Category Archives: U.S. Congress

Time for America to fake a punt?

NFLBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The 13-3 New Orleans Saints arguably were the best team in football this season – certainly better than the 9-7 Philadelphia Eagles, but they weren’t better than the Eagles during the first quarter last Sunday.

In their playoff matchup, the Eagles jumped out to a 14-0 lead. New Orleans couldn’t stop them or get anything started. Head Coach Sean Payton had to do something to Make the Saints Great Again.

And so, early in the second quarter, Payton called for a fake punt on fourth-and-1 from the New Orleans 30-yard-line. The Saints picked up four yards and scored a touchdown on that drive. They won, 20-14.

Payton knew he had to do something to shake things up, even though failure would have given the ball back to the Eagles with another score within reach. The momentum was all on the Eagles’ side. It wasn’t a crazy gamble; the backup quarterback who took the snap had the authority to call off the fake punt if he didn’t like the defensive alignment. It was a controlled risk, but a risk nonetheless.

Sports-to-politics analogies are overused by newspaper columnists, but let’s go with this one.  Continue reading →

What’s different about this $1 trillion?

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Winter has arrived, and squirrels everywhere have enough to eat because they stored up food when it was more available in the warmer months.

We could learn a lot from those little rodent-sized brains. Instead of squirreling away our savings, we pig out on today’s and tomorrow’s resources.

This year, the federal government will run a deficit of about $970 billion, or 4.6 percent of the gross domestic product, despite a warm-weather economy that has been expanding for almost a decade. As a recent headline by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget told us, “The deficit has never been this high when the economy was this strong.” Continue reading →

Tom Cotton and criminal justice reform’s FIRST STEP

Tom CottonBy Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

In politics, it’s often not about who’s right and who’s wrong. Instead, it’s often about who’s more right. Which brings us to Sen. Tom Cotton and the FIRST STEP Act.

President Trump signed the criminal justice reform act into law Dec. 21, a day after the House passed it 358-36. Previously, the Senate had passed it 87-12. Cotton was the most vocal opponent among the 12 (and the 36). The rest of Arkansas’ congressional delegation voted yes.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Advocates across the political spectrum supported the law, including Charles and David Koch, the ultra-wealthy, conservative activists, and the American Civil Liberties Union. President Trump supported it, but according to insider news reports, it was his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the son of an ex-federal inmate, who really pushed it. Continue reading →

Obamacare ruling: Next 20 years more important than next two

Seema Verna

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verna hands a waiver to Gov. Asa Hutchinson allowing the state to require Arkansas Works recipients to work. Hutchinson opposes Obamacare but has championed the Arkansas Works program created as a result of the law.

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

How significant was the federal judge’s ruling last week that Obamacare is unconstitutional? We might not know for another two years, but the bigger question is, what happens in the next 20?

The judge ruled in a lawsuit that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is unconstitutional because the U.S. Supreme Court’s original reasoning could no longer stand.

Back in 2013, the Supremes ruled the individual mandate to buy health insurance is constitutional because the penalty for not doing so is a “tax.”

In December, Congress repealed the penalty when it passed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. A Texas-led coalition of 20 states, including Arkansas under Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, sued arguing that without the penalty, there’s no tax, which means Obamacare itself is no longer constitutional.

Texas Judge Reed O’Connor agreed, though he did not issue an injunction, which means nothing happens while the ruling is under appeal. Now the case winds its way through the system, perhaps ending at the Supreme Court. Continue reading →

Instead of gaining five yards, Congress takes a knee

Steve Womack

Steve Womack was co-chair of the Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriations Process Reform.

By Steve Brawner, © 2018 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

No, adopting a two-year budget cycle wasn’t going to restore fiscal sanity in Washington, much less make a dent in the $21.85 trillion national debt (your equal share as of 9:24 a.m. Tuesday: $66,389.76).

But as Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., told me, when you can’t score a touchdown, at least try to gain five yards.

That comment came four days after a committee he co-chaired failed to advance the two-year budgeting idea.

Why two years? Because Congress can’t get the job done every year. As Womack told me, Congress is so bitterly divided and spends so little time in Washington (about 120 days a year) that it can’t complete the budget soon enough. And that’s if it completes it at all.  Continue reading →