by Bob Barr | Jan 3, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Regardless of where the vote for House Speaker winds up — with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) either winning his sought-after job as Speaker or returning to his seat as one of 435 sitting Members — the chaos a handful of conservative Republican Members have caused will do lasting damage to their party and accomplish little of long-term substance.McCarthy has already taken severe damage to his position. The “Never Kevin” members of the Republican caucus have so wounded him that he would be largely unable to control the mechanisms a speaker must wield to keep the body functioning. In his weakened state, just controlling his own side of the aisle for two years would be a Herculean task. McCarthy’s forced, eleventh-hour concessions after his months-long campaign for Speaker will simply reinforce allegations that he lacks principles on which to govern. More importantly, and beyond the wounds to McCarthy’s political persona, some of these concessions will make it harder for the slim GOP majority to achieve its priorities.For example, agreeing to establish one or more “select” committees to investigate the Biden administration’s abuses of power, will undercut the powers of standing committees and their chairmen to set and coordinate the majority party’s priorities. That agencies of the Executive Branch have been abusing their powers was not a concept undiscovered until the Freedom Caucus latched onto it. Executive Branch abuse of power has been building for decades. While it is fair to charge the current administration with forcing the pendulum further in that direction, the reality is that every recent administration has pushed the envelope – Republican and Democrat.These matters of expanding and...
by Bob Barr | Dec 28, 2022 | Townhall Article |
TownhallI am not a Marine, but I have been honored over my years to count several formerly active and now-retired U.S. Marines as close personal friends. Additionally, I worked with many active-duty Marines during my years serving with the CIA in the 1970s and as a Member of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. The United States Marine Corps represents the very best of what America stands for, most notably attributes of ethics, reliability, loyalty, patriotism, strength, and innovation. These are some of the reasons why I and many others, including several former Marine officers, have grave concerns about policies now being forced onto the Corps, especially by a pair of official documents published over the past nearly three years — Force Design 2030 and Talent Management 2030.The Marine Corps has served our country honorably in every major foreign conflict since before we became an independent sovereign nation. One of our country’s most beautiful memorials is the one just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., depicting the four Marines raising the American flag at Mt. Suribachi during the fierce battle for Iwo Jima in February 1945.Despite the tremendous successes and great human cost borne by the Marine Corps in fighting to protect our national security, the service periodically has faced serious bureaucratic attacks here at home. Some of these challenges have been rooted in inter-service rivalries, with others based on myopic fiscal concerns or the well-known bureaucratic game of change-for-the-sake-of-change. The current attacks on the Marine Corps structure and culture, however, truly are existential.The changes recommended by these documents are considered by retired Marine Corps generals who have studied them thoroughly, not...
by Bob Barr | Dec 27, 2022 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily CallerFew things strike greater fear into the hearts of many congressional Republicans — especially senators — than the specter of a “government shutdown.” The fact – not the myth – however, is that not one of the more than a half dozen government “shutdowns” the nation has survived since the 1970s was anything close to a “shutdown.” Still, many in the GOP quake at the mere mention of one, and rush to vote “Aye” for whatever spending bill is placed before them in order to avoid being labeled by their Democrat colleagues and the corporate media as budgetary Scrooges.While these so-called “shutdowns” do result in temporary problems for the functioning of the government and its millions of workers, the occurrences are neither government-wide nor permanent. In every case, the results are both temporary and partial, affecting only certain, “non-essential” federal workers. Government shutdowns are the result of budget disputes between Democrats and Republicans in the Congress or between the Congress and the White House, but always accompanied by both parties’ failure to do their jobs and pass appropriations bills to fund all government agencies by the end of the fiscal year each September 30th. This year, 18 Republican Senators blinked in their very open dispute with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) over the massive $1.7 trillion spending package laid out before them just days before Christmas. Following that senatorial GOP capitulation, nine Republican House members jumped onto the spending spree bandwagon orchestrated by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her soon-to-disappear majority in the lower chamber. Not surprisingly, departing Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney was one of the Republican Nine.Headlines announcing the passage...
