Op-Eds

October 15, 2015

Congress Needs Uber-Level Innovation

The Republican establishment’s failure of leadership over the years is no excuse for conservatives’ failure of imagination now. Conservatives have to start working immediately on our own agenda of prudent but disruptive institutional innovation, so that regardless of who the next Speaker is, he or she will walk into the job with a blueprint for success.

October 2, 2015

The conservative case for criminal justice reform

This Thursday, after months of hard work, a bipartisan group of senators and I introduced the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015. Most people, including many conservatives, might think criminal justice reform is a progressive cause, not a conservative one. But, like many pearls of conventional wisdom, this is simply untrue.

October 2, 2015

Democrats Used Reconciliation to Pass Obamacare. We Should Do the Same to Repeal It

Patient costs are up. Access to doctors is down. Co-ops are going bankrupt, and insurance companies have already asked Uncle Sam for a taxpayer-funded bailout. Five years have passed since former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) infamously admitted, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.” Americans now know what was hiding in Obamacare. And they don’t like it.

September 11, 2015

A Bad Deal and a Dangerous Precedent

Now is the time to make clear — to the White House and to the American people — that the Senate understands, and plans to defend, its rightful role in the treaty-making process.

September 8, 2015

A conscience vote on Planned Parenthood

In truth, Congress no longer approves the annual federal budget line-by-line — keeping this, cutting that, fixing the other. Rather, we budget by what is called a “continuing resolution,” or “CR.”

Mike Lee: Fixing our broken transportation system

Utahns deserve a reliable and efficient transportation system that delivers top-notch infrastructure at the most affordable price. And our state’s transportation projects rank among the nation’s best planned and most efficiently built. Unfortunately, the federal highway bill the United States Senate is voting on this week only perpetuates the worst aspects of Washington’s broken system.

Don’t Let Democrats Expand Federal Early-Education Funding

After making sure the ESEA reauthorization isn’t used to expand Washington’s control over early-childhood education and care, Congress must advance reforms that empower parents — with flexibility and choice — to do what’s in the best interest of their children.

SCOTUS Rebuffs EPA But Has The Damage Already Been Done?

The EPA’s flouting of the law is unsurprising. Under the Obama Administration, the EPA has become a politicized agency bent on implementing policies by bureaucratic fiat that Congress has explicitly rejected in the lawmaking process.

Congress Has a Plan to Defend Your First Amendment Rights After Court’s Marriage Ruling

In the wake of Friday’s 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court in the marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, many of the millions of Americans who voted to define marriage as an exclusively male-female institution in their state constitutions will be wondering: What does this mean for me?

End Ex-Im, the government’s Enron

Congress has a choice to make, with a deadline of June 30. It can either renew the authorization of the Export-Import Bank — a taxpayer-backed credit agency that picks winners and losers in the marketplace — or let it expire and begin the bank’s orderly winding-down.