The Administration

As we all know, the failure of the Pakistani government would be disastrous for the world. The combination of a dangerous terrorist organization, nuclear weapons and perhaps the will to kill and to proliferate is a deadly equation for the region and for the United States and its allies. Following this week’s hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, special envoy to the region, it is my opinion that we must do everything in our power to prevent this from happening.

Recently, General David Petraeus came to Palm Beach, in my congressional district, and he said that Pakistan and Afghanistan have become a single issue as they share a local terrorist threat. So, while I believe that aid to Pakistan is important, I believe that we must shape the nature of the aid. Our aid must communicate security priorities, including the Pakistani government’s assurances to safeguard the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan and to secure their nuclear facilities and weapons. Pakistan must maintain a certain level of commitment to fighting the Taliban. Read more...

Escalating violence along our nation’s Southern border with Mexico continues to present a serious threat to communities and law enforcement on both sides of the border.  As Mexico’s drug cartels fight for dominance of the Southwest border region, it is clear that more resources and a strategic plan that focuses on more than information and technology sharing are needed to effectively address this threat.

Nonetheless, the Obama Administration appears committed to advancing its Southwest Border Initiative.  The problem with this strategy is that it relies entirely on Mexico suddenly getting serious about border control. While there definitely needs to be some level of coordination between the U.S. and Mexico, sending more money and equipment south of the border – without first closing dangerous smuggling corridors -- is not an effective enforcement strategy. Read more...

In an interview with The Hill, Sen. Grassley talks about his hope for bipartisan healthcare reform and responds Secretary of State Clinton's role in urging China to finance America's debt.

There is a clear difference between those affected by President Barack Obama’s tax proposals.  First, there are tax evaders who deliberately break the law to beat the system.  Their actions are not fair to the millions of Americans who pay their taxes.  We should and we must crack down on those who consciously break the law.  The second group is made up of international companies headquartered here in the United States that provide good-paying American jobs and must be competitive on the world stage.  Adding more layers of taxation to these companies, that already pay one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world could lead to layoffs here at home and a shrinking of American businesses. At a time when our economy is struggling, we must make sure our companies have every tool they need to operate on a level playing field so they can continue to grow, expand, and provide more American jobs.  I’ve talked to a handful of Ohio companies that employ between them hundreds of thousands of people and this proposal could jeopardize thousands of Ohio jobs.

Based on various news reports that I’ve read today, it’s clear that many members recognize the difference between American companies who are operating legally in the international arena and tax evaders who purposefully break the law.  There is already bipartisan concern about some of the president’s proposals and I hope that as we move forward we can balance increased enforcement with the tools American companies need to operate on a level playing field around the world.

As a former federal tax attorney, I witnessed first-hand how the complicated tax code burdens families and small businesses. We simply can't afford the hours of frustration and wasted dollars spent trying to comply with the more than 70,000 pages of the tax code. In fact, the Cato Institute estimates that Americans spend about $300 billion a year having their taxes prepared, in large part because they can't maneuver through the cumbersome code.

So, I am more than happy to engage in the debate over simplifying the tax code. However, it appears that President Obama’s $190 billion tax hike on American companies is another fundraiser for his out of control spending agenda. Less than three months ago, President Obama stood before the employees of Caterpillar in Peoria, Illinois to tout the need for his trillion-dollar-plus ‘stimulus’ spending bill.  Now, President Obama is discussing closing loopholes in a supposed attempt at simplifying the tax code, which will actually hit the very same company and many others like it. Read more...

Given my 25 years in the car dealership business, of which most of you are aware, I can't let this week go by without commenting on last week's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Chrysler Corporation. What the Obama Administration is doing with the American car industry saddens me. No, it actually angers me. In fact, I am fired up big time. It has become abundantly clear that the only objective of the Obama task force is to put control of GM and Chrysler in the hands of the UAW union and wipe out anyone who had invested any capital in either of these companies. What’s more, he is using taxpayer money to subsidize the union's takeover of these companies. Here are some of my observations on what it going on:

Under the Obama plan; the government, UAW, and government-controlled banks will own 95% of GM. They will own 80% of Chrysler. The existing stockholders get 1% of GM and 0% of Chrysler. The bondholders (who are not government controlled banks) get 4% of GM and 0% of Chrysler. The remaining 20% of Chrysler will be owned by Fiat

As an organization who has fought to elect Republicans to Congress, it is outrageous to hear the continuous cheers from members of the GOP over Senator Specter’s Party switch. Whether or not you agree 100% with every vote Senator Specter has taken, he is a three decades long Republican leader who served on key committees and carried the GOP banner dozens of times on major issues. More disturbing is that GOP leaders are missing the fact that Specter followed over 240,000 Pennsylvania voters who left the GOP last year. These voters were socially moderate, fiscally conservative Republicans who felt so alienated by the GOP’s strident moral agenda that they turned to the Democratic Party. They are a bellwether for what is happening in States across the Nation and this cannot be ignored. Moderate Republicans like Senators Snowe and Senator Collins need to know that the real Republican majority- the moderate majority- supports them in their work and as centrists who work for their Party AND for their electorate. Senator Boxer’s comments suggesting that there is no room for pro-choice leaders in the Republican Party are way off. We need more of them and we need the moderate majority to demand more from the Party leadership, which has pandered for too long to a small faction of extremists. We have compromised our foundations by promoting risky, divisive social wedge issues and we are paying for it by losing seats and legislators across the country. Without change and wooing back of social moderate voters, the Party will continue to collapse.

When I first started working to improve management and oversight of Private Security Contractors (PSCs) in 2004, observers described Iraq as a Wild West – a place where PSCs could shoot up buildings and people without any law enforcement in sight.  Indeed, between 2004 and 2007, there were numerous incidents in which rogue contractors attacked innocent civilians without any repercussion.  The infamous 2007 incident in which Blackwater contractors killed 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square was the shocking coda to this era.

After much pressure from Congress and the American and Iraqi publics, the Defense and State Departments have made significant and laudable progress in establishing a regime to effectively regulate and oversee PSCs in Iraq.  Though these departments may have been slow to recognize the challenges of managing PSCs in a complex, chaotic security environment, I strongly commend the measures they have taken in the last two years.  Yet, while our government’s efforts have evolved, the operations of security contractors continue to evolve as well. Read more...

Our criminal justice system is broken. Earlier this week, during a hearing of the Judiciary Crime and Drugs Subcommittee entitled "Restoring Fairness to Federal Sentencing: Addressing the Crack-Powder Disparity,”  we heard from the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the Judicial Conference of the United States calling for equalization of the crack – powder sentencing structure.

There is no excuse for breaking the law by using and/or selling illegal drugs.  But today we have a civil rights injustice in our drug sentencing policy between crack cocaine and powder cocaine.  According to the Journal of American Medical Association, “cocaine in any form produces the same physiological and subjective effects.”  Yet under current law, it takes 100 times more powder cocaine than crack cocaine to trigger the five- and 10-year mandatory minimum sentences. Read more...

In President Obama's inaugural address, he declared that "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our founding fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."

The President's statement referenced false and disingenuous choices of the Bush Administration. As the facts continue to come to light about exactly what happened at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, and other U.S.-run secret prisons around the world, it is increasingly impossible to ignore that the U.S. government violated the basic human rights of prisoners. Not only did these insidious tactics sacrifice our national integrity, but they may also have compromised our security as well. Read more...