A family is never closer (or more challenged) than when a new family member enters the picture. For millions of Americans, this means bringing an adopted child into the warm, caring environment of a new home.
November is National Adoption Month, and it is also a good moment to point out how social service professionals, foster parents, and adoptive families make tremendous sacrifices on behalf of children all over the world. As they work to find permanent homes for orphans and foster children, these individuals and organizations give an incredible gift to children who need a safe, permanent and loving place to live.
For some of these children, they are growing up with adoptive parents they will know and love nearly from birth. For others who are older, the adoption process is a second chance for a stable home. For our nation as a whole, the act of adoption, completed thousands of times each week, demonstrates our respect for life, our belief in the American dream, and the capacity for love within our strong families.
In America, nearly a quarter of a million children entered the foster care system last year. Just as many foster children exited the system, mostly by reunifying with their families (50 percent) or through adoption (25 percent). Still today, hundreds of thousands of American children await adoption into a new home with new hope.
Children from around the world come to America as adoptees, and there is no more powerful statement about the openness and compassion of our nation than that. Between 1999 and 2010, more than 224,000 children from foreign countries were adopted in the United States, and last year 241 adoptions of foreign children were completed in Missouri. Nationwide, whether it was one of 64,000 children from China or one of the two children from Turkmenistan, an American family opened their doors and their arms to a child who will have an unparalleled opportunity in this country.
Children with special needs, too, find loving and accepting homes with parents who take on the responsibility for a young life and its new challenges. Each adoption in America is as unique and special as each live birth.
There is a federal role in supporting adoption: making sure that parents of adopted children have the same rights as those with children who are natural-born and ensuring fairness through the visa process for adoption. Every year, several families seeking assistance with the adoption process (often with international adoptions) seek assistance from my congressional office. I’m never happier to help.
When we think about our families and our communities, it becomes even more obvious that each of us plays a part in making sure adoption is accepted and encouraged as an alternative to abandonment or abortion. To those who make the ultimate act of familial openness on behalf of a child in need of a home, thank you very much. We are a stronger, healthier, happier nation for your loving sacrifice.
Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the Eighth District of Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives.
An Iranian military official said late last month that their navy plans to send vessels to international waters off the Atlantic coast of the United States in a clear threat to American population centers.
In the minds of most Americans, there are two possibilities. Either the Iranian navy is blustering in the same manner as countless leaders of that country over the years, or this is designed to be a military provocation of the United States. From the perspective of a free nation facing a constant threat of warfare from abroad, America must view this statement as provocative and aggressive.
Iran is on a fool’s errand to intimidate the United States.
During the cold war, aggressors of the United States played this dangerous game, conducting war games and advancing military assets right up to the limit of the American threshold for risk. Those provocations were part of the conflict in an age of nuclear deterrence, but the conflict today between the U.S. and rogue regimes around the world is even more dangerous.
The military and political strategy of states like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela ranges from making radical speeches at the United Nations to openly backing terrorist regimes and organizations.
Whether the Iranians attempt to send ships into the Atlantic or not, their strategy is clear: they are taking advantage of the clear threat that terrorism poses to the security of the American homeland. While their threats are likely no more than a publicity stunt, the Iranians’ desire to provoke the American public with rash actions sends an unintended message to our country. Iran is making an argument for a robust, active, energetic system of national defense in the United States. We cannot afford to let our guard down for one moment, to overextend our military any longer, or to ignore the smallest international threats to our shores.
If military conflicts often divide American public opinion and create fractious arguments in Congress, then the readiness and capability of our national defense systems are issues on which all Americans can agree. There are still many leaders of other countries in the world who wish to do us harm. For their personal political gain or out of sheer madness, they continue to target our free society.
These situations should be met resolutely in the United States by people and leaders who understand that our freedoms are the real object of the threats (whether or not they are backed up by actual aggression). In fear or anger, we are legitimizing the regimes that seek a reaction. By reaffirming our freedoms and our willingness to defend them, on the other hand, we counter their message with a response befitting the service of our men and women in uniform.
Patriotism in the United States has never been about being better than other nations, even though the free society we have built makes us the greatest nation in the world. The nations which oppose us know they cannot destroy this spirit with a bomb or an attack; they know they must deceive us into giving up our greatness by becoming lazy, weak or angry. The chances of that happening are about as good as the chances of an Iranian vessel making it to within 12 nautical miles of the U.S. shore.
Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the Eighth District of Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives.
When the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives (ATF) chose a name for its new border operation in 2009, they ripped it from blockbuster movie posters, calling it “Fast and Furious.” Well, the way they conducted this operation really ought to make Americans furious about the lack of controls and responsibility used in planning this action of the federal government.
Here was the idea: federal agents would sell guns to suspected and known traffickers, who would take the contraband across the border into Mexico where they knew the firearms would most likely be purchased and maybe even used by criminals in another country. Used they were, as more than 2,000 guns were sold as part of the operation, becoming part of a million-dollar illicit arms trade over the southern U.S. border.
For years, ATF lost track of the guns they had let go. Some of them were used in the commission of violent crimes in Mexico, including more than a few murders.
The officials at the highest levels who approved this idea lost sight of a very important goal. They failed to keep the safety of American citizens, Mexican citizens, and the U.S. agents working along the border as their highest priority. The flaws in their plan ought to be clear to anyone who was part of Operation Fast and Furious. The guns disappeared into the night, over the border, on their way through and to some of the most violent gangs in the continent.
The safeguards of responsible gun ownership in the U.S. were exchanged for a knowing transaction with a criminal element, a complete contradiction of the system we use to protect our Second Amendment rights.
The coming weeks will hopefully bring those responsible for the mission to account. At ATF and the U.S. Department of Justice, there is the sense that more is known about the mission than is being shared with the American public and with Congress.
In the meantime, Americans should notice an important truth in all this: I know I have. Illegal traffic over the southern border of the U.S. runs in two directions. Illegal aliens and drugs enter our country through a porous border, and money and guns often travel the other direction. Both black markets are dangerous to our national security, as well as our families’ security.
Securing the border is imperative because it will stop illegal trade and trafficking in both directions. This is an activity federal agencies should be bent on stopping with clear enforcement actions, not imperfect plans like this one.
Operation Fast and Furious is also Frustrating, mainly because the laws we have in place would go a long way to stopping illegal border crossings and trafficking in people and firearms. Until those laws are truly and aggressively enforced, however, we will be left with inferior ideas to target criminals. Giving guns to people who break the laws for a living and then losing track of them should not strike anyone as a better way to get at the heart of the problem. It can be much better addressed with border security, fences, and surveillance of the back doors to our nation.
Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the Eighth District of Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The White House Office of Management and Budget is a repository of rather dry information about the federal government. When OMB says something about how we interact with our federal government, however, it is usually wise to listen.
Last week, the office put out a report quantifying the amount of time Americans spent filling out federal government forms in 2010. The total? You’ll be as shocked as I was, I am sure: 8.8 billion hours.
As Americans, we collectively spent a total of 1,000 years of time on paperwork in a single year. That’s absolutely unbelievable. Every hour spent filling out compliance paperwork, reporting requirements, tax forms, applications, reimbursements, and surveys is an hour small business owners can’t put into growing their business, an hour family members can’t put into their families, an hour that a health care provider can’t dedicate to their patients. Paperwork doesn’t add to our American society; it subtracts.
If the value of each of those 8.8 billion hours was just $20, then the total cost of this colossal burden to our country of compliance with our own government is $176 billion every year.
And paperwork is the chief product of the aggressive regulatory environment in our nation’s capital. The burden on Americans, our families, our businesses and our institutions is growing by the month. Where government should be getting more efficient and less expensive, it is getting bigger and more complicated.
Turning the tide requires us to think in terms of the real world – another thing that does not come easy to bureaucrats in concrete buildings in Washington DC. What’s the real cost of this regulation? What does it mean to a small business faced with a raft of new requirements, forms and instructions? How much more complex will this make filing the average American’s federal tax return? Is this regulation more important than creating a good job in Missouri? Ten jobs? A hundred?
Unfortunately, our federal bureaucracy doesn’t operate this way. Where there should be freedom and individuality, the federal government has an irresistible urge to categorize and corral. That is why our government is not viewed as a partner to innovation, but rather an obstacle.
In the private sector, there is always more work to be done than there are people to do it. The last thing any small business needs is a pair of idle hands. Our agribusinesses, our small businesses and our manufacturers depend on getting the most from their operations in terms of efficiency, quality and productivity. Government paperwork is the ultimate waste of resources. Time and effort go in – but what comes out?
Increasingly, the answer to that question is frustration, frustration, and more frustration. I encounter dozens of Missouri businesses in the Eighth Congressional District each year that need help intervening in a new, ridiculous requirement of a federal agency or just plain understanding the forms they have to fill out to stay in compliance with the law. Our health care providers have it especially bad. Just when they learn how to communicate with the federal government using one set of codes, the bureaucracy produces another set they are forced to use.
Just recently, I saw one such new form. It was meant to replace a 2008 form. The difference between old and new? Nothing. Not one line. I read it from start to finish. Instead of saying 2008 at the end, it will say 2012.
Oh, there was one other small change: The charge of filing a fraudulent claim for failing to use the new form starting next year. Federal forms cost Americans money as well as time, and in many cases today – both.”
Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the Eighth District of Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives
By Jo Ann Emerson
For years, the Environmental Protection Agency has been striving to expand its regulatory reach, issuing standards and making rules for everything it can think of. But just recently the Obama Administration forced the agency to take a step backwards in the implementation of onerous attainment standards for ozone levels in the atmosphere.
The ozone rules, about to go into effect, would have defined four counties in the Eighth Congressional District to be in non-attainment status, meaning that the levels of ozone were too high. In other words, the EPA thinks Southern Missouri has a smog problem.
Wisely, the Obama Administration stepped in and prevented the rulings from taking effect. Before giving them too much credit for their commonsense, however, consider the reason the Administration tugged on the reins of the runaway EPA just this once. Rather than expose the ridiculous nature of the regulations the EPA is writing, the president sought only to delay their implementation, mainly so other, less-obvious rules can continue to move forward.
The ozone regulations are something the extreme environmental community doesn’t want the American public to hear much about. They are so far beyond reason, so adversarial to jobs and our economy, so arbitrary as to discredit the entire movement perhaps beyond repair.
The ozone regulations would have placed portions of Yellowstone National Park in violation of the EPA’s standards, in addition to affecting 85 percent of counties in the nation. Boilers in thousands of schools, hospitals, office buildings and churches would have been affected by the rule – treating those facilities in our own communities just like the EPA treats industrial polluters. And in extreme cases the rule would have forced the destruction of a building for the construction of each new building in a county out of favor with the EPA.
Clearly, these effects are beyond the pale of the powers of the federal government over our states, counties and cities. It is completely absurd for the federal government of the United States to promote rules and regulations that essentially target not just the energy infrastructure of the nation, but also the small businesses and community institutions that account for the bulk of our economic activity and jobs.
The major argument for controlling the size and scope of the federal government is not to make a political point, it’s not even to reduce our national debt, as important as that is. The primary reason to limit our federal government is to free our economy from ridiculous, burdensome, antagonistic regulations that remove authority, jobs and prosperity from local communities now and in the future.
Slowing the enactment of these regulations is no great credit to the Obama Administration, instead it should serve as a warning sign that the federal bureaucracy is making policies, right now, which are incredibly damaging to our communities. Not only is this kind of regulation tone deaf and out of touch, it also runs contrary to the promises politicians make to turn our economy around and to restore our position as an unchallenged global leader – in industry, in prosperity, in freedom… and in common sense.
Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the Eighth District of Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives
