The lede from National Journal Daily’s (subscription required) front page story on Congressional approval of three trade agreements says it all:

The future of U.S exports moves to center stage now that Congress approved trade pacts with South Korea, Colombia and Panama—an achievement that lively will be Congress’s biggest on the trade front for years to come. (Emphasis mine)

Hundreds of thousands of jobs can be created if we take steps to increase our exports.  Approval of the Panama, South Korea and Colombia pacts is an excellent start and should make a strong positive long-term impact on our economy.  It is estimated that these three pacts alone could create over 250,000 here at home.

The National Journal Daily story continues:

Taken together, the three deals represent the largest free-trade agreement since Congress passed the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993. Overall, trade in goods with the three partner countries totaled more than $84 billion in the first seven months of 2011, according to the Census Bureau. The pacts will provide U.S. companies greater access to all three markets as soon as the deals enter into force later this year.

An earlier story from Bloomberg Businessweek highlights some of the economic benefits of each agreement:

The South Korea deal, the biggest since the North American Free Trade Agreement, would boost U.S. exports by as much as $10.9 billion in the first year in which it's in full effect, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission. The accord with Colombia would increase exports by as much as $1.1 billion a year. The South Korea and Panama pacts were signed in June 2007, while the Colombia accord was signed in November 2006.

At a more microcosmic-level, trade is vital to the economy of Arkansas.  Over 600,000 Arkansas jobs depend on exports.  Over 1,500 companies export from Arkansas, most of which are small to medium businesses.  In turn, our agriculture producers, businesses and manufacturers reinvest those dollars into our economy and communities.

The pacts were approved in a bipartisan manner.  Republicans and Democrats in both the House of Representatives and Senate cast their vote in support of these trade agreements.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise since we have repeatedly said this is one way to stimulate the economy where we find common-ground.

Unfortunately just one day earlier, our Chamber was bogged down in a political exercise.  Senate Majority Leader Reid brought up a bill he knew would fail and ensured that his caucus all voted in line with him.  That bill—his version of President Obama’s “Jobs Bill”—was destined to fall short of the votes to block a filibuster so he knew he didn’t need to worry about forcing members of his caucus to vote against the bill’s final passage, which many have said they would if it came up for a vote.  He went as far as taking powers away from the Minority last week and would not allow us to offer the bill as an amendment, just to protect the image of “unity” in his caucus.

The past two days should be looked at as a case study in how the Senate should operate.    

Here’s what Majority Leader Reid should take away from this lesson:  The Senate needs more days like Wednesday and less like Tuesday.

Arkansas and many other states are working hard to protect water quality and reduce excessive nutrients in our rivers, lakes, and streams, but the EPA still forces a heavy-handed top-down approach to many regulations and water quality standards. Senator Boozman asked questions to the Acting EPA Assistant Administrator, Nancy Stoner, relating to these problems during an Environment and Public Works Subcommittee hearing on the topic of nutrient reduction approaches.

We have all encountered the aggressive salesperson at some point in our lives.  At car dealerships, service companies and shopping malls across the country, these forceful salespeople implore high-pressure tactics to close the deal with you.  They distort the truth, promise the world to you and generally tell you whatever to takes to make the sale.  This technique is known as the “hard sell.”

Successful salespeople will tell you to avoid this approach.  It turns the customer off, loses their attention and leads to a general distrust of the person making the pitch.  Once a salesperson crosses that line, it is nearly impossible to get the customer back.  President Obama, desperate to sell his plan to raise taxes, may have crossed that line with his latest sales pitch.

The non-partisan FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, found that President Obama’s claim that he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher making $50,000 a year isn’t true.

At a recent town hall meeting sponsored by the social media firm Linkedin, President Obama said, “Somebody who’s making $50,000 a year as a teacher shouldn’t be paying a higher effective tax rate than somebody like myself or Jeff [Weiner, CEO of Linkdin], who’ve been incredibly blessed.”

Along with the disingenuous wealth redistribution argument of this claim, there is also a major factual error with this statement.  As FactCheck.org points out, a single taxpayer with $50,000 of income would have paid 11.9 percent in federal income taxes for 2010.  The Obamas paid more than twice that rate—25.3 percent (and higher rates than that in 2009 and 2008).  If the $50,000-a-year teacher in the President’s illustration shared the same tax situation as the Obama’s—supporting a spouse and two children—he or she would have paid no federal income taxes at all.

When FactCheck.org asked the White House about this, an Administration spokesperson told them: “The President was not offering a literal comparison of his personal tax rate.”

Comparing the amount of taxes you pay versus the amount of taxes someone else pays, is a textbook example of a literal comparison.  It is apples to apples.  And it exposes the underlying flaw in the President’s approach to our economic crisis.  Instead of convincing the American people of the merits of his policies, the President has resorted to emotional appeals to stoke the public’s frustration and pit sides against each other.  It isn’t important if these appeals are true or not, it seems, as long as those lines generate applause. 

So with 14 million unemployed Americans, the President’s only answer is to double-down on government spending.  He knows he cannot convince us to spend more while we are $14 trillion in debt, but this time he can claim it is “paid-for” as long as he can get his tax hikes through Congress.  However, the American people lack faith in his recycled stimulus plan, given that it failed to the first time, and are not supportive of a tax hike to fund another “Big Government” plan that is not likely to succeed.

This leaves the President with few options other than to give the American people the “hard sell” or abandon his approach.  Unfortunately, he seems to have chosen the former over the latter.

According to a recent poll conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the American Hospital Association’s Health Research and Education Trust, the average cost of a family policy climbed 9 percent in 2011 to $15,073.  This is a dramatic turn, as President Obama pledged that the new law would reduce premiums on average by $2,500 for American families. 

The group’s findings, based on data collected through May, also showed that health insurance is consuming a bigger share of employer costs, preempting pay raises and making companies pass on more medical costs to their workers, benefit consultants said. President Obama promised that if you like your plan, you can keep it. Yet, the survey found that only 56 percent of workers are still in plans of their choice that pre-date the new health law’s enactment last year. 

The partisan health law pushed through by President Obama in 2010 has contributed to a dramatic increase in health costs, forcing employers to significantly cut back medical coverage and limit pay increases for workers.  This $2.6 trillion law threatens the economy and job creation. I have voted to repeal this law and will continue to fight for a full repeal and support efforts that create a business friendly environment that empowers private sector job growth.