort of transfer provisions that could turn any gun owner into a lawbreaker.

“If you transfer a gun to any other person for as little as a second and you don’t come with an exception, you are a criminal and can be put in prison for up to a year.

“So if you sell your gun to your son for a dollar, you’re a criminal.  If you give your gun to your stepson, you’re a criminal.  If you hand your gun to your neighbor to look at and go into the kitchen for a paper towel, you’re a criminal.  If you go hunting with a friend and hand him your gun and he doesn’t have a hunting license or is a veteran with PTSD, you’re a criminal,” said Hammond.

“It’s simply an effort to make gun ownership so full of trap doors that no one wants to own a gun because every time you handle that gun or hand that gun to someone, you basically risk going to jail,” he added.

Hammond says no mass shooter in 20 years would have been stopped by this legislation.  He says law-abiding Americans are the only ones who get stopped from buying guns with a background check.

“Most people who walk into gun dealers and fail background checks, their overwhelming reaction is absolute surprise.  They’re people like veterans, people who haven’t paid traffic tickets, people whose psychiatrists have turned them in, people who had no idea in the world that the convolutions of federal law would prohibit them from purchasing a firearm.

“The murderers, on the other hand, just get their guns on the street,” said Hammond.

Listen to the full podcast to hear more of Hammond’s analysis of the House bill, why he thinks the legislation is already dead even before getting to the Senate, and what he thinks Democrats would push for if the universal background check bill ever became law.

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Cohen Before Congress, India-Pakistan Tension, Dems Miss Own Climate Hearing

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America recoil at the Trump world sleaze revealed by former Trump attorney Michael Cohen in his testimony to Congress, but also realize he’s the least credible witness Congress could have called on the subject. They also worry about escalating tension between nuclear powers India and Pakistan after Pakistan claims to shoot down two Indian military planes. And they get a kick out of the House Democrats having to adjourn their own hearing on climate change denial because not enough of them attended.

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