Summary: Immediately after the congressional elections of November 2, new Members and re-elected Members of both parties will gather to meet (caucus) and vote on new leaders and enact internal party rules. Long before the House adopts its formal rules in January, these internal… Read more

The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, but it does not lay out a specific spending process to follow. The current budget process is an amalgamation of many laws and rules. Some of these rules--such as the budget resolution, spending caps, and "Pay-As-You-Go"--were designed to impose fiscal discipline and spending restraint on Congress.… Read more

Good football teams use misdirection--because it works. One trick is to fake a quarterback kneel-down in the last seconds of a half, then throw long. The same trickery happens in politics. As this year's Congress winds down, Democrats have announced they are lowering their planned spending to the $933 billion that President Bush insists is… Read more

The era of big government never ended. Although Bill Clinton pronounced its epitaph in 1996,[1] big government survived and expanded under the Republican majority. Judging by the actions of the new Democratic Congress, the end of big government is nowhere in sight.   Despite the Democrats' promise to be more fiscally… Read more

Even minor taxpayer victories are hard to come by in Congress, so each one is sweet. The recent and successful fight to end "secret earmarks" required die-hard tactics from a group of congressional stalwarts who were willing to take heat and ridicule from some of their colleagues. Members of the House Republican Study Committee… Read more

President George W. Bush was right to veto the war supplemental funding bill. In his second veto since taking office, the President rejected a bill that contained an unconstitutional usurpation of presidential authority as commander in chief[1] and, by adding billions of dollars in pork and pet programs, made a… Read more