FREEDOMWORKS 02/18/2018 CONGRESS WILL NOT ALLOW THE PENTAGON TO SAVE BILLIONS!

A Million Dollars a Minute

By Judge Andrew Napolitano via The Washington Times Imagine you open the faucet of your kitchen sink expecting water and instead out comes cash. Now imagine that it comes out at the rate of $1 million a minute. You call your plumber, who thinks you’re crazy. To get you off the phone, he opines that it is your sink and therefore must be your money. So you spend it wildly. Then you realize that the money wasn’t yours and you owe it back. Now imagine that this happens every minute of every day for the next three years. At the end of the three years, you owe back more than $6 trillion. So you borrow $6 trillion to pay back the $6 trillion you owe. Is this unending spigot of cash reality or fantasy? I am not speaking of Amazon or Google or Exxon Mobil or Apple. They deliver products that appeal to consumers and investors. They deal in copious amounts of money because they sell what hundreds of millions of people want to purchase and they do it so efficiently that hundreds of thousands want to invest in them. If they fail to persuade consumers to purchase their products and investors to purchase their financial instruments, they will go out of business. READ MORE HERE

WATCH NOW: Sen. Mike Lee & Holly Harris of Justice Action Network on Conservative Justice Reform

Sen. Mike Lee and Holly Harris of the Justice Action Network discuss the importance of conservative justice reform and how it can save taxpayers money and make their communities safer at the same time. WATCH HERE

WATCH NOW: Ben Franklin in "Patently Ridiculous II"

Watch Ben Franklin show you how corporate fat cats team up with Congress to bully small businesses and steal their ideas. WATCH HERE

The Weekly Fix: Nothing Says "Bipartisanship" Like Earmarks

By Adam Brandon The fix is in. There is a movement to restore earmarks to Congress, and it’s being led by entrenched and out-of-touch Republicans. It’s amazing how quickly beltway politicians will revert to their old antics when they have been living in the swamp for too long. Earmarks are the special carve-outs in a piece of spending legislation that designate funds toward specific projects. Earmarked funds have very little oversight and are usually spent on pet projects for members of Congress to brag about in their home districts, like building a library and naming it after themselves. Earmarks are to blame for the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” a $3.4 million “turtle tunnel” in Florida, a teapot museum in North Carolina, and a cowboy poetry gathering in Nevada, to name a few. The earmark ban has been in place since 2011. Now, establishment Republicans and Democrats want them back. READ MORE HERE

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ALEC-FreedomWorks Legislator of the Week

Via ALEC This week, ALEC and FreedomWorks are proud to introduce Pennsylvania State Representative Seth Grove. Representative Grove is not only this week’s Legislator of the Week, he was also awarded the 2017 Legislator of the Year at the ALEC States and Nation Policy Summit in Nashville, TN. Representative Grove has been a champion for fiscal restraint in Pennsylvania. As founder and Co-Chair of the Pennsylvania Taxpayers’ Caucus, he regularly partners with ALEC and promotes sound fiscal policy. For years, Representative Grove has been a leader for taxpayers – opposing tax increases proposed by both parties. This year alone, he has warned against gross receipts taxes and severance taxes, which would have hurt the state’s business climate and consumers. READ MORE HERE

THE REGULATORY UPDATE WITH PATRICK HEDGER SPONSORED BY THE ALLIED EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

The Dangers of Tariffs

On this week's Regulatory Update, Patrick Hedger discusses the Commerce Department's proposed tariffs and how they hurt consumers and American companies, and erase the gains made by tax reform. WATCH IT HERE

Congress Continues to Ignore Pentagon's Requests to Close Unnecessary Bases and Save Billions

Via Washington Examiner Military leaders have pleaded with Congress for years to allow the closure of tens of thousands of excess military bases around the world, a move that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says could save the services $2 billion annually. But lawmakers had blocked shuttering any facilities under the Base Realignment and Closure program. On Monday, the Pentagon announced that it has given up on the effort for now and did not even mention the so-called BRAC program in its newly released 2019 budget request. “We did not ask for that in this budget. We’ve asked for it a number of times in the past without much success,” said David Norquist, the Pentagon comptroller. Instead, Norquist said the Pentagon will take another tack and focus its attention on other opportunities across the river on Capitol Hill. READ MORE HERE

Senate Judiciary Committee Advances Sentencing Reform

Via Washington Examiner The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced bipartisan legislation despite objections from Attorney General Jeff Sessions. After passing through the committee on a 16-5 vote without an amendment attached, the responsibility falls on Senate Majority Mitch McConnell to decide to take up the legislation. Since being introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in October, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act has gained bipartisan support among the committee. Grassley tried with similar legislation in 2016, but it faltered after McConnell opted to not bring it to the full Senate floor for a vote. READ MORE HERE

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