Acre In, Acre Out The Federal Government owns approximately 81 percent of Nevada, part of the roughly 650 million acres of land it owns throughout the United States. Nearer to home, Uncle Sam owns approximately 53 percent of Craig County and 49 percent of Alleghany County according to sources in those counties, and owns significant portions of other counties in the Ninth District as well. About 95... Read more »
The Save American Workers Act On Thursday, April 3, the bipartisan Save American Workers Act, which would restore the standard American work week of 40 hours, passed the House in a vote of 247-179 with my strong support. This important bill would repeal Obamacare’s requirement that employers offer health care coverage to those working at least 30 hours per week. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has re... Read more »
A Free and Open Internet In mid-March, the Commerce Department announced that it plans to relinquish control of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the technical side (the management of domain names such as .com, .edu, .gov, etc.) of the Internet. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Until 1998, the functions were managed by Jon Postel, a computer scie... Read more »
Dear Friends – You are likely aware of the EPA’s latest assault in its ongoing “War on Coal,” which essentially bans the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States. These misguided EPA regulations, called New Source Performance Standards (NSPS), are so unrealistic that there is not a single coal-fired plant in the United States that would be allowed to be built today, even th... Read more »
Obamacare, Four Years Later Four years ago – on March 23, 2010 – President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. President Obama and his Congressional allies drafted Obamacare as they wanted it, stringing together separate and distinct ideas to change our health care system, and set the timetables for the implementation of the law. Some... Read more »
Lack of Oversight at the EPA Those who read this column regularly may remember my bill, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Maximum Achievable Contraction of Technocrats (MACT) Act, H.R. 3641, which would reduce the EPA’s workforce by 15 percent within three to four years. I introduced this bill because I believe the EPA has too many people working on new regulations which hurt jobs, as oppo... Read more »
Protecting Black Lung Benefits As you know, I support the repeal of Obamacare and believe it will eventually collapse under its own weight. As many feared, its rollout was problematic. Federal officials are now telling us that implementation of Obamacare is on track. But they told us the website was on track too. After refusing to work with Congress on altering or delaying portions of Obamacare, P... Read more »
Half a League, Half a League, Half a League Onward Many lessons can be extracted from history. Reflecting on today’s quickly-evolving situation involving Russia and Ukraine makes me think of the Charge of the Light Brigade which took place in 1854 during the Crimean War. Religious issued contributed to the start of the Crimean War, but another factor was growing Russian power in the Middle East an... Read more »
Opening in California earlier this month was the giant Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which the Wall Street Journal reports “…includes three towers as tall as 40-story buildings. Nearly 350,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect sunlight onto boilers atop the towers, creating steam that drives power generators.” The Wall Street Journal called the system “The $2.2 Billion B... Read more »
Obamacare: “Losing on Both Ends” When trying to sell the American people on their plans for health care reform in February of 2010, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, “This [health care] bill is not only about the health security of America. It’s about jobs. In its life, it will create 4 million jobs — 400,000 jobs almost immediately.” Any student of history knows that when governmental... Read more »
