When I ran for office, I ran in opposition to the establishment and the politicians in both parties. Bank bailouts, Obamacare, and a failure to stand up and fight were among my main complaints, and these were many of the same frustrations that moved people to start the Tea Party. Frankly, I just got sick of throwing things at my television and decided to do something about it by running for office. I took on the special interests and Washington Machine, and I won. Since I’ve been in Washington, let me tell you, it is every bit as bad as I feared. It’s why so many people—myself included—are angry and challenging the status quo. At first, we were told that we couldn’t fight for change because we didn’t control the Senate. Now we are told we …show more content…
I urge the leaders of my party to do something different: to take the offensive for our beliefs rather than surrendering before the battle begins. Too often Washington looks like two sides of the same coin to the American people. We have a chance to change that and we must act this week. I hear our leaders preaching of the necessity of 60 votes to defund anything. This is a warped and completely backwards mis-reading of our role. Spending ends automatically with the end of the fiscal year. We should state clearly and boldly that any spending moving forward will take 60 votes. Instead of preemptively announcing defeat, we should take a stand and put forward 12 individual spending bills with hundreds of instructions to cut wasteful spending and eliminate funding for outrageous regulations. The burden of 60 votes to pass a bill in the Senate then works in our favor. Unless Democrats can gather 60 votes, most wasteful spending will fail and—with certainty—offensive spending like that of Planned Parenthood will fail. Every year Congress is supposed to pass bills that fund government. They don’t, of course, and they haven’t in many decades. It’s among the many reasons Congress has a 14% approval rating. Frankly I can’t believe it’s that