The Senate voted 96 to 3 Thursday to prohibit members of Congress from using non-public information for personal financial gain but beat back a slew of amendments to further limit congressional perks.

The Senate action puts pressure on House Republicans to pass similar legislation to quell allegations of congressional self-dealing at a time when Congress’s approval rating is at an all-time low.

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On this day last year, I posted two charts that I developed using the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank’s interactive website.

Those two charts showed that the current recovery was very weak compared to the boom of the early 1980s.

But perhaps that was an unfair comparison. Maybe the Reagan recovery started strong and then hit a wall. Or maybe the Obama recovery was the economic equivalent of a late bloomer.

So let’s look at the same charts, but add an extra year of data. Does it make a difference?

Meh…not so much.

Let’s start with the GDP data. The comparison is striking. Under Reagan’s policies, the economy skyrocketed.  Heck, the chart prepared by the Minneapolis Fed doesn’t even go high enough to show how well the economy performed during the 1980s.

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The highlight of the exchanges today between members of the House Oversight Committee and Attorney General Eric Holder came when Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY) was given her time to question the AG. Her questions are important because she speaks for a district in New York, far removed from the border mayhem and violence connected to Fast and Furious. The fact her constituents are outraged goes a long way in describing how widespread the angst and disgust over Fast and Furious really is.

After opening her time by pointing out that Holder had frequently responded to charges in a dismissive way, by saying they were all part of a political game, or an election year charade, Buerkle said:

I think it’s important to recognize that you, as the Attorney General, with all due respect, need to  be held accountable, or someone does, as to what happened. Of all the issues that face this country, this is the issue that I hear from my district so frequently about. In fact, today I have no fewer than 30 questions from folks in my district who want to know what happened, why it happened, and who’s going to be held accountable.

She then stated that she’d been “taken aback” by Holder’s haughty declarations to others on the committee, wherein he said “I am the Attorney General,” as if that meant he were above reproach. Said Buerkle: “With all due respect, yes you are [the Attorney General], but you are also accountable not only to the folks in my district, but to the American people.

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Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) opened this morning’s hearings by providing a timeline for Fast and Furious: a timeline that briefly described the role of every law enforcement agency involved. He spoke about the debt we owe Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and agent Terry’s family. And he announced that ATF whistleblower John Dodson was present in the room for the hearings today. (Dodson is the Phoenix agent who risked his career and his life to inform Congress about details of Fast and Furious as they were visible to him on the street.)

Then Issa dug in deeper:

On Oct 11, 2011, after months and months and months of this committee trying to get further documents, we issued subpoenas for documents and were told they’re hard to get. Yet, ten times as many documents have been provided to the Inspector General. Mr. Attorney General, when is the primary investigative committee of congress going to be allowed the same access that the IG has? That the twelve thousand members of the IG have? We ask very little of government by contrast, …but we believe we deserve those answers in at least as timely a fashion as your own IG gets.

We’re going to ask you many things today, hopefully you came prepared to know [the answers to questions] on Fast and Furious. Questions like: What can you do to bring this to a close? What can you do to help the American people know this is no longer going on and will not happen again in the future?

Issa then went on to talk in detail of how frustrating it’s been to try to get information to date. In doing this he referenced former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, the attorney who covered up the connection between Fast and Furious and Brian Terry’s death. And he suggested that Burke “clearly didn’t do his job in a way that anyone can be proud of.” Issa then pointed to more stonewalling on the part of the DOJ, and specifically drew attention to Patrick J. Cunningham, who, when subpoenaed, invoked the 5th to keep from telling what he knew about Fast and Furious.

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It’s official.  Former Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who resigned in disgrace over a bizarre sexting scandal this past June, was NOT hacked.

Today, eight months after the congressman first claimed he was the victim of a hacking or a prank, the NY Daily News has broken the story that Anthony Weiner spent more than $13,000 in campaign funds to hire private investigators to track down a hacker that never existed.

Weiner paid T&M, a Manhattan-based firm, $13,290 for “legal services” in the fourth quarter of 2011, financial statements filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission reveal.

Sources told the Daily News, however, that Weiner hired T&M — a firm loaded with former NYPD sleuths — when he was in full spin mode over the controversy that eventually led to his resignation from the House.

[...]

Two sources familiar with Weiner’s downfall said the Queens pol told investigators the same story. T&M investigated — and learned Weiner had sent them on a fool’s errand.

“They did their job, and then it was time to sit down with lawyers,” another source said. “Self-denial, it dies a slow death.”

Surprised? No, neither were we.

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The leading breast cancer charity organization has announced that it is ending its relationship with Planned Parenthood because the latter is under investigation of whether it has used public monies to fund abortions. The Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure has provided grants to Planned Parenthood for breast prevention screenings and breast education at their centers throughout the country.

Leslie Aun, a Komen spokesperson, told the Associated Press that her foundation’s break with Planned Parenthood comes as a result of a policy change which blocks grant money to organizations which are under investigation by local, state, or federal authorities.

According to Planned Parenthood, funding from the Komen Foundation has provided 170,000 breast screenings over the past five years. The family planning organization has announced a recent “emergency fund” of about $250,000, from the Amy and Lee Fikes’ Foundation, that will compensate for the funds lost from the Komen Foundation.

In response to the drop in funding from the Komen Foundation, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, openly criticized the anti-abortion sentiments that led to the end of the relationship between the organizations. Ms. RIchards said in a press release, “We are alarmed and saddened that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation appears to have succumbed to political pressure. Our greatest desire is for Komen to reconsider this policy and recommit to the partnership on which so many women count.”

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I just received an email from Congressman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office, and as I alluded to in my last post on Big Government, zero hour is fast approaching for Attorney General Eric Holder. He is to appear before the  House Oversight Committee for questions over Fast and Furious this Thursday at 9 am, and the closer we get to that time, the greater the pressure that seems to be mounting on Holder.

At the head of the crowd applying pressure to Holder is Issa himself, who has simply grown sick and tired of waiting on Holder to comply with the numerous subpoenas he’s received for documents related to Fast and Furious. As a result, Issa has moved from a “wait and see” approach to one of demanding Holder comply or else. To that end Issa sent Holder a letter on January 31 warning him that he has until Feb. 9 to turn over all documents or face “contempt” charges.

Wrote Issa to Holder:

[Your] actions lead us to conclude that the department is actively engaged in a cover-up. If the department continues to obstruct the congressional inquiry by not providing documents and information, this committee will have no alternative but to move forward with proceedings to hold you in contempt of Congress.

Issa has plenty of reasons to suspect a cover-up, and he’s not alone in doing so.  After all, the most recent DOJ document dump (on Friday, January 27), proved that despite months upon months of denials, the DOJ did have knowledge of gun-running all along. Not only that, but the DOJ’s own Lanny Breuer actually suggested gun-running at a tactic.  Who knows how many more revelations await us if Holder will only hand over the rest of the documents Issa has subpoenaed?

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In a deal with several moving parts, Conservative favorite Rep. Allen West will move over and run in Rep. Tom Rooney’s old district, as Rooney moves on to run in a newly created district. Additionally, Adam Hasner will drop his Senate bid, leaving a somewhat clearer path for Rep. Connie Mack to run for the Senate nomination.

U.S. Senate candidate Adam Hasner will likely leave the race and run for Allen West’s soon-to-be-vacated Congressional seat, a source tells us. West’s seat looks a lot like Hasner’s old legislative Delray Beach-based district.

Meanwhile, to avoid a bloody primary, leadership in the U.S. House asked Hasner to run for West’s seat. But first, West had to announce he’d leave his seat and run for Tom Rooney’s seat. And before that happened, Rooney had to announce he’d leave his district and run for a new district.

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Back in 2010, I crunched the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office and reported that the budget could be balanced in just 10 years if politicians exercised a modicum of fiscal discipline and limited annual spending increases to about 2 percent yearly.

When CBO issued new numbers early last year, I repeated the exercise and again found that the same modest level of budgetary restraint would eliminate red ink in about 10 years.

And when CBO issued their update last summer, I did the same thing and once again confirmed that deficits would disappear in a decade if politicians didn’t let the overall budget rise by faster than 2 percent each year.

Well, the new CBO 10-year forecast was released this morning. I’m going to give you three guesses about what I discovered when I looked at the numbers, and the first two don’t count.

Yes, you guessed it. As the chart illustrates (click to enlarge), balancing the budget doesn’t require any tax increases. Not does it require big spending cuts (though that would be a very good idea).

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Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has come under fire, including from Judicial Watch, for his controversial relationship with mortgage giant Freddie Mac in the years after the former House Speaker left Congress. The issue is especially sensitive in Florida, which has been described as “ground zero” of the housing crisis. Voters take to the polls in the “sunshine state” today in the Republican primary. (Judicial Watch does not endorse or oppose candidates for office.)

Gingrich initially said in debates and press interviews that Freddie Mac paid his company as much as $25,000 per month for his services as a “historian.” He has since switched that term out for the more standard “consultant.” But the documents released by the Gingrich campaign suggest he may have been more than a “consultant.”

Politico reports:

New details from Newt Gingrich’s contracts worth $1.6 million with Freddie Mac show that the Republican hopeful wasn’t just a boardroom consultant, but served as a high-profile booster for the beleaguered organization. He even gave a rallying speech to dozens of the group’s political action committee [PAC] donors in the spring of 2007.

Shortly after the “rah, rah” speech, as one source described it, Gingrich gave an interview for the Freddie Mac website, where he supported the group’s model at length. The interview is no longer on Freddie’s site.

Gingrich said in the interview that Freddie has “made an important contribution to home ownership and the housing finance system,” even though many Republicans revile it.

And so these records seem to suggest that Gingrich, who described the Freddie Mac business model “insane” on the campaign trail, had a different tale to tell when Freddie Mac was filling his corporate bank account.

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Leftists want higher tax rates and they want greater tax compliance. But they have a hard time understanding that those goals are inconsistent.

Simply stated, people respond to incentives. When tax rates are punitive, folks earn and report less taxable income, and vice-versa.

• When tax rates increase, sometimes they engage in tax avoidance, lowering their tax liabilities legally.
• When tax rates change, sometimes they choose to alter their levels of work, saving, and investment.
• And when tax rates go up, sometimes they resort to illegal steps to protect themselves from the tax authority.

In a previous post, I quoted an article from the International Monetary Fund, which unambiguously concluded that high tax burdens are the main reason people don’t fully comply with tax regimes:
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Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s battle against congressional insider trading will enter a critical phase this week as the Senate is set to vote on a bill banning members of Congress from using material, nonpublic information to make private investments.

From USA Today:

Aware that most Americans would like to dump them all, members of Congress hope to regain some sense of trust by subjecting themselves to tougher penalties for insider trading and requiring they disclose stock transactions within 30 days.

A procedural vote Monday would allow the Senate later this week to pass a bill prohibiting members of Congress from using nonpublic information for their own personal benefit or “tipping” others to inside information that they could trade on.

The Senate is considering passage of the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act, which would ban members of Congress and their staffs from engaging in insider trading and would include a 30 day reporting requirement on all investments.  The Senate version of the bill is cosponsored by Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY).  Prior to Peter Schweizer’s book Throw Them All Out and the 60 Minutes report based on his book, the STOCK Act had only four cosponsors in Congress.   Now, the bill has 230 cosponsors.

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In his weekly message from the White House, President Obama echoed his call from Tuesday’s State of the Union Address decrying Congressional insider trading and demanded that Congress pass a law banning the practice.

Clearly, Obama’s team have read Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster book “Throw Them All Out” as revealed by his reference of “campaign bundlers” and their practice of segueing from election-time bag-men to K Street lobbyists as smoothly as an FM disc jockey transitioning from an ABBA song to REO Speedwagon with just a quick mention of the local weather.

What’s most audacious about the president’s call for an end to lobbying by campaign bundlers is that the bulk of Schweizer’s book that deals with the campaign bundler situation focuses on the outrageous behavior of the White House handing out billions of dollars in stimulus funds to their campaign bundlers.  When it comes to being lobbied by bundlers, the Obama White House is Albert Pujols and Congress is Wilson Betemit.  (more…)

As Washington, D.C.’s Democrat-dominated government attempts to evict Occupy protestors from their McPherson Square encampment, only a few blocks from the White House, the protestors have found an unlikely ally: the U.S. Park Police (USPP).

The federal-municipal confrontation has sparked speculation that President Barack Obama is protecting the Occupy protestors from city administrators.

The Occupy activists, however, seem to believe otherwise.

Big Government headed into the heart of the snow-bound encampment for an exclusive on-site interview with an Occupy DC demonstrator who does not believe the USPP is acting on orders from the Obama administration.

The Occupy DC Encampment under Washington, D.C.'s first snowfall

The activists are familiar with the details of the political fight that began when the D.C. Mayor and the District Council wanted the Occupy sites finally shut down for health reasons, but USPP refused to do so in the name of the First Amendment.

The theory that the White House was pressuring USPP not to enforce District of Columbia statutes emerged Tuesday, January 24, during a Congressional hearing, when National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis fielded questions from Republican lawmakers.

U.S. Representatives were mystified as to why the USPP has not responded to District requests to finally shut down the encampment, and why the overnight sleeping ban in federal parks had not been enforced.

“Each of our First Amendment demonstrations (is) a little bit unique. And this one is, let’s say, unprecedented. The core of their First Amendment activity is that they occupy the site,” Jarvis told lawmakers. “We felt that going in right away and enforcing the regulations against camping could potentially incite a reaction on their part that would result in possible injury or property damage.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Aware that most Americans would like to dump them all, members of Congress hope to regain some sense of trust by subjecting themselves to tougher penalties for insider trading and requiring they disclose stock transactions within 30 days.

A procedural vote Monday would allow the Senate later this week to pass a bill prohibiting members of Congress from using nonpublic information for their own personal benefit or “tipping” others to inside information that they could trade on.

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House Republicans will be prepared with a plan to replace ObamaCare with free-market alternatives after the Supreme Court delivers its decision in June. The High Court is planning to hold oral arguments on the healthcare law in March.

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pennsylvania), who serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and chairs its Subcommittee on Health, said that Republicans will be ready for the open window provided by a Supreme Court ruling regardless of the nature of that decision.

Congressman Pitts said he expects the High Court to strike down the individual mandate, but not the entire law. He added that it is also possible the Court could say that federal tax law precludes its decision on the mandate’s constitutionality until after 2015. “We’ll have a window of opportunity with everyone looking to explain that the Affordable Care Act is not fully implemented yet…We’ll use that opportunity and that window to discuss the full ramifications of the Affordable Care Act,” Rep. Pitts said.

Rep. Pitts, who has a Heritage Action for America score of 79%, indicated that the Republican plan will include long-standing GOP priorities, such as limits on medical malpractice suits, the ability to purchase health insurance across state lines, and expansion of the use of health savings accounts. In addition, his committee plans the following:

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As others have noted, this past Tuesday marked the 1,000th day since the Senate has passed a budget. Heritage’s Mike Brownfield explains:

Instead of respecting the people’s money and putting it to its appropriate use, the Senate has chosen to pass short-term “business as usual” continuing resolutions, one after another, all while government spending continues to skyrocket, deficits are exploding, the country’s credit rating is in jeopardy, Social Security and Medicare are in crisis states, and future generations are left holding the bag.

As we point out in our new video, plenty of great achievements in history have been made in less than 1,000 days. And all the American people are asking of the Senate is that they pass a budget. If Christopher Columbus can discover the New World in 70 days, why can’t the Senate pass a budget in less than 1,000 days?

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After President Clinton took a drubbing from voters in the 1994 Congressional election, he realized his policies weren’t working.  He promptly declared, “The era of big government is over,” and he then went about making good on that declaration:

• He reduced spending by a miraculous 3 1/2 percent of GDP.

• He attacked entitlement spending and abolished the ballooning open-ended welfare system.

• He signed what amounted to the biggest capital gains tax cut in American history.

• He delivered the only four budget surpluses in four decades.

• And he produced a period of prolonged economic expansion.

President Obama faced a similar cross-road as he delivered his fourth State of the Union Address to Congress.  If he had followed the example of his successful Democratic predecessor, he could have redeemed his presidency, revived the economy and rallied the country.

Instead, he succumbed to the basic ingredient of hubris: that the more we invest in our mistakes, the less willing we are to correct them.

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Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who was the subject of allegations of congressional insider trading, has indicated that he will not seek to extend his term as chair of the House Financial Services Committee after 2012.

Bachus was one of several Capitol Hill leaders from both parties involved in insider trading, according to Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer, who raised the issue in his recent book, Throw Them All Out. Subsequently, President Barack Obama called on Congress this week to pass a law banning congressional insider trading–though the book also documented crony capitalism in the Obama administration’s green energy programs.

Bachus could have sought a waiver from the Republicans Party’s self-imposed six-year term limit on committee chairs, which includes time spent leading the minority as ranking members. However, he chose not to do so, though he has indicated that he wishes to play a role in selecting his successor.

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One year ago, I wrote about how the French government was getting unexpected additional revenues following the implementation of lower tax rates.

This is the Laffer Curve in action, and it’s happening again in France, only this time because the government reduced the wealth tax.

Here’s part of the story at Tax-news.com.

France’s solidarity tax on wealth (l’impôt de solidarité sur la fortune – ISF), which was radically reformed by the government in June last year, has served to yield much greater fiscal revenues for the state than initially predicted. …the government agreed that the solidarity tax on wealth would in future comprise of only two tax brackets: a 0.25% tax rate imposed on individuals with net taxable wealth in excess of EUR1.3m (USD1.7m), and a 0.5% tax rate levied on individuals with net taxable assets above EUR3m. Previously, the entry threshold at which wealth tax was applied was EUR800,000, with the rates varying between 0.55% and 1.8%. To alleviate any threshold effects, a discount mechanism was also instated applicable to wealth of between EUR1.3m and EUR1.4m, as well as to wealth of between EUR3m and EUR3.2m. Although the new provisions provide for lower tax rates and for the abolition of the first tax bracket, effectively exempting around 300,000 taxpayers from the tax, according to latest government figures, the tax yielded around EUR4.3bn in 2011, almost EUR60m more than originally forecast in the collective budget.

This is not to say that France is an example to follow. There shouldn’t be any wealth tax, and income tax rates are still far too high.

And it’s also worth remembering that tax policy is just one of many factors that determine economic performance.

That being said, nations that shift from terrible tax policy to bad tax policy will enjoy better economic performance, just as nations that go from good policy to great policy also will reap benefits.

In other words, incremental changes make a difference. That’s even the case when the politicians impose a “Snooki tax” on indoor tanning services.

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