April 13, 2018
"to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life." --Abraham Lincoln
Chairman's Note: Social Capital Index
According to the Department of Commerce, the United States economy grew 2.6% in the most recent economic quarter. This is strong economic growth. And according to the Labor Department the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% in March for the sixth month in a row. Economists consider this number to be near full employment.
And yet we all also know that not everything is going in the right direction in our country. Today a lot of our communities are struggling with challenges like addiction, family breakdown, and isolation. The economic numbers that our government collects does not provide us with a full picture of American life.
Genuine human connections are the foundation of a happy life. They occur at home, but also in the community in churches, civic groups, neighborhood gatherings, and workplaces.
Social scientists refer to these connections as “social capital,” to illustrate that they are a resource every bit as precious as money. Indeed, more precious.
Just as social capital is important for each of us as individuals, so too is it important in the life of a community. So where is civil society flourishing, and where is it struggling?
This week the Social Capital Project released the Social Capital Index—the clearest picture ever taken of the health of American communities, state-by-state and county-by-county. You can read the full report here, but below are a few of its findings.
We’ll start with the bad news, which will not be news to many of you: Social capital is not distributed equally in our country, and lots of American communities are struggling with challenges like addiction, family breakdown, and isolation.
States in the south and southwest have the lowest social capital scores, plus a few states in the north like New York.
In many areas in these states, the institutions and values that support healthy relationships have broken down. Churches and civic groups are not the support network and wellspring of meaning and moral education that they once were. This breakdown of community has left individuals to fend for themselves in increasing isolation.
Sadly, many more Americans live in these struggling communities than in flourishing ones. Three times as many Americans (29%) live in the weakest 10 states than live in the strongest 10 states (9%).
But there are bright spots as well. States with high social capital tended to be rural states in the West, Midwest, and Northeast.
Our state, Utah, had the highest social capital score because of its stable families and commitment to helping the less fortunate. Utah ranked first out of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. for family unity, social support, and philanthropic health.
The Social Capital Index is not a competition so much as a tool. Now that we have an understanding of what social capital is and where it is concentrated, we are better prepared to address important policy questions about family breakdown, drugs, and crime.
As we look at Utah’s first-place finish in the index, we should think to ourselves, “What has Utah done right? And how can we use this knowledge to help our neighbors in need, both within Utah and across the country?”
Issue in Focus: Uber but for Planes
If you are one of the roughly 2.5 million travelers who fly in the US on any given day, you know how integral flying can be for business, connecting with family and friends, and appreciating our great country. You also likely know how commercial flights can be expensive, time consuming, and stressful.
Now imagine you could pull up an app on your phone which could connect you to a private pilot who is flying to your desired destination and is willing to fly you there. The cost? Splitting part of the flying costs with the pilot.
This kind of tool already exists in Europe, and it may become a widespread reality for travelers in the United States very soon. But first, the apps have to get past the regulators. In this case, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and its subjective rulemaking.
Flight-sharing of this kind has existed for years. Pilots would post on physical airport bulletin boards allowing any willing participant to jump on their flight and split costs. Companies like Flytenow and Airpooler saw a better way to advertise these flight opportunities and essentially put airplane bulletin boards online and on apps – including information about the pilot’s flight history and certifications, so people know who they’re hopping on board with.
But when these companies tried to get the greenlight from the FAA, they were shut down. According to the FAA interpretation of their 1986 advisory circular, the fact that the app allowed private pilots to list their flights more broadly meant they were no longer private pilots and instead needed to be certified as ‘common carriers,’ a classification that holds many more regulations. They also began reassessing what was and was not considered ‘compensation’ under the advisory and if more broadly advertised cost-sharing flights violated that as well.
To be clear, nothing about the flights themselves changed; they still had the same safety checks guidelines that applied when the flights were shared via bulletin board. But because FAA bureaucrats had interpreted an ambiguous 30-year old regulation, an innovation that could open the skies and drive down costs was shut down.
This ambiguity is why I’ve introduced the Aviation Empowerment Act. The bill would clearly define many of the key terms in the circular, especially those used in the ‘common carrier’ definition. It would allow private pilots to advertise their flights in whatever way they deem appropriate. These fixes would not only open the door to flight-sharing apps, it would also ensure that any future interpretation of ‘common carrier’ would be subject to formal regulation procedures before it could take effect.
Additionally, it creates a new categorization of pilot that would allow private pilots to profit from flying under certain circumstances, not just receive compensation for fees and expenses.
The changes in this bill allow for innovation and competition in the aviation industry. Because it makes no changes to safety guidelines and certifications, it does so without endangering pilots or passengers.
And that means if you are one of the 2.5 million people who fly in the US every day, you will have more safe, cost-effective options to choose from as you fly across this great country.
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April 27, 2018
"to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life." --Abraham Lincoln
Chairman's Note: How to Prevent Another Spending Disaster
“I will never sign another bill like this again,” President Trump said after signing last month’s 2,232 page, $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill.
President Trump is right. The omnibus bill passed by Congress this March betrayed everything for which conservatives stand.
Not only did it bust the spending caps conservatives worked so hard to secure in 2011 by more than $250 billion but it also failed to build the border wall President Trump promised during his campaign. The bill also included language limiting the ability of federal law enforcement officers to enforce our nation’s immigration laws. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi identified this limit as a huge win for California Democrats.
I fully agree with President Trump: a spending bill like the one passed this March must never happen again.
Unfortunately, Congress currently is on a path to repeat this disbursement debacle.
While the House and Senate appropriations committees have both admirably begun the process of passing next year’s spending bills, congressional leaders have not yet indicated when they plan to give these bills the floor time they need to become law.
This virtually ensures that the next spending bill will again be written behind closed doors and will not be made public until just days before it needs to be passed. Even then, we should not expect to see the bill until after the September 30 deadline. Instead, if the past decade of swamp-life is any indication, Congress will pass a continuing resolution that will extend funding for the federal government past the November election and into a December lame-duck Congress.
At that point, unless Republicans defy history by actually gaining seats, Democrats will have all the leverage in spending negotiations since they can promise Republicans will only get a worse deal when a far more progressive Congress is sworn in in 2019. That would be a recipe for a debacle even worse than the one Congress forced President Trump to sign in March.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There is another path.
Republicans still control both chambers of Congress and the White House. The House could begin passing the 12 appropriations bills necessary to fund the government under the ordinary budget process. The Senate could then move to debate. And yes, at that point Democrats may try to block debate on appropriations bills.
But let’s make them actually block debate!
Consider how this would work in practice. We could call up the Department of Defense appropriations bill and show the American public whether Democrats support, or don’t, paying the troops. If Democrats refused to begin debate on the appropriations bill, they then would have to explain why they are obstructing funding for our nation’s men and women in uniform.
We never even tried that last year. Instead we waited until we were already over four months into the fiscal year before we held one vote to begin debate on the Defense appropriations bill in February 2018. But as soon as that vote was held, we immediately tucked tail and moved on to other things. We didn’t fight, and the American people lost as a result.
Even if we don’t get all 12 appropriations bills passed in the Senate, at a bare minimum Congress should pledge to continually try to debate them and to cancel weekends and recesses to force more work. If an omnibus is still necessary after Democrat obstruction over the next four months, Congress should then release its omnibus spending bill a month before the September 30th deadline.
That way the American people will have time to read it and lawmakers will have time to debate, write amendments, and vote on changes to the bill.
President Trump could even get the whole process jumpstarted this month by submitting a rescission package to Congress identifying the spending he wants to cut from the last spending bill.
None of this is going to be easy, because governing is hard. There is no magic wand that President Trump can wave to produce a spending bill he would be proud to sign.
But with some hard work and lots of tough votes, Congress can make sure that what happened last month never happens again.
Originally published by the Federalist
Issue in Focus: Mueller legislation is unconstitutional
Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee considered legislation providing that any special counsel appointed by the Justice Department may be fired only for good cause and allowing a special counsel who has been fired to challenge the decision in court.
The proposal is politically salient because many fear the president will fire Robert Mueller. To be clear, the president should allow Mueller to finish his investigation into Russia’s election interference in a timely fashion.
But this legislation is unconstitutional, and political expedience can never trump the Constitution.
Supporters of the legislation argue it is necessary to ensure no one is above the law, but the Constitution is the highest law of the land, and the Constitution provides that only the president can exercise executive power.
Because the power to prosecute is the quintessential executive authority, any congressional attempt to direct prosecutions — including by limiting the president’s power to fire a prosecutor — is an unconstitutional breach in the separation of powers. All senators swear to uphold the Constitution, and I hope that the full Senate will not pass this legislation if it is brought to the floor.
Moreover, the Constitution itself provides several ways to hold executive branch officials accountable, most notably through elections. We should stick with those remedies, because undermining the separation of powers is a grave threat to liberty.
Some may question how legislation meant to hold the president accountable is a danger to liberty. It’s because it would empower the creation of unaccountable federal prosecutors who could not be fired for acting unjustly or unwisely. In 1940, then-Attorney General Robert Jackson said “the prosecutor has more control over life, liberty and reputation than any other person in America.”
That’s even more true if the prosecutor has been made unaccountable to the public, yet that’s exactly what this legislation aims to do.
Originally published by USATODAY
