Category Archives: U.S. Congress

Rep. Steve Womack: Biggest threat not Iran, China or debt

Steve WomackWhat’s the country’s biggest threat? According to U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, it’s not a nuclear-armed Iran, China attacking Taiwan, or the nearly $40 trillion national debt.

“It is the profound division in the body politic that prevents the legislative branch of the greatest country this world has ever known, that prevents that legislative body from doing its most basic function,” he said in Springdale Wednesday. “And then you have to ask, ‘How did we get here?’ …

“Let me tell you how we got here. We got here because we couldn’t control ourselves in the area of redistricting.”

Womack, who represents the 3rd Congressional District in northwest Arkansas, made his comments at a conference of the state’s engineering firms and the Arkansas Department of Transportation.

While part of his remarks covered infrastructure, he spent most of the last 10 minutes discussing partisanship and gerrymandering. The latter is the centuries-old process where majority parties redraw congressional districts using sometimes squiggly lines to ensure their states elect more of their own party members. Democrats and Republicans both do it. Continue reading →

Is SAVE America Act worth all the trouble?

vote, Mark Moore, 16-year-olds, Arkansas, primaries, Goodson, photo ID, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, SAVE America ActMost Americans agree with requiring voters to present an ID at the ballot box. It’s already the law in Arkansas. Should it be a federal law, and should the government also require people to present a birth certificate or a passport in order to register to vote?

Those questions arise as Republicans in Congress, under President Trump’s leadership, seek to pass the SAVE America Act.

The bill would require voters to present a photo ID when voting in federal elections and to provide documentary proof of citizenship – generally a passport or birth certificate – when registering. 

The House of Representatives passed the bill, 218-213, with one Democrat voting with Republicans. All four members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation voted for it. It’s now in the Senate, where Arkansas Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman are co-sponsors.  Continue reading →

Gov. Sanders not-great, not-terrible night

vote, Mark Moore, 16-year-olds, Arkansas, primaries, Goodson, photo ID, Sarah Huckabee SandersThere is a lot to cover as we review Tuesday’s primary elections. We’ll start with what happened with Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and three Republican state Senate races.

Sanders’ political action committee, Team SHS PAC, donated $7,000 each to two candidates who challenged Senate incumbents who had voted against her planned 3,000-bed Franklin County prison. 

The incumbents nevertheless won easily. In District 28, Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, defeated Bobby Ballinger with 60% of the vote. Meanwhile in District 10, Sen. Ronald Caldwell, R-Wynne, won with 70% over challenger Trey Bohannan.

Caldwell is seeking to be the next Senate president pro tempore when senators vote in the next couple of months.

Continue reading →

Social Security crisis this year’s election secret

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawks, balanced budget amendment, Jonathan Bydlak, immigration, $98.8 trillion, $970 billion, Social SecurityHere’s an issue not being discussed much in this year’s campaign: The winners of U.S. Senate races across the country likely will face a Social Security crisis near the end of their terms, about the time they would run for re-election.

 In Arkansas, that would be Sen. Tom Cotton or one of the candidates seeking to replace him.

Both the Social Security Administration’s actuaries and the Congressional Budget Office have said that the Old-Age & Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which pays seniors’ Social Security benefits, will become insolvent by the end of 2032.

That’s less than seven years from now. Continue reading →

Arkansas projects get funded as debt elephant gets ignored

tax, taxes, debt, deficits, spending, trillion, State of the Union, deficit hawks, balanced budget amendment, Jonathan Bydlak, immigration, $98.8 trillion, $970 billion, debt elephantCongress has funded most but not all of the government. Four members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation secured hundreds of millions of dollars for highways and other state projects. Meanwhile, a nonpartisan group is warning of the consequences of ever-increasing government debt.

That paragraph pretty much sums up the federal budget news from the past couple of weeks, with more to come. 

As you may not have noticed, there was another government shutdown last week, though only a partial, brief one. It ended when President Trump on Feb. 3 passed the second of two bills that funded government operations through September – all except for the Department of Homeland Security, which got funding for only two weeks until Feb. 13.

Democrats balked at funding that agency because they want major reforms to its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. As of Sunday evening, the question had not been resolved. 

So we’re in another partial government shutdown. Continue reading →