McCarthy: Republicans in House pushing reform and bills to curtail spending

 Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) gives us his view from Capitol Hill. In his words:

‪ "This week my colleagues and I took the first of many steps to rein in wasteful government spending as we promised in the Pledge to America.  On Tuesday, we voted to pass legislation that would save taxpayers $35 million over 10 years by eliminating the mandatory printing of Congressional bills and resolutions.  You may remember this issue from an earlier update--each time a Member of Congress introduces a bill or resolution, 200 copies are printed by the Government Printing Office.  This is a lot of unnecessary paperwork in the digital age when bills are made available online.‬

‪ "On Wednesday, we voted to repeal the Democrats’ job-destroying health care law.  I joined 244 of my colleagues in a bipartisan vote to keep our Pledge to America promise to repeal the government takeover of health care, which the American people continue to oppose.  If not repealed, this law will increase our nation’s budget deficits and debt and impose new mandates and penalties on employers that will make it harder for small businesses to create the jobs our nation needs.  My colleagues and I are now calling on the Senate Democratic leadership to allow this bill to be debated and voted on by the Senate.‬

‪  "On Thursday, the House passed H.Res. 9, which starts the replacement process for the health care law by instructing House committees to assemble commonsense legislation that will actually improve our nation’s health care system and lower costs.  The resolution requires any legislation these committees develop to eliminate job destroying regulations, lower health care premiums by increasing competition and choice, preserve the ability of an individual to keep a health care plan if they like it, provide those with pre-existing conditions access to affordable coverage, reform the liability system and increase the number of insured Americans while not encouraging the insolvency of entitlement plans and increasing taxes on hard-working Americans. ‬

‪ "Next Tuesday, the President will be coming to Congress to give the annual State of the Union address.  I hope to hear from him that we can work together to cut out-of-control Washington spending and create jobs.  On the House floor, we will be considering a resolution to reduce non-security spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels for the remainder the year. We will also consider legislation to end the taxpayer funding of presidential election campaigns and party conventions, a proposal that could save Americans $520 million.  This is a spending cut American taxpayers chose as part of the YouCut program to reduce federal spending and the deficit.