Call them back and make them do their jobs.
Posted on August 7, 2008 - Filed Under Congress, Energy 
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Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, Aug. 8, 2008.
Did you call the president like I told you? I know some of you did because you called the station and asked again for the number. Get a pen and paper because I’m going to give the number out again.
If you missed last week, I urged everyone to call the White House and urge the president to exercise his constitutional authority to call the Congress back to Washington from the August recess and put them to work on, among other things, debating and voting on legislation aimed at increasing domestic supplies of energy and thus giving all of us some relief from the crippling price we’re paying at the pump and elsewhere.
I said all of this last Friday during this very slot. What I did not know while we were on the air was that the subject of energy was in the process of coming to a head on the House floor at very nearly that same moment.
A significant number of Democrats have crossed the aisle and are joining Republicans in support of a piece of legislation called the “American Energy Act.” According to its proponents in Congress it’s a kind of an “all-of-the-above” bill aimed at increasing domestic oil drilling, increasing funding for research on alternative energies and providing common-sense initiatives regarding conservation.
Democrats are crossing the aisle to support the bill because they have ears and they want to keep their jobs. And with their ears they’re hearing loud and clear from their constituents that opposing drilling offshore and in ANWR and in the western shale was one thing when gas was $2.10 a gallon. It’s something entirely different as you approach four bucks.
So last Friday morning, the Republicans were gaining ground when Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sensing that she couldn’t afford to allow a full day of discussion on the American Energy Act to take place in front of the C-SPAN cameras, abruptly adjourned the House, killed the C-SPAN feed and turned off the lights in the House chamber.
Here’s how it sounded. Click here to listen.
With that, Congress went on vacation.
Except not entirely. A group of Republicans has either remained in Washington or returned to Washington and they’re on the House floor every day, speaking to tour groups in the gallery and whatever media is in the chamber on the subject of America’s energy needs. About 20 or 25 are on hand on any given day. About a hundred in total have taken part. One of those who is back in Washington is Louie Gohmert, our congressman from Tyler.
I spoke with Louie yesterday and he tells me that the House gallery has been full of ordinary citizens who are openly expressing their appreciation of the fact that someone in Washington is willing to suffer the suffocating heat and forego a vacation to stay there to fight for them, however symbolic the fight may be.
Hats of to Louie and his colleagues.
This piece is not about energy per se. It’s about arrogance.
If Nancy Pelosi truly believes that her approach to our energy problems is the right one, she should welcome an open debate and an up or down vote. Debating and voting is what we pay Congress to do.
Instead, Nancy Pelosi turns off the lights. This is the woman who, upon being elected Speaker of the House, promised the most open Congress in history and stated her belief that generally, all bills should come to the floor for fair and open debate and with an amendment process that offers the minority the chance to offer alternatives.
Congressmen are supposed to do two things. Debate and vote. The Speaker of the House, on one of the most pressing issues in a generation, is allowing neither.
The president needs to call her out by exercising his authority to re-convene the Congress. The number to call to urge him to do so is 202-456-1111.
In a country of 300 million, one person can be safely ignored. But when we all speak at once, even the most arrogant of politicians has no choice but to listen.
Give ‘em Hell, W! Call ‘em back and let ‘em sweat.
Posted on July 31, 2008 - Filed Under Congress Print This
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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.
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