Strengthen America by Strengthening Families
Aug 18, 2020
Among the many clear signs of the deterioration of American community and family life, one in particular stands out: Nearly half of all children will spend some time outside of an intact family by their late teens. As detailed in a recent report from the Joint Economic Committee’s Social Capital Project, The Demise of the Happy Two-Parent Home, family stability has steadily deteriorated over the past 50 years. The trends this report documents are especially troubling because it is often America’s most vulnerable who experience the greatest family instability today.
FISA needs reform. Our amendment would do that — and protect constitutional rights.
May 10, 2020
The Fourth Amendment is clear: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” While the Founders could not have imagined the technology of today, the amendment should leave no doubt that our “effects” include our private emails, texts, images and calls, which often contain the most personal details of our lives.
Washington won’t fix the covid-19 crisis alone. But it can harness the private sector.
Apr 28, 2020
The biggest mistake policymakers can make as we begin to dig out from the covid-19 shutdown is assuming that we’ll be able to intuit all the answers.
In the initial emergency, as workers were ordered home and businesses closed, our first reaction was to give money to businesses and workers to make up for lost incomes. But this was always a short-term solution. The urgent task was getting money out the door. And we have. Both Congress and the Federal Reserve have made trillions of dollars available to American businesses and families to help get through the shutdown phase of the crisis.
Reopening America, One Community at a Time
Apr 23, 2020
It has been just over one month since Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19. Since that day our lives have been turned upside down. Schools have been closed, stay-at-home orders issued, businesses shuttered and lives lost.
This has been a trying time for our country.
Coronavirus is bigger than politics, but so are the American people
Mar 15, 2020
Amid all the disruptions and frightening statistics, there is good news: We are going to defeat COVID-19. And the most important part of that sentence is the word “we.”
The time is going to come for political debates — important and contentious debates — about the United States’ response to this coronavirus outbreak.
It's time for Congress to bring accountability to intelligence community's surveillance power
Mar 3, 2020
The FBI improperly spied on the Trump campaign in 2016. We must ensure the bureau can’t do it in 2020 or ever again. Because if the FBI can unfairly target a presidential campaign, imagine what it can do to regular Americans.
Here’s how we know what happened. In December, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a 478-page report detailing over a dozen “serious performance failures” in the FBI's use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to intercept the communications of President Trump’s campaign supporters. Horowitz identified “at least 17 significant errors or omissions” in the applications to spy on Trump campaign official, Carter Page.
Make Federal Architecture Great Again
Feb 7, 2020
The second best news out of Washington this week is that the Trump administration is crafting an executive order to rewrite the General Services Administration’s architectural and design guidelines for federal buildings. The proposed rule, “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again,” would finally drain the Swamp of its embarrassing fetish for eyesores.
Why we’re introducing a resolution on war with Iran
Jan 15, 2020
For more than 40 years, the United States and Iran have had a troubled relationship. Because of the Iranian regime’s insistence on spreading terror throughout the region and its efforts to develop nuclear weapons, multiple administrations have considered a broad range of options — both military and diplomatic — to counter these threats.
Soleimani Senate briefing unacceptable
Jan 13, 2020
Within hours of learning that Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani had been killed by a U.S. missile strike, I issued a statement calling Soleimani’s death “a big victory for the safety of the American people.”
The Senate's not a jury – these impeachment guidelines set by founders are clear
Jan 7, 2020
On Jan. 15, 1999, near the end of the second day of the Senate impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, Impeachment Manager Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., made a lengthy presentation during which he referred to the senators in his audience as “jurors” no fewer than six times.
