First moves

Here's what the Republican Congress should do right off the bat:

1) Pass a clean health care repeal bill. Sure, it will die in the Senate, but so what.

2) Pass a friend-of-the-court resolution backing the states that are suing to fight Obamacare, with details of where the legislators believe the law is unconstitutional. Don't leave it for the states and the courts--get a dog in the legal hunt.

3) Pass a bill removing the waivers from health care bill. The waivers are corruption waiting to happen--or not waiting at all. It leaves the administration with the power to choose to help political allies and thrash opponents. Pass it while saying that everyone should be treated equally under the law, regardless of the skill of their lobbyists. Would the Senate be so quick to reject that? I'm not so sure.

4) Pass a corporate tax bill along the same grounds: remove all loopholes and special tax breaks. Every company should be treated equally by the government. Better yet, start the flat-tax movement at the corporate level. Make the corporate taxes a simple one-page form with a nice flat rate--and make the rate in-line with other developed countries, or lower. Imagine all of the money that would flow away from accountants and tax lawyers to research, development, expansion, marketing, etc. Even without cutting taxes, it would unleash a big chunk of money that businesses currently waste complying with the tax laws. Secondly, it would be great to sell to the public: you want to diminish the power of lobbyists in Washington? then take away much of what they are lobbying for. Much of corporate lobbying goes into the tax code, the rest into regulations.

5) Pass a bill to kill grants and government money currently flowing to companies--yes, even those that are pursuing "green" projects. Again, it is ripe for corruption, as the government gets to choose winners and losers, and the side with the most-connected lobbyists wins! It would be easy to sell to the public too, as an end to real corporate welfare.

6) Completely kill farm subsidies. Again, most of the subsidies go to corporate farms. We should stress efficiency over some quaint and outdated view of the family farmer getting up every morning to milk the cows by hand and reap his hay with a scythe. Agriculture is big business. It shouldn't be subsidized--that goes double for ethanol.

7) Defund, or refuse to fund this coming year the NEA, NEH, CPB, and a host of other alphabet agencies that have no business existing when the whole of their budgets are basically borrowed from China. This country shouldn't be funding the arts when we can't pay to keep the lights on.

8) Pass a hiring freeze on the federal government. No new employees--we have plenty of bureaucrats already. Let workers shift from one job to another, one agency to another, but no new total hires.

9) Pass a law requiring massive fines for any employer found employing illegal aliens. An employer can avoid the fines by simply showing that they have cleared the employee through eVerify. The fines should be great enough to threaten the existence of the company.

10) Pass a repeal of the stupid bills that have made it into law lately, such as light bulb bans, or the water cut-off in California's central valley.

Then, next month...