Give ‘em Hell, W! Call ‘em back and let ‘em sweat.
Posted on July 31, 2008 - Filed Under Congress 
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Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, Aug. 1, 2008.
It’s August and if you think it’s hot and miserable here, you should go to Washington, D.C. If you’ve ever been in our nation’s capital in August you know. If you haven’t, take it from me it’s about the most miserable place in the country this time of year. Geographers can give you all of the reasons for Washington’s summer discomfort. I don’t really care about the particulars. Suffice to say that the heat and the humidity are stifling.
Here in East Texas the weather in August saps your strength. In Washington, the August weather saps your courage.
For this reason, since early in the 20th century, Congress has observed the August Recess. The recess serves a number of purposes, the first and original being the escape from D.C.’s stifling misery but also so that members could return to their states and districts, meet with constituents, maybe take a vacation without having to miss a vote and, every two years, do a little campaigning.
I plan to take a little August recess in a couple of weeks and go somewhere with more pleasant weather myself. And toward that end, I’m already working ahead so that the things that are expected of me won’t go undone while I’m gone.
Not so your representatives. They’re going on vacation and coming home to ask you to rehire them for two or six more years having accomplished astonishingly little and having left at least two vitally important pieces of your business completely undone.
The first job the Congress has left undone is its most basic function - funding the government. For the first time in 60 years, which is to say for the first time in my life, the Congress has not passed a single appropriations bill by the August recess to keep the government running. Not one. Having not done so, they will return to work in September and have less than a month to debate and pass 12 spending bills.
Mark my words and watch what happens, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi will stuff all 12 appropriations into a single spending bill, cram that bill full of pork and bad policy and waste and noxious politics and present it to President Bush on a take it-or leave it basis. The president can either sign the bill and in so doing enact laws he would otherwise veto or veto the entire bill and shut the government down on Oct. 1.
The second thing Congress has left undone is deal with the price you’re paying at the pump. The majority of the country now says that it’s time to drill offshore and in the Midwest shale and in ANWR. Reid and Pelosi will not allow a single bill that provides for such exploration to even come to the floor for debate. The president lifted the executive order that banned offshore drilling and the price of oil dropped that day. Imagine the impact on prices if the Congress removed the legislative ban and actual exploration began. The Democrats always say they’re out to help the poor and downtrodden. But it’s the poor who suffer disproportionately when it costs more than $60 to fill up the average-sized car.
When the majority of us tell our representatives we want something, it’s their job to deliver it. That’s why they’re called representatives.
So what are we going to do? I have an idea and I need you to get a pen and paper ready. I’m going to be giving you a phone number in just a minute.
Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution gives the president the power to screw up our esteemed solons’ vacations. It says, in part, “…he may on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses or either of them…” Put simply, the president has the constitutional authority to order the Congress to return to Washington. Harry Truman, citing the do-nothing Republicans, did it in 1948, earning him the nickname of “Give ‘em Hell Harry.” Truman was expected to lose the election in 1948. But instead we’ve all seen the victorious Truman holding up the front page headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Just like in 1948, calling the Congress back into session so that the members can do their jobs is good policy and good politics.
So here’s the number: 202-456-1414.
Call the White House and ask for the comment line and urge the president to call the Congress back to Washington. I’m not leaving for vacation until the work I have to get done is done.
Neither should Congress.
Those working-at-the-car-wash blues.
Posted on July 24, 2008 - Filed Under Economics, Minimum Wage Print This
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Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, July 25, 2008
At midnight Wednesday, base labor in America became worth 70 cents per hour more than it had been just one minute before. Just like that, an employee making $5.85 an hour began making $6.55 an hour, the new federal minimum wage. That’s an increase of twelve percent.
Wow! Isn’t that great? If you have employees earning the minimum wage, they’re worth more today than they were when you went to work on Wednesday. A twelve percent gain in productivity from those employees couldn’t come at a better time.
What gain in productivity?
Well, the gain in productivity that would certainly be the precursor to a significant increase in compensation. This is America. You don’t just get a raise. You have to earn it.
No, not necessarily.
The federal minimum wage has little to do with the market for labor. The federal minimum wage was born of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Minimum wage was political then. It’s political now.
Franklin Roosevelt promoted the Fair Labor Standards Act as a way of getting around the fact that it was impossible to unionize the entire country without running afoul of either the law or deeply held anti-union sentiment in many states. It was a purely political move. Trying to shove unionization down the throats of states such as Texas would have touched off a firestorm. The Fair Labor Standards Act was an end-around for the benefit of the labor unions that supported FDR.
For 70 years we’ve had minimum wage and it’s not going away. But it is important to understand that minimum wage is not set by those engaged in the buying and selling of labor. It is not set by an employer’s offer of work at a specified wage and a worker’s concurrent acceptance. Minimum wage is set by Congress. The same Congress that specifically exempts itself from most of the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act that established minimum wage in the first place.
And every time Congress raises the minimum wage, we get the news stories about how inadequate the new wage is. Just this past Wednesday, Christopher Rugaber of the Associated Press wrote of Walter Jasper, a car wash worker in Nashville, Tennessee.
“It [the increase in minimum wage] will help out a little,” says Jasper, who with his fiancée supports a family of seven. “I’d like to be on a job where I can at least get a car,” he says.
Well, good gosh, $262 a week isn’t going to get Mr. Jasper a car. Not if he wants to eat, feed the five kids and come in out of the rain. Neither will the $290 a week when minimum wage goes up again, this time to $7.25 an hour, 363 days from now.
So let’s raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour. That’s a thousand dollars a week or $52,000 a year. Out of that $1,000 in gross pay every week, Mr. Jasper would net about $780 or $3,380 a month. Out of that he could surely afford the rent in a decent place and a serviceable car and food for himself, his fiancée and the five kids (that obviously came from some union somewhere that is apparently not connected to an extant marriage).
But, Paul, I’m not sure what Mr. Jasper does at the car wash but it’s probably not worth $52K a year. If you raise the wage too high, instead of minimum wage he’ll get no wage.
Well that’s true and that’s the point. The car wash is going to try to get the work Mr. Jasper is doing done for as little as possible. Possessed of the knowledge that they would have to pay $5.85 an hour for the job Mr. Jasper holds, they offered employment and Mr. Jasper took it. If there had been no takers at that price, the car wash would have had to decide to either raise the wage offering or eliminate the position. And thus, with each increase in minimum wage, Mr. Jasper’s employment is further jeopardized.
Please understand that I’m not putting Mr. Jasper down. The fact that he has lived long enough to produce and/or have to feed five children and can still only command minimally compensated employment speaks to a very serious problem.
But thinking that Congress can solve the problems faced by the Walter Jaspers of the world by setting the base price of labor by fiat is delusional.
Education and experience are the essential variables in selling one’s labor to employers. Education can be obtained in America by just about anyone willing to put forth the effort. Experience is obtained by starting at the bottom of the ladder and working one’s way up.
Each increase in minimum wage risks raising the bottom rung of that ladder out of the reach of Walter Jasper.
Congress: Lead (not likely) or get out of the way.
Posted on July 17, 2008 - Filed Under Congress, Energy, Gasoline Prices Print This
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Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, July 18, 2008.
All the recent opinion polls say the same thing. The majority of Americans want action on high energy prices and they want action today. Right now.
Citing just one poll, the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll taken June 17 and 18, 76% of respondents favor more drilling for oil in the United States, 77 percent favor increased offshore drilling, 51 percent favor building more nuclear power plants and for the first time a majority - 53 percent - favor drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
And yet, Congress obstructs.
The arrogance of the Congressional leadership with respect to America’s energy security and the clear desires of the American people is simply breathtaking.
Those in Congress who oppose increased oil exploration justify their objections by saying that the fruits of such efforts won’t be seen for five to ten years. They ignore the fact that President Bush put forth an energy proposal that called for increased oil and gas exploration, the construction of new refineries, the construction of new nuclear power plants and $10 billion in tax incentives to promote new energy technologies in June 2001, seven years ago. The Congress thwarted that plan and they have thwarted all administration proposals put forth since.
The Republicans say we need to drill for oil. The Democrats say we need to forget about oil in favor of alternative energy sources. But they don’t say what those alternative energy sources are. That’s because the sources don’t yet exist. Your car still needs gasoline. The truck that brings food to the Brookshire’s still needs diesel. The airplane that flies you to your business meeting or brings you your overnight package still needs kerosene.
The fact is if we are to prosper, we need to do it all. We need to drill for oil. We need to develop wind and solar power. We need to find a clean way to use coal. We need to build nuclear power plants. We need more refineries. We need to find a safe way to use natural gas to power vehicles. And we need to do it all now.
Former house speaker Newt Gingrich made a very powerful point earlier this week. He said that World War II proved that we could move with amazing speed on multiple tasks. And he cited the numbers.
In the 1,347 days between Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surrender, we built 102 aircraft carriers, one every 13 days, 5,626 merchant ships, one every five hours and 42 minutes and 273,882 aircraft, one every seven minutes and five seconds.
As I have said before, we are the offspring of people who got things done.
So in this time when we ourselves should be getting things done, what’s happening?
Well, here’s one example. British Petroleum (BP) obtained all necessary permits from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to expand an existing refinery in Whiting, Indiana. The expansion would allow the production of an additional 620 million gallons of gasoline each year. It will create 2,000 construction jobs and 80 additional permanent jobs.
You can bet that getting the permits from the state was no picnic. But with BP having complied with the law and standing ready to go to work, an environmental group called the National Resources Defense Council swooped in and filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop the project. Check back with me in five years and we’ll see if the project is even started.
Folks, we can no longer afford this. At the time of the Arab Oil Embargo we imported approximately 25 percent of the oil that we needed to fuel our economy. Today, that number is over 70 percent.
If Congress had acted on President Bush’s proposals in 2001, we would have accomplished much of the plan by now, we would have created thousands of American jobs, we’d be pumping millions of barrels of oil, we’d be producing millions of watts of environmentally clean electricity and we would be dramatically less dependent on the thugs in the Middle East.
And gas wouldn’t be $4.00 plus a gallon.
When the Democrats took over the Congress in 2007, oil was $50 a barrel and corn was $2 a bushel. Today, oil is over $130 a barrel and corn is $6.50 a bushel. What is the Democrat plan to deal with these unacceptable facts?
As we proved in World War II, we can get things done. The time has again come for us to do so. And step number one in our new plan of action is to demand that Congress get out of the way.
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