U.S. Congressman Michael C. Burgess, M.D. 26th District of Texas

Stick to guns and force POTUS to act now. He is not our President, and we are so frustrated with his politics which lie every day. Keep up the good work and add pressure every opportunity. We will defeat him in 2012...

I appreciate passage of the Medicare fix however I don't quite follow how continuing the reduced FICA tax will produce jobs. If you are paying FICA, you already have a job. Be sure the Keystone project is not an environmental disaster before it is approved. In a related area all that fracking in Texas to release trapped gas promises to leave behind a big mess. Do you realize what they pump down the well to release the gas?

Raiding the underfunded Social Security Fund to provide tax relief is unconscionable! You don't fix one problem by creating another problem. If you want to target the same people for tax relief as this bill, then replace those funds from the government's General Fund. Next cut spending by the same amount of money you took from the general Fund. It shouldn't be that difficult to cut spending. Here's some practical ideas: 1. Phase out incrementally over five years, the one trillion dollars a year in annual government subsidies. 2. Pay government workers (including Senators and Congressman) wages, pensions, and benefits as compared to the averages in private business. Also stop paying management and professional workers overtime. 3. Any Federal agency dispensing welfare or similar benefits should be limited to personnel and administrations costs of a maximum of 5% of total budget, same as a good charity. 4. Government employee promotions and merit increases will be based on doing more with less resources. Demotions for those that increase staff and spending. 5 We spend more on defense than the next largest 20 militaries combined. Strong defense is critically important, but a 20% cut properly applied (e.g. close unneeded military bases) will still keep us very strong. 6. Keep unemployment pay at maximum 26 weeks as originally intended. Government's own studies indicate more than half the unemployed do not look for work until two weeks prior to their unemployment benefits running out. To have extended it to 99 weeks was unconscionable. 7. Drastically cut bloated staffs for Senators and Congressman (some have 100 staff members). You get six each max, plus each political party gets two for each Seantor and Congressman, to work centrally for all Senators and Congressman. When a bill is being legislated, instead of having each of 535 members having their staff review and analyze which is much duplication of work, these central political groups can do for all within the same political party. 8. Find a way to cut government employees by 20%. Adopting some of the above idesa will put a good dent in that goal.

Six companies have already contracted for three-quarters of the oil. Five are foreign, and the business model of the one American company — Valero — is geared toward export. So almost none of the oil will reduce our dependence on imports. TransCanada's own study stated that no more than 2,500-4,650 temporary direct construction jobs lasting two years will be created. There are also hazards for the Ogallala Aquifer and a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. So who is winning here?

The latest bill will probably not do the job, but at least the House and our Representative are trying. All this sudden :MIDDLE CLASS" retoric started by the WHITE HOUSE is laughable, WE WERE in the middle class until POTUS OBAMA tanked the economy,

For goodness sakes. A job is a job. One job is better than NO job. So all of you analysts get a grip on yourselves and exhale...

Unlike the earlier Trillion dollars I heard little about what was in this bill. I did hear that no one had read the whole thing. I did not think cutting the Social Security tax was a good idea the first time and it was only suppose to be temporary and now more millions are going to come out of the SS fund, which isn't funding fast enough as it is. Talk about DUMB. Another TRILLION dollars and not a single CUT yet. Create WHAT JOBS! Unemployment benifits does not create jobs. The pipeline and doing away with Dodd/Frank and most of the EPA regulations and OBAMA CARE, that would create jobs. We need a new speaker of the House and members of the House that CUT spending, and not one Trillion over 10 years, but one Trillion every year, if not more. Somebody up there needs to know when to STOP digging the hole.

Another Trillion dollas on a bill no one has read. Is this a re-run? Unlike the earlier "don't shut down the government" bill, we did not hear much about this "fight". I can't see how it is anything but dumb to take money from Social Security and complain about there being to little funding of it. It is stealing, does not create a single job. Unemployment benifits do not create jobs. The pipeline, repeal of Dodd/Frank, and most of the EPA regulations that would create jobs. I did not see jobs being created on the first "tempoary" tax cut. Cut income tax, not Social Security tax. The whole SS system needs to be overhaled but not funding it is not the way to do it. Another trillion and not a single cut. We need a trillion cut each year. We also need a new Speaker of the House. One that knows how to cut and not spend. No wonder the approval rating of Congress is so low.

I want to know that you read the bill before you voted on it. You just voted to spend $1 trillion. Why? The government is disfunctional and continues to spend money we don't have. The only way to move forward is to cut more than we spend. You are contributing to the bankruptcy of this country by failing to insist on REAL cuts not just the politically expedient cuts in the growth rate of spending. Reducing FICA is simply wrong when everyone in congress and the President knows SS is going bankrupt. Political cowardice should be a crime.

And, all the natural gas that is being extracted from our shale formations and then compressed, processed and distributed is also not going to the U.S. alone. More of it all the time is going to other countries serving the gods of profit, not energy independance. We truly are fools and deserve what comes next.

There is little or no reason to believe that the oil delivered by the Keystone Pipeline would be shipped to foreign countries when demand is so high here. The impact will be significant and may reduce the international price for oil as we develop leases to reduce dependency on foreign sources. I understand that the oil field near Williston, N.Dakota is adding 3,000 high paying jobs per month. The pipeline will employ thousands of high paying jobs directly and many jobs indirectly. Obama needs to stand up to the tree huggers and pass this legislation.

I am a veteran of 32 years in a corporate environment and would suggest the following common business practices for deficit reduction. - Enact a five percent across the board budget reduction against CURRENT budgets. Allow latitude in how each dept chooses to reduce. Some may cut headcount while others may choose to delay purchase of office equipment or other items. Generate monthly or quarterly actual budget reports and punish noncompliance with dismissal, demotion or other punitive action. No business is so efficient that it can't squeeze five percent out of its working budget. - Alter government accounting standards to comply with the same GAAP standards that private sector businesses are required to follow. This will expose the legislative smoke and mirrors commonly used in crafting legislation. Hold government department heads criminally accountable for fiduciary misconduct in the same manner as their private sector counterparts. - Determine a set point at which the deficit is considered manageable by non partisan economic determinants and restrict budgetary growth to inflation only until that set point is reached.. - Establish compensation parity by freezing wage and benefit increases of all federal employees until parity with the private sector has been reached. That may cause some attrition but then that's generally a good thing. The HAY plan is a tool commonly used by private sector businesses to determine average wage and compensation levels by industry and it or a competing methodology should be adopted as a standard . No one at my wife's large cap corporate employer has received a raise in the last 3 years and I suspect that policy is more a norm than an exception in the private sector.. .

I have already called the office of The Honorable Michael Burgess as well as sent a written message to him giving sound reasons and requesting that he vote AGAINST this bill. Mr. Ronald Puma of Copper Canyon is right!!! Most of the activities in Congress are unconscionable!!! I write, I call, I FAX, I plead but Congressman Burgess just votes his own pleasure. I am extremely disappointed.

I agree with Ronal Puma. He needs to run for President! I'd vote for him!

I thought Republicans lived and breathed for tax cuts, and now you're balking at extending a tax break for over 160 million middle class Amercians? And you insist they must be paid for? When you slashed taxes on the wealthy by over 1.3 trillion dollars in the early 2000s, they were not paid for. Why is that? What about the millions upon millions of jobs that was supposed to create? What about the trillion dollar spending for the war in Iraq, that was never paid for?

Alex from Frisco got the point. Where are the real jobs and the heck with this fake "job creators" aka Rich millionaires that are planning on taking a longer vacation overseas, buy a better foreign car from overseas, buy nicers things from overseas with tax breaks that the GOP give them to "create jobs" here in the US. (lol) Then what happens when Oil Pipeline have problems and cause more environmental issues in Texas for Texans that are not benefiting from it anyway. Sounds to me like more Big Money Oil companies padding the pockets of some local politicians. As Alex put it: Six companies have already contracted for three-quarters of the oil. Five are foreign, and the business model of the one American company — Valero — is geared toward export. So almost none of the oil will reduce our dependence on imports. TransCanada's own study stated that no more than 2,500-4,650 temporary direct construction jobs lasting two years will be created. There are also hazards for the Ogallala Aquifer and a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions. So who is winning here?

For all these posts about the Keystone Pipeline, does anyone of you know the details of the effort?

Once again, Dr. Burgess and his fellow travelers have shown that they believe a couple of constituents wearing tri corner hats are the people who they are representing. It will be interesting come November 2012 to see how many of the first term GOP representatives are returned to their previous positions. Lets hope that Dr. Burgess will be able to return to his medical practice in Lewisville. Hopefully, he has kept up on his CME's.

The good doctor has voted the party line since taking his place during the Bush Administration. Her voted for all of the $6.1 Trillion in spending deficits created by the Bush administration;. Nerver an independent thought just towing the party line.

I am tired of the naysayers. In a ten year period America built the Hoover Dam, Golden Gate and Chesapeake Bay Bridge as well as the Empire State Building. Today with EPA, OSHA, NLRB and who knows what else you could not even get a study done. The sky may be falling but I want a stinking job, build the pipeline, drill for oil or whatever. I want a job not another year of unemployment.