THE CENTRIST: January 2015

By Congressman Joe Pitts

Guest Columnist

At the end of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy taps her feet three times while saying, “There’s no place like home.” She wakes up back in Kansas in her own bed. In dreams, mere words may be able to make something happen. Here in the real world and especially in politics, words aren’t enough to get things done.

The President’s State of the Union speech is always an important part of the political debate. The TV ratings may not be what they were a few decades ago, but the address is still carried on every broadcast channel, all the cable news channels and gets front page coverage in all the national papers.

President Obama’s party may no longer control Congress, but he still has the power of the veto pen, executive authority and the ability to set the agenda through his speeches. Coming into his seventh year in office, the President faces a new political reality: Republicans control both chambers of Congress.

During the speech, the President recalled the Democratic National Convention speech that first vaulted him to national prominence in 2004. This is the speech where he said there wasn’t “a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.”

It’s one thing to say that once a year in the biggest speech of the year, and another thing to actually do it on a day-to-day basis. Behind the high-minded sentiments of the address, there were concrete policy proposals. Only a small handful of those proposals have any real hope of finding bipartisan support.

The President did call for more authority from Congress to negotiate trade deals with Pacific nations and Europe. The President also announced an initiative to improve research into diseases. This sounded somewhat similar to the 21^st Century Cures initiative that House Energy and Commerce members in both parties started last year.

There really isn’t common ground to be found on many of the biggest proposals in the speech. For instance, the President wants to reduce the price of community college to nothing for students who maintain a C average.

Right now, the federal government has very little reach into community colleges, which are controlled principally by states and counties. By paying for the bulk of tuition for these schools, they would effectively be nationalized. The President noted that Tennessee, a state run by Republicans, currently pays for community college tuition.

That the President would use Tennessee as an example shows just how disconnected he is from Republicans. That a state already has the ability to act on their own and tailor a program to their own needs is a strong argument against an expansive new federal program.

One of the other major proposals was a series of new tax credits paid for with a series of new tax hikes. The President already raised taxes with his health care law and in the fiscal cliff negotiations. I don’t know of a single Republican elected to federal office who ran on a platform of raising taxes. In fact, almost every member would be at risk of losing their primary if they even voiced support for the President’s plan.

The President then threatened to veto a wide variety of bills that could be on their way to his desk. The fact is that almost anything that will get to the President’s desk this year will have real bipartisan backing. Senate Republicans will need at least six Democrats to pass most bills.

I know how hard bipartisanship is to make happen. When I served on the Budget Committee, I negotiated with the Clinton administration to pass balanced budgets four years in a row. As the Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, I’ve negotiated major bills to govern the Food and Drug Administration and reform the way we pay doctors working in Medicare.

You don’t reach a final agreement by starting at a point that is completely untenable to the other party. You can’t simply tap your toes while chanting “bipartisanship” and then wake up with a new law. I’m disappointed that the President’s proposals are so far to the left that it is virtually impossible to meet in the middle. It seems to be a warning that cooperation is going to be difficult to achieve in the final year’s of the Obama presidency.

Rep. Joe Pitts is a Republican who represents Pennsylvania's 16th Congressional District.

Quotations of Note

"We make war that we may live in peace."
--Aristotle

"I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the
standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that
governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape
the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong."
--Lord Acton

"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the
highest political end...liberty is the only object which benefits all
alike, and provokes no sincere opposition...The danger is not that a
particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern...
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
--Lord Acton

"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry,
Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from
the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the
field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life
so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,
Almighty God! I know not what course others may take;
but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
--Patrick Henry

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine
patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now,
deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we
have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
--Thomas Paine

"The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people's hands, that is,
to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and
in the courts of justice"
--John Adams

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will
within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I
do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often
but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights
of the individual."
--Thomas Jefferson

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of
another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain himâ?¦the idea
is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights."
--Thomas Jefferson

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his
fellow citizens."
--Thomas Jefferson

"The protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor of our country, require
that force should be interposed to a certain degree."
--Thomas Jefferson

"To draw around the whole nation the strength of the General Government
as a barrier against foreign foes... is [one of the] functions of the General Government on which [our citizens] have a right to call."
--Thomas Jefferson

"It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually
take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without
inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."
--Thomas Jefferson

"I am ever unwilling that [peace] should be disturbed as long as
the rights and interests of the nations can be preserved. But whensoever hostile aggressions on these
require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are
just friends and brave enemies."
--Thomas Jefferson

"By nature's law, man is at peace with man till some aggression is
committed, which, by the same law, authorizes one to destroy another as
his enemy."
--Thomas Jefferson

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against
every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
--Thomas Jefferson

"Our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to mankind, call on us
by every motive which is sacred or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved country
during the troubles which agitate and convulse the residue of the world, and to sacrifice to
that all personal and local considerations."
--Thomas Jefferson

"It is an essential attribute of the jurisdiction of every country
to preserve peace, to punish acts in breach of it, and to restore property taken by force within
its limits."
--Thomas Jefferson

"By nature's law, man is at peace with man till some aggression
is committed, which, by the same law, authorizes one to destroy another
as his enemy."
--Thomas Jefferson

"Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy,
and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it. But the temper and folly of our enemies may
not leave this in our choice."
--Thomas Jefferson

"We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly,
we shall all hang separately."
--Benjamin Franklin

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people
by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent
and sudden usurpations."
--James Madison

"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without
it nothing can succeed."
--Abraham Lincoln

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we
fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a
blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted)
in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a
track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected?
I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot,
we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time,
or die by suicide."
--Abraham Lincoln

"The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the
support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me."
--Abraham Lincoln

"Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive
good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement
to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor
diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall
be safe from violence when built."
--Abraham Lincoln

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean
the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and
the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please
with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible
things, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective
parties, called by two different and incompatible names -
liberty and tyranny."
--Abraham Lincoln

"If all do not join now to save the good old ship of the Union this voyage
nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage."
--Abraham Lincoln

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points
out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again;
who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause;
who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst,
if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with
those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
--Theodore Roosevelt

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs,
even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy
much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that
knows not victory nor defeat."
--Theodore Roosevelt

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth
of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic
state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by
an individual, by a group."
--Franklin D. Roosevelt

"War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder.
This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the
timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour,
of our choosing."
--George W. Bush

"When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and true maxim that 'a drop of honey catches more flies
than a gallon of gall.' So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him
that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say
what he will, is the great highroad to his reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing him of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause is really
a good one."
--Abraham Lincoln

"To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge
it by the standards of his time, not ours."
--Mark Twain

"It is with trifles and when he is off guard that a man best
reveals his character."
--Arthur Schopenhauer

"When men speak ill of thee, live
so as nobody may believe them."
--Plato

"He that has light within his own clear breast may sit in the center,
and enjoy bright day: But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts benighted walks under the
mid-day sun."
--John Milton

"Character consists of what you do on the third
and fourth tries."
--James A. Michener

"We should be too big to take offense and too noble to
give it."
--Abraham Lincoln

"I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the
content of their character."
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A man's character is his guardian divinity."
--Heraclitus

"Character develops itself in the stream of life."
--Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"Do what you know and perception is converted into character."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so
highly prized as that of character."
--Henry Clay

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Friday, January 30, 2015

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Monday, January 26, 2015

Sunday, January 25, 2015

Saturday, January 24, 2015

Friday, January 23, 2015

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Monday, January 19, 2015

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Friday, January 16, 2015

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Monday, January 12, 2015

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Friday, January 09, 2015

Thursday, January 08, 2015

Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Monday, January 05, 2015

Sunday, January 04, 2015

Saturday, January 03, 2015

Thursday, January 01, 2015

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Quotations of Note