Consolidated Appropriations
Our national debt is rapidly approaching $19 trillion, a number so large it is hard to even fathom. The debt breaks down to more than $58,000 a year per person and over $157,000 per taxpayer. Just to put these numbers in perspective a little bit more, the average household wage in the United States is about $52,000 and the median home value in Florida’s First Congressional district is $152,000. So that means every man woman and child in Northwest Florida is on the hook for more debt than the average family pulls in through a year of hard work, and the average Northwest Florida taxpayer’s share of Washington’s debt is larger than the value of their own home.
Washington’s spending is unacceptable, and it must stop. As a strong fiscal conservative, I have fought for years to restrain Washington’s big spending ways, and I believe that we must balance our budget and return to regular order. Given our debt problem, it is more imperative than ever that we go through each and every line item of the federal budget with a fine tooth comb and rid the budget of waste. Year-end spending bills like the omnibus make it very difficult to achieve this important goal.
I know that Republican appropriators and House leadership had the best of intentions while crafting the omnibus bill, and there are some positive measures included—especially a much needed increase in the defense budget to ensure that our service members have all the resources needed to defend our Constitution and protect our way of life. Additionally, the bill has several important veterans-related provisions, including increased oversight to help address VA’s systemic failures, restrictions on construction funding to prevent further construction debacles like the Denver VA, expansion of whistle blower protections so that VA employees feel confident they can come forward to expose problems without the fear of retaliation, and increased funding to end VA’s claims disability backlog.
Unfortunately, however, the bill also includes billions of dollars above the spending caps agreed to in the Budget Control Act, and it does not go far enough on several crucial issues. The bill includes language passed by the House to protect Americans by reforming the visa waiver program for foreigners looking to come to the United States on tourist visas, but it does not stop the Obama Administration from continuing its misguided Syrian refugee resettlement program, which must be shut down, and instead provides an additional $100 million in funding to resettle refugees. On immigration, instead of clamping down on the President’s executive amnesty, the bill would actually change immigration law and quadruple the number of foreigner H-2B workers allowed in the country to 250,000. While the bill does include important pro-life riders like the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funds from being used to pay for abortions, it does not include the language passed by the House previously to defund Planned Parenthood. And despite the fact that the bill provides relief from some of Obamacare’s taxes and prevents a taxpayer bailout of insurance companies, we must go further and repeal all of Obamacare.
I voted against the bill because it is well past time to stop spending our children and grandchildren into the poorhouse and take decisive steps to prevent the debt crisis that hangs over our future by cutting spending, balancing our budget and growing our economy.
Tax Extenders
With the tax year 2015 filing season looming, Congress acted last week to prevent tax increases on millions of families and businesses that would result with the expiration of over 50 provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. The Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act, which I voted for and that passed the House by a vote of 318-109, would provide much needed certainty to the American taxpayer by making numerous tax relief provisions permanent, including those pertaining to research and development, charitable donations, state and local general sales taxes, and small business expensing, as well as providing two or five year extensions to several others, including a two-year moratorium on the medical device tax and an extension of the exclusion of discharge of qualified principal residence indebtedness from gross income. The measure would also implement important policy reforms, including several that rein in the IRS to provide for the firing of IRS employees for taking official actions for political purposes, prohibit IRS employees from using personal email for official purposes, and require IRS employees act in accord with the taxpayer bill of rights.
First Session of the 114th Congress Comes to a Close
In the first session of the 114th Congress, the House of Representatives has passed more than 500 bills, and more than 100 have been signed into law. As we wrap up the first session this month and begin the second session in January, I would like to highlight a few major pieces of legislation from the last 12 months and look forward to what the House will be doing next year.
Under the Constitution, Congress has a clear directive to provide for the common defense of our Nation and protect American security. The primary means by which Congress fulfills this role is through passage of the National Defense Authorization Act(NDAA), which must be passed each year. Despite one Presidential veto, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was eventually signed into law. And the NDAA passed by Congress in the first session contains vital measures to equip and pay our troops, maintain readiness, care for our men and women in uniform, and deter the many existing threats.
Another important bill signed into law during this session was the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, which finally repealed the flawed Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) for Medicare payments to providers and replaced it with a new streamlined quality inventive program that rewards performance and enables physicians to participate in a way that best fits their practice. In addition, this legislation will help strengthen Medicare’s ability to fight fraud, waste, and abuse by prohibiting Social Security numbers on Medicare cards, reducing wrongful or improper Medicare payments, removing duplicative Medicare Secondary Payer reporting requirements, and eliminating civil money penalties for inducements to physicians to limit services that are not medically necessary.
Throughout the entirety of the first session of Congress, the House has focused on passing conservative pro-growth bills that support our Nation’s small businesses to help them grow and create new jobs. One of the best ways that we can support American businesses, and particularly small businesses, is by reining in excessive regulatory actions that harm our economy and take dollars out of the pocket of hardworking Americans. The Small Business Administration estimates that regulations in this country cost our economy $1.75 trillion a year, and the regulatory burden on small businesses amounts to more than $10,000 per employee. To reduce these excessive regulations the House passed bills like the REINS Act, which would require any regulation with a cost of $100 million or more to be voted on in Congress, as well as bills like H.R.37, the Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act, which would cut back on some of the red-tape that is hampering growth and access to capital, and H.R.636, the America’s Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015, which would provide critical tax relief to small businesses hampered by Washington’s high tax policies.
In the second session of this Congress we will continue to focus on these important issues, and there are also many more the important items on our agenda. One of those items will be legislation to simplify the tax code and reduce taxes for hard working Americans. Simplifying the tax code would be an enormous win for the American people, and it would help our businesses grow and hire new workers.
In addition, the House will continue to fight to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a conservative solution that spurs competition in the marketplace by instituting patient centered reforms and removing Obamacare’s many harmful mandates and taxes.
And of course national security and providing for the defense of our Nation will remain one of the House’s top focuses. The scope of these security concerns—including the radical Islamic terrorism of ISIS, al Qaeda and other Islamists, the extremely troubling actions of the Iranian regime, which appears intent on continuing to pursue nuclear arms and threaten the security of Israel and the entire region, and the many ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and around the world—grows every day, and it is more important than ever to support our warfighters and ensure that we keep America and her citizens safe.
It is an honor and privilege to serve the people of Florida’s First Congressional District in the House, and in 2016 I will continue to stand up and represent Northwest Florida’s conservative values in the halls of Congress.
Veterans Corner
VA Secretary’s Refusal to Punish Confirmed Whistle blower Retaliation in Phoenix
VA’s routine and pervasive refusal to seriously discipline employees who have engaged in proven incompetence, corruption and malfeasance is contributing to all of the department’s most serious problems. In this case, the department’s own investigations determined more than a year ago that two high-level Phoenix VA Health Care System administrators retaliated against whistle blowers, yet incredibly VA still hasn’t disciplined these officials for their retaliatory behavior. The fact that VA’s top leaders have likely known about these issues for more than a year and haven’t acted on the reports’ disciplinary recommendations severely undercuts the credibility of the department’s repeated assertions that whistle blower retaliation will not be tolerated.
Additionally, it’s now clear that no matter what type of investigation – including those done by VA itself, the inspector general or Congress – finds misconduct on the part of VA employees, the end result is almost always the same: the department fails to institute meaningful discipline against the employees found to have done wrong. It’s well past time for VA leaders to prove they are committed to holding corrupt and incompetent employees accountable. This can only be achieved through actions not words. Unfortunately, up to this point, VA has offered little more than rote talking points on the importance of accountability while the department’s rampant lack of discipline remains on perpetual display.
First Session of the 114th Congress in Review
This year, the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs (HVAC) continued its strong focus on reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs into an organization truly worthy of the veterans it is charged with serving. On the legislative front, several veterans-related bills have been signed into law. These include the Clay Hunt Suicide-Prevention for American Veterans Act, which will help improve veterans’ access to mental health care; the Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act of 2015, which was designed to rescue VA’s mismanaged finances and streamline the Veterans Choice Program; and the Department of Veterans Affairs Expiring Authorities Act of 2015, which puts the Army Corps of Engineers – instead of VA’s hapless Office of Acquisition, Logistics and Construction – in charge of VA construction projects expected to cost $100 million or more.
One of the most important reform bills the House passed this year is the VA Accountability Act of 2015, which I introduced. It would give the VA Secretary the authority to swiftly fire corrupt or incompetent employees while putting into place the strongest whistle blower protection measures found anywhere in the federal government. The bill passed the House and now awaits consideration by the Senate.
Our committee has proven that oversight can be just as successful as legislation when it comes to reshaping how VA works. Over the past year, HVAC’s oversight has helped expose a host of new problems at the department, including additional delays in care, data manipulation and fiscal irresponsibility while keeping the focus on the department’s systemic lack of accountability.
Because of our continued scrutiny of undeserved employee bonuses, VA has cut its bonus expenditures over the last several years – from around $400 million annually to $142 million last year. After HVAC helped uncover incredible waste and fraud within VA’s Appraised Value Offer relocation program, which was providing VA executives with exorbitant moving expenses of more than $200,000, VA has discontinued the perk. And due to our focus on VA’s pervasive lack of accountability, the department recently announced it will no longer delay discipline while waiting for the results of Inspector General or Department of Justice investigations. VA has also decided to stop routinely putting employees on indefinite paid leave – an administrative accountability dodge the department has abused for years.
Our committee is working every day to expose VA’s problems and improve the department’s ability to provide our veterans with the care and benefits they have earned. As HVAC chairman, I look forward to continuing these efforts next year.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Washington Update