Out-of-Control Government Spending Has Real Consequences

• On the last business day of 2023, the federal government reached a grim milestone: $34 trillion in gross debt. The share for each household in the country is roughly $260,000.
• Overspending has been a driving force behind the wave of inflation that started in 2021. Rising interest rates, mostly in response to inflation, have pushed home mortgages out of reach for millions of families.
• The House and Senate are currently haggling over annual spending bills that were supposed to have been done months ago.
• While House Republicans are seeking modest reductions to parts of the bloated federal bureaucracy, the Democratic-led Senate wants to maintain the big-spending status quo.
• Buried in the spending bills are thousands of itemized requests known as earmarks. These are mostly local-level projects that provide obvious political benefits to legislators who want to “bring home the bacon.” Stopping wasteful and absurd earmarks would be a first step toward restoring fiscal sanity to Washington.
• Americans have endured real economic pain over the last few years as a result of Washington’s mismanagement. If Congress doesn’t get its act together on budgeting, the worst may be yet to come.

Schedule an Interview: David Ditch

Filing Alleges 'Improper' Relationship Between Georgia DA, Top Trump Prosecutor

• Motion filed by defendant Michael Roman in the RICO prosecution in Georgia raises serious concerns about the ethics of the Fulton County prosecutor, Fani Willis, and whether she may have violated state and federal law.
• The motion alleges a romantic relationship between Willis and the private attorney she hired to act as a special prosecutor in her case against Donald Trump and other defendants, including Roman.
• Willis has approved payments of over half a million dollars to that attorney.
• The alleged payment by the special prosecutor for vacation trips for himself and Willis raises questions not only about Willis’s ethics and professional judgement, but whether she engaged in honest services fraud, which makes it a federal crime for a vendor to give kickbacks to an employer.
• The motion also alleges that Willis misled county officials in seeking extra funds to pay the private attorney and never sought the county’s approval to hire him as a special prosecutor, as required by Georgia law.
• Willis was previously cited by a local court for her unethical conduct in publicly disclosing her targeting of a former state senator in this prosecution at a fundraiser for the senator’s opponent in a race for lieutenant governor of Georgia.
• This motion should be heard by the trial judge, possibly investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta for honest services fraud, and/or sent to the State Bar of Georgia’s Office of the General Counsel for possible violation of state ethics rules.

Schedule an Interview: Hans von Spakovsky and Cully Stimson

Voting Fraud Is Widespread

• The 2020 election involved a criminal voter fraud scheme with mass absentee ballots and phony voter registrations, according to the Justice Department and the New Jersey attorney general.
• As explained in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” election fraud cases are more easily detectable in some states than others. And far too often, remedies to curb absentee ballot fraud are unfairly smeared.
• The prosecutions and convictions brought within the last three months — ranging from illegal voting and ballot tampering to fraudulent registration — underscore the vulnerabilities in the electoral system.
• As these cases unfold, they underscore the importance of continuous efforts to strengthen election laws and protect the vote as we move into 2024 — enabling us to safeguard the democratic foundations of the United States.

Schedule an Interview: Fred Lucas