2011 Annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity

Location: Nationals Park Stadium

Description:
2011 Annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity
July 14 – 7:05

Since 1909 the Congressional Baseball Game has been the only annual partisan showdown beloved by all and enjoyed by thousands. Every year, with a few interruptions, Senate and House members of each party team up to settle scores and solidify friendships off the floor and on the field. Members usually sport the uniform of their home states and districts, and although proportional representation is not required, elected officials of many states play to win every year. Over the last century the Congressional Baseball Game’s popularity has contributed to its evolution into a fundraiser for two worthy and effective DC area charities, The Washington Literacy Council, and The Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington.

(From RollCall.com Vault)

It’s often much tougher and more expensive to see representatives play hardball up close in Washington, so at only $10 a ticket the game is a fiscally responsible way to have a whole lot of fun!

Congressional Baseball Game Nationals Ticket Offer
Enjoying discounted Nationals tickets is as easy as 1-2-3

- Visit nationals.com/tickets and click the green “T” box next to the game that you select.
- On the ticket purchase page, enter the coupon code GOV2011 and then click the “Apply” button next to it. The page will then refresh and the discounting pricing and seating areas will appear.
- Select a seating area and number of tickets that you would like to purchase.

Tickets start at a 33% discount and can include up to $15 Food/Beverage credit at Nationals concession stands!

You never know who you’ll see there

Start Time: 19:05
Date: 2011-07-14

Buy Tickets

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First Friday Returns w/ SE Cupp

We’ve got a big night tonight. First of all, join us 5:30 to 9:00 PM tonight as we return to Union Pub to kick off the summer. We will be joined by best-selling author and political commentator SE Cupp.

In addition, the new liberal First Friday knock off, creatively titled “First Thursdays,” (read more here: http://goprockstars.com/?p=821) has inspired the Washington Post to write a story about which is better. Let’s make sure we leave them no doubt.

Finally make sure to follow our new Twitter account and like our new Facebook fanpage.

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/ItsFirstFriday
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-First-Friday/222312621121196

See you tonight. Be there or be talked about.

Cheers,
Rich and Tom

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Location: SVC 212
Link out: Click here
Description: George Washington U reception hosted by Sen. Conrad and Rep. Stearns
rsvp w/ discover@gwu.edu
May 24 6-8pm
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2011-05-24
End Time: 20:00

Paul Ryan‘s 2012 Budget

…heads to the Senate this week. What do you think?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

After you take the poll, check out our April 6′s Member of the Week Paul Ryan article.

sweet jacket + scarf combo

Member of the Week : Tom Coburn – Junior Senator from Oklahoma

Sometimes you have to stand up and applaud.  You have to applaud the complete lunacy that rears its ugly head on occasion within Congress.  Despite resigning from office on May 3, the ghost of John Ensign, and the ludicrous affair that has derailed his career/life, continues to engulf his closest friends and colleagues.  A report released on May 12 by the Senate Ethics Committee has shown that Senator Tom Coburn played a more active role than previously known in the negotiations between Ensign and his former aide – and the husband of the wife Ensign slept with – Doug Hampton.  An active figure in the Republican Party, Thomas Allen Coburn faces a frantic fight for survival and continued legitimacy within his own realm.

Coburn’s journey to the spotlight in which he finds himself started in Casper, Wyoming.  Born on March 14, 1948, Coburn grew up in a religious family and was known as a rambunctious kid; his penchant for trouble led his uncle to nickname him “Stinkweed.”  He attended Oklahoma State University, where during his senior year he served as President of the College of Business Student Council.  He graduated with a B.S. in accounting in 1970 and returned home with his wife Carolyn, 1967’s Miss Oklahoma, and went to work for his father’s company, Coburn Optical Services.

He quickly proved his keenness for management.  From 1970 to 1978, Coburn served as manufacturing manager at the Ophthalmic Division of Coburn Optical Industries.  Under his leadership, sales increased from $100,00 to $40 million, the Virginia division of Coburn Optical grew from 13 employees to more than 350, and the business captured %35 of the U.S. market.

In 1975, Coburn was diagnosed with malignant melanoma.  He eventually recovered but the ordeal lead him to pursue a medical degree from the University of Oklahoma’s medical school.  He graduated with honors in 1983 and immediately opened a medical practice in Muskogee, Oklahoma.  Over the course of his career in obstetrics, he treated over 15,000 patients and delivered 4,000 babies.  During this time, Coburn also served as a deacon in a Southern Baptist Church.  He is currently one of two licensed doctors currently serving in the Senate

Coburn entered Congress in 1994 as part of a new class of fervently conservative Republicans.  He defeated 71-year old retired teacher Virgil Cooper by a 52%-48% margin, becoming the first Republican to represent Oklahoma’s 2^nd District since 1921.  He spent much of his six years in the House working on health-related legislation, including laws that required AIDS counseling for pregnant women and labels on condoms disclosing that they didn’t prevent infections that lead to cervical cancer.  He played an influential role in reforming welfare and led efforts to balance the budget through countless proposed amendments.  Moreover, he earned a reputation as a political maverick due to his frequent battles with House Speaker Newt Gingrich stemming from Coburn’s belief that the Republican caucus was moving toward the political center.

In 2000, Coburn kept his pledge to serve only three terms in office and returned to Muskogee to practice medicine.  Retired but not one to shy away from controversy, Coburn wrote Breach of Trust. Detailing Coburn’s perspective on the internal Republican Party debates over the Contract with America, the book displayed a personal disdain for career politicians.  Moreover, Coburn criticized past and present Republican figures, leading to speculations that some congressional Republicans wanted no part of Coburn in politics.  His blunt critique of the insider politics within his party and that of Capitol Hill established him as an outsider, a man of the people who acknowledged the rotten core of the system he once called home.

Not surprisingly, his return to politics was more of a question of when and not if.  After practicing medicine for four years, Coburn saw his chance to re-enter politics in 2004.  In spite of announcing he wouldn’t be running for Senate in a 2003 press release, Coburn changed his mind the next day and entered the race – months after his opponents.  Challenging the Republican establishment in the process, Coburn faced Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys in the Republican primary.  In spite of Humphrey having the support of the state’s Republican leadership, Coburn secured the primary with 61% of the vote.  He went on to face then-Rep. Brad Carson who had succeeded Coburn in his House seat in 2000.

In the general election, Coburn established himself as an opponent of pork-barrel spending and corruption in Washington.  His focus on spending reduction, and his reputation for fighting the practice of awarding federal dollars to special interest causes, won him supporters that otherwise disagreed with him on social issues.  He eventually won with 53% of the vote.  He was easily re-elected in 2010.

His voting record in the Senate is as conservative and confrontational as his House record.  His staunch conservative values have resulted in a non-conformal voting record –only 80% of the time with Republican Party – and unusual political stances.  In 2000 he sponsored a bill to prevent the Food and Drug Administration from developing, testing, or approving the abortifacient RU-486.  Though the bill failed in the House, Coburn sparked controversy with his remark on the issue of abortion, “I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life.”  Moreover, his opposition to earmarks has annoyed many senators, Republicans and Democrats, due to his preferred tactics of filibustering and stalling bills he thinks are too wasteful.

Thomas Allen “Tom” Coburn is a polarizing figure.  A man with a network that includes far-right conservative leaders and surprisingly, Barack Obama, Tom Coburn faces a true test of his convictions in the coming months.  The toxicity of the John Ensign scandal is threatening to derail Coburn’s reputation as an outsider stuck in the insider treachery of Capitol Hill.  Tom Coburn pledged to retire from the Senate in 2016 prior to the Ensign scandal.  One can’t help to feel that Coburn can’t have that date come soon enough.

–Amendment202

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Eric Cantor – House Majority Leader & Young Gun

Eric Cantor

Next Friday – April 8^th – something could happen that hasn’t happened since the Clinton Administration: a federal government shutdown.  For five days in November 1995 and 21 days between December 1995 and January 1996, major portions of the federal government became inoperative.  In the first shutdown, 800,000 workers stopped heading into the office.  In the second, about 284,000 stayed home, with an additional 475,000 working on “non-pay status.”  The shutdown cost the economy nearly $1.4 billion.  Adding to this possibility, the Department of Treasury has stated that the U.S. debt ceiling – if not raised by Congress – could be reached between April 15 and May 31.  One of the key power brokers involved in both debates – and the Member of the Week – Eric Cantor is House Majority Leader and Representative for Virginia’s 7^th District.

An anointed “rising star”, Eric Cantor is by all means the future of the Republican Party.  He was born into a wealthy family in which both parents were active in the community; his father sat on the Housing Authority Board, and his mother was on the boards of the Family and Children’s Trust Fund and the Science Museum of Virginia.  Furthermore, his father was the state treasurer for Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign.  Cantor’s involvement in politics began at a relatively young age.  During his freshman year at George Washington University he interned for then-Rep. Thomas Bliley (R-VA), serving as his driver for his 1982 campaign.  In his senior year, he worked for a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.

In 1992 – and at the age of 28 – Cantor ran for the seat left vacant by his former boss in the Virginia House of Delegates.  Despite being young, he out-organized and out-raised his rivals to win.  The ability to organize and fundraise exceptionally well would eventually become Cantor’s calling card.  While in the state house, Cantor frequently sided with business, passing bills that limited the amount of money Virginia-based Phillip Morris was required to pay in tobacco lawsuits and killing legislation that would have reduced telemarketing calls.

Eric Cantor’s fundraising prowess came to the forefront in 2000 when Cantor decided to run for Bliley’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.  It should be noted that Virginia’s 7^th District (numbered as the 3^rd District prior to 1993) is strongly Republican.  In fact, the district has been in Republican control since 1981.  With this in mind, the Republican primary is usually a much closer affair than the general election.  During the primary in 2000, Cantor faced a full frontal assault from a state senator accusing him of being an elitist who didn’t understand the problems of his constituents.  Cantor struck back in the only way he knew how, out-spending his rival by almost four to one.  In spite of his spending power, Cantor won by only 263 votes.  In the general election he won with 67 percent of the vote.

In 2002 – only weeks after being reelected – Eric Cantor was chosen by Roy Blunt to serve as Chief Deputy Republican Whip, the highest appointed position in the Republican caucus.  During his six-year tenure as deputy whip under Blunt, Cantor became caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandals.  In 2003, he and other Republicans signed a letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton opposing a plan by the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians to open a casino near another one owned by the Coushattas, an Abramoff client.  Adding to this, Abramoff also raised $30,000 for Cantor.

After the election cycle in 2008, in which Cantor helped launch a successful fundraising program – raising $60 million in the process – to protect GOP House incumbents and capture open House seats, he was unanimously elected Republican Whip for the 111^th Congress.  As a result, Cantor became the first member of either party from Virginia to hold position of Party Whip.  On January 3, 2011, he became the Majority Leader when the 112^th Congress took office.

Eric Cantor’s growing power and influence cannot be understated.  As the sole Jewish Republican in the House, he is the highest beneficiary of pro-Israel campaign dollars.  He has used these connections to bridge the divide between wealthy Israeli donors and Republicans, pushing the party to take a stronger stand on Israeli issues.  In regards to the current budget and debt ceiling debate, Cantor has all but ruled out another short-term continuing resolution next week absent a budget deal.  His stance is important for two reasons.  First, as House Majority Leader he controls pacing of legislation on the House floor and will decide the scheduling of any future continuing resolution to keep the government operating past next Friday.  Second, his firm stance risks undercutting efforts by John Boehner to bridge differences with Senate Democrats and President Obama.

Fundraising Machine

Furthermore, Cantor has made it known that the House will hold off on raising the government’s debt limit until Washington is closer to exhausting its $14.3 trillion credit line and until tax revenues can better indicate when the debt ceiling needs to be raised.  This is important, as the must-pass debt limit increase will be leveraged to rein in future spending.

The future of the Republican Party is perhaps directly seen in Eric Cantor.  In the 2007-2008 election cycle he and three other Republicans started the Young Gun Program as a Member driven organization of House Republicans dedicated to electing open seat and challenger candidates nationwide.  In the fall of 2010, Cantor, along with the two other founding members of Young Guns, wrote a New York Times bestselling book, Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders. In the book Cantor laid out the vision of creating “a clear agenda based on common sense for the common good” within the Republican Party.  Whether or not this “agenda” is created remains to be seen but regardless the actions of Cantor will define the Republican Party.

– Amendment202

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