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In our latest edition, we're grateful to have an interview with Rep. Tom Cole, who spoke with us about plans for appropriations for the rest of the year and his planned reforms to disaster relief
By: Matthew Foldi
During his career as an academic and as a high-level strategist for the GOP, Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.) never wanted to pursue federal office.
But after watching the horrors of 9/11 unfold outside of his office window at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “God opened a different door” for him. Cole is now the recently-inaugurated chairman of the House’s Appropriations Committee. He sat down with the Washington Reporter for an extensive interview, in which he laid out his thoughts on this year’s appropriations priorities, the advice he has for whoever wins November’s elections on budgetary matters, and what reforms he wants to make to how America funds its disaster response.
Cole assumed the helm of the Appropriations Committee after Rep. Kay Granger (R., Texas) left her role as chair mid-session. Cole told the Reporter that “the bottom line to me is we’re not going to finish [appropriation negotiations] by September 30,” and predicted that Republicans are “going to keep trying to move stuff, both between now and the August break, once we come back from the RNC and then continue into September.”
“My guess is we get those to the last week or two of September, we pass the continuing resolution, and we kick these bills past the election, probably into the lame duck, November, December,” Cole said. In the meantime, “we should just get the best deal we can.”
In the event that Republicans hold unified control, which Cole predicts, he still wants to have gotten a lot of the legwork done ahead of time.
Click HERE to read more on Rep. Tom Cole’s plans for 2024 approps and beyond.
You’ve started a new role as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. What do you think comes next on appropriations with the House’s legislative appropriations bill, and for the rest of the Congress?
Matthew Foldi
Editor-in-Chief
My guess is they’re going to keep trying to move stuff, both between now and the August break, once we come back from the RNC and then continue into September. At some point, my instinct tells me that we’ll run out of runway. The Senate’s now moving. They got three bills out of committee. I just talked with Senator Patty Murray and again, they’re coming in with numbers well above ours, and whether they can get them across the floor, I’m not sure.
My guess is we get those to the last week or two of September, we pass the continuing resolution, and we kick these bills past the election, probably into the lame duck, November, December. At that point, what I think will happen is the winner of the November election will make the decision. “Do we want to finish these bills now before the end of the calendar year, or do I somehow think I’ll have a political advantage kicking them forward into next year?” And this is not an unusual thing.
If Trump is the president-elect, which I think he will be, and he wants to kick this into next year, then I’m going to support the president. That’s his call to make. But my recommendation to him, if he asked me or wanted me involved in it, would be, “Mr. President, get this stuff done. Make us do our work, not put it on you, and, frankly, not do it to the new members of Congress.”
Rep. Tom Cole
Chairman, House Appropriations Committee
What advice would you give someone who wants to be the next Tom Cole?
Matthew Foldi
Editor-in-Chief
Rule number one is to do stuff you like to do. I’ve never picked any path because of money, and I’ve done the things that I really enjoy doing. I think the most important thing is to enjoy doing work and to do it well. Compensation will take care of himself. The second thing is, it sounds corny, but when God opens the door, walk through it. I did not begin my life planning to be an elected politician or a political operative or anything of the sort. I was going to be a British historian. I was pretty good at that, but there weren’t very many opportunities there. By accident, I ended up helping my mother get to elected office, because that’s what she wanted to do. I didn’t care that much about it, but it was important to her. I hadn’t done much the first time she ran, she lost very narrowly, and I felt terrible about it. I should have done more. I got involved in it, and I really liked it. I got to see it through her eyes as an elected official, and we were very close, personally, always. So I just started messing around with it for fun.
Rep. Tom Cole
Chairman, House Appropriations Committee
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By: Matthew Foldi
Senate Commerce Committee Republicans are leading a probe into the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) “newfound use of flawed and self-serving cost-benefit analyses” in “recent notices of proposed rulemaking (NPRMs) and finalized rules,” a group of Senators said in a letter first obtained by the Washington Reporter.
The letter follows the agency’s interim report on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which was released last week, and which attracted conservative pushback.
In the letter to FTC Commissioner Lina Khan, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and his colleagues pressed Khan on her agency’s rulemaking, which they view as straying from the agency’s core mission; Cruz and his colleagues laid out how new analyses from her agency will raise costs for consumers.
Cruz, who wrote to her along with Sens. John Thune (R., S.D.), Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), Ted Budd (R., N.C.), Deb Fischer (R., Neb.), and Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), noted in his latest letter that “the FTC had previously described its mission as protecting consumers ‘without unduly burdening legitimate business activity,’ [but] its latest strategic plan omits this crucial caveat.” The Republicans pointed to three recent rulemakings Khan led, which demonstrate to them that “the FTC is no longer concerned with whether newly issued regulations are so cost-prohibitive [that] they cripple free enterprise.”
Click HERE to read the full letter that Sens. Ted Cruz, John Thune, Roger Wicker, Ted Budd, Deb Fischer, and Marsha Blackburn wrote to Lina Khan.
By: Matthew Foldi
Temu, the e-commerce giant, is facing scrutiny for its “reprehensible” record on forced labor, including investigations by the Biden administration into Temu for its reliance on slave labor from China’s Xinjiang province.
One longtime intelligence agency veteran confirmed to the Washington Reporter that Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking into the Chinese-tied retailer. “I know DHS is looking deeply into Temu,” he said. The company “pays the law lip service,” but their products “could not not be from Xinjiang province,” he said. Under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), spearheaded by Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), DHS must block imports that use Uyghur slave labor by adding manufacturers, exporters, and other violators to the UFLPA entity list.
Rubio has hammered Temu, along with a similar Chinese retailer called Shein. And Rubio is far from alone, with lawmakers like Rep. Tim Walberg (R., Mich.), one of the top Republicans on the House’s Education and Workforce Committee, also said to the Reporter that Temu’s cheap products directly undermines the American workforce, and that the company’s use of slave labor is “even reaching the American workforce’s ability to compete fairly.”
Click HERE to read more about the threats posed by Temu.
By: Matthew Foldi
Republican lawmakers have proposed legislation that will allow for expedited deportations of illegal immigrants who have been convicted of, or who have committed offenses related to, entering military, naval, or coast guard properties, the Washington Reporter has learned.
The Protecting Military Assets Act of 2024, introduced by Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R., Texas), comes after a series of high-profile crimes allegedly committed by illegal immigrants, including one instance in which two illegal immigrants attempted to breach the Marine Corps’s base in Quantico, Virginia. According to the Potomac Local News, one of the two was “on the U.S. terrorist watch list.”
“This breach is a clear example of how out of control this crisis has become under President Biden’s leadership,” Luttrell told the Reporter. “Fortunately, our dedicated service members were able to stop these individuals before any harm was done. However, this incident raises a crucial question: what happens when action is not taken in time? The lives of our brave service members and the safety of our nation are truly at stake.”
Click HERE to read more, and to see the full text of the legislation, first reported by the Reporter.
By: Matthew Foldi
China’s National People’s Congress is seeking to meet with congressional staff via the U.S.-Asia Institute (USAI).
Multiple House offices whose members are on committees ranging from Energy and Commerce, Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, and the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party received exclusive invites from USAI for an “online congressional exchange,” which is open to “full-time Congressional staff and fellows.”
“This online exchange opportunity will allow for Congressional staff to interact with staff from the American Chamber of Commerce and the National People’s Congress of China,” the invite says. The National People’s Congress of China (NPC) is the politburo of the CCP.
Click HERE to learn more about how the U.S.-Asia Institute is connecting Hill staff with their counterparts in communist China.
By: Sen. Ron Johnson
Democratic governance has been a disaster for America. The Biden administration is just the latest manifestation of how the ideology and policies of the radical progressive Democrats do nothing to build a strong nation, state, or city — they simply divide and destroy.
Five days before his election, presidential candidate Barack Obama stated, “in five days we will fundamentally transform America.” He wasn’t joking or engaging in hyperbole. He was simply stating the new mission of the fundamentally transformed, radically Progressive Democratic Party.
Make no mistake, the current Democratic Party bears little resemblance to that of my parents and grandparents. The Democratic Party of yesteryear cared about workers and people struggling to get by. Today’s progressive Democrats divide our nation with open borders, identity politics, critical race theory, transgenderism, and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children. Their massive growth of government with all the deficit spending it requires, combined with their insane war on fossil fuels, has put achieving the American Dream out of reach for too many of our fellow citizens.
This week, Wisconsin welcomes the Republican National Committee to Milwaukee. Situated on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan, populated by good and decent Wisconsinites, Milwaukee has much to offer its citizens and visitors alike. I sincerely hope by week’s end, visitors heading back to their homes will have nothing but fond and positive memories of our city and state.
But that will only occur if the progressive Democrats’ protesters don’t disrupt the final step in the Republican Party’s democratic process of choosing our presidential candidate — President Donald Trump. Hopefully, Democrats will defend democracy by respecting Republicans’ constitutional right to peacefully assemble by allowing us to do so. We shall see.
Click HERE to read more from Sen. Ron Johnson on the failures of progressive Democrats in Wisconsin and across America.
