A Whiff of Secession and Nullification

-By Alan Caruba

In May Rasmussen Reports took a survey of a thousand adults asking if they believed that States have the right to secede. “One-in-five Americans believe individual States have the right to break away from the country, although a majority doesn’t believe it will actually happen.”

That a Tea Party movement sprang to life in the midst of the protests against Obamacare and then was instrumental in transferring political power in the House of Representatives in the 2010 election cannot be dismissed. People—lots of them—are increasingly wary of the central government, particularly one that has burdened them with more debt in the last three years than in the entire prior history of the nation.

In October, Pelican Press will publish “Rethinking the American Union for the Twenty-First Century” in which a number of scholars edited by Donald Livingston, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, examine the implications of secession, possibly by regional groupings of States, from the present federal government.
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A Whiff of Secession and Nullification”


Urge Congress to Vote ‘NO’ On Striking $$ Saving Section From Federal Construction Projects Bill (Illinois Especially)

-By Warner Todd Huston

Today there may be a vote on striking a section of H.R. 2055 that will insure that federal construction projects for the military are fairly priced and will save money for the taxpayers. Some representatives want this advantageous section struck out and replaced with a union-favoring provision that will cost the tax payers millions and will cause even more job loss in an already failing economy.

The bill is the Military Construction (MilCon) and Veterans Affairs (VA) and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2012 (H.R. 2055). The section the Democrats want to eliminate is section 415.

Section 415 removes the requirement for companies bidding for federal construction projects for the military to sign anti-competitive project labor agreements (PLAs) that will force these companies to pay union dues, union benefits and adhere to union rules regardless if the companies themselves are staffed by union members of not.
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Urge Congress to Vote ‘NO’ On Striking $$ Saving Section From Federal Construction Projects Bill (Illinois Especially)”


Soros Funded MoveOn.Org Lies About Hacking Fox News Ticker

-By Warner Todd Huston

What’s the best way to counter what you think are the lies coming from your opponents? Is it to make up lies of your own? Apparently MoveOn.org thinks so. On June 9, MoveOn admitted using lies, subterfuge and fraud to “counter” what they maintain is the wrong-headed thinking of Fox News. I guess to a left-winger, lies are just the ticket to get people to trust them! In fact, this whole story is just downright silly as MoveOn.org not only perpetrated a fraud, they made a big production of it all in the process.

Not long ago an emailer calling himself “Babi Gumm” began to inform various news sites and bloggers that he had “hacked into the Fox News ticker on 6th Avenue in New York.”

This “Babi Gumm” claimed that he had replaced the Fox ticker message with his own anti-capitalist message one screaming to America that “we are being lied to” by “Right wingers” who are “destroying the middle class and trying to kill our unions.” His supposed ticker hack also told viewers that “the country is not broke.”
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Soros Funded MoveOn.Org Lies About Hacking Fox News Ticker”


Unionists Next Target for Destruction: Apple, Inc.

-By Warner Todd Huston

A four-year Apple store employee in San Francisco wants to unionize the low wage workers that help customers in Apple Stores across America. Should he succeed, this will, of course, take one of the few successful companies we have left in America, hobble it with jobs-killing union rules, and destroy its jobs like the rest of them.

Cory Moll, 30, has a plan to take a bite out of Apple, it seems. He is claiming that the minimum wage, retail jobs of the floor helpers at Apple stores are beset with “unfair practices.” So, he wants to organize the 30,000 retail employees in Apple’s 325 brick-and-mortar stores.

Using Twitter and Facebook, Moll is trying to get the rest of the country’s Apple store employees on his jobs killing bandwagon. Fortunately, he has yet to gain much support from them.
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Unionists Next Target for Destruction: Apple, Inc.”


Quinn’s Tax Hikes Chasing Away Chicago Merc?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and his profligate Democrat Party cohorts have been racking up the loss of one business after another since they decided to wildly raise the state’s taxes. Quinn’s and the Democrat’s next target seems to be the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, an ongoing Chicago tradition since 1898.

Chicago has the third highest corporate tax rate in the country and CME’s Chairman, Terence Duffy, and its Chief Financial Officer, James Parisi, say it is a burden with which they don’t think they need to contend.
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Quinn’s Tax Hikes Chasing Away Chicago Merc?”


Obama’s Plan To Make Your Electric Bills Jump 60 Percent

-By Warner Todd Huston

Only a few days ago I wrote about how Obama’s new EPA rules would force Americans to pay up to 60% more on their electric bills. This weekend, the Chicago Tribune said the same thing.

Leading off saying, “Consumers could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40 to 60 percent in the next few years,” the Trib went on to highlight the same destructive EPA rules I wrote about on Friday.

Coal-fired plants historically have been one of the cheapest ways to generate electricity, but operating costs are expected to increase significantly because of upgrades needed on older plants to meet new environmental regulations. The Illinois Power Agency estimates that by 2017 the energy portion of bills could jump 65 percent from today’s rates.

But one thing the Tribune did not mention. Obama campaigned on forcing us to pay that 60% more on our electric bills. Obama wants to bankrupt the electric industry, he wants us to lose jobs, he wants us to be soaked to pay more for our energy. He wants this because he feels America should be taken down a notch or two He wants to hobble this country. It’s what he’s said since day one… (See the following video)
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Obama’s Plan To Make Your Electric Bills Jump 60 Percent”


Weekly Republican Address: Rep. Adam Kinzinger on the GOP’s Plan for America’s Job Creators

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Delivering the Weekly Republican Address, U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) highlights “Pledge to America with measures designed to remove government obstacles to private-sector job growth – the kind of growth the ‘stimulus’ promised but failed to deliver. Republicans have urged President Obama to change course and work together to enact this job creation plan, an invitation Rep. Kinzinger renews here. A member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Kinzinger is in his first term representing Illinois’ 11th Congressional District.

http://kinzinger.house.gov/

Transcript
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Weekly Republican Address: Rep. Adam Kinzinger on the GOP’s Plan for America’s Job Creators”


Obama’s New EPA Rules Would Destroy Our Energy Sector

-By Warner Todd Huston

Half of America’s energy comes from coal-fired power plants but Obama’s new EPA rules would about destroy the coal industry driving our energy costs through the roof. That’s not all they would do, either.

Even Paul Bedard of USNews says that Obama’s new EPA rules will “slam the coal industry so hard that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost.”

Analysis by the National Economic Research Associates says that these two new EPA regulations would be “among the most expensive ever imposed by the agency on coal-fueled power plants, dramatically increasing electricity rates and natural gas prices and leading to substantial job losses,” and would cost the U.S. electric sector nearly $18 billion a year.
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Obama’s New EPA Rules Would Destroy Our Energy Sector”


Rep. Adam Kinzinger Will Talk Jobs in the Weekly Republican Address

From the office of Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R, ILL)…

Washington, D.C. – House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today announced that job creation will be the focus when Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) delivers the Weekly Republican Address on Saturday, June 11. The news that our economy still isn’t creating enough jobs has raised new questions about Washington Democrats’ ‘stimulus’ policies. Republicans recently unveiled “A Plan for America’s Job Creators,” a blueprint that builds on the Pledge to America with measures designed to remove government obstacles to private-sector job growth – the kind of growth that the ‘stimulus’ promised but failed to deliver. These will be among the topics discussed in the weekly address.

“I’m humbled to have an opportunity to address our nation about the future of job creation, which is on the minds of folks throughout Illinois’ Eleventh Congressional District and across the country,” Rep. Kinzinger said. “In Illinois, businesses are sapped with more taxes and increased government regulations that directly impact them, creating greater consumer uncertainty, which translates to less confidence in the markets. At a recent town hall meeting, I spoke with constituents and job creators who are fed up with the doubt and distrust over our economy. In order to refuel economic growth, we must eliminate out-of-control spending and end unnecessary regulations and skyrocketing taxes on job creators.”

Adam Kinzinger, a pilot in the Air National Guard, represents the people of Illinois’ Eleventh Congressional District. Kinzinger serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee as well as a Deputy Republican Whip. Kinzinger remains active in the military with the rank of captain and has earned the Air Medal six times serving in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.
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Rep. Adam Kinzinger Will Talk Jobs in the Weekly Republican Address”


Healthcare: Let The States Decide

-By Warner Todd Huston

The debate about healthcare coming from the Democrats is steeped in purposeful misdirection on one hand and a complete lack of any real knowledge about what Obamacare will even do on the other. It is also a major overreach on a federalism level which is why it is hard to understand why more people aren’t talking about the Healthcare Compact plan (healthcarecompact.org).14 states have already signed onto it and has even been signed into law in two of them, Georgia and Oklahoma.

Of course, the problem is that we are expected to believe that Obamacare — which is essentially a nationalized healthcare policy — will work just fine on a national level. Despite that history has proven over and over again that centralized planning simply does not work, most especially with something as unwieldy and complicated as healthcare.

It doesn’t help that we are not being told the truth by those pushing Obama’s plan, either. Many times the president has claimed that with Obamacare you can “keep your health care plan” if you like it, you can keep your doctor if you like him. This, however, has been generously called a “questionable” promise. And that isn’t the only untruth coming from Obamacare supporters.
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Healthcare: Let The States Decide”


Senator Seeking Answers on NLRB’s Attack on Boeing

-By Warner Todd Huston

Senator Jim DeMint (R, SC) wants some answers as to why Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) thinks it has the power to tell American businesses where they are allowed to build their newest manufacturing facilities.

On June 6 Senator DeMint’s office filed a freedom of information request demanding documents connected to the NLRBs decisions to try to force Boeing not to open a new manufacturing plant it planned to open in South Carolina.

DeMint is concerned about the outside influence of unions in this case. On his website he notes that in the same month that the NLRB began attacking Boeing the International Association of Machinists was bragging in its newsletters about the political influence it had bought with its campaign contributions.
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Senator Seeking Answers on NLRB’s Attack on Boeing”


Announcing the Running on Empty Tour

-By Warner Todd Huston

Americans have sent Obama a bill for: $560,699.03

The number above is how much more gas will cost Americans over the next 12 months compared to the price when President Obama took office.

Americans for Prosperity Foundation is kicking off the Running On Empty Tour, a national grassroots tour to highlight President Obama on his administrative policies that have led to some serious pain at the pump for all Americans.
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Announcing the Running on Empty Tour”


Big Unions Cooling on Obama?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Bloomberg has another unions-are-mad-at-Obama story this week and, while there is no doubt that unions are a bit miffed at the big “O,” we should all be cautioned about where Big Labor will put its support in 2012. Miffed or not, and quite contrary to what Bloomberg wants you to believe, Big Labor will support Obama to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

Still, it is interesting to see the unions whine about Obama. This president has been the biggest booster to Big Labor than any other president in history. The business punishing regulations alone that Obama has saddled upon this struggling economy makes his efforts more destructive and favorable to unions than any two past presidents combined.

Obama is using his regulatory powers to force contractors to pay unions off to get federal work even if those businesses aren’t members of any union, he’s sallied forth from his castle to inform businesses about where they will be allowed to build businesses, his crony capitalist efforts have put big businesses all across the country under his thumb, and he’s eased as many regulations that keep unions in line as he can… and he plans to do even more.
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Big Unions Cooling on Obama?”


600 More Days of Obama

-By Alan Caruba

As of May 30, 2011, America has 600 days more of rule by President Barack Hussein Obama.

He is the 44th President and, while we have had incompetent Presidents in the past, we have never had one determined to destroy the nation. It has taken more than two years for most sentient Americans to grasp this extraordinary threat. He has not solved problems. He has exacerbated them.

Granted the financial crisis began in 2008 as President George W. Bush was finishing his second term, but President Obama—aside from blaming Bush for everything that has occurred on his watch—literally tripled the national debt with dubious and failed “stimulus” programs, plunging the nation into debt that rivals all others in our history.

President Obama had a lot of help in getting elected and will no doubt get it in his effort to secure a second term. The mainstream media has utterly debased itself, sounding more like the state monopolies of fascist nations.
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600 More Days of Obama”


Roskam to White House: ‘Simply Hope For a Change is Not an Economic Policy’

From the office of Rep. Peter Roskam (R, ILL)…

Roskam: “The White House has to realize… simply hope for a change is not an economic policy.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Peter Roskam, Chief Deputy Whip, spoke at the House Republican Leadership press conference following the release of the May Jobs Report, which showed the unemployment rate rose to 9.1% after only 54,000 jobs were created last month:

Roskam Remarks:
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Roskam to White House: ‘Simply Hope For a Change is Not an Economic Policy’”


Jon Huntsman: ‘We Won’t be Spending Time in Iowa’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Looks like GOP candidate for president Jon Hunstman has decided that he won’t bother with the Iowa Caucus during this primary season. Huntsman claims he’s skipping Iowa because he refuses to support ethanol subsidies.

At a stop in New Hampshire, Huntsman RightPundits.com.


Will a Lloyd Dobler Economy Save Us?

-By Beth Shaw

Will a Lloyd Dobler economy save us? That’s the question being asked around the internet today and we can surely expect more of that sort of question as we are seeing more and more headlines of looming economic disaster, both nationally and globally.

What is getting in the way of the United States creating, building, producing and hiring?
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Will a Lloyd Dobler Economy Save Us?”


MSNBC: Obama’s Job Loss Blamed on Natural Disasters, Bush’s Job Growth ‘False’ Because of… Natural Disasters?

-By Warner Todd Huston

From the “figures lie, but liars figure” department we find that left-leaning cable newser MSNBC reported that the main reason Obama’s job stats are tumbling and unemployment is so high is because of the harsh tornado season and other natural disasters we have been experiencing over the first half of 2011. Yet, hypocritically, if we take a peak back to the unemployment rates reported by MSNBC in 2004, during Bush’s era, his jump in hiring was called false because of — you guessed it — hurricanes and other natural disasters.

That’s right, folks, MSNBC is using natural disasters to explain away Obama’s high unemployment rates when they used the very same excuse, natural disasters, to say that Bush’s rise in employment was false.

Talk about tailoring the “news” to fit the ideological objective that MSNBC wants to push, eh?
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MSNBC: Obama’s Job Loss Blamed on Natural Disasters, Bush’s Job Growth ‘False’ Because of… Natural Disasters?”


Ill. Democrat Assaults Fellow Senator On Floor of Senate!

-By Warner Todd Huston

Apparently, when anyone dares question an Illinois Democrat he gets violent… even if he’s a state senator and he’s right on the floor of the senate itself.

51st District Senator Kyle McCarter (R- Lebanon) objected during the debate today about the ComEd utility legislation the Democrats were pushing. His fellow Senator, the 36th District’s Senator Mike Jacobs (D, Moline), was pushing a vote on the bill without telling everyone present that his father, former senator Denny Jacobs, was a lobbyist for ComEd, the company that would benefit most from the bill.

Sen. McCarter rose to his feet and calmly alerted the house to the fact that not only was Senator Jacobs’ father a lobbyist for ComEd but that the Democrat Party was the largest recipient of ComEd’s campaign cash.
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Ill. Democrat Assaults Fellow Senator On Floor of Senate!”


Fox Business Network Opens New Studio Overlooking Floor of Chicago Mercantile Exchange

-By Warner Todd Huston

Fox Business Network is leaping head first into full time coverage right in the thick of it all at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange with a new CME-based studio booth on the next level up from trading floor itself. Interestingly, this marks as the very first time a financial network will have its own, branded booth so close to the floor.

Thursday afternoon I spoke to Fox Business Network correspondent Jeff Flock about the grand opening of the CME booth and asked him what made the Network make this move. “Since both exchanges were consolidated there that makes that floor the center for futures trading in the country and now Fox Business will have a permanent presence where all the traders can see us.”
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Fox Business Network Opens New Studio Overlooking Floor of Chicago Mercantile Exchange”


Dem. Party Chair Mad that GOP wants to Make Being an Illegal Alien… er… Illegal

-By Warner Todd Huston

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a Democrat Congresswoman from Florida and is currently the head of the Democrat National Committee. She is also one of the most vitriolic, off base, half informed demagogues of the far left in America today. There are tons of examples of her lies and calumnies out there — it’s an almost daily occurrence now that she is DNC head — but today we have a new one. This time DWS is lamenting how Republicans want to make illegal immigration, well, illegal.

Yes, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is not bright enough to catch the “illegal” part in the phrase “illegal immigrant.” Apparently the question, “what part of illegal don’t you get,” is one she doesn’t get.

Naked Emperor has the video of Wasserman Schultz from May 26 of this year.

Transcript:
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Dem. Party Chair Mad that GOP wants to Make Being an Illegal Alien… er… Illegal”


Notes on Democracy: And to the Republic, for Which It Stands

-By Nancy Salvato

I’m fairly certain that everyone from my generation knows the words to The Pledge of Allegiance by heart.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”

When reciting the pledge, we should focus on the meaning attached to these words, most of which were written by Francis Bellamy, commemorating our history in honor of the 400th anniversary of Columbus Day at Chicago’s World’s Fair. I say “most” because the original pledge, as written by Bellamy, was altered. Nevertheless, each word in this final version provides our citizenry an appropriate lens through which we may view our world.
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Notes on Democracy: And to the Republic, for Which It Stands”


Bin Laden Gone: Next Target, Ronald McDonald

-By Rev Michael Bresciani‏

If it weren’t actually in the news who would believe that all America has to do since the death of our number one enemy is to go after that nefarious destroyer of American children; Ronald McDonald.

CNN Money report says Corporate Accountability International and a host of health organizations are screaming for an end to McDonald’s practice of targeting children in their ad campaigns. No doubt bolstered by Michelle Obama’s quest to slim down America’s fatties, Mr. McHappy is probably being surrounded by a team of lethal Navy Seals at this very moment.

It is not clear whether Ronald has a dead or alive order attached to his capture but secret White House sources have indicated that no photos will be released after he is brought to justice if he is killed in the action. Although some are saying that if is captured alive he will no doubt be water boarded at Gitmo until every detail of his evil plan to destroy our kids is fully uncovered.

Tongue in cheek humor notwithstanding, can the democrats and the far left get any sillier in their attempts to distract or defer attention away from the miserable failures of the Obama Administration just prior to an election year?
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Bin Laden Gone: Next Target, Ronald McDonald”


Green Policies a Substitute For Anti-Capitalist, Anti-American Ideas

-By Warner Todd Huston

Those anti-capitalist college professor types that used to sneer at America and supported the murderous antics of the Soviets had for a short time after the fall of the U.S.S.R. no place in which to invest their anti-American ideals. However, it is clear that they have found a new home: greenism. And so, the old left is the new left again, re-born and hiding behind climate change, mythic green energy, and environmental extremism all acting the surrogate for their failed communist-styled ideas.

One of the latest examples of this surrogacy is indulged by the University of Maryland’s Gar Alperovitz with a piece in The Nation entitled “The New-Economy Movement.”

In this piece, Alperovitz not only openly admits that the so-called “new economy” thinking is simply today’s dumping grounds for ages old, communist philosophy — evinced in buzz words like social justice, egalitarianism, and sustainable communities — he claims they will never be satisfied and that as time moves on, the demands of these enviro-centric economic theories will grow “much more radical.”
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Green Policies a Substitute For Anti-Capitalist, Anti-American Ideas”


Democrats Plan: Destroy U.S. Healthcare So They Can Re-Build it in Socialist Image

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama and his Democrat pals have been lying to you, America. They do not want to find a cure for America’s obviously ailing healthcare system. They want to erect its headstone. Democrats want to destroy every aspect of our healthcare system. They have to, you see, because if they don’t they cannot rebuild it to operate under a socialist model. More proof of that was highlighted by Conn Carroll earlier in the week at the Washington Examiner.

Carroll rightly points out that Obamacare is purposefully designed to collapse Medicare and to run 25% of all hospitals out of business. Sure this will hurt — even kill — thousands of America’s most vulnerable citizens, but, heck, you have to break a few citizen eggs to create the ideal, socialist omelet, don’t you know?
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Democrats Plan: Destroy U.S. Healthcare So They Can Re-Build it in Socialist Image”


$90,825 Literally Went to the Dogs in D.C.

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Chicago Tribune reports that $90,825 in so-called stimulus money went to the dogs in Washington D.C. No, not the Blue Dogs. It went to actual dogs.

The National Park Service (NPS) spent $90,825 in stimulus funds to upgrade Marion Park, a popular dog destination on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. The money went to repainting the existing fence, sidewalk repair, and purchasing new benches and trash cans for the park.

Wonderful ,eh? What a waste of money.


Illinois State Legislators Try to Explain to Fox Business Network Why Ill. Is Going Bankrupt

FOX Business Network (FBN) has been airing a series called, “Entitlement Nation: Makers vs. Takers.” The last episode will feature a special focus on two of the biggest entitlement programs in the country: Social Security and Medicare.

FBN will interview Illinois House GOP leader Tom Cross and State Treasurer Dan Rutherford to examine how entitlements have affected the Land of Lincoln… I’ll answer that, by the way: badly.

When: Friday, May 27th, 2011; 11 AM/ET
Where: FOX Business Network (FBN)

(AT&T, Channel 211; DISH, Channel 206; DIRECTV, Channel 259)


Roskam Applauds GOP Jobs Plan

From the office of Rep. Peter Roskam (R, ILL)…

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Peter Roskam, Chief Deputy Whip, issued the following statement after House Republicans unveiled a plan for America’s job creators that was built on the Pledge to America governing document.

“It’s no secret that the trillions in stimulus spending and a massive increase in government red tape has destroyed jobs and hurt our economic recovery. More of the same is a recipe for the same results. That’s why House Republicans have designed a plan that will remove barriers to job creation, empowering and helping families, small businesses, and entrepreneurs struggling to create jobs and spur our recovery. The threat of unsustainable government debt, increased regulations written by unelected bureaucrats, and energy policies designed to increase gas prices has cost us jobs and forced families and businesses to pull back from participating in the economy. The House Republican plan will help change that by returning confidence and certainty to job creators across the country.”

http://roskam.house.gov/