by Bob Barr | Apr 3, 2024 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller The budget for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is large and growing every year. The Biden Administration has asked Congress to appropriate $369.3 billion for the VA in 2025 – a nearly 10% increase over 2024. Roughly half of the VA’s spending goes toward providing disability benefits to compensate veterans for injuries or health conditions resulting from their service. Yet, with all that money being allocated to support our nation’s disabled veterans, many still struggle to obtain what they are owed under the law. This makes it even more difficult to understand why some Members of Congress have proposed legislation that actually would make it harder for veterans to get the help they need. It is hardly a secret that the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has for years been plagued with problems – everything from computer systems that just don’t seem to work, to difficulties in setting appointment scheduling and lengthy wait times for many veterans once they do secure medical visits. The VBA currently has a backlog of more than 300,000 disability claims that have been pending for more than 125 days. In addition to long waits to receive decisions on their claim, many veterans are also being assigned inaccurate disability ratings, often resulting in lower benefits than deserved. An NBC News story from fall 2023 highlighted a lack of training, understaffing and low morale at the VBA as contributing factors leading to errors in decisions. As one VA employee put it in that account, “You end up developing an ‘I don’t care’ attitude. When you stop caring, you stop processing claims, you miss stuff.” Problems like these are causing large numbers...
by Bob Barr | Nov 20, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In the 14 years since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was granted what it had for decades sought — power to regulate tobacco and tobacco products — it has sought to expand its reach. One way the agency has done this is by waging a misguided, years-long crusade against e-cigarettes. FDA’s broad tobacco mandate, overseen by its Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), is to “regulate the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of tobacco products to protect public health.” In this endeavor, the FDA claims that it “evaluates new tobacco products based on a public health standard that considers the risks and benefits of the tobacco product to the population as a whole.” Inherent in this mission statement is the underlying goal to reduce or eliminate cigarette smoking in the United States — arguably a reasonable though certainly not universally supported point of view. What is unreasonable, however, is the FDA’s regulatory record over the past several years as measured by its stated objective. For example, CTP has in recent years approved, without any scientific review, nearly 900 new brands of cigarettes produced by dozens of companies; new brands on top of the billions of packs of cigarettes already approved for consumers. This fact alone appears completely at odds with the parent agency’s mission. The confusion becomes bewildering when considering that, during this same period, CTP has approved less than two dozen e-cigarette products, despite acknowledging that e-cigarettes are an effective alternative to the far more health-damaging cigarette smoking. Simply put, e-cigarettes have not gotten a fair shake in the agency’s taxpayer-funded activities, the result (to some extent) of bad behavior by a select...
by Bob Barr | Nov 8, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller For centuries, and certainly to Thomas Jefferson and other Founders, the value of an educated citizenry has been understood to be an imperative for good governance, if not for the very survival of a free people. Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli stated the principle clearly in an 1874 speech to the House of Commons, declaring that “Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.” Based on recent decisions by top education officials in states like Oregon, however, the fate of our country in this 21st century is indeed bleak.The Oregon Department of Public Education recently teamed up with woke Democratic Gov. Kate Brown to render virtually meaningless the value of a high school diploma from any public school in the Beaver State. Dragging the already sinking ability by Oregon students to read, write and calculate into the education abyss is the unanimous decision just last month by the Public Ed Department. Thanks to these bureaucrats, a 2021 policy to not require Oregon students exiting high school to prove they can read, write or perform mathematically to any particular level will continue for four more school years. In the Bizarro World that has transformed many Democrat-run American cities and states into cultural and economic wastelands, those who support Oregon’s profoundly disturbing education policy decision may laud the fact that it has led to an historically high graduation rate of 81.3 percent. The fallacy of this artificial calculus is that in virtually every other state or city that has sacrificed educational standards on the altar of “equity,” proficiency in basic subjects like math, reading and writing...
by Bob Barr | Nov 1, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller In August 2022 Congress passed President Biden’s signature “Inflation Reduction Act” without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. There were several reasons for this purely partisan vote, one of which was that the legislation included a mechanism for a major tax increase on many prescription drugs used mainly by Medicare enrollees for treatment of certain cancers, heart conditions and diabetes. Already flush with the 87,000 new employees authorized by the very same Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS is drafting regulations to start collecting the prescription drug “excise tax,” which can virtually double the market price for the medications. To win the Senate votes — including hold-out Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who switched his vote in favor of the bill at the last-minute following secret parleys with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — Biden presented the proposed excise tax as a way to reduce the cost of many common, Medicare-covered prescription drugs, rather than what it really is — a measure that will lead to shortages and increased prices. What Biden and the Democrats actually did was impose price controls on Medicare-covered prescription drugs, disguising them as “negotiated prices” between Uncle Sam and the drug manufacturers. This sleight-of-hand might sound reasonable, even perhaps positive, except for the fact that refusal by any of the manufacturers to “accept” Washington’s proposed prices, would result in a mandated tax on the final, consumer cost of the drugs that would in short order reach 95% — effectively doubling its price. Moreover, while disguising an “excise tax” as a “price negotiation” may sound great, it does so only until you realize...
by Bob Barr | Oct 24, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller A recent, nonpartisan poll of 2,008 registered voters, conducted by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, concludes what many Americans already know, which is that our two-party political system is a chaotic mess. Far more disturbing, however, are the survey’s findings that a significant percentage of voters consider that violence, suspension of democratic norms and states seceding from our union, all are acceptable alternatives to our current troubles. These troubling findings certainly can, at least in part, be attributed to pronounced ignorance that has for at least a decade, characterized many Americans’ understanding of the structure of our national government. For example, a 2014 survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania found that more than one-third of adults surveyed could not name a single one of the three branches of our government. Coupled with historic lows in the public’s trust in government, such a disturbing level of civic cluelessness makes the most recent finding by the University of Virginia even more troubling. Having so many voters remaining fundamentally ignorant about how our government operates, while at the same time having little or no trust in that government, and with some forty percent considering it “acceptable to use violence to stop” those in the opposing political party “from achieving their goals,” is a recipe for disaster. If voters engaged directly with political leaders and parties, there might be at least some check on these disturbing trends, but, as the Pew Research Center has discovered, the vast majority of Americans get their news the easy way, from “digital devices,” which are by definition more subjective, less transparent and more easily...
by Bob Barr | Sep 26, 2023 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Last week, the House Judiciary Committee demonstrated once again that the GOP does not know how to conduct effective oversight of the Executive Branch. The occasion was the appearance of Attorney General Merrick Garland before the Committee for an entire day, at the end of which nothing of value was revealed. Oversight, along with the appropriations power and passing substantive legislation, is one of the three great responsibilities of the Legislative Branch. It has the power to employ congressional committees to question witnesses and gather evidence supposed to ensure that the president and all executive officers, departments and agencies, are operating within the law and consistent with the intent embodied in legislation passed by the Congress. It is, unfortunately, the one power possessed by the Congress that is the least understood and the most often squandered. The Judiciary Committee hearing on September 20th was billed expressly as “Oversight of the Department of Justice,” but the Republican members demonstrated little interest in actual oversight of the massive Department, which includes the FBI, ATF, every United States Attorney in the country and our government’s immigration and border control agencies. Instead, they took the opportunity to beat up on Garland over one matter — Hunter Biden. To be sure, the failure of the Justice Department to seriously investigate or prosecute the “First Son” for what appear to have been numerous, and serious violations of federal law, is a matter deserving of oversight. Additionally, the failure by this Administration to carry out the myriad powers of the Justice Department fairly and transparently, constitutes a political failure that is fair game for the...
