The People Should Determine What Kind of Supreme Court They Wish to Have

March 11, 2016

The opening words of the Preamble to the United States Constitution are familiar to us all: “We the People.” But what exactly do they mean?
 
It was by “the People” that the Constitution was written and ratified. It is for “the People” that my colleagues and I, along with every other public official across these United States, now serve. And it was on behalf of “the People” that the Constitution established “one supreme Court,” consisting of judges appointed “by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.”
 
Since the tragic passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, there has been a great deal of debate about this particular provision of the Constitution.
 
But there should be no controversy. The text of our founding charter is clear: The president has full and complete power to nominate individuals to the Supreme Court, and the Senate has full and complete power to confirm nominees or to withhold consent.
 
It’s as simple as that. Indeed, the Senate retains complete discretion with respect to whether it should even consider – much less accept or reject – presidential nominees.
 
This should not be controversial. It is how virtually every student of the Constitution – and nearly every member of Congress – has understood the Senate’s power of “Advice and Consent” for the past 228 years since the Constitution was ratified.
 
But now, with the presidential election in full swing, President Obama and his allies in Congress and the media claim the opposite is true. As they tell it, the Senate is constitutionally obligated to hold hearings and to vote on the candidate that President Obama eventually nominates to replace Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.
 
I respectfully dissent. 
"It’s as simple as that. Indeed, the Senate retains complete discretion with respect to whether it should even consider – much less accept or reject – presidential nominees."
If this a-textual and a-historical account of the Constitution were accurate, then prior Senates violated the Constitution when they did not cast up-or-down votes on Supreme Court nominees. Even the Standing Rules of the Senate would be suspect, contemplating as they do that “[n]ominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President...”
 
Neither does the prospect of a temporary eight-member Court raise concern. For instance, during the Court’s 2010-2011 term, the Court decided over 30 cases with eight or fewer justices, almost entirely as a result of recusals arising from Justice Kagan’s nomination. Similarly, following the retirement of Justice Powell in 1987, the Court acted on 80 cases with eight or fewer justices. 
 
In short, the sky does not fall when the Court comprises only eight justices. As Justice Breyer recently stated, the work of the court “[f]or the most part...will not change.”
 
With the future of the Supreme Court now at stake, and the election for our next president already well underway, it is the People who should determine what kind of Supreme Court they wish to have. The president is entitled, of course, to discharge his own constitutional authority to nominate. But the Senate is equally entitled to withhold consent and protect the People’s voice. 
 
As James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, ambition must counteract ambition. And the People should decide.

The Bipartisan Case for Ending Regulatory Capture

March 4, 2016

It’s not every day that I have the opportunity to speak at an event alongside my colleagues Senator Whitehouse and Senator Warren. On paper, you might think the three of us, two progressive Democrats and one conservative Republican, don’t have much in common.

And yet earlier this week, all three of us spoke at the same venue on the same topic, because we are committed to the same cause: fighting regulatory capture in all its forms. 

Hosted by the Administrative Conference of the United States, the purpose of the event was to discuss solutions to the problem of special-interest influence on the modern administrative state. And with panelists and speakers from across the ideological spectrum, it was a testament to the emerging consensus among policymakers, scholars, and activists on both sides of the aisle and everywhere in between that sees regulatory capture for what it is: one of the most pressing political, economic, and moral issues of our time. 

But too often, especially on Capitol Hill, this consensus breaks down along partisan lines. Members of both parties are guilty of railing against regulatory capture when it’s politically convenient, and looking the other way when it’s not. 

"Regulatory capture has played an important role in building today’s discredited status quo and insulating it from reform. So any effort to win back the trust of the American people – as both political parties will surely hope to do in the years ahead – must include an agenda to rein in the agencies and regulate the regulators."
Our constitutional system was set up to operate according to these basic principles of transparency in lawmaking and accountability to the people, but this is not how the federal government works today.
 
Today, the vast majority of federal “laws” are not passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president; they are written, and also enforced, by unelected bureaucrats via a decision-making process that is opaque and highly technical... precisely the kind of venue that is susceptible to capture by concentrated interests.
 
Concentrating the powers of judge, jury, and executioner in a single governmental body made up of individuals who never stand for election makes an easy, high-value target for special-interest factions vying for access to the levers of power in pursuit of their own interests.
 
So it should come as no surprise that the movement against regulatory capture is gaining momentum at this particular moment in our nation’s history.
 
If there’s one thing we know about American politics today it’s that there is a deep and growing distrust between the American people and our political system in Washington. 
 
No matter where they live or which party they support, most Americans no longer believe we have a federal government of, by, and for the people.
 
And in many cases they’re right. Increasingly what we have today is a government of unelected officials with a degree of job security that would make tenured professors envious; a government by well-connected market incumbents and fashionable special interests; and a government for the benefit of political and economic elites.
 
Regulatory capture has played an important role in building today’s discredited status quo and insulating it from reform. So any effort to win back the trust of the American people – as both political parties will surely hope to do in the years ahead – must include an agenda to rein in the agencies and regulate the regulators.

The Facts on Supreme Court Vacancies

February 26, 2016

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was an extraordinary man whose contributions to this country and its people are so prodigious that it will take generations for us to fully comprehend our debt to him. His untimely death is a tragedy, and his legacy a blessing to friends of freedom everywhere.  
 
Justice Scalia was a learned student of history and a man who relished a spirited debate. So it is fitting that his passing has sparked a conversation about the constitutional powers governing the appointment of Supreme Court justices and the historical record of Court vacancies.
 
This debate gives the American people a unique opportunity to discuss our nation’s founding charter at a time when our collective choices have real consequences. So it’s important that this debate proceed with candor, mutual respect, and deference to the facts.
 
From the outset, all of my Republican colleagues on the Judiciary Committee and I have maintained that the Senate should withhold its consent of a Supreme Court nomination to fill Justice Scalia’s seat and wait to hold any hearings on a nominee until the next president is sworn in.
 
This position is consistent with the Senate’s powers in the appointment of federal judges and supported by historical precedent.
 
In particular, a close look at the history of Court vacancies proves that there is nothing unprecedented or improper about the Senate choosing to withhold its consent of a president’s nominee to the Court.
 
Some claim that leaving Justice Scalia’s seat vacant until the next president nominates a replacement would inflict profound institutional damage to the Supreme Court.
 
This is simply untrue. Since the nomination of Justice Scalia in 1986, it has taken more than 70 days on average for the Senate to confirm or reject a nominee after nomination (and it has often taken even longer, including 108 days for a Democrat-controlled Senate to reject Judge Robert Bork).
 
Thus, even if President Obama were to nominate someone today, it is highly unlikely that his nominee would be seated in time to participate in any of the cases currently before the Court because the Court stops hearing cases in April and the nominee would not be confirmed before early May.

"In particular, a close look at the history of Court vacancies proves that there is nothing unprecedented or improper about the Senate choosing to withhold its consent of a president’s nominee to the Court."
In fact, an Obama nominee nominated today would not hear a case until the beginning of the Court’s next October term, mere days before the presidential election. This is not the fault of President Obama or the Senate; it is simply a function of the unfortunate timing of Justice Scalia’s death.
 
And let’s not forget that the sky does not fall when a 4-4 split occurs. Rather, either the decision of the lower court is left standing, or the Court can reschedule the case for re-argument at a later date.
 
More to the point, the Court has regularly functioned just fine with just eight justices. As recently as the Court’s 2010-2011 term, the Court had to decide over 30 cases with eight or fewer justices, almost entirely as a result of recusals arising from Justice Kagan’s nomination.
 
These are the facts. They can’t be ignored or wished away. If we’re going to have a serious, honest debate about the vacancy left by Justice Scalia’s tragic passing, we must acknowledge this reality.

Video: There is No Local Buy-in for a Bears Ears National Monument Designation

In an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Senator Lee highlights the widespread local opposition to a new national monument designation in Utah. (link)

Issue in Focus: Bringing Freedom Back to the Internet

A year ago today, five unelected bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to exploit an 80-year-old law meant for regulating radio, telephone, and telegraph operations, in order to begin regulating the Internet.
 
As unprecedented a step as this was, it was not the first time FCC bureaucrats attempted a takeover of the Internet.
 
More than five years ago, the FCC released its Open Internet Order of 2010, a set of new regulations designed to appease so-called "net neutrality" activists who had been fighting for more government control over the Internet.
 
But Americans fought back — and they won. The Internet service providers challenged the new FCC regulations in federal court, arguing that Title I of the Communications Act of 1934 did not give the FCC the authority to implement net neutrality regulations. And in 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a decision holding that the FCC had exceeded its authority to regulate Internet providers as "information services" under Title I.
 
Undeterred, and forever striving to expand their powers, the bureaucrats at the FCC did not give up. The next year they released their Open Internet Order of 2015, this time reclassifying Internet service providers as common carrier utilities, which is what AT&T was in 1934 when the federal Communications Act was first passed.
 
Back in the 1930s, it may have made sense for the FCC to protect consumers from a single company with monopoly control over an emerging communications technology. But we live in the 21st Century, and the Internet today is categorically different from telecommunications technology from the Great Depression era. Today, with numerous providers fighting over multiple platforms to offer consumers the best experience, the FCC's anachronistic approach will only stifle Internet-drive innovation, which will only hurt the consumers it claims to protect.
 
The reality is that the Internet has already taught us that the best way to protect free speech online is to keep the Internet open and free from cronyist bureaucratic control, allowing permissionless innovation to produce new and dynamic technologies that empower and connect people. That's why Congress should take up and pass the Restoring Internet Freedom Act. This bill will repeal the FCC's net neutrality rules and set the stage for more comprehensive reforms of federal technology policy.
 
Instead of expanding the scope of an 80-year-old law beyond recognition, we should trust the good judgment and common sense of the American people to decide what works and what doesn't. This has been our nation's way since its inception: the belief that ordinary men and women – not distant, unelected bureaucrats – make their own decisions. The Restoring Internet Freedom Act is an important step in that direction.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was an extraordinary man whose contributions to this country and its people are so prodigious that it will take generations for us to fully comprehend our debt to him. His untimely death is a tragedy, and his legacy a blessing to friends of freedom everywhere.  
 
Justice Scalia was a learned student of history and a man who relished a spirited debate. So it is fitting that his passing has sparked a conversation about the constitutional powers governing the appointment of Supreme Court justices and the historical record of Court vacancies.
 
This debate gives the American people a unique opportunity to discuss our nation’s founding charter at a time when our collective choices have real consequences. So it’s important that this debate proceed with candor, mutual respect, and deference to the facts.
 
From the outset, all of my Republican colleagues on the Judiciary Committee and I have maintained that the Senate should withhold its consent of a Supreme Court nomination to fill Justice Scalia’s seat and wait to hold any hearings on a nominee until the next president is sworn in.
 
This position is consistent with the Senate’s powers in the appointment of federal judges and supported by historical precedent.
 
In particular, a close look at the history of Court vacancies proves that there is nothing unprecedented or improper about the Senate choosing to withhold its consent of a president’s nominee to the Court.
 
Some claim that leaving Justice Scalia’s seat vacant until the next president nominates a replacement would inflict profound institutional damage to the Supreme Court.
 
This is simply untrue. Since the nomination of Justice Scalia in 1986, it has taken more than 70 days on average for the Senate to confirm or reject a nominee after nomination (and it has often taken even longer, including 108 days for a Democrat-controlled Senate to reject Judge Robert Bork).
 
Thus, even if President Obama were to nominate someone today, it is highly unlikely that his nominee would be seated in time to participate in any of the cases currently before the Court because the Court stops hearing cases in April and the nominee would not be confirmed before early May.

"In particular, a close look at the history of Court vacancies proves that there is nothing unprecedented or improper about the Senate choosing to withhold its consent of a president’s nominee to the Court."
In fact, an Obama nominee nominated today would not hear a case until the beginning of the Court’s next October term, mere days before the presidential election. This is not the fault of President Obama or the Senate; it is simply a function of the unfortunate timing of Justice Scalia’s death.
 
And let’s not forget that the sky does not fall when a 4-4 split occurs. Rather, either the decision of the lower court is left standing, or the Court can reschedule the case for re-argument at a later date.
 
More to the point, the Court has regularly functioned just fine with just eight justices. As recently as the Court’s 2010-2011 term, the Court had to decide over 30 cases with eight or fewer justices, almost entirely as a result of recusals arising from Justice Kagan’s nomination.
 
These are the facts. They can’t be ignored or wished away. If we’re going to have a serious, honest debate about the vacancy left by Justice Scalia’s tragic passing, we must acknowledge this reality.

Video: There is No Local Buy-in for a Bears Ears National Monument Designation

In an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Senator Lee highlights the widespread local opposition to a new national monument designation in Utah. (link)

Issue in Focus: Bringing Freedom Back to the Internet

A year ago today, five unelected bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to exploit an 80-year-old law meant for regulating radio, telephone, and telegraph operations, in order to begin regulating the Internet.
 
As unprecedented a step as this was, it was not the first time FCC bureaucrats attempted a takeover of the Internet.
 
More than five years ago, the FCC released its Open Internet Order of 2010, a set of new regulations designed to appease so-called "net neutrality" activists who had been fighting for more government control over the Internet.
 
But Americans fought back — and they won. The Internet service providers challenged the new FCC regulations in federal court, arguing that Title I of the Communications Act of 1934 did not give the FCC the authority to implement net neutrality regulations. And in 2014, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a decision holding that the FCC had exceeded its authority to regulate Internet providers as "information services" under Title I.
 
Undeterred, and forever striving to expand their powers, the bureaucrats at the FCC did not give up. The next year they released their Open Internet Order of 2015, this time reclassifying Internet service providers as common carrier utilities, which is what AT&T was in 1934 when the federal Communications Act was first passed.
 
Back in the 1930s, it may have made sense for the FCC to protect consumers from a single company with monopoly control over an emerging communications technology. But we live in the 21st Century, and the Internet today is categorically different from telecommunications technology from the Great Depression era. Today, with numerous providers fighting over multiple platforms to offer consumers the best experience, the FCC's anachronistic approach will only stifle Internet-drive innovation, which will only hurt the consumers it claims to protect.
 
The reality is that the Internet has already taught us that the best way to protect free speech online is to keep the Internet open and free from cronyist bureaucratic control, allowing permissionless innovation to produce new and dynamic technologies that empower and connect people. That's why Congress should take up and pass the Restoring Internet Freedom Act. This bill will repeal the FCC's net neutrality rules and set the stage for more comprehensive reforms of federal technology policy.
 
Instead of expanding the scope of an 80-year-old law beyond recognition, we should trust the good judgment and common sense of the American people to decide what works and what doesn't. This has been our nation's way since its inception: the belief that ordinary men and women – not distant, unelected bureaucrats – make their own decisions. The Restoring Internet Freedom Act is an important step in that direction.

Congress Should Decide Any Changes to Selective Service

February 12, 2016

If you haven’t been paying attention lately, you might have missed a controversy crop up about an issue that I imagine most Americans did not realize was controversial.
 
Over the last week, prominent military and political leaders have called for requiring all American women to register for the selective service – that is, potential military conscription.
 
To clarify: we are apparently now contemplating a future national emergency in which young women – as young as teenagers – are taken against their will, sent to boot camp and off to war… while eligible, able bodied young men are not.
 
As the father of a teenage daughter, as a husband and a brother and a Christian, I’m going to say this as politely as I can: this is completely unacceptable.
 
The United States has been blessed with millions of women who have served in our armed forces, since even before the founding of our nation. Today there are more such heroes than ever. They carry out their duty with distinction and honor us with their courage in every branch of our armed forces.
 
But voluntary service and the draft are entirely different things.
    
Advocates of adding women to the selective service say that the policy must be changed now because the Pentagon has opened combat jobs to women. Equal is equal, they say.
 
But equal is not interchangeable. Five thousand years of human civilization should be enough evidence to persuade us of this immutable fact. But if not, we also have reams of empirical data, including a massive study recently conducted by the Marine Corps.
 
But of course, the empirical case against conscripting women only points toward the moral case: men are supposed to protect women and children, not the other way around. Everyone in all three groups knows this, however unfashionable it  may be to say in some places.
 
Being forced to register for the selective service is not a “right” women today are denied. It is a violent duty our daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives do not share.
 
Selective service is not a question of what our society allows women to do, but what our society forces women to do against their will. And civilized societies blessed with enough able-bodied men to meet their security needs do not conscript women – or for that matter girls, boys, the aged or infirm - to do it in their place. Period.
 
Obviously, I feel very strongly about this.
 
But there are honest differences of opinion on this issue, with respected voices on all sides. Some say the right policy now is to end selective service altogether. Some want to add women, but only as a contingency. Some say women might be drafted, but precluded from combat positions.

"This is an unsettled debate. So it’s a decision that should be made by the American people’s elected representatives – not unelected bureaucrats or judges."
This is an unsettled debate. So it’s a decision that should be made by the American people’s elected representatives – not unelected bureaucrats or judges.
 
And so, when Congress returns from the upcoming President’s Day recess, I will introduce legislation to make sure that’s how this decision gets made. My bill does not change the requirements for selective service registration. It simply says that any future change can only come by an act of Congress.
 
I hope all my Senate colleagues, on both sides of the aisle and all sides of this question, join me. Because regardless of what decision we make, we should all be able to agree that it’s “we the people” who should make it.

Make Congress Great Again

February 5, 2016

The federal government is broken, and congressional weakness is to blame.
 
The authors of the Constitution made Congress the most powerful of the federal government’s three co-equal branches. Congress was designed both as the most powerful and the most accountable to the people.
 
Consent of the governed in a republic depends on transparent policymaking by representative institutions. Congress’s embrace of this mandate is part of what has made America successful and exceptional.
 
But if there is one thing politicians of every party and ideology agree on, it’s that hard work and accountability are inconvenient.
 
And so, over the course of the twentieth century, and accelerating in the twenty-first, Congress has handed many of its constitutional responsibilities to the Executive Branch.
 
Increasingly harmful federal laws are increasingly written by people who never stand for election, via processes contrary to those provided for in the Constitution, and, indeed, with the explicit purpose of excluding the American people from their government and shielding policymakers from popular accountability.
 
Executive overreach is an enormous problem – but it’s a problem largely of Congress’s own making.
 
Under Houses, Senates, presidents, and Supreme Courts of every partisan combination, Congress has recast itself as the backseat driver of American politics.
 
Today, the vast majority of federal “laws” – upwards of 95 percent - are not passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president; they are imposed unilaterally by unelected bureaucrats in the Executive Branch.
 
At the same time, Congress’s budget process has almost entirely broken down. Most federal spending has been put on auto-pilot, authorized without a vote. Meanwhile, fiscal oversight, deliberation, and reform are a bipartisan charade.
 
This upending of our constitutional order has led not only to bad policy, but to deep public distrust in our governing institutions.
 
It’s no wonder Congress’s job-approval ratings are at historic lows. Oftentimes we’re not even doing our job, and — just look around — the American people are paying the price.
 
Congress’s reclamation of its constitutional authority is a necessary first step toward real reform, within Washington and around the country.
 
So this week I joined a group of nine colleagues from the House and Senate to develop and promote a new agenda of structural reforms that will strengthen Congress and reassert its vital role in our society. We call it the Article 1 Project (A1P).
 
The purpose of the Project is to develop, advance, and ultimately enact an agenda of structural reforms to strengthen Congress by reclaiming its constitutional legislative powers that today are being improperly exercised by the Executive Branch.
"Executive overreach is an enormous problem – but it’s a problem largely of Congress’s own making."
Specifically, A1P will focus on restoring congressional power in four key areas at the core of Washington’s broken status quo:
 
1. Reclaiming Congress’s power of the purse;
2. Reforming legislative “cliffs”;
3. Reasserting congressional authority over regulations and regulators;
4. And finally, curbing executive discretion.
With political attention now fixated on the presidential race, little hope for major legislative breakthroughs in President Obama’s final year in office, and the American people furious at Washington’s indifference and dysfunction, now is the perfect time for Congress to begin thinking about what a re-constitutionalized federal government would look like.
 
Such a government would not deliver either party or any citizen everything it wants. But it would give the American people a more representative and responsible government, and in turn, a healthier, freer society. All that stands between Americans and the government of, for, and by the people that the Founders bequeathed us is the will of the Congress to finally step up and do its job.

The Fight to Reform Congress in 2016

January 29, 2016

After Republicans won a majority in the Senate and maintained their majority in the House in November 2014 I proposed that the two chambers take five modest steps to repair what had become a dysfunctional legislative branch. This was part of my effort as the recently elected chairman of the Senate Steering Committee to put forward a vision and a plan that would guide the Republican majority toward unity and restore the public’s confidence in Congress.
 
To recap, the five steps that I proposed to fix Congress were:
 
1. Restore trust between Congress and the American people by making the legislative process open and transparent.
2. Reject crony capitalist policies that use government power to enrich elites at the expense of everyone else.
3. Pass a budget that balances in ten years without gimmicks, doesn’t raise taxes, and repeals Obamacare.
4. Don’t just cut spending for government programs, but reform them.
5. Let committees reclaim their traditional role in crafting legislation.
 
A little over a year in, I can confidently say that there has been some substantial progress on almost all of these fronts. But I can also say with equal confidence that there is still much work to do.
 
By January 22, 2015, the Senate had already taken more votes on amendments than it did in all of 2014. In May, we passed a budget that balanced in ten years, didn’t raise taxes, and repealed Obamacare. In June, the charter for the Export-Import Bank, the epitome of crony capitalism, expired. And in October, after months of bipartisan work, the Senate Judiciary Committee took the lead on criminal justice reform by passing the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act.
 
These were all important, positive steps toward a more transparent, accountable, and responsible Congress. But this is only half the story of 2015: we also took significant steps in the wrong direction, back toward Congress’s dysfunctional past.
 
Less than a month after we passed a budget that balanced in ten years, the Senate voted to blow a $200 billion hole in it by passing an unfunded bill – the so-called “doc fix” – that raised Medicare reimbursement rates without any meaningful reform to the program.
"The good news is that we already have everything we need to fix Congress, reclaim our surrendered constitutional powers, and craft policies that serve the interests of the American people."
There’s also the matter of returning to the discredited, undemocratic legislative process that predominated under Democratic control of the Senate for so many years. While the Senate has taken far more votes on substantive amendments than we did in the past, procedural tools were still used to block amendments on major pieces of legislation, like the highway bill. Even worse, that same highway bill, which raised spending and made no meaningful reforms to the perpetually insolvent Highway Trust Fund, was then used as the vehicle to revive and reauthorize the corrupt, economically indefensible Export-Import Bank.
 
Finally, the Senate capped off the year with a $1.8 trillion, more than 1,000-page spending bill that was negotiated in secret and then presented as a take-it-or-leave-it measure with Congress up against a manufactured crisis.
 
So: a few steps forward and a few steps back; some successes to build on and some failures to learn from in 2016. The good news is that we already have everything we need to fix Congress, reclaim our surrendered constitutional powers, and craft policies that serve the interests of the American people. We still have a five-step plan to fix Congress and we still have the tools to put it into practice – they’re right there in Article I of the Constitution, ready to be reasserted.
 
The only question is: can Congress muster the will to step up and finally do its job?

Today, We Celebrate Life

January 22, 2016

January 22 is a bittersweet day in America.
 
On this day 43 years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States issued two unconscionable decisions in the cases of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton that made abortion legal and available on demand across the country.
 
These decisions defied the spirit and the letter of the Constitution; invalidated 50 state laws; denied the truth about the dignity of all human life and the humanity of the unborn; and ushered in the greatest human-rights scandal of our time: an abortion industry that has claimed the lives of more than 50 million of our brothers and sisters... and counting.
 
That is what happened on January 22, 1973.
 
But what took place exactly one year later was just as momentous.
 
On January 22, 1974 thousands of Americans rallied together on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to celebrate life and to stand up for the truth about the unborn.
 
On that day the March for Life was born, and January 22 has never been the same. Every year since, on that same day, untold thousands of citizens gather in the nation’s capital on behalf of the most vulnerable among us.
"On January 22, 1974 thousands of Americans rallied together on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to celebrate life and to stand up for the truth about the unborn."
No matter what kind of wintry weather awaits them – and this year promises to be severe – these crusaders come to Washington to march for life, sustained by the quiet confidence of a people in possession of the truth.
 
To all of those marching this year, whether here in Washington or in your own way wherever you are: thank you for all that you do. You are an inspiration to me and to each new generation of pro-life Americans.

Turning the Page on the Obama Era

January 15, 2016

President Obama faced a tough task when he delivered his final State of the Union this week.
 
As a lame duck president, he wanted to spend the evening touting his administration’s record and setting his place in history. But the president also knew that, in living rooms across the country, his starry-eyed message would fall on deaf ears.
 
The simple reality is that, despite recent job growth, wages for most Americans remain flat, the labor participation rate is near record lows, and the unemployment rate for those without a college degree is twice as high as it is for those with a degree. So it should come as no surprise that the vast majority of Americans do not like the direction the country is headed. Look at any recent poll and you’ll see that between two-thirds and three-quarters of respondents are dissatisfied with the way things are going.
 
President Obama reads these polls too. He knows the American people are unhappy, or, as he put it on Tuesday, “a lot of Americans feel anxious.”
 
He tried to assuage these fears by blaming technology and trade for a changing economy where “more and more wealth is concentrated at the very top.”
 
And it is true. Much of the wealth created in the Obama era has gone to an elite few. And far too many Americans have not shared in our growing economy.
 
President Obama’s answers to these problems is to double down on the most harmful, aspects of his economic agenda that helped produce this skewed recovery.
 
He wants more government control of the energy, education, and technology sectors. He wants a federal government that dictates what Americans are paid and when they can take time off. He wants higher taxes on businesses that operate overseas.
 
We’ve seen this movie before – in fact, we’re living through it right now – and we know it doesn’t end well.
 
But there is a better way. Instead of concentrating power in the hands of Washington elites, we can return it to the American people.
"But there is a better way. Instead of concentrating power in the hands of Washington elites, we can return it to the American people."
Let’s end the existing higher education oligopoly by allowing states to accredit their own institutions of higher learning.
 
Let’s give parents, not Washington bureaucrats, the power to choose where their federal education dollars are spent and where to send their kids to school.
 
Let’s free states from the federal labor and environmental red tape that drive up the cost of infrastructure projects, so they can build the transportation systems their communities need at the right price.
 
Let’s give employees and employers greater freedom to determine how long and when they work.
 
Let’s allow judges to roll back excessive mandatory minimum sentences that take far too many fathers away from at-risk communities.
 
And let’s empower families by letting them keep more of their hard-earned paychecks.
 
Republicans have been blessed with a strong field of presidential candidates, many of whom support these reforms. The American people will be much better off if the next State of the Union comes from one of them.

Do We Have the Courage to Earn Back the American People’s Trust?

December 18, 2015

Well, here we are again: another year of legislative dysfunction capped by an undemocratic, un-republican process that uses the threat of another manufactured crisis to impose on an unwilling country the same broken government policies that have repeatedly failed the people they are supposed to serve. 

The bill that Congress passed today – made up of the omnibus spending bill and tax extenders package – and the process that produced it are an affront to the Constitution – to they very idea of constitutionalism – and an insult to the American people. 

I'm not even talking about the substance of the bill, which is bad enough.  

I'm talking about the way it was produced. A small handful of leaders from the two parties got together behind closed doors to decide what the nation’s taxing and spending policies would be for the next year. 

And then, after several weeks, the negotiators emerged – grand bargain in hand – confident that the people they deliberately excluded from the policymaking process would now support all 2,242 pages of the legislative leviathan that they cooked up.

This is not how a self-governing – or self-respecting – institution operates, and everyone in Congress knows it. 

The leaders who presided over these negotiations were elected, just like every member of Congress, to represent the people residing in their state or congressional district, not the entire population of the country. 

Yet they just excluded 99 percent of the country from this process, as if their representatives are just partisan seals, trained to bark and clap on cue for their leaders.

That anyone is celebrating this bill as some kind of achievement is just further evidence of how out of touch Washington has become. 

Indeed, the very premise of this process – that the establishment leaders of the two parties can accurately and fairly represent 320 million Americans – is itself absurd. 

This isn’t just my opinion. It’s the opinion of the vast, and bipartisan, majority of our constituents. 

70 percent of the American people think the country is on the wrong track. Congress, for its part, is one of the least-trusted institutions in the country, with a mere 14 percent of Americans approving of the way Congress is doing its job, according to a recent survey. And a dwindling minority of Americans trusts the federal government to do what’s right for the country. 

The country doesn’t trust or respect Congress. And having passed this bill — and having therefore assented to the secretive, undemocratic process behind it — Congress just told the country, loud and clear, that the feeling is mutual.
"That anyone is celebrating this bill as some kind of achievement is just further evidence of how out of touch Washington has become."
The American people deserve better than this. And Congress has the capacity to be better. What we lack is the collective will to break our bad habits and put in the work necessary to return to an open, inclusive, transparent policymaking process. 

Summoning that common resolve ought to be the primary goal for Congress next year – and in particular for the Republican majorities in the House and Senate. 

This is not something that can be micromanaged or negotiated behind the scenes. It must be worked out in the light of day and through unrelenting individual and cooperative effort to overcome those who stubbornly cling to the discredited, dysfunctional status quo. In the Senate, that will undoubtedly require working more than three days a week and, when necessary, through the weekends – not as a PR stunt, but as a method of withstanding and outlasting the hardball tactics employed by those who insist on standing in the way of a more democratic, collaborative legislative process. 

Congress already has the tools to earn back the trust of the American people. The only question heading into 2016 is whether we have the courage to use them.

Learning Can’t be Centrally Planned

December 11, 2015

This week, following the Senate’s vote of approval, President Obama signed into law the “Every Student Succeeds Act,” which reauthorized federal K-12 education policy for five years.

This represents a serious setback for America’s schools, teachers, and students, one that will have sweeping consequences for decades to come. Because when we get education policy wrong – as this law does and as we have for so many years – it affects not just the quality of education students receives as children, but the quality of life available to them as adults.

The problem is not just the particular provisions of the law, but the dysfunctional and outdated model of education on which it’s built – a model that concentrates authority over education decisions in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats, instead of parents, teachers, principals, and local school boards. 

For the past 50 years, this model has defined and guided the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act – and the Every Student Succeeds Act is no exception. 

Not coincidentally, this central-planning model has also failed to produce any meaningful improvements in academic achievement – especially for students from low-income communities.  

In fact, since 1969, test scores in reading and math have hardly budged for public school students of all ages – even while per-pupil spending has nearly doubled and school staff has increased more than 80 percent.  

And yet, here we are: once again stuck with another federal K-12 education law built on the model that has trapped so many kids in failing schools and confined America’s education system to a state of stagnant mediocrity for half a century. 

This is not simply a failure of policy – it’s a failure of imagination. 

Our 1960s-era, top-down model of elementary and secondary schooling has endured, essentially unchallenged, for so many decades that the education establishment has come to take it for granted. For many policymakers and education officials in Washington and in state capitals around the country, the only reform proposals that are given the time of day are those that seek to standardize America’s classrooms, enforce uniformity across school districts, and systematize the way that teachers teach and the way that students learn. 

But schools are not factories; education can’t be systematized; learning can’t be centrally planned. 

So instead of imposing an obsolete conformity on an invariably varied environment, we should be trying to customize and personalize K-12 education for every student. 
"But schools are not factories; education can’t be systematized; learning can’t be centrally planned."
We know that local control over K-12 – and even pre-K – education is more effective than Washington, D.C.’s prescriptive, heavy handed approach, because we’ve seen it work in communities all across the country.

For years, education entrepreneurs in the states – including my home state of Utah – have been implementing and refining policies that put parents, teachers, principals, and school boards back in control of education policy. 

But Washington is standing in the way, distrustful of any alternative to the top-down education status quo. And under the Every Student Succeeds Act, Washington’s outdated, conformist policies will continue to be in the way. 

Which is why I voted against the bill, and why I will continue fighting for real K-12 education reforms that empower teachers and parents with the tools they need to meet the unique educational needs of their students and children.