Rush Holt's Obnoxious Concoctions

WARNING: Do not break the law before, during, or after reading anything I mention.



Rush Holt, and several of his radical colleagues, continually creates obnoxious appropriations that raid the taxpayer purse for special benefits to be handed out to a few connected recipients. Rush Holt firmly stood with partisan allies to narrowly pass many expansive, and expensive bills this year. Several of these mountainous appropriation bills, emanating from the petulant 111th Congress, which became public law, contain curious allotments of taxpayer dollars.


We need to scrutinize all congressional expenditures. Rush Holt's tenure is marked by misappropriations and maladministration of taxpayer funds. At a time when austerity is sorely needed in Congress, Mr. Holt continues to recklessly disburse public treasure on ridiculous programs. He must believe that the federal government can simply spend money on any conceivable project. This blatant display of contempt for our trust, and misconstruction of public power and budgetary discretion, deserves outright denunciation.


H.R. 3288, a monstrous appropriation bill, Rush Holt voted for spending $124 million on Seat Belt Performance Grants, $139 million for Alcohol-Impaired Driving Countermeasures Incentive Grant Program, $4 million for the city and county of Honolulu to operate a ferry boat service demonstration, $80 million to restore Pacific salmon populations, $10 million for prisoner reentry research, and $300 thousand for a program to support student and parent mock elections.


In H.R. 2997, another wasteful display of extravagance filled with excessive spending, Rush Holt voted for $1 million to fund a food animal residue avoidance database program, $80 million for breastfeeding peer counselors, and $216 million for the Center for Tobacco Products. In the same bloated bill, Mr. Holt voted to derive $578 million from prescription drug user fees and $57 million from medical device user fees to pay for all these ridiculous programs.


In H.R. 2918, a legislative branch appropriation bill, Rush Holt voted to spend $25 million for salaries and expenses for house leadership offices, $20 thousand for the house family room, $200 thousand for digitizing culturally significant and historic materials for the Durham Museum in Omaha, Nebraska – which has nothing to do with the legislative branch - $191 million for salaries for compensation and expenses of house officers and employees, and $276 million in contributions for health, retirement, Social Security, and other benefits. Federal salaries and benefits should be cut by at least 10% for those not defending this nation.


In H.R. 1105, an omnibus appropriation bill passed by the grabbing 111th Congress, Rush Holt voted to spend $100 million for boll weevil eradication programs, $469 thousand for the design and construction of an agriculture pest facility in the State of Hawaii, and $80 million for salmon fisheries.


This list of wasteful spending is a very small sample of what was actually spent by Congress, when factoring out salaries and benefits, represents about $1 billion. That is $10 billion over a decade that could be better spent elsewhere, say, securing our borders, servicing our national debt, or letting taxpayers keep it.  The taxpayers of New Jersey's 12th congressional district deserve better representation. Rush Holt has squandered taxpayer money on a multitude of programs that the federal government should not be funding. These programs should be under the purview of state governments, with local resources and labor. Time after time, Rush Holt votes with his partisan colleagues. They are forcing their expansionist will with slim majorities, recklessly spending our public treasure on pet projects for special favorites. These practices are unfair, fiscally unsound, not a duty of the federal head.

Every dollar counts. One million here, and another million there, soon it amounts to billions, which could be better spent paying off our national debt, securing our nation, and defending our common interests, not reckless concoctions to end all ills. The federal government is drifting further and further away from its primary objectives. It is being distracted by too many acquired duties that have nothing to do with any enumerated power in the U.S. Constitution. How many priorities can there be? Our national debt and common defense are the primary objectives for the federal government. We need to rein in extravagant spending and discretionary authority. We can start by voting Rush Holt out of office in November, ending his reckless spending endeavor.

Rush Holt's Radical Tenor

WARNING: Do not break the law before, during, or after reading anything I mention.



What has Rush Holt done for us lately? He expanded federal reach, authority, power, discretion, and deficits. In H.R. 4173, the financial strangulation bill - the latest unread legislative behemoth spewed forth by an impetuous Democratic Congress - Mr. Holt followed the beaten partisan path and voted for more bureaucratic layers and phantom fixes.

Each added layer will be staffed with a gluttonous retinue of salaried pensioners and careerists micromanaging the books of thousands of businesses. Those unelected bureaucrats, each salivating over the budgetary trough, seeking comfort and security in their obscure positions, will invent and implement complex administrative laws, strict statutes, and a penumbra of procedures for an all-assuming and voracious federal head. It is time for the citizens of New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District to halt Mr. Holt’s imprudent schemes.

The new financial regime, concocted by Rush Holt and the most radical Democrats controlling the 111th Congress, made the following bureaucratic additions to an already enlarged federal sphere: 1) the Financial Stability Oversight Council, 2) the Office of Financial Research, 3) the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion, 4) the Federal Insurance Office, 5) the Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee, 6) the Investor Advisory Committee, 7) the Office of Investor Advocate, 8) the Office of Municipal Securities, 9) the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, 10) the Consumer Advisory Board, and 11) the Office of Housing Counseling, just to name a few.

Dense foliage will grow from these newly sprouted federal tentacles. Swift shadows will stretch far and wide over our republican realm of liberty. A heavy frost on economic activity will creep in due to an array of uncertainties emanating from cumbersome regulatory measures, intrusive enforcement procedures, broad discretionary power, and enhanced supervisory authority. A multitude of studies, research reports, and exhaustive examinations will be conducted. There are several new disclosure mandates, and the sharing of that private information with many federal government agencies, and international entities. Too many of these expansive schemes are unnecessary intrusions that will ultimately consume precious time, waste valuable resources, and damper economic recovery.

In sections 204 and 205, the former dealing with the orderly liquidation of covered financial companies, and the latter dealing with the orderly liquidation of covered brokers and dealers, a supposed Lehman Brothers fix, may even do nothing to prevent capital markets from experiencing drastic psychological disturbances. We all witnessed, and many participated in, the real-time rapid depletion of market value in the autumn of 2008. Many celebrified economic pundits noted the manner in which the Lehman incident occurred as being a major catalyst for the initial phase of mass market mayhem. We are kidding ourselves, and it is disingenuous of public servants like Rush Holt to suggest, that these newly created agencies, commissions, and councils will be able to prevent another Lehman episode.

It does not matter when, where, by whom, and how a financial institution is dismantled. What will matter, though, is that a financial institution is being liquidated. Whether it is done by new federal agencies, or under existing structures, led by free and independent market participants, the act of liquidation itself can drastically erode confidence, especially if the designated institution for liquidation is a major component of the national economy. These new layers of federal bureaucracies will not have a special ability to accurately predict, or competently prevent, market instability, large bankruptcies, criminal behavior, bear raids, panics, and frozen liquidity.

Quite simply, too many companies, and individuals, were over-leveraged. The federal government is over-leveraged. We are now undergoing a de-leveraging process in the private sector that is being artificially manipulated by the continual hindrances hurled by Congress. We need to de-leverage the federal balance sheet. Many financial institutions relied on fantastical algorithmic computer models to determine risk, exotic financial instruments to hedge it, and investment vehicles to disperse it. When these human inventions failed, panic spread, the federal government stepped in, and taxpayer liquidity was granted. Congress should not be determining what companies can exist or perish. This is a free market determination.

There should be no favoritism, most especially with bankruptcy laws, given the constitutional mandate of uniformity. This detached actual consequences from risk, and reality, because of an implicit guarantee, especially unfairly granted to the largest financial institutions, that their assets, and poor fiscal judgment, were backed by the full faith and credit of the federal printing press and taxpayers. If Congress is having such a difficult time managing our own federal budget, then how could they manage the balance sheets of thousands of public and private companies, and responsible for determining the suitable level of risk on the books? Congress cannot even determine the risk of its own endeavors, how can they possibly perform these intricate duties?

Rush Holt, and so many public servants, has failed to provide any real leadership on these pressing concerns. Mr. Holt does not completely understand the ramifications of his decisions, or our precarious fiscal arrangement. He has placed several new bureaucratic impediments in the path of prosperity. During a time of economic malaise we should be dismantling barriers to growth, not erecting new obstacles in the path to economic renewal. Sure there are certain aspects of H.R. 4173 that can be accepted. If the best provisions of this massive bill were put into separate legislative instruments, and fully debated, maybe this bill could have garnered more supporters than it did.

The radical tenor emanating from Rush Holt and this Democrat Congress is being carried by the laws they enact. Real growth and prosperity is greatly inhibited by a national leadership vacuum that produces confusion, contention, consternation, and conflagration. This political void can be an opportunity for our common advancement, or an avenue for demagogues to divide and conquer us. The wise and virtuous citizens residing in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, and the nation at large, must be an impediment to these contortionist attempts by Congress. We need to free ourselves from the innumerable burdens that restrain and distort economic virtue and vitality. November will be a day to take back the reins of government from Mr. Holt and his Democrat colleagues, and redirect this misguided utopian journey back to practical reality.