The few signs of spring in Southern Missouri are welcome reminders that baseball is nearly back again. Nothing embodies the hope of springtime like the prospect of taking your favorite team to the playoffs, or even to the World Series.
Well, I can think of one thing better than winning a World Series: winning two of them in a row.
This is what the St. Louis Cardinals have set out to do, from the first day of Spring Training. The immense pressure to repeat last year’s heroics is squarely on the shoulders of a team which is – for me – easy to root for.
I lived and died with every pitch of the playoffs last year. Each hard-fought victory, each amazing moment, each gritty comeback told a short story about the greatness of the game of baseball. No sport is so dramatic.
Then, when the team came to Washington, DC this winter as World Champions, I got the chance to meet many of the players. The St. Louis Cardinals earned their championship with heroics on the field, but they are just as deserving of the great recognition they get off the field for their character and kindness.
This good group of guys cleans up well. They are bright, they exemplify to all of us what is possible with hard work and perseverance, and they possess a community spirit which makes them active in communities around Missouri and around the country. As role models, we couldn’t ask for better players or a better organization.
In 14 years, the organization’s charitable arm, Cardinals Care, has contributed $14 million to non-profit community efforts. Add to that the invaluable presence of Cardinals players in hospitals, at community events throughout the region, teaching boys and girls all over Missouri the finer points of baseball, and acting as an inspirational presence to young people who see a model for service.
None of the things Cardinals players do off the field will help them win championships, but it doesn’t stop them from participating in the lives of the people who look up to them. It shouldn’t stop us, either.
As the baseball season gets underway, it is well worth remembering the importance of being active in our communities. Even baseball players who get paid millions to play a game for a living still find ways to volunteer. When they give back to the community, they make it possible for us to share the thrill of their victories as fans, and more. We are partners in their efforts to make life a little better for those who most need our help.
Remember, in no other sport is there a play called a “sacrifice,” but in baseball, even a player who makes an out can get credit for helping move a runner over, bringing in a run and contributing to the success of the team.
I’m very excited to see these young men take the field again this year. Win or lose, they will continue to be an example to us all that the more we give – the more we get.
Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the Eighth District of Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives.
By Jo Ann Emerson
When the Supreme Court commits six hours to hearing arguments about the health care law on March 28, multiple points of view will be raised around a core issue in the Affordable Care Act. The central argument of the case against the law is that the individual mandate is unconstitutional because the government cannot force you to engage in a specific economic behavior.
Most criminal laws prohibit certain behaviors, like speeding or violence. But the Affordable Care Act fines Americans for doing nothing – in this case for not buying health insurance.
It’s a good argument. As Americans we enjoy the freedom to not do something if we choose. We don’t have to get out of bed in the morning, we don’t have to eat peas, and we don’t have to attend military parades in the square of our Dear Leader. There are consequences to all of these choices, but the bottom line is that, as Americans, we are free to decide what is best for ourselves. The story is not the same around the world, under dictatorships in North Korea or Iran.
So what can the government require Americans to do?
One of the attorneys set to argue the Supreme Court case says that, without any limiting factors in the Affordable Care Act, the government can force Americans to buy all kinds of things, like buying cars to help improve the American auto industry.
Obviously, that is an extreme case and a hypothetical one, but the point is well-taken. Consider that the aim of the ACA is to strengthen our health care system by drawing funding and participation into it (and into the U.S. Treasury). People who are otherwise healthy are forced to pay – either through premiums or through penalties – to support that system. A major argument of the ACA is that the health care system needs more healthy customers, and the only way to convince healthy people to get insurance is to fine them if they do not.
And there you have the constitutional crisis under consideration at the Supreme Court in less than a month.
In a similar way, the government obtained the power under the ACA to mandate insurance coverage on Americans for certain medical tests, screenings or interventions. It’s not just the fact that the government is forcing Americans to buy insurance, but very specific policies. They may be expensive to purchase or to provide, they may be unneeded by the customer, and they may conflict with the advice of your doctor. Still others contradict the moral beliefs of the insurance provider as recently demonstrated by the mandate on religious organizations like charities and private schools to provide abortion drugs. Some estimates indicate the mandates could end up accounting for 20 percent of the cost of the premium.
The ACA, simply put, uses mandates instead of markets.
This is not the way to expand access to Americans who need coverage. The burden of the mandate should not be on free Americans, it should be on the insurers and health care providers to serve every one of their willing customers with an affordable product or service. There are far more creative, compelling, workable and constitutional ways to create incentives to achieve this goal than the sweeping expansion of government powers embedded in the new health law.
Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the Eighth District of Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives.
By Jo Ann Emerson
The president’s budget is really just a stack of paper. It is only as serious as the administration offering it. That said, the budget proposal offered President Obama an important opportunity to turn away from irresponsible deficit spending, trim the size of federal government, and commit to a responsible path forward.
Instead, the president’s budget was late, it was huge, and it offered only more of what we have come to expect from this administration when it comes to spending: lots of spending.
To be precise, the Obama budget projects a $1.3 trillion deficit for FY 2013. This marks the fourth year in a row in which the president would run up a trillion-dollar deficit, incurring $5.8 trillion in debt during his term of office. Since 2008, our nation’s total indebtedness has increased by a full 50 percent, and the president sees little reason to deviate from this course.
Even in a highly political year, the budget proposal includes $2 trillion in taxes – a stern reminder that it is the American people who fund the operations of our federal government. Mostly though income taxes, we pay for every bureaucrat and every program that the president proposes to fund.
And this budget would increase the funding for hundreds of federal programs, agencies and departments with very little justification.
The Congress will say “no” to the president’s budget with little debate. But every American who wants to see a reduction in the amount of federal spending and the size of federal government should remark on the president’s budget proposal as proof that we do not have a like-minded partner in the White House.
A good example is in the bill I wrote into law last year to fund the portion of government that deals primarily with financial services. I cut the president’s budget request for this fiscal year by 25 percent, sending the strong message that we would not tolerate and could not afford his proposal. We need a budget rooted in reality.
Notwithstanding the bipartisan support for the cuts I proposed, the president’s budget for the next fiscal year increases spending in those same areas by 7.7 percent -- $1.7 billion.
On the budget, this president will not budge.
Congress should not yield, either. We have a long way to go to put our country back on a sustainable path to growth. Cutting spending is only half of the equation, and creating a competitive regulatory and tax environment is the other. These problems deserve our full attention now and in the years to come.
In the meantime, we must continue to make the commonsense case for trimming the budget, year after year, where it has grown too big, where it doesn’t provide taxpayers a return on their money, and especially where it is shown to be vulnerable to waste and fraud. These examples abound, and a responsible Congress must keep finding them and asking tough questions about why they should be funded as the president asks.
Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the Eighth District of Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Keeping the family farm or ranch in the family is a point of pride for lots of folks in Southern Missouri.
Understandably so. Many Missouri families carved a living from the land more than a century ago, and their small businesses have weathered the bad years and prospered in better times. Still other families have aspired to own a ranch or a farm, and poured decades of effort into making that dream come true.
These families put the “culture” in agriculture, and it is a culture of hard work, perseverance, respect for the land, pride in feeding the nation and the world, and belief in the permanence of agriculture as a vocation best run by families and not corporations.
All of that long and storied and successful tradition is put at risk by rules from the Department of Labor which threaten to classify the children of farm families as illegal child laborers. For feeding livestock, for driving a tractor, for working at an auction or for doing farm chores, these new rules would levy fines and hand down punishments.
Worse, the regulations would discourage a young generation of future farmers and future ranchers from taking up agriculture and keeping their family businesses alive. These rules would kill the aspiration of young Americans to own their own land, build their own businesses, and take care of the resources that provide so much to rural communities in return.
Here is a story which is not uncommon in Southern Missouri: I know a young farmer who is just 21 years old. He used his earnings from farm work to buy calves. He raised the calves and sold them at auction, and he saved that money, too. He’s just bought a house using the proceeds of raising livestock as his down payment. This young man is on his way thanks to the work ethic and the proceeds of his budding business.
Working odd jobs at the ranch down the road, raising a calf for sale at auction, helping out at harvest – new rules threaten all these crucial, exciting, educational and just-plain-fun parts of growing up in Southern Missouri. These restrictions remove an opportunity like that young farmer had to get ahead by getting an early start. It’s not so much the money he earned; it’s the experience he learned that will serve him best.
We are up against a rule-making government that doesn’t understand, or even try to understand, much about rural America. Bureaucrats want to regulate dust on our farms, force us to store milk as though it is crude oil, and run our agriculture and manufacturing economy on solar power. They don’t realize, above all, that agriculture is deeply engrained in many of our families, vital to much of our economy, and it forms the basis of our character.
Starting this education in ethics at an early age is essential to passing the family business on to the next generation.
Ask a farmer or rancher in Southern Missouri today when they first sat on a tractor or took an animal to auction – they’ll tell you age five, age eight. They’ll tell you they knew then that the family business was in their blood. And children who grew up on farms and embarked on totally different careers will tell you the same thing, before noting how the farm or ranch experience makes them better nurses or police officers or shopkeepers.
Ask those same members of our agriculture community in Missouri if they would ever put their own children at risk or allow them to work without giving them the tools they need to be safe. Never – not a chance. We don’t need a federal agency to tell us when our children can start on the farm or the ranch. It is up to parents to decide when to teach the life lessons to make these kids, and their own farms and ranches, successful in the future.
Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the Eighth District of Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Religious freedom has a long and proud history in America. From the very first pilgrims to cross the Atlantic, to the religious freedom established in colonial charters, to the Bill of Rights – it is a basic premise that Americans have the right to worship as they wish. This is one of our most treasured liberties.
Since the birth of our nation, however, the relationship between church and state has grown more and more complicated. Today, this tension is playing out on the issue of abortion, against a backdrop of one of the most controversial laws enacted in our time.
The Affordable Care Act, the health care law passed in 2010, mandates a slew of behaviors never before required by the U.S. bureaucracy. Many of them are explicitly referred to in the law, like the individual mandate to carry health insurance. That aspect of the ACA is currently the subject of a Supreme Court challenge by 26 states.
Other parts of the health care law, however, are the product of rules and regulations decided upon by the various agencies charged with implementing the legislation. The most glaring example of how the federal government is abusing the powers granted to it by the law deals with religious organizations. Religious schools, religious charities and religious organizations which offer insurance are required by the new rules to provide coverage for contraceptives, sterilization and drugs that induce abortions. Despite the moral objections of our many religious institutions to these practices, they are being forced to cover them with insurance.
Conscience protections are vital to religious providers of health care. They prevent the government from requiring abortions be conducted in hospitals that object, performed by doctors who object, and paid for by charities who object. And in the realm of insurance, these protections are equally important to prevent taxpayers and religious organizations from subsidizing the use of abortion drugs.
Our Founders decided that religious belief should never be subjected to the force of the government. They also believed the opposite to be true. I doubt they would see eye to eye with an administration which believes the government has the power to treat religious organizations with faith-based missions in the same way as they treat secular organizations with secular aims.
Matters of conscience extend, too, to the fact that the religious organizations covered by the mandate are participating in coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion drugs even if those insured by the plan never use those services. Supporting the insurance policies that cover these services is tantamount to subsidizing the services themselves. In the same way as a restaurant bill split five ways forces you to pay a little for the appetizer even if you didn’t eat any, these insurance plans force religious organizations to pay a little for the contraception, sterilization and abortion drugs of others.
There is no reason for the federal rules to cover religious organizations with objections of conscience. Now, more than ever, it is critical to protect our religious institutions – and taxpayers – from the expensive intrusions of a government bent on legislating life.
Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau represents the Eighth District of Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives.
