Columns

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal discussing the California Wildfires.

The federal government can’t raise or spend a single dollar unless Congress says it can. Fiscal responsibility rests with lawmakers—and can’t be dodged, or DOGEd. Fifty years ago Congress developed a process specifically designed to bring spending in line with revenues: budget reconciliation. Unfortunately, it has rarely been used for its intended purpose. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Rep. McClintock discusses restoring the budget reconciliation process.

In the attached column, Rep. Tom McClintock (CA-05) examines the cost and impact of federal grants on the national economy. Between 2016 and 2020, federal grant spending ballooned from $675 billion to $972 billion. Budget writers and appropriators should look with extreme skepticism on every grant that awards money without results or that robs taxpayers in one community to pay for projects in another.

In the attached column Rep. Tom McClintock (CA-05) discusses the cost and reach of subsides and the impact of subsidies on the national economy. Insurance, electric cars, mass transit, sugar, milk, solar panels, airline tickets, housing, tuition, health care, film production, green energy – it is hard to find a sector of the economy that isn’t rife with subsidies. Subsidies not only cost hundreds of billions of dollars and inflate the prices of the things being subsidized, but they also misallocate resources and misdirect consumer decisions.

As Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas has carried out the Biden administration’s open borders policy and deliberately produced the worst illegal mass migration in history. Since he took office, he has released three million illegal immigrants directly into the country, a population the size of Arkansas. And while the Border Patrol has been occupied changing diapers and taking names, an additional 1.7 million known got-aways have entered as well – an additional illegal population the size of Hawaii. The impact on schools, hospitals, homeless shelters, working families’ wages, social programs, law enforcement, national security and has been catastrophic. In response, many are demanding Mayorkas’ impeachment for “failing to maintain operational control of the border,” as Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resolution puts it. He is certainly guilty of that and more: maladministration, malfeasance, and neglect of duties on a truly historic scale. But these are not impeachable offenses. We know this because the American Founders specifically rejected these terms at the Constitutional Convention.