GOP Needs to Get Its Act Together

                A commentary

                By J. F. Kelly, Jr.

                According to the 2022 election results at least, the Republican Party regained control of the House of Representatives. You could have fooled me. It can’t even seem to gain control of its own members. Recently in this space, I noted the low approval rating of Congress at 22%. Here are two sure-fire ways to drive it even lower: (1) fail to unseat seat George Santos (R-N.Y.), who won a close election in a Long Island district and (2) more Republican delays in getting its act together and demonstrating that it is actually capable of exercising leadership by getting down to urgent business, including those priorities I discussed in last week’s column.

                Mr. Santos has admitted that he lied to voters about his background, education, work history and education. Stretching the truth to voters is common political campaign practice and gullible voters deserve what they get if they believe everything a candidate says without exercising some reasonable skepticism and digging deeper. But Santos did more than just embellish a resume. In most businesses and similar organizations, falsifying anything in an employment application, resume or curriculum vitae is considered lying and grounds for termination. Why should a person that does this to get elected get a free pass from Congress?

                Santos lied about being a “proud American Jew”, graduating from Baruch College, working directly for prestigious Wall Street firms and relatives fleeing the Holocaust. This would have been grounds for termination in any of the organizations I worked in. Why should it be different in Congress where our laws are made and oversight executed?

                Meanwhile, New York and national prosecutors are investigating and Democrats are calling for his resignation. Brazilian authorities have indicated that they will open an investigation into allegations that he committed check fraud in Rio de Janeiro in 2008. Is there anything else that Mr. Santos lied about or neglected to tell the voters about that we should know?

                Republicans should lead the way in demanding that George Santos step down or be unseated even though it further erodes the party’s slender majority. Arguments by some Republicans that that some Democrats had also lied about past events and backgrounds are pathetic and do not excuse Santos whose fabrications went well beyond just padding a resume and about whom the only good thing that comes to mind is that he wasn’t endorsed by former President Donald Trump.  

                The other rapid route to near zero approval ratings is for Republicans to continue the behavior they have demonstrated in their first few days of attempting to establish control of the People’s House and failing to elect a speaker on the first ballot for the first time since 1923. Nothing much could get done until they finally-elected Kevin McCarthy on the 15^th ballot. No one else seemed to want the job which has been likened to herding cats. Democrats watched, with amusement, another Republican circular firing squad. All they had to do to watch this latest attempt by the GOP to self-destruct was to show up and vote for their own minority leader. Meanwhile, the People’s House could accomplish nothing of the people’s business, including the swearing in of new members, many of whom had brought family members to witness democracy in action. What they witnessed instead was three days of inaction except for the occasional chaos.  

                Among the urgent priorities awaiting Congress are gaining control of the southern border, controlling violent crime and increasing the size of the military, especially the navy and air force, to deal with the growing threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Regarding the latter, Ukraine’s defense against Putin’s invasion is being largely funded by the United States and Europe with no end in sight. It is causing world-wide disruptions, a significant drain on U.S. and NATO military stockpiles and having a detrimental effect on our focus on Asia and the Western Pacific. Coping with, or hopefully deterring, the threat that the PRC poses to our vital interests in those regions will require a significantly larger military. As also noted frequently in this space, we currently lack the industrial capacity to rapidly respond to that need and the hour is late, given the lead times required. Both Congress and the  Pentagon seem late in acknowledging this.

                That appears to be finally changing as the Pentagon rethinks its policies on defense mergers. The number of firms capable of producing the ships, aircraft, missiles, fighting vehicles, etc. needed for a rapid buildup has shrunk significantly over the years and providing the investment necessary to restoring the infrastructure to support expanding the defense industry will require a firm commitment to needed force levels from the federal government, something which has been elusive. The hour is late and Congress needs to get to work now.

                Mr. McCarthy finally became speaker but he sacrificed much power in winning the role and becoming the second in line for the presidency. A single member of the majority party may now move to vacate the speaker’s chair. He also pledged that domestic discretionary spending for FY2024, which includes defense, cannot exceed FY2022 levels. This limitation, along with strong opposition from doves in Congress will make it difficult indeed to effectively confront or deter the PRC’s ominous buildup and intentions regarding Taiwan. A sign of that opposition was revealed in a belligerent and inappropriate speech by minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) glorifying the accomplishments of the outgoing Democratic Congress before handing the gavel to Mr. McCarthy who, after showed great patience with what came across as a victory speech for Democrats, followed with a stirring acceptance speech, giving Americans with election fatigue some hope that civility, compromise and patriotism are back in style in the People’s House. We shall see. Actions speak louder than words.

January 16, 2023

Changing Priorities for America

A commentary

By J. F. Kelly, Jr,

                The time for resolutions is over. The time for action is past due if we are to change the direction the nation is heading. The elections are over and the priorities for Congress and the Executive Branch are clear. They are (1) ending the chaos at our southern border by whatever it takes, (2) dealing with COVID, (3) controlling inflation, (4) fighting crime and violence more effectively, (5) countering Chinese aggression and (6) ending Putin’s war in Ukraine.

                The chaos at our southern border is an international embarrassment. Overwhelmed border communities and large cities like El Paso are unable to deal with the flood of people, drugs and COVID-infected people, including probable security risks, crossing our porous border daily. This is a major failure of the federal government. Busloads of unvetted migrants are being shipped to interior cities and dropped off at bus depots because there is no room for them at the shelters. How ironic as we celebrate the birth of Christ in a manger because there was no room for the Holy Family in the inn.

                In its haste to undo everything that Donald Trump had done to slow illegal immigration and without a plan for dealing with the predictable human flood of border crossers that followed, the Biden Administration caused this crisis. Title 42 of the U.S. Code has temporarily stemmed the tide but will not solve the problem. The administration blames Republicans in Congress for failing to back immigration and asylum reform legislation but border security demands Executive Branch leadership. The integrity of our borders must be established by action, not legislative debate, before immigration and asylum reform can be debated and legislation crafted by Congress. That leadership is absent in the Biden/Harris Administration and it is putting American citizens in danger. In order to make it clear to the world’s huddled masses, and prevent dangerous and expensive attempts to migrate illegally, that America’s borders are not open to all, the southern border needs to be militarized like the borders of many other sovereign nations.

                COVID-19 originated in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and spread throughout the world before the PRC imposed effective controls on travel. After two years of draconian shutdown policies, during which it declined to use American and other western-developed medicines because it falsely claimed that their own were superior, China’s Communist government yielded to public street protests and abruptly relaxed restrictions, resulting in widespread infections, many of which may be variants. The clueless Biden Administration imposed travel restrictions but not before hundreds of thousands were allowed to travel, likely spreading COVID variants around the world.

                Inflation is reducing the American standard of living, costing jobs and increasing homelessness. The war in Ukraine, plus associated supply problems and food and fuel shortages, are direct results. Another cause is the administration’s senseless and futile war on fossil fuels. We are experiencing a harsh winter with fuel costs, especially for clean liquid natural gas, at record levels. Heavy demands on the over-stressed electrical grid systems are risking rolling blackouts with most of the heating season still to go. Heating by electricity is expensive as consumers are discovering. Fossil fuels are still required to produce electricity, driving up their cost. More people die from freezing than from heat and people at risk of freezing don’t care much about climate control causes. Perhaps the Biden Administration should consult experts in cold climate countries, instead of climate czar John Kerry, on how they manage to survive and prosper in cold climates. They’ll find the answer is not dependance on windmills or solar panels.

                Crime and violence, mostly in Democrat-controlled cities, continues unabated. The reasons remain clear enough: demonizing, reducing and re-purposing police departments and prosecutors who decline to prosecute violent criminals. So are the solutions. Elect mayors and prosecutors who will put the rights of the victims ahead of those who victimize them and restore respect for the law and those brave persons who enforce it.

                China has growing problems of its own, largely of its own making and especially as it emerges from a lengthy period of COVID-related lockdowns. It remains, however, determined to annex Taiwan and surpass us as the world’s largest economy and super-power. Their pilots are becoming increasing aggressive and reckless in their encounters with allied forces in the South China Sea which they regard as theirs.  They may not manage to surpass us as the world’s largest economy but they are on track to surpass us militarily, at least as measured by size. The solution will be expensive and unpopular with many Americans but it will be necessary unless we wish to cede the role to the Communist Party of China which rules the PRC. We must Increase by half again the size of our navy and air force and it may already be too late to fully restore the industrial capacity to do so.  

                Finally, the war in Ukraine, which Europe and America are funding, has no end in sight. The toll is heavy and reconstruction will be expensive. This war cannot be allowed to go on indefinitely and a solution must be negotiated that will end the bloodshed and destruction. The United Nations continues to demonstrate its inability to broker such negotiations.

January 7, 2023