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As far as Accountability in his Contract for the American Dream Congressman Chaffetz lists our sitation as:
Americans have lost confidence in their elected leaders and the direction of the country as a whole. We are being governed by a “nanny state” mentality that is blanketing the country with the misconception that the government can and should solve all problems.
He envisions the goal as:
Imagine an atmosphere of personal responsibility where individuals took control of their future and worked hard to improve their lives. Restoration of confidence in the government is possible through true openness and transparency in all facets of government operations.
To achieve that goal he proposes:
- Fire the Czars and adhere to the procedures under the Constitution requiring Senate confirmation for such leadership positions.
- Apply all laws equally to Congress.
- Require Committees to post all proceedings on the Internet within 24 hours. Allow 72 hours for Bills and Conference Reports to be publicly online prior to a vote on the House Floor.
- Prohibit Members of Congress serving on Appropriations and Ways & Means from seeking earmarks.
- Require that 100% of all campaign donations be filed with the Federal Election Commission for public review.
- Attack the rampant waste, fraud, and abuses in Medicare and Medicaid.
- Deny the passage of “card check” and participate in labor law reform.
- Ensure that E-Verify is fully deployed and mandatory for hiring an employee.
My thoughts on his steps toward the goal:
- Sounds more like a sound bite than an real effective step in the right direction.
- What does this mean?
- This couldn’t hurt.
- This would make those committee assignments much less desirable but if the rest of our Representatives can still seek earmarks little will have been accomplished.
- I like it.
- Vague.
- Vague.
- I’m not sure that E-Verify is all that it is cracked up to be. I fear that it will be more expense than value.
4 replies on “Accountability for the American Dream”
“Fire the Czars and adhere to the procedures under the Constitution requiring Senate confirmation for such leadership positions.”
Their is nothing wrong with these so called “Czars”, If someone has an issue with what one of these Czars do then they need to take away the Presidents ability to exercise that power. The Czars can’t do anything that is not delegated to the white house in the first place. If All they want is to confirm a Czar I would suggest that congress formalize that position via legislation so that they can confirm them.
“Require that 100% of all campaign donations be filed with the Federal Election Commission for public review.”
Nothing short of publicly funded elections will solve the problems we have with the money flood in Washington.
“Attack the rampant waste, fraud, and abuses in Medicare and Medicaid.”
The coming health care bill(if it passes) handles a lot of this. Even if you don’t like the overall bill it does handle much of the fraud and abuse in Medicare.
If Congress were to formalize the position of Czar what is there to stop the president (this one or a future one) from creating a new position (perhaps Tsar) that does not require congressional confirmation. I think the fact that the president requires more than a Cabinet is an indication of a presidency that has expanded beyond anything the founders would have recognized – proof that we have left our Constitutional moorings behind us.
I’m not sure that publicly funded elections would be the panacea that you view it as.
You know that I don’t like this poor excuse for reform, but you don’t seem to understand that no matter how often you say it I am not convinced that this bill does anything significant to handle the existing fraud and abuse in Medicare.
“If Congress were to formalize the position of Czar what is there to stop the president (this one or a future one) from creating a new position (perhaps Tsar) that does not require congressional confirmation.”
I don’t mean to actually create a “Czar” position, I mean create a position that would cover that would cover what they said one particular “Czar” did before. And again the Czars can’t do anything that isn’t delegated to the white house in the first place, Congress can more then easily enough undelegate things to the white house(given this potentially takes a veto override).
And for many of these czars do we really need confirmation? Tho I loath the source Glenn Beck has a nice Czar list. I am not worried in the slightest about rather or not congress confirms the AID’s Czar, or the California Water Czar. Some of the Czars look like positions that should be formalized such as the Border Czar, or the Terrorism Czar.
The Czars have no power to create, enforce, or remove any rules regulations or otherwise, they simply report to the president their findings and the president can then act on them within what ever power the congress/constitution has delegated to him. I don’t see these as “Leadership” positions, I see them as the president obtaining himself a network of advisers to help him make decisions and their is nothing unreasonable about that.
“You know that I don’t like this poor excuse for reform, but you don’t seem to understand that no matter how often you say it I am not convinced that this bill does anything significant to handle the existing fraud and abuse in Medicare.”
I am not trying to convince you of the health care bill, I am stating that the bill increases funding for Medicare fraud investigations, strengthens the Medicare anti-fraud rules committee, removes/rewrites several badly written Medicare Advantage regulations, adjusts the Medicare advantage payment rates to be in line with normal Medicare, etc. These will have an effect, I suppose the amount of the effect can(will be) argued but none the less they will do something.
Until Congressman Chaffetz actually says what it is he would do further prevent Medicare/Medicaid fraud I am going to have to consider his statements hot air.
Until Congressman Chaffetz actually says what it is he would do further prevent Medicare/Medicaid fraud I am going to have to consider his statements hot air.
Fair enough.