Congress makes IRS look compassionate

One of the best policies instituted by the Republican Congress that came to power in the 1994 election was dialing back the Internal Revenue Service’s auditing capacity and giving taxpayers a break for honest mistakes.

However, as James M. Peaslee explained in the Wall Street Journal, the Democrat Congress has inexplicably put a bullseye on taxpayers, even for good-faith mistakes, and taken away the IRS’ ability to waive penalties, making the tax collectors look like nice guys compared to hatchet-wielding Democrats: (more…)

Know the facts about ObamaCare

Last week, NBC News claimed that the flagging support for ObamaCare was due to “[M]isperceptions about the president’s plans for reform … that nonpartisan fact-checkers say are untrue.”  Fortunately, Heritage Foundation took the trouble to fact check the fact-checkers at NBC.

So, when our teleprompted President or scripted Democrat lawmakers like Betsy Markey tell you that Obamacare won’t:

  • Provide health benefits to illegal immigrants,
  • Lead to a government takeover of the health care system,
  • Use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, or
  • Allow government to ration health care

You can be well armed with hard facts simply by following the documentation provided by Heritage.

Budget study should focus on big picture

It’s becoming a ritual at the State Capitol: a committee is meeting to study the competing pressures of spending mandates and spending limits on the state budget.  Like those before them, this year’s panel has heard from a litany of experts and special interests, almost all of whom will complain about the Gordian knot in which the state budget is entangled.

Yes, Colorado’s budget is complicated and elected officials are often asked to make difficult, sometimes incoherent, fiscal choices.  Like it or not, the people of Colorado have, in exchange for their tax dollars, insisted on external checks and balances which sometimes become unbalanced themselves. (more…)

Markey snubs Eastern Plains

Many U.S. Representatives are using the August recess to hold town meetings — especially this summer with the debate over the federal government’s role in health care heating up — but not rookie Congresswoman Betsy Markey.

The Fort Collins Democrat isn’t holding any actual town meetings.  You know, the type you advertise a week or two in advance, invite all comers and answer questions from often unpredictable regular folks. (more…)

Colorado wheat growers oppose Waxman-Markey

Last month, I expressed my disgust with agriculture lobbyists inside the Beltway who paved the way for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill to pass out of the U.S. House.  As a wheat grower, I was particularly frustrated by the short-sightedness of the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG).

Well, to give credit where it’s due, although NAWG is still wrong as it can be on cap-and-trade, the Colorado Association of Wheat Growers this week met with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and told him that CAWG’s executive committee unanimously opposes Waxman-Markey. (more…)

A fiscal epiphany for Ritter, Bennet?

Impending mortality tends to focus the mind, and looming elections tend to focus politicians’ ears on vox populi.  But just as theologians debate the sincerity of “deathbed conversions,” voters should be skeptical of lawmakers who find religion as elections near.

Although 15 months remain until the 2010 elections, Democrats are learning — just as Republicans discovered after their 2004 victory tour — how quickly the political winds can shift for the party in power. (more…)

‘New energy economy’ collides with endangered species

The Endangered Species Act may present the newest, largest road block to the development of wind energy across Colorado’s Estern Plains and neighboring states, the according to an Associated Press story in The Denver Post.

Should the lesser prairie chicken become listed as threatened or endangered—and it’s close now—there would be significant restrictions on companies hoping to plant towering turbines across a five-state region believed to have some of the nation’s best wind energy potential. (more…)

Five questions for health care townhalls

Anyone who can attend a townhall meeting by one of Colorado’s U.S. Senators or Representatives — if they have the courage to listen — might benefit from these questions from Heritage Foundation that get to the root of key questions about Obama Care:

Can you promise me that I will not lose my current plan and doctor?

Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman have all admitted that the public option will inevitably lead to government-run health care. The independent and non-partisan Lewin Group estimates that about 83.4 million people would lose their private insurance if Obamacare became law. (more…)

Obama explains how ‘public option’ will end private insurance

He says, “Nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care.”  He says, “If you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep our plan.  Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”

That’s what he says now, but that’s not what he said when he thought no one — except the single-payer zealots — was paying attention.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bY92mcOdk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ebreitbart%2Etv%2Funcovered%2Dvideo%2Dobama%2Dexplains%2Dhow%2Dhis%2Dhealth%2Dcare%2Dplan%2Dwill%2Deliminate%2Dprivate%2Dinsurance%2F&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]