This summer, millions of Americans will hit the road and take vacations at one of the more than 50,000 hotel and lodging properties we represent. Many of these establishments actually have 50 or fewer rooms, qualifying them as small businesses. These hotels and motels, which provide a pleasurable destination for the summer traveler, are very much like millions of other small companies that are driving American economic growth. As we honor the hard work of businesses like these during Small Business Week, we should be mindful of spiraling costs that may eventually threaten these businesses, like the ever-rising cost of health care. Read more...

In the debate over the Senate immigration bill, there is one key question that has gone unasked: why is it that undocumented immigrants applying for legalization must pay the price if the federal government fails to meet its border-security and immigration-enforcement goals? This has become the consistent theme when it comes to “triggers”—those enforcement measures which must go into effect before other provisions of the larger bill can be implemented. And if a trigger is not met, there is one and only one component of immigration reform that suffers: legalization of undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. Read more...

Is housing finance reform gaining momentum? 

Fortunately, recent developments on the Hill indicate that housing finance reform may at last be re-emerging on the Washington policy agenda.

There is nearly universal agreement that too many American veterans are made to languish unnecessarily under the current Department of Veterans Affairs claims backlog.  For many months, often years, our servicemen and women patiently wait to receive their hard-earned benefits, held up by a notoriously burdensome and antiquated government bureaucracy, which has only worsened as more than 2.5 million troops return from overseas service in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some critics have even called for the resignation of VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki.  While justified in their outrage, their demands for the Secretary’s job are wrongheaded and would only make matters worse.

The recent disclosures of government overreaches, including the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative non-profits for special scrutiny, have upset many Americans and have been condemned by politicians from both parties.  However, let’s not forget another recent revelation about the IRS – one that offers a wake-up call about the power of all government agencies in the age of the Internet.
 
A month ago, internal documents were released showing that the IRS claimed the power to read email and other private documents stored on the Internet without a warrant.  The IRS argued that anyone who used the Internet had no reasonable expectation of privacy against governmental intrusion. Read more...

If members of the U.S. House of Representatives have their way, low-income families who own a modest car or have a few thousand dollars in the bank will soon no longer be eligible for the public benefits they need to feed their children.

The House is expected to vote in the coming week on a new five-year extension of the Farm Bill, which includes $20.5 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps). This reduction is accomplished in large part by stripping away an option known as “categorical eligibility,” which simplifies the process of applying for SNAP assistance and allows states to set or eliminate an “assets test” for recipients.

As a Republican, I believe the states often understand the significance of some issues long before Washington does. In my home state of Montana, we long ago understood and dealt with the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics.  That is, we had dealt with it, until the U.S. Supreme Court defied both precedent and common sense, and struck down our century-old law banning corporate expenditures in elections.
 
Last week, a group of Montana Republicans introduced a ballot initiative to begin to restore integrity to Montana’s election system by banning dark money – the vast, anonymous contributions that overwhelmed the voices of regular people in last two election cycles since the Supreme Court issued its Citizens United ruling in 2010. Read more...

The recent theft of approximately $45 million from ATMs across the globe made for a series of splashy, cringe-inducing headlines.  The thought that a network of criminals could maneuver their way through sophisticated security programs to quickly syphon tens of millions of dollars out of bank accounts has prompted more than a few people to sneak a look at their checking account to make sure it is all there.

Fortunately, committing a crime that requires you to go to dozens of ATMs in a short time span is going to give law enforcement officials a pretty good idea of who you are.  On top of that, the decision of those same criminals to spend their newfound fortune wildly – not to mention document it on social media - means that they (a) were not exactly criminal masterminds and (b) never watched “Goodfellas”, where similar behavior of those involved the large robberies earned them a one-way trip into a freezer truck.

The high-profile nature of this attack, however, is an excellent illustration of how much damage a determined cyber attacker can do with a little knowledge.  The $45 million ATM hack was not the first big cyber attack, and it surely will not be the last.

If you were to read in your morning news today that Congress was working to pass legislation to raise gas prices, you would be outraged.  You would be looking for where to point the finger—Congress, the president, the oil companies.

Yet the current Farm Bill being debated in the House of Representatives this week is currently considering a bill with the stated goal of raising the price of milk.