[Vision2020] Say What?

[Tom Hansen]

Sali's Evaluation of the New Congress' First 3 Months

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r110:13:./temp/~r110BU9xse::

Submitted on April 19, 2007.

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Mr. SALI. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman McCarthy. I appreciate the
opportunity to give this report on this first quarter. I think it is very
apt for us to let the folks back home know exactly what is going on from a
Republican perspective. 

In the first quarter of the new Congress, the new Democrat majority has made
its priorities clear by acting to impose higher taxes, more government
spending and by attacking key aspects of the Idaho way of life. 

In the last 3 months, the majority has acted to impose the largest tax
increase in more than a decade. In fact, within the first month of Congress
this new majority passed H.R. 6, a bill to increase by $7.7 billion over a
10-year period, an increase that will effectively affect the price of gas at
the pump and further our addiction on foreign oil. 

Instead of higher taxes and continued increasing reliance on foreign oil, my
constituents need lower fuel prices, but in the first three months in
Congress, this new majority has done nothing to lower fuel prices but to the
contrary has acted to actually increase the price of gas. 

In the same 3 months, the new majority has passed a budget that includes
almost $400 billion in increased Federal spending, a budget that failed to
address the explosive growth in entitlement spending, spending that will
consume over 60 percent of the Federal budget in 15 years. 

The Democratic majority has focused in the Natural Resources Committee on
what they call the evolving West. Those of us who are actually from the West
are calling it the war on the West. The majority has had countless hearings
primarily to paint an inaccurate picture of the West and its issues. 

The reform of Federal forest land management policies should be their focus
in these hearings. We have forests that are overgrown and are fire hazards
to our communities. We lack access to our lands, and we are under constant
attack from radical environmentalists. We need better forest management, and
the Federal Government needs to be a better landlord instead of an absentee
one. 

This should be the focus of their agenda in the Natural Resources Committee
if they really want to help us in the West. 

The priorities of this new majority were further illustrated when they
mandated the Commander in Chief, withdraw troops on an unprecedented
arbitrary timeline without any consideration of what is actually happening
on the ground. The same new majority conditioned financial support for our
troops on funding of unrelated and various pork barrel projects, including
$5 million to study tropical fish and $74 million for peanut storage. 

In a time of runaway deficit spending, something needs to change
dramatically. The change the new majority proposed in the first three
months, however, is to proceed in the wrong direction, the direction of
debt, deficit and defeat. 

We need to balance the budget. To do so, we must cut Federal spending.
Congress' ongoing spending habits continue at the expense of our children,
and we owe it to Americans and we owe it to our children and our
grandchildren to cut spending. 

That is why I stood with my Republican colleagues and supported an
alternative budget plan to balance this Federal budget by 2012 in just 5
years. Together with a balanced budget, I also joined my colleagues
cosponsoring legislation to make permanent numerous tax cuts, numerous tax
credits that affect average American families. The American taxpayer will
work through April 30 this year just to pay their share of taxes. 

Well, change, indeed, must occur. My priorities for change are these:
spending must be reduced, tax burden on American families and small
businesses must be reduced, our natural resources in the West must be
responsibly managed, the constitutional authority of the President must be
respected. Unfortunately, the priorities of the new majority, as evidenced
over the last 3 months, are not my priorities, and they are not the
priorities that the people of Idaho hold.

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Seya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Forty percent of the mass of every tree in the forest is crude oil.  Stop
and think about that.  We call them fossil fuels because they used to be
live stuff . . . now in the ground is turned into crude oil." 

- Bill Sali (September 21, 2006)