Top Congressional Republican Wants To Know If Marijuana Should Be Legal

March 16, 2015 By Jonah Bennett 3 Comments

The recent signing of a medical marijuana bill by GOP Sens. Rand Paul and Dean Heller hasn’t gone unnoticed. Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise has introduced a poll on his website, asking people to vote on whether marijuana should be legalized on the federal level.

Scalise in the past has voted down marijuana reform legislation, Marijuana.com reports. On May 30, 2014, Scalise voted against an amendment in the House to prevent the Department of Justice from using funds from its budget to crack down on states that have enacted medical marijuana programs. Later, in July, Scalise voted against legislation to prohibit states from penalizing banks that offer financial services to marijuana companies.

Marijuana advocates see the poll as a possible sign that Scalise may be considering switching his position. Poll results as of late have shown that the country is increasingly moving toward pro-marijuana attitudes. The General Social Survey in particular found that 52 percent of Americans support marijuana legalization. Only 42 percent remain opposed. (RELATED: Survey: Majority Of Americans Support Legal Marijuana)

“This is a great sign because we know that whenever voters are asked their position on marijuana laws, the result always comes out to be strongly pro-legalization,” Tom Angell, chairman of the Marijuana Majority, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “As more politicians begin to engage with their constituents on this topic, they will see how much public support there is for reform and it’ll be much more likely they’ll feel emboldened to take action to upgrade outdated marijuana prohibition policies.”

However, Scalise’s office made it clear that the poll isn’t any indication that the Majority Whip is changing his position.

“Congressman Scalise is a staunch Conservative who likes to know what his constituents are thinking on issues,” T.J. Tatum, spokesperson for Congressman Steve Scalise, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Scalise is opposed to the legalization of marijuana because, as noted by law enforcement officials, it is a gateway to more dangerous drugs, but he always appreciates learning the views of the people throughout his district.”

Marijuana reform legislation continues to make strides across the country, as 23 states have enacted medical marijuana programs in one form or another, and four other states have legalized marijuana. The recent focus on marijuana reform on both state and federal levels has prompted a flurry of activity. And on Friday, that activity culminated in the introduction of a bill to push through medical marijuana in Texas, introduced by Democratic state Rep. Marisa Márquez.

“Every year, thousands of Texans are diagnosed with cancer, seizure disorders, multiple sclerosis, PTSD, and other debilitating illnesses,” said Caitlin Dunklee, campaign director of Texans for Medical Freedom, in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The suffering that these patients experience is devastating for them and their families. The bill being filed today would allow patients the freedom to access the medicine that can best alleviate their suffering.”

Lawmakers in Massachusetts, too, have forwarded a bill to regulate and tax marijuana like alcohol. Users over 21 years of age would be allowed to possess and grow limited amounts of marijuana. The bill is backed by over 12 legislators.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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Not A Good Look: Human Trafficking Bill Held Up Over Attention To Detail

March 14, 2015 By Rachel Stoltzfoos 2 Comments

The reasons Senate Democrats give for suddenly slammed the breaks on an anti-human trafficking bill this week are numerous, but one thing is clear: for them, it’s definitely been awkward.human trafficking

The 68-page anti-human trafficking bill has 13 Democratic cosponsors and was supposed to pass easily Tuesday, but Democrats suddenly reversed course and are now holding the bill hostage over standard language preventing federal funding of abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or life of the mother.

Democrats claim they didn’t notice the abortion language until this week, and accuse Republicans of “sneaking” it into the bill. Republicans say that’s bogus, and accuse the Democrats of lying about it for political gain. (RELATED: Dems Remember To Read Bill They’re Pushing, Throw A Fit)

Whatever the case, it’s not a good look for Senate Dems.

The language of the bill has been publicly available online since it was introduced in January, and the abortion language is on page 4 of the bill. In February, it passed unanimously through the Senate Judiciary Committee after Republicans and Democrats on the committee examined the bill and offered amendments.

So it’s hard to believe not a single Democrat or any of their staffers read the bill carefully enough to catch the abortion language. And yet, that’s exactly what they claim.

“Republicans were aghast that Democrats were sticking to their insistence that their aides had not read the bill,” wrote Politico’s Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim.

Their aides. Had not. Read. The bill … which was months old and less than 70 pages.

“In order to think that people missed it, and all of a sudden discovered it just this week really is not plausible,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn, a sponsor of the bill, said at a press conference Thursday.

A Senate aide told The Daily Caller News Foundation it’s a fundraising ploy. “Democrats are basically trying to fundraise off of this,” he said. “They’re trying to make it sound like they are standing up for women’s rights by holding up a bill that is protecting women.”

“Look how quickly they turn on their own people,” he added.

Maybe they did create this mess on purpose to score points with pro-abortion groups, such as NARAL and Planned Parenthood, who are now condemning the bill and calling on Senators to remove the abortion language with the hashtag “StrikeTheBan.”

Or maybe they did it to obscure a different objection to the bill — an amendment designed to curb illegal immigration proposed by Republican Sen. David Vitter. (RELATED: Senate Democrats Fight For More Illegals In Anti-Prostitution Bill)

“It appears they’re scared to vote on amendments like mine, to close the birthright citizenship loophole,” Vitter told TheDCNF.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered to let Democrats offer an amendment stripping the bill of the abortion language, if they stop blocking the bill, but they refused his offer.

Maybe Senate Democrats aren’t actually blocking a bipartisan bill that would help trafficking victims for political purposes. But that would mean they failed to read the bill carefully enough to catch the abortion language.

“Of course we read the bill,” Adam Jentleson, a spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, told TheDCNF. “But it’s easy to miss the language if you’re not looking for it, which we weren’t since Republicans told us it wasn’t in the bill.”

Read it, but not carefully, he said.

Is it worth then killing bill over the abortion language?

“No. We want the bill to pass,” he said.

So Reid and McConnell are in yet another face-off.

“I’ll say this to everybody out there who cares about this bill,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday. “We’re going to stay on it until we finish it.”

Reid also insisted the bill would pass, but without the abortion language. ”The legislation dealing with human trafficking is going to pass this Congress, but it’s going to pass this congress without abortion language in it,” he said on the floor Thursday.

The Senate will take up the bill again next week.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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Feds Have NO IDEA How Much Is Spent On Contract Workers

March 12, 2015 By Josh Fatzick 2 Comments

The Congressional Budget Office has determined that the government has no idea what the size or cost of the federal government’s contracted workforce is.

The analysis also determined that the government has no reliable way of knowing the information. The only system the government has to track federal contract data is, by its own admission, incomplete and its accuracy questionable.

The Federal Procurement Data System, which the analysis calls a “comprehensive source of information about federal spending on contracts,” does not report the size of the labor force funded by federal contracts, and makes it nearly impossible to summarize federal spending on contracts.

“Each purchase is assigned a single ‘product or service code’ —- but there are roughly 3,000 of those codes, and FPDS offers no useful way to group them,” the analysis said.

The Department of Defense recently started collecting and reporting the number of full-time positions funded by some of its service contracts, but its reporting excludes contracts for product purchases and service contracts for facilities. In addition, much of that data is reported by the contractors themselves or estimated by DoD officials.

This system is “relatively new,” and limited solely to the DoD, therefore it “does not provide enough information to allow CBO to estimate the overall size of the government’s contracted workforce,” according to the analysis.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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UC Berkeley Slammed Over Allegedly Biased Minimum Wage Report

February 23, 2015 By Connor D. Wolf 3 Comments

A top researcher has called out University of California, Berkeley for allegedly releasing a biased research paper that served as leverage for the San Francisco minimum wage increase.

Economic expert Michael Saltsman, research director at the Employment Policies Institute, argues that a biased research paper by UC Berkeley helped lead residents of San Francisco to support a rapid minimum wage increase, which possibly contributed to several businesses closing. As Saltsman argues, the wage increase makes the cost of operations a much worse burden for business owners. They often have to cut hours or even in some instances completely close their business.

The paper, “San Francisco’s Proposed City Minimum Wage Law: A Prospective Impact Study,” was released in August, and argued that an increase of the minimum wage will have a vastly positive impact for workers in the city.

“Drawing on a variety of government data sources, we estimate that 140,000 workers would benefit from the proposed minimum wage law, with the average worker earning an additional $2,800 a year (once the law is fully implemented),” the study noted. “Our analysis of the existing economic research literature suggests that businesses will adjust to modest increases in operating costs mainly through reduced employee turnover costs, improved work performance, and a small, one-time increase in restaurant prices.”

The following November, residents of the city voted to increase the minimum wage gradually to $15 an hour over the course of three years. Saltsman argued the UC Berkeley study used biased findings.

“These are the comforting studies they can turn to,” Saltsman told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “It creates stories that say you can raise the minimum wage without consequences.”

“If you look at the methodology,” Saltsman said. “Basically they didn’t take into account the fact it could have a negative impact on employment.”

Saltsman argued that the study only looked at how the wage increase will benefit workers, as opposed to how it may negatively impact businesses. If a business owner is unable to hire as many employees or has to close their business because of the higher cost of operations, it becomes bad for workers, too.

“These contribute to the public policy debate,” Saltsman continued. “It’s become a key position in the public policy debate.”

Saltsman said their approach and the results of the study are not at all surprising. Some of the researchers involved had activist backgrounds.

“The problem at UC Berkeley is they are presenting themselves as unbiased economists,” Saltsman notes. “This is the sort of thing you expect from an advocacy group.”

Michael Reich, one of the researchers involved in the report, shot back at the claims the study was biased.

“In restaurants and retail, stores both open and close all the time. You’d need to know whether closings increased and openings decreased relative to a control group,” Reich told TheDCNF. “That’s an objective method that all economists, including me, use to identify the causal effects of a policy.”

Though the wage increase has not gone into full effect yet, opponents are already pointing to several businesses that have closed. These include Borderlands bookstore, Abbot’s Cellar, Luna Park and Source.

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Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

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Military Reform Aims To Slash Pay For New Troops

January 16, 2015 By Jonah Bennett 10 Comments

In a speech on Wednesday off the coast of San Diego, outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned troops that the U.S. can’t afford its military personnel anymore.

Troops are already bracing for the results of a report on Feb. 1, which will most likely not be friendly to military pay. The report is by the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, which was originally created in 2013 by Congress for the purpose of researching feasible reforms for military pay and retirement benefits.

The White House is eagerly awaiting the results, as the Obama administration has set scaling back military budgets as a priority. Healthcare costs alone comprise 20 percent of the Pentagon’s annual budget, according to Congressional Budget Office calculations.

“I think this will be as big an issue … over the next year as there is, and it should be, because when you are talking about that entire compensation package for all of you and your families, I mean that is key,” Hagel stated, according to Military Times.

“We cannot sustain the current trajectory that we are on with the current system we have…We’ve got to address this. And we have to be honest about it. And we have to deal with it,” Hagel added.

Sen. John McCain, now chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, concurred with the need for sweeping reforms, particularly in the military health care system. Both Hagel and McCain reaffirmed that the inevitable changes coming to military pay and benefit policies will only apply to new recruits, and existing troops will be grandfathered out of the system currently in place.

“We know that it has to be reformed, everybody knows it has to be reformed,” McCain told The Hill. “There’s nobody I know that says you can continue as we’ve been going.” One of the Pentagon’s concerns revolves around personnel costs eroding investment in much-needed defense research and the development of high-tech weapons.

Some groups, however, have chastised the DOD for neglecting the needs of military personnel, and this increased level of tension between DOD officials and non-profit military groups will continue to build when the commission forwards its findings to Congress and the White House.

“Even though sequestration has placed DoD in a difficult position, we cannot continue to try and balance the budget on the backs of the very people who bear the burden of security for this nation and who have given so much over the last 13 years,” said Vice Admiral and President of the Military Officers Association of America Norb Ryan in December.

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