Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Federal Judiciary Blogs -> Bench Memos - National Review Online

Federal Judiciary

: Bench Memos - National Review Online

Three Simple Reaganite Ideas for the New Congress

The incoming Republican House of Representatives and its reformist GOP brethren in the Democratic Senate will be embroiled in complex legislation. Feeding or starving Obamacare, accelerating or braking federal spending, and possibly even keeping or replacing the U.S. Tax Code will be among the huge questions that will keep the 111th Congress working day and night.

#ad#Beyond these momentous matters, however, pro-market Republicans should promote smaller initiatives that break with the Big Government Bush-Obama years. Reaganite Republicans should invite Democrats to join them in these commonsense efforts. Democrats then can demonstrate whether or not they learned anything last Election Day.

? Republicans should enact the HOT Tax. The Higher-Rate Optional Tax would satisfy liberals who don't like their taxes cut.

'I am in the highest tax bracket,' an unidentified woman said in a November 30 MoveOn.org commercial that attacks the Obama-GOP tax-cut compromise. 'We don't need the money. The country does.'

No American should be forced to accept an unwanted tax cut. So, the HOT Tax would require new language on IRS tax returns: 'If you believe your tax bracket is too low, please indicate the higher rate at which you prefer to be taxed. Multiply that rate by your Adjusted Gross Income. Send in that higher amount.'

The HOT Tax would spare tax-cut opponents from accepting undesired tax relief. The rest of us can enjoy the lower taxes we need to pay our bills and take care of ourselves and our loved ones. Everybody wins.

Republicans should ask congressional Democrats to support the HOT Tax. If they would deny guilty liberals the chance voluntarily to pay even higher taxes, let them vote accordingly.

? Republicans should introduce a measure to require that federally funded projects and structures be christened according to the Post Office's rules regarding personalities on stamps. If one must be dead for ten years before gracing a stamp (save for deceased U.S. presidents, whose memorial stamps appear upon their first posthumous birthdays), one likewise should be lifeless for a decade before getting one's name slapped on a federally financed highway, bridge, or warship.

Public facilities that honor living, even sitting politicians -- like South Carolina's James E. Clyburn Golf Center and Kentucky's Mitch McConnell Loop hiking trail -- belong in North Korea, not America. This is a bipartisan embarrassment, especially when unhinged Democrats such as former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia and jailed Republicans such as former congressman Robert Ney of Ohio have seen their names pried off of public works after they disgraced themselves.

This self-aggrandizing practice makes it harder for members of Congress to oppose earmarks. Just imagine a wavering Democrat voting against the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center when the gentlelady from Watts is standing there, right beside him on the House floor.

This ego-driven pork helped grease the $36.1 billion in earmarks that President Obama has signed to date. It also contributed to steering 72,920 boondoggles onto G. W. Bush's desk, whereupon he signed them. This cost taxpayers $170.7 billion. (As Citizens Against Government Waste's MacMillin Slobodien calculates, this averaged 9,115 projects at $21.3 billion per annum across Bush's eight years in the Oval Office.)

Republicans should pass legislation to end this publicly funded edifice complex. If Democrats want to preserve today's Pyongyang-worthy policy of taxpayer-funded megalomania, let them vote accordingly.

? Republicans should re-legalize Thomas Edison's light bulb. In one of his most shameful acts, Republican socialist G. W. Bush signed the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. Among many other things, this 822-page doorstop established new lighting regulations. According to the Federal Trade Commission: 'These standards, which begin in 2012, will eliminate low efficiency incandescent light bulbs from the market.'

Americans already are hoarding Edison's light bulbs -- among mankind's greatest inventions and, alongside Neil Armstrong's Moonwalk, arguably the apotheosis of Yankee ingenuity. Washington, D.C., is killing these bulbs (and bulb-manufacturing jobs) to boost those swirly Compact Florescent Lamps. CFLs conserve energy. However, they brighten slowly, emit light that some find stark, confound dimmer switches, and release toxic mercury when they break.

Republicans should make CFLs and Edison incandescent light bulbs equally legal. Let Americans, not Uncle Sam, decide how best to illuminate their homes and businesses. If Democrats reject this Declaration of Incandescence, let them vote accordingly.

These three modest proposals should satisfy an electorate thirsty for more individual freedom, personal choice, and a government that leaves their wallets in peace. If Americans see Republicans promote such small policies, and advance bigger ones as best they can while Democrats control the Senate and the White House, they will take note. And, come 2012, let them vote accordingly.

--- New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on December 31, 2010 (boomark / email).