economics

Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives voted  330-93 to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank.  While it may have been well intentioned originally, EX-IM has become a piggy bank for corporate welfare.  One of the worst examples comes from right here in Arizona.

First Solar received a $455 million loan guarantee from Ex-Im to sell solar panels to a company in Canada.  The hook?  That company was a wholly-owned subsidiary of First Solar.  So First Solar fleeces taxpayers to sell solar panels… to itself.

Thankfully, every Republican in the Arizona delegation voted no on reauthorization.  When only 93 Republicans vote against ending corporate welfare, it demonstrates the problem in Washington.

This video from Heritage Action sums it up well.

There is a great irony to the scandal surrounding the General Services Administration and their Vegas soiree in which nearly a million dollars of taxpayer money was spent for an alcohol-fueled party weekend that included clowns and mind-readers.

In February 2009, Obama said this about bank executives:

“We’re going to do something to strengthen the banking system,” Obama said. “Your are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you pay taxpayers back. You can’t get corporate jets. You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime. There’s got to be some accountability and some responsibility.” 

So Obama tells bank executives shouldn’t go to Vegas, but his own agency – whose stated mission is to “foster an effective… and transparent government for the American people” – can go blow nearly $1 million?

American Future Fund has a web ad putting a fine point on this issue.

Budget wunderkind Paul Ryan has endorsed Mitt Romney for President.  With this get, Romney has picked up the endorsement of the two top rising stars in the Republican Party – Ryan and Marco Rubio.

Ryan’s endorsement demonstrates that the conservative intellectual wing of the GOP is now firmly ensconced with Romney.

Tuesday’s primary elections in Wisconsin (Ryan’s home state), Maryland and D.C. will likely be the end of Gingrich’s campaign and should, for all intents and purposes, be the end of Santorum’s campaign.

Conservative star, Senator Marco Rubio, has endorsed Mitt Romney for President.  That is a BIG get for Romney and one that is yet another nail in the coffin for Rick Santorum’s improbable quest for the nomination.

There are still some important conservatives who have not jumped onto Team Romney, but Rubio’s announcement will lead to more and more asking for a jersey.

I suspect we’ll see a couple this weekend.

Obama’s health care law may be on life support.  After three days of oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the challenge to the health care bill signed into law two years ago, the future of the law is very uncertain.

It’s clear that supporters of the law were rocked by how aggressive the questioning was by Justices Kennedy and Breyer – two justices that are key to which way the decision goes.  The Left is also very unhappy with Obama’s Solicitor General.  Mother Jones wrote, “If the law is upheld, it will be in spite of Verrilli’s performance, not because of it.”

I was struck my Kennedy’s first question right out of the box, “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”  That is how a Supreme Court Justice “gets up in your grill.”

Justices Scalia, Alito and Chief Justice Roberts also asked withering questions.  Justice Thomas was typically silent – he hasn’t asked a question in the last six years.  It is assumed that those four are near-certain to support striking down the individual mandate and based on Kennedy’s questioning, he could be the fifth vote.

What has alarmed the Left more than anything is the discussion in the final day of arguments when the Court discussed whether it was more reasonable to overturn the entire law if they agree that the individual mandate is struck down.

While I strongly believe that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, and have been cautiously optimistic that the Court would so rule, I have been very pessimistic about the Court overturning the entire law.  That would be a nice gift to the American people if it were to happen.

Transcripts of the three days of arguments are here:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday here and here

Pinal Sheriff Paul Babeu had a confrontation with the Pinal County Board of Supervisors in which he claimed that his overspending of nearly $2 million was not HIS budget deficit, but theirs.

Below is an embarrassing blowup by Babeu.

U.S. House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan is the most serious person in Washington when it comes to taking on the real challenges of government spending and debt.  Washington Democrats will howl at the budget he releases today, which should be proof enough that it is something we need.

Here is a great video introduction of Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity Budget.

So the debate over who is more conservative, Ben Quayle or David Schweikert, continues to point to Quayle being more conservative.

The American Conservative Union (the group that organizes CPAC) released it’s 2011 Congressional Scorecard today.

Qualye scored a perfect 100 and Schweikert scored 96.

That’s a close score, it represents one vote in which Qualye and Schweikert differed.  So, it appears that it isn’t that big of a deal.

But the details point out something disturbing.  Here is how the ACU lists this particular vote:

Spending increase. HR 2354 (Roll Call 586)

The House passed an amendment to the Energy and Water Appropriations bill increasing spending on renewable energy and energy efficiency programs by $10 million. These programs had received massive increases in the 2009 budget and the Obama stimulus program. ACU opposes these attempts to reverse modest spending cuts and opposed this amendment. Nevertheless, the House passed the amendment on July 15, 2011 by a vote of 212-210.

This is stunning.  Schweikert voted to increase spending? What’s worse, it’s to support an industry that has already been one of the biggest beneficiaries of government largesse since Obama took office.  Just picture the infamous Solyndra failure.  Most amazing, is that Schweikert cast the deciding vote for passage.

That’s not very conservative.

Whenever two Republicans face off in a very Republican district, it always comes down to “who is the most conservative.”

When I was John Shadegg’s campaign manager in his first race in 1994, the candidate who was the presumptive nominee was former Scottsdale City Councilman and former Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, Jim Bruner.  Bruner is a successful guy and had served honorably in his positions.  He was a classic establishment Republican, generally conservative, but willing to use taxpayer dollars to fund things like a baseball stadium.

The central issue in Shadegg’s campaign against Bruner was that he cast the deciding vote to impose a temporary tax on residents of Maricopa County to fund the construction of what became Bank One Ballpark – or BOB – and is now known as Chase Field.  It was a huge gift to Jerry Colangelo who was trying to get a baseball franchise to Phoenix.

Shadegg’s other main opponent in the primary that year was Trent Franks, who at the time was a former one-term state legislator.  Franks positioned himself as the “true” conservative in the race, primarily touting support from social conservatives in the district.

Shadegg obviously won that race, but then after 2001 redistricting, Franks ran and won in a new district.  For eight years, Shadegg and Franks served in Congress together, which gives us an interesting test of who was more conservative.

According to National Journal Rankings, they tied for the most conservative Member of Congress twice, and in the other years, Franks ranked about 5 points more conservative on average.  In that time, Shadegg and Franks were both in the top 3% of the most conservative Members of Congress.

So we can see that when Shadegg and Franks were battling over the “true conservative” label in 1994 they both ended up in about the same place.

As an aside, given that Salmon is running for Congress again, I compared Salmon and Shadegg in the 6 years they served together.  Over the six years, Shadegg was on average 7 points more conservative than Salmon, but if you took the last three years of Salmon’s tenure, Shadegg was on average 14 points more conservative than Salmon.

Now to the main point.

This is very instructive for voters in the newly drawn Congressional District 6 and the race between Ben Quayle and David Schweikert.  The latest National Journal rankings show that Ben Quayle is, in practice, more conservative than David Schweikert.  And it’s not even close.

Check out the rankings.  It scores how conservative members are on economic issues, social issues and foreign policy issues, and the overall rank in Congress.

                                     Economic        Social                 Foreign Policy            Score   Rank

Quayle                        90                   83                              91                                94            1

Schweikert                 75                   69                               91                               81       66

Gosar                          73                   69                               91                               79.8    76

Flake                           49                   83                              91                               78.7    91

Franks                        78                   74                             70                               76.2    109

Qualye isn’t just the most conservative member of the Arizona delegation, he’s the most conservative by a long shot.  He scores 13 points higher than Schweikert who scores 1.2 points better than Gosar, 2.3 points better than Flake and 3.8 points better than Franks.  Quayle’s the most conservative walking away.

This is the kind of stuff that drives folks like Rob Haney crazy.  No matter how many times he called Shadegg a “RINO” over the years, it just didn’t stick because Shadegg was demonstrably conservative.  And, Haney and his cohort’s heads are now exploding because their chosen candidate, Schweikert, is demonstrably LESS conservative than Quayle.

Damn those pesky things like facts.

Prediction: Romney will win Arizona by double digits and also win Michigan next Tuesday.  That will give him momentum going into Super Tuesday in which he will win more delegates than Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich and continue to lead the delegate count on his way to the Republican nomination.

Here is my problem with Rick Santorum, and it’s personal.  I took vacation time in 2004 to work on Pat Toomey’s Senate campaign against Sen. Arlen Specter.  Rick Santorum, to the surprise of many conservatives, endorsed and cut ads for Specter, as did President George W. Bush.  The argument at the time from the White House was that if Specter was the Republican nominee, Bush would be able to win Pennsylvania.  The counter argument was that if Specter was the nominee, the base Republican voters in Pennsylvania would be unmotivated to turnout and vote.

As a result of Santorum endorsing Specter, Specter won the primary in 2004 by one vote per precinct over Toomey and then Bush went on to lose Pennsylvania to Kerry in the General Election.

I can’t forget Santorum supporting Specter, who not only voted counter to Bush in the following years, but eventually switched to Democrat and was the deciding vote on Obama’s health care bill.

That’s unforgivable.