Monday, August 9
10-10:45a
Commissioner’s Court
Ward County Courthouse
400 South Allen Ave.
Monahans, TX 79756
PUBLIC EVENT

1:30-2:15p
Winkler County Courthouse
District Courtroom; 3rd Floor
100 East Winkler
Kermit, TX 79745
PUBLIC EVENT

Wednesday, August 11
9-9:45a
Forrest Park Community Center
814 S. Houston Ave.
Lamesa, TX 79331
PUBLIC EVENT

11-11:45a
College on the Square
1806 26th Street
Snyder, TX 79549 or 79550
PUBLIC EVENT

1:30-2:15p
First Financial Bank- Board Room (2nd floor)
201 Elm Street (across from courthouse)
Sweetwater, TX 79556
PUBLIC EVENT

3-3:45p
Civic Center
157 W. 2nd Street
Colorado City, TX 79512
PUBLIC EVENT

Monday, August 16
9-9:30a
Glasscock County Gin
300 CR Coop
Garden City, TX 79739
PUBLIC EVENT

10:20-10:50a
Chamber of Commerce
120 North Main
Big Lake, TX 76932
PUBLIC EVENT

12:00-1:00p
Location: TBA
Mertzon, TX 76941
PUBLIC EVENT

2-2:30p
Schleicher County Courthouse
Commissioner’s Court
2 North Divide St.
Eldorado, TX 76936
PUBLIC EVENT

5:30-7p
Fredericksburg Townhall
Hill Country University Center
2818 U. S. Hwy 290 East
Fredericksburg, TX 78624
PUBLIC EVENT

Wednesday, August 18
5:30-7p
Midland/Odessa Townhall
Center for Energy & Economic Diversification (CEED)
1400 North FM 1788
Midland, Tx 79706
PUBLIC EVENT

Tuesday, Sept. 7
9:30-10:15a.m.
Midkiff Farmers Co-op Gin
12602 FM 2401
Midkiff, TX 79755
PUBLIC EVENT

5:00-6:30p.m.
Andrews Town Hall
Senior Center
300 West Broadway
Andrews, TX 79714
PUBLIC EVENT

Wednesday, Sept. 8

5:00-6:30p
Comanche Town Hall
Economic Development Center
115 West Grand Ave.
Comanche, TX 76442
PUBLIC EVENT

Thursday, Sept. 9

10:15a-11a.m.
Goldthwaite Town Hall
Mills County State Bank Community Room
1101 Parker Street
Goldthwaite, TX 76844
PUBLIC EVENT

11:30-12:15p.m.
San Saba Town Hall
San Saba County Court House
3rd Floor District Court Room
500 E. Wallace
San Saba, TX 76877
PUBLIC EVENT

Friday, Sept. 10

2:30-3:15p.m.
Ballinger Town Hall
Runnels County Court House
Court Room
613 Hutchings Ave
Ballinger, TX 76821
PUBLIC EVENT

3:30-4:15p.m.
Winters Town Hall
Winters High School Cafeteria
205 East Jones Street
Winters, TX 79567
PUBLIC EVENT

Monday, Sept. 13

5:30-7:00p.m.
San Angelo Town Hall – Public
C. J. Davidson Conference Center
Angelo State University
1910 Rosemont Drive
San Angelo, TX
PUBLIC EVENT

Please, Mr. President, don’t take drastic measures to save us from oil wells. Valuable human endeavors usually pose a slight risk of substantial harm. If absolute safety is the noblest cause, humans should close themselves in padded rooms and breathe filtered air. Examples of worthwhile endeavors that pose slight risks of harm abound:

A bus full of California high school students plunged off a cliff in 1976, killing 28. A bus poses the slight risk of substantial harm. We have never endured a presidential bus ban.

A psychotic shot 32 students at Virginia Tech in 2007. Attending college poses a slight risk of substantial harm. We have never endured a presidential ban on going to college.

About 41,000 are killed each year in the United States in car crashes. A person in a car is only 0.004 percent safer than someone in a coal mine, based on federal mortality data. Driving poses a relatively high risk of substantial harm and exacts an environmental toll that dwarfs the world’s worst human-caused environmental disasters. We have never endured a presidential moratorium on driving.

Yet we will endure a presidential moratorium on deep-water drilling come hell or high water, thanks in large part to Ken Salazar, U.S. secretary of the Interior. President Barack Obama wants a ban through November because deep-water drilling poses a slight risk of harm. Two federal judges have said no, but Obama won’t back off. The White House unveiled a plan last week, devised by Salazar, that may get around the judicial rulings. The song and dance from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the moratorium will hold up because it’s more flexible.

If Salazar’s loophole works, it will give some protection from the infinitesimal probability of another oil disaster this year. The loophole will absolutely, beyond question exact hardship on Americans. It may cause fuel prices to reach unprecedented levels, inflating the costs of goods. The Houston Chronicle estimates the ban will cost tens of thousands of jobs in the Gulf Coast region alone. That would ripple through a national economy that’s flirting with a second big-dip recession and burdened by an ominous national debt. A moratorium — unlike most human endeavors — isn’t worthwhile. Unlike other endeavors, a drilling moratorium doesn’t pose a slight risk of substantial harm. It poses an absolute certainty of substantial harm.

Our country doesn’t progress when it embraces safety as the highest cause. The “just keep us safe” mentality partly explains why we remain dependent on oil. As France turned to nuclear reactors to get free from big oil, we avoided the slight risk of harm posed by reactors.

Secretary Salazar, please rescind your recommendation to President Obama. There is no shame, only honor, in rethinking an idea. Let’s avoid a moratorium that turns a slight risk of harm into a certainty of harm.

It may be that the last people in America who believe that the $862 billion economic stimulus of February 2009 created millions of net new jobs are Vice President Joe Biden and the staff economists in the White House. Yesterday, President Obama’s chief economist announced that the plan had “created or saved” between 2.5 million and 3.6 million jobs and raised GDP by 2.7% to 3.2% through June 30. Don’t you feel better already?

Christina Romer went so far as to claim that the 3.5 million new jobs that she promised while the stimulus was being debated in Congress will arrive “two quarters earlier than anticipated.” Yup, the official White House line is that the plan is working better than even they had hoped.

We almost feel sorry for Ms. Romer having to make this argument given that since February 2009 the U.S. economy has lost a net 2.35 million jobs. Using the White House “created or saved” measure means that even if there were only three million Americans left with jobs today, the White House could claim that every one was saved by the stimulus.

The White House also naturally insists that things would be much worse without the stimulus billions spent on the likes of Medicaid payments, high speed rail projects, unemployment benefits and windmills. Mr. Obama said recently in Racine, Wisconsin that the economy “would have been a lot worse” and the unemployment rate would have gone to “12 or 13, or 15 [percent]” if government hadn’t spent all of that money.

This is called a counterfactual: a what would have happened scenario that can’t be refuted. What we do know is what White House economists at the time said would happen if the stimulus didn’t pass. They said the unemployment rate would peak at 9% without the stimulus (there’s your counterfactual) and that with the stimulus the rate would stay at 8% or below. (See the nearby chart.) In other words, today there are 700,000 fewer jobs than Ms. Romer predicted we would have if we had done nothing at all. If this is a job creation success, what does failure look like?

All of these White House jobs estimates are based on the increasingly discredited Keynesian spending “multiplier,” which according to White House economist Larry Summers means that every $1 of government spending will yield roughly $1.50 in higher GDP. Ms. Romer thus plugs her spending data into the Keynesian computer models and, presto, out come 2.5 million to 3.6 million jobs, even if the real economy has lost jobs. To adapt Groucho Marx: Who are you going to believe, the White House computer models, or your own eyes?

Or, as Milton Friedman used to say, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The money government spends does create some jobs—the folks working on road projects, say—but that money has to come from somewhere, which means taxing or borrowing it from areas of the private economy that are nearly always more productive. This doesn’t mean that government spending is always a bad idea, but it does mean that government spending as economic stimulus is fanciful.

Harvard economist Robert Barro first blew apart Keynesian assumptions with his famous 1974 essay, “Are Government Bonds Net Wealth?” He and Charles J. Redlick, also of Harvard, recently updated this demolition in a new study for the Mercatus Center examining 50 years of defense spending in various countries. They find a multiplier effect of between 0.4 and 0.7. This means that government spending shrinks the private economy, because it “crowds out other components of GDP, particularly investment.”

This would certainly explain better than Ms. Romer’s computer models why a nearly $1 trillion stimulus has been followed by a mediocre economic recovery, a 9.5% unemployment rate, and almost no net new private job creation.

The performance of the 1st Marine Division at the “Frozen Chosin” is legendary and Maj Lee was integral to the unit’s success. He is prominently featured in most books about the battle.

As a platoon commander with Baker 1/7 he was known for his tough training, unrelenting demand for excellence, and stern, extremely professional persona. Once Baker Company got into the fight, however, his fellow warriors witnessed his battle leadership and appreciated his methods. He received the Navy Cross and Silver Star for his actions at the Frozen Chosin and is now revered by everyone that fought with him or knows his story.

One of Major Lee’s most gripping exploits is this: As the 1st Marine Division travels down the steep and winding road through the mountains to awaiting ships at Hungnam, Marine companies and battalions leap frog from mountain top to mountain top above the road, clearing the ridge of Chinese that could shoot down on the men below, most of them wounded. This continues day after day, mountain top after mountain top, and the casualties swell. Typically the Marines did not move at night, because of the oppressive cold. Finally they decide to do a night movement. B 1/7 is the lead company and Lee, with the bulk of the 1st MarDiv behind him, and his arm in a sling from previous wounds, navigates through the snow in complete darkness towards Chinese positions. They surprise and kill many Communist Chinese.

Much has been written about Major Lee’s life and service in the Korean War, including a recent documentary by the Smithsonian Institution here in Washington, D.C. He is remarkable man, an “old school” Marine hero that is truly “larger than life”, and it was my humble honor to meet him.

As a college student I have had so many amazing opportunities. I have studied abroad in Oxford, England with ACU and had the chance to travel all over Europe. I have lived in Brazil for a summer. I have only been in Washington D.C. four days but I can already see that this is an opportunity that will rank among the best experiences of my life! It is eye opening to see the democratic process in action and I love contributing to an office that serves all the people I know back home.

Coming from Midland, Washington is a big and exciting place. People always seem to be running around, doing important things. It has been fun to ride the Metro and figure out my way around town. Things never stop moving! It is really amazing to walk in to work each morning and be able to see the Capitol. Washington is a beautiful city and being surrounded by monuments and amazing buildings reminds me of the important work everyone is doing here.

As an intern I am mostly responsible for doing basic office jobs. I answer phones and often get to speak with constituents. Once I am trained I will be able to give tours of the Capitol which I am definitely looking forward to! I am also available to help permanent staffers with any projects they have going on. Regardless of what I am doing, Capitol Hill is a fun and exciting place. Sometimes I can’t believe that I have this opportunity. My job may not be glamorous but it is unbelievably cool to be here for the summer. I can’t wait to see what is in store for the next seven weeks!

When President Obama last month announced his six-month deepwater moratorium, he pointed to an Interior Department report of new “safety” recommendations. That report prominently noted that the recommendations it contained—including the six-month drilling ban—had been “peer-reviewed” by “experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.” It also boasted that Interior “consulted with a wide range” of other experts. The clear implication was that the nation’s drilling brain trust agreed a moratorium was necessary.

As these columns reported last week, the opposite is true. In a scathing document, eight of the “experts” the Administration listed in its report said their names had been “used” to “justify” a “political decision.” The draft they reviewed had not included a six-month drilling moratorium. The Administration added that provision only after it had secured sign-off. In their document, the eight forcefully rejected a moratorium, which they argued could prove more economically devastating than the oil spill itself and “counterproductive” to “safety.”

The Administration insisted this was much ado about nothing. An Interior spokesman claimed the experts clearly had been called to review the report on a “technical basis,” whereas the moratorium was a “comprehensive” question. Obama environment czar Carol Browner declared: “No one’s been deceived or misrepresented.” Really? We can only imagine the uproar if a group of climate scientists had claimed the Bush Administration misappropriated their views.

We decided to call some of these experts ourselves. Their information, and concerns, are revealing.

The experts were certainly under the impression they were reviewing a comprehensive document, as some of the recommendations would take six months or even a year to implement. And the report they agreed to did address moratoria: It recommended a six-month ban on new deepwater permits. Yet Benton Baugh, president of Radoil, said that in at least two separate hour-and-a-half phone calls among Interior and the experts, there was no discussion of a moratorium on existing drilling. “Because if anybody had [made that suggestion], we’d have said ‘that’s craziness.’”

Vessels operate near the Transocean Deepwater Discoverer drilling rig at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
.Ken Arnold, an engineer and consultant, said the changes went beyond just the drilling moratorium. The Interior draft he looked at included timelines for each safety recommendation. The “bulk” of those recommendations, he explained, were all ones that could be done within 30 days. And most of the longer-term provisions would result in only “marginal increases in safety.”

Yet when the final report came out, the timelines he saw had been removed, no doubt because they argued against the necessity of a six-month moratorium. Mr. Arnold adds that the Administration’s decision to allow industry to continue drilling “gas injection wells”—which, he says, are no more risky than production wells—only shows the moratorium makes “no sense.”

“This was a political call; this was not a technical call,” says Mr. Arnold. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has since testified that the call was his. But Robert Bea, from the University of California at Berkeley, who also reviewed the report, told us Interior had sent him a letter that “stated clearly that [the moratorium] had been inserted at the request of the White House.” Mr. Bea pointed out that the Department of Interior is more than equipped to target and shut down specific Gulf operations that might offer safety concerns. There was no call for a moratorium “for industry as a whole.”

Ford Brett, managing director of Petroskills and also a reviewer, notes that the experts first went to the Interior Department with their concerns. “All they had to do was put out another press release—one sentence long—clarifying that we hadn’t reviewed the drilling moratorium. . . .That didn’t happen.” Only then did the experts go public.

All of this matters because it offers proof the moratorium was driven by politics, not safety. The drilling ban was not reviewed by experts, and was not necessary to satisfy most of the safety recommendations in Mr. Salazar’s report. It was authored by political actors so Mr. Obama could look tough. A cynic might argue the ban was only added after review precisely because the Administration knew experts would refuse to endorse it.

A big reason why those experts would have balked is because they recognize that the moratorium is indeed a threat to safety. Mr. Arnold offers at least four reasons why.

The ban requires oil companies to abandon uncompleted wells. The process of discontinuing a well, and then later re-entering it, introduces unnecessary risk. He notes BP was in the process of abandoning its well when the blowout happened.

The ban is going to push drilling rigs to take jobs in other countries. “The ones that go first will be the newest, biggest, safest rigs, because they are most in demand. The ones that go last and come back first are the ones that aren’t as modern,” says Mr. Arnold.

The indeterminate nature of this ban will encourage experienced crew members to seek other lines of work—perhaps permanently. Restarting after a ban will bring with it a “greater mix of new people who will need to be trained.” The BP event is already pointing, in part, to human error, and the risk of that will increase with a less experienced crew base. Finally, a ban will result in more oil being imported on tankers, which are “more likely” to spill oil than local production.

All this is even before raising ban’s economic consequences, which already threaten tens of thousands of jobs. This is why Louisiana politicians are now pleading with the Administration to back off a ban that is sending the Gulf’s biggest industry to its grave.

“Mr. President, you were looking for someone’s butt to kick,” said Lafourche Parish President Charlotte Randolph, recently. “You’re kicking ours.” The sooner the Administration climbs down from this pointless exercise, the better for a Gulf that needs real help.

On May 8th, 2010, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates delivered a speech at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, in which he stated:

“The attacks of September 11th, 2001, opened a gusher of defense spending that nearly doubled the base budget over the last decade, not counting supplemental appropriations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which brings us to the situation we face and the choices we have today – as a defense department and as a country. Given America’s difficult economic circumstances and parlous fiscal condition, military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny.”

He went on say:
“Eisenhower strongly believed that the United States – indeed, any nation – could only be as militarily strong as it was economically dynamic and fiscally sound.”

I could not agree more, as do I believe, my constituents in the Texas 11th Congressional District. Every day I hear from them and they all tell me the same thing: they, the citizens of America, are fed up with expanding government, out of control spending, annual budget deficits and the exploding national debt.

As the economy continues to struggle to recover from the great recession and voters begin to realize the immense financial burden that awaits their children and grandchildren, I believe the American people will demand more responsibility in how growing government spends their tax dollars. Defense is by far the largest portion of discretionary spending in the national budget and should receive scrutiny equal to that of the rest of the government. For that reason conventional wisdom anticipates a relative freeze in our defense budget, making it increasingly important that available money is spent wisely and accounted for completely.

As I told the Secretary at a House Armed Service Hearing on February 3rd, 2010:

“Mr. Secretary, the Department of Defense is unauditable…There’s $636 billion dollars that we spend every year, and we don’t know that we spend it correctly… The only way that’s going to happen is if the Department of Defense and all of its variety of agencies have clean audits.”

Competition will also be critical to positive results, which is one reason that my colleagues and I feel so strongly about the need for an F35 alternate engine (F136). I recently signed a letter with Congressman Robert Andrews (NJ-1), in support of the F136. While the congress and the Secretary of Defense may disagree on this specific issue, we completely agree on the overarching issue of wasteful defense spending and excessive overhead, and will work closely to provide what our country needs to defend itself within the parameters of what our economy will allow.

Threats, real and perceived, do exist; ranging from economic and military powers such as China, to unstable rogue regimes with nuclear ambitious such as Iran, to transnational jihadist terrorists such as Al Qaeda. Ironically, the most significant threat to our national security is not an external foe, but an internal weakness, our debilitating financial situation. Our economy is our mightiest weapon and if we continue down the path that the Obama administration is leading us, we will be vulnerable and exposed with only ourselves to blame.
Comprehensive reform must be adopted that includes both mandatory and discretionary spending. Every component of government has serious issues and competing priorities. Tough choices must be made. Government must exercise actual discretion when budgeting so-called discretionary spending and must implement much needed reform to our unsustainable myriad of entitlements. Everyone will sacrifice together if we address this problem as a country. Every day that passes without meaningful action, the longer and more difficult the journey becomes.

Secretary Gates’ recent comments regarding the inherent bond between the strength of our economy and the security of our nation are timely and accurate. I applaud him for identifying this reality and bringing it to the forefront of the discussion. As the man responsible for the largest amount of discretionary spending in America’s budget, his pledge sets a manifest example for the rest of government and the country. Hopefully this will become a driving force for change and assists to reign in the current administrations’ unsustainable spending. We don’t have the luxury of abdicating this responsibility; change is imperative.

This November, when voters choose their future, I predict that the results will speak loud and clear. Americans are sick and tired of reckless spending. Threats still exist but that doesn’t equate to a blank check for defense spending. America needs fiscal responsibility, its citizens will demand it, and our national security requires it.