The Safe Doses Act, legislation I introduced to fight medical theft, recently passed both the House and the Senate. In a time of intense partisanship, this bipartisan legislation passed both chambers of Congress to protect patients from stolen and mishandled medical products that find their way back to our stores. It currently awaits signature by the president. Medical theft is a growing form of organized crime that impacts thousands of patients in the U.S. who rely on life-saving drugs every day. These stolen drugs are sold through a network of middlemen to our stores and patients have no …

As my constituents in Wisconsin know, times are tough for small businesses. Regulations, new taxes, and careless spending have left many small business owners feeling helpless and abandoned. According to a report released last week by the Associated General Contractors of America, Wisconsin lost the second-highest percentage of construction jobs in the country. There are various factors that go into a frustrating employment number like that, but overly burdensome regulations should not be one of them. My House colleagues and I last week passed the Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job …

The Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, gives the federal government the tools to tax religiously-affiliated schools, hospitals, universities and soup kitchens right out of existence if they object to a government mandate. Last week, I voted to repeal Obamacare because the entire law is bad policy, the mandate expands the role of government to unprecedented levels, and the taxes decimate our religious liberties. This cannot stand.We have heard a lot about the mandates in the law, but we have not heard much about these hidden taxes on religious freedom. Obamacare includes provisions …

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of Obamacare sometime this month. Americans want to repeal all or part of the law by margin of 2 to 1. It’s no wonder, as we are living the nightmare of Nancy Pelosi’s “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”While we wait for the court’s decision, the president’s health care law has already become a giant discouragement to our job creators. In order to pay for the monstrous new entitlement, the bill includes several new taxes.One example was the expanded 1099 reporting requirement that would have forced …

When it was revealed that the General Services Administration (GSA) spent $823,000 on a conference in Las Vegas in October 2010, Americans were appalled at the blatant disregard for taxpayer dollars.I take very seriously my role as trustee of taxpayer funds, and the GSA’s conference was an egregious display of wasteful government spending. GSA employees not only spent a lavish amount on the government dime, but also made videos poking fun at the cost and extravagance.  The responsibility lies with head of the GSA, as well as the president. The White House should be setting a tone of fiscal …

On Sunday, the average price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline in the Milwaukee area hit $4.07. When President Obama took office, it was $1.89. Higher energy costs are a burden on American families and threatening our economic recovery.     In 2011, the average household spent an estimated $4,155 at the pump.  In total that represents 8.4 percent of what the median family makes annually, money that could be spent elsewhere when times are tough.  Surging gas prices hit Americans not only the pump, but also at the grocery store. As gas prices increase transportation costs, small businesses and …

The freedom to own and protect one’s private property is foundational to our country — our Constitution explicitly protects private property rights.The House last week approved my legislation, H.R. 1433, the Private Property Rights Protection Act, to protect every citizen’s right to private property, not just the most powerful or profitable.  In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Kelo v. City of New London that private property could be “condemned” for the sole purpose of implementing a local government’s redevelopment plan. In this case, the city seized Susette Kelo’s home to give the …

When President Obama mandated that religiously-based organizations violate core tenets of their faith, Americans were rightly outraged. In response, the president announced an “accommodation” policy to these organizations, but the so-called compromise is not a compromise at all because it does not take away the mandate that infringes upon religious liberty. On Jan. 20, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, affirmed a rule that requires church-affiliated hospitals, agencies and universities to provide contraception and sterilization in the health …

This week the U.S. House repealed an unsustainable entitlement called the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program, which was created to offset the costs of Obamacare. Its repeal is a victory for those of us seeking to dismantle the fiscal quagmire of President Obama’s health care reform law. A former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office called CLASS “the poster child for President Barack Obama’s health care reform: bad policy, deceptive budgeting and stealth government expansion.” The top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee called it “a ponzi …

One of the most rewarding parts of my job is the opportunity to nominate young men and women from Wisconsin’s 5th Congressional District to the United States Service Academies, and recently, I named my nominees for the Class of 2016.  I offer my congratulations to Garrett McElligott of New Berlin, Nicholas Hermberg of Sussex, and Brian Biwer of Waukesha, who were named principal nominees to the US Air Force, Naval, and Military Academies, respectively. As principal nominees, their appointments are assured as long as they can meet the physical, academic and medical requirements of the …

Last week, our national debt hit $15 trillion. The urgency of our debt crisis demands that Congress pass true spending reform that will enforce fiscal discipline. This can only be accomplished with a Balanced Budget Amendment. If we want to give job creators certainty for the future, and encourage them to expand and grow, we must rein in out-of-control spending. The House considered a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, which requires a two-thirds vote in each chamber of Congress to pass. With opposition from the tax-and-spend left, the amendment did not pass. This Balanced Budget …

I appreciated this opportunity to hear from 21 local businesses who know what it means to make a payroll and develop a business plan for growth and hiring (at a roundtable discussion on jobs in Brookfield last week). I want to thank Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce for its help in identifying businesses for this unique meeting.Job creators in my district face crushing federal government regulations and uncertainty thanks to the threat of higher taxes. Terry Welch, president of Prime Leather Finishes, shared his frustration with America’s highest-in-the-world corporate tax rate, saying: “…

On Tuesday, I will be holding a Job Creators Roundtable in Brookfield to discuss what Washington can do to promote private-sector job creation and growth. I want to hear directly from small business owners and job creators in the 5th Congressional District about what obstacles they face in this current economic climate and hear about solutions that Congress can pursue to infuse confidence and certainty into the economic environment. We cannot tax and spend our way to prosperity. Out-of-control spending and the constant threat of new taxes and regulations chill hiring and discourage businesses…

The Obama Administration has repeatedly claimed that green jobs will be our nation’s economic saving grace. Putting millions of Americans back to work while creating an industry that will “define the 21st century,” according to Vice President Biden. The president promised green energy government subsidies would create 5 million good-paying jobs. The facts point to an alarming alternative. President Obama has spent billions of taxpayer dollars on solar subsidies, but has very little long-term sustainable job growth to show for it. We recently learned that Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturing …

The country is looking to President Barack Obama for leadership, but an announcement to raise taxes by $1.5 trillion indicates the administration is more concerned with earning easy political points than actually tackling our national debt or promoting much-needed job creation. Tax increases will punish job creators, slow investment and perpetuate an economic environment of uncertainty. Americans need jobs, and Washington should be passing policies to encourage private sector growth, not punish it. Additionally, the president’s second stimulus will be paid almost entirely by raising taxes and…

President Obama has encouraged Congress to move forward on legislation to help put Americans back to work. However, he is blind to the fact that some of the very real impediments to creating jobs are coming directly from his own administration. This fall, House Republicans are committed to finding and repealing some of the most harmful regulations and administrative decrees, which pose barriers to growth and perpetuate an economic environment of uncertainty. In April, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against Boeing, when it chose to create new jobs in South Carolina…

In the past two years, there has been a stream of frustrating news regarding the state of our economy. Since March 2009, unemployment has averaged 9.5 percent. With those sobering facts in mind, our federal government is expected to hit the national debt limit at the end of this month, meaning we will reach the legal limit that our country is allowed to borrow. Current ongoing negotiations to raise the national debt ceiling have revealed fundamental differences in opinion about what steps our country needs to take to jump start the economy and ensure America’s future is bright for the next …

Since 1960, the federal government has only balanced the annual budget an astonishing six times. As a result, our national debt is $14 trillion and the government currently borrows 42 cents on every dollar. There is not a business or family that could sustain that amount of borrowing. It is far too easy to offer political platitudes about how we need to take action on our fiscal situation. And far too often politicians have neglected long-term fiscal responsibility to score short-term political points. That is why I support a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This would place a …

On Friday, the Department of Labor issued the latest jobs report, and the news was not good. The economy added only 54,000 jobs in May. It is clear that the president’s economic policies are not working. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average unemployed American has been looking for a job for 38 weeks, the longest average time in history. Consider what these abstract statistics mean in real life. For many of us, summer is time for baseball. If someone started looking for a job before opening day, they would still be job searching two months after the final game of the World …

World history was made on May 1: Osama bin Laden was finally found and killed. To him I say good riddance. For decades this man terrorized the world and remains responsible for the killing thousands of people, including thousands of Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. In many ways, he was the Hitler of today’s generation. I believe it is better that he was killed before he could kill more innocent civilians, or be captured and granted a global stage for his message. The hunt for this awful man continued through three presidential administrations: Clinton, Bush and Obama. It did not come easy; it did…