By Darrell Issa Federal tax reform moved forward this past week in Washington. Good news for most of the country. Not so much for us here in California. Done right, it would have spurred economic growth, allowed Californians to keep more of their hard-earned paychecks, enabled Americans to better save for the future, and helped dig hard-working families out of the mountain of tax increases piled on them in recent years. Unfortunately, I fear that the plan as approved could actually make the incredible burden our state's taxpayers feel even worse. I voted no because my constituents don't deserve a tax increase. While the world thinks living is easy in the land of sand and sun, the Southern California families and small businesses I know are putting in long hours and making tough sacrifices to make each day work. Californians have stayed late, picked up second shifts and worked hard in an honest effort to make ends meet, only to find themselves with less and less to show for it. The tax plan approved this week would have made some good steps forward -- simplifying the tax code, changing the corporate tax rate from the world's highest to be more globally competitive, and bringing down the rates for individual taxpayers -- but I worry that even under the reduced tax rates, many across our state could be forced to pay more, not less, and for me that is simply unacceptable. For taxpayers in our district, being able to deduct their state and local income taxes from their federal return is the first line of defense against the tax increase factory the Democrats have built in Sacramento. Democrats in our state Capitol have worked around the clock for years, churning out tax increases by the dozen on everything from gasoline, everyday purchases, paychecks -- even plastic bags at the grocery store. Taken together, our state lawmakers have put Californians' taxes at the top of the list -- highest income taxes in the country, highest sales taxes nationwide and now, thanks to the latest 12-cent-a-gallon gas tax hike, the highest gas prices anywhere in the land. For Americans with leaders in their state Capitol less greedy than our own, eliminating the deduction makes little difference. But for us, eliminating the ability of Californians to deduct their hefty state and local taxes significantly compounds the substantial burdens already imposed on the taxpayers by our state. Even worse, eliminating the state and local tax deduction would assure that almost all of the bill's tax cuts would be distributed to other states -- leaving California with the bill. Hard-working Californians deserve to see a tax cut too. Some say the state and local tax deduction allows other states to subsidize Sacramento's bad tax policy. I'd remind them that the numbers show it's actually quite the opposite. For every dollar California taxpayers send to Washington, the state receives less than a dollar back. Put another way: It's actually California taxpayers who already support spending for other states, even with the state and local tax deduction in place. Republicans are right as they work to reduce taxes, revitalize our economy, make America competitive on a global scale again and fix our broken tax code, but any plan must benefit all taxpayers -- no matter where they live. Californians aren't asking for a special handout, they just deserve their fair shake at the table. We can do better for California than the plan that was approved this past week. That's why it didn't earn my support. But the process of overhauling our tax code is far from complete. As the bill moves forward to the Senate, I will continue fighting for changes that will ensure this bill returns money to all of our nation's taxpayers -- Californians included. Tax reform remains imperative. Let's get the details right and get this country moving again.

By Darrell Issa The problem with governing by executive order is that it provides no reliable guarantee of certainty: what one administration assembles, the next can just as easily dismantle. That's one of the many reasons DACA -- the program created through executive order by President Barack Obama to protect from deportation the children of illegal immigrants brought here years ago in their youth -- always made a poor replacement for actual immigration reform. It's also why, now that the Trump administration has decided to rescind this order, it's important for Congress to come together to do the job they should have done years ago and finally fix our broken immigration system. Related: Rep. Scott Peters: Now Congress must act to protect dreamers This posed a challenge for President Obama, who for years simultaneously refused to work with Congress while insisting he didn't have the legal authority to take action on his own. Finding himself at a crossroads, he chose to rewrite the nation's immigration law by executive decree, creating further uncertainty for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were brought here by their parents through no fault of their own. I criticized this at the time, writing in an earlier column that "it is inherently un-American to create a new group of second-class citizens that are allowed to stay indefinitely but given an indefinite unknown status." The same still holds true today. With a six-month deadline before the administration officially begins unwinding DACA, now is the time for Congress to step up and craft a meaningful solution. It would be neither fair nor feasible to expel all of the dreamers from the country. First of all, hundreds are currently serving in the military, defending our nation. Others are decades into a life in America -- educated, hardworking and law-abiding. Brought here by their parents as children, they spent their formative years in the U.S. where they learned their first words, attended school, graduated and obtained their first jobs. Still more are following the process outlined by their government: When asked to register for DACA status, they stopped hiding, came out of the shadows and did the right thing. The hundreds of thousands of dreamers are none other than the victims of their parents' actions and hope to find some way to be brought into the system so they can legally stay in the only home they've truly known. At the same time, it would be a mistake to simply declare blanket amnesty and grant full citizenship to anyone with a DACA designation. This would be a clear violation of the spirit of our legal immigration ideal, punishing those who have carefully complied with the law and patiently waited their turn. There is a better way, one that gets to the heart of the problem, addresses it as a policy challenge and applies a lasting solution. The plan I propose is a simple one. For the next five years, let's set aside 15 percent of the over one million visa slots we already award every year in order to make them available to qualified dreamers, so they move into the legal immigration line and have a certain legal path forward in this country. So many are siblings or family members of legal immigrants and U.S. citizens, that it makes sense to use a small portion of these slots to provide certainty for these young individuals. The benefit of this approach would be clear. It keeps neutral the overall number of green cards issued, and provides a reasonable path forward that would allow us to address all of the dreamers who seek to stay within just five years -- and all within our existing legal immigration frameworks. But Congress must also go further. We must also right the failures of the past by reforming our immigration system as a whole. Having confronted and dealt with the DACA quandary, there can be no better time to enact the concrete measures we need to strengthen our borders, enhance enforcement of our laws and prevent this problem from happening again. For years, I've put forth bipartisan reform proposals that would create a more efficient legal immigration system, that can adjust to the changing needs of our growing nation and, yes, improve the protection of our border. Those ideas must be part of the equation, too. The American people deserve a sense of seriousness in Washington and a solution that lasts for all time. If we fail, we will be letting down a lot more than the 800,000 dreamers, we'll also be letting down a nation that expects -- and deserves -- leaders with vision and action with integrity.

By: Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Mike Lee Who'd have thought it would take more time, training and money to be licensed as a hair stylist, interior designer or barber than it does to become an emergency medical technician ready to save people's lives in an emergency? Yet in California, Utah and every state across the nation, legal absurdities like this have become the new normal, as occupational licensing requirements (essentially government permission slips required to do your job) have become mandated in more fields than ever before. Their spread has made it increasingly difficult for workers -- especially lower-income Americans -- to start their careers or take new jobs in any number of fields, including even those as simple as hair-braiding, upholstery or, yes, even flower arranging. Americans already face a tough economy, and occupational licensing requirements only make it harder for them to build better lives for themselves and their families. For jobs with a direct impact on health or public safety, the government has a legitimate role to play in protecting customers from unscrupulous or dangerous actors in the marketplace. But many occupational licensing requirements have little to do with ensuring your safety -- and a lot to do with keeping people like you out of work. Take California, for example, which requires four years of experience, $400 in fees and an exam in order to be licensed as a landscaper -- 52 times the experience it takes to become an EMT. Or look at Utah, where it takes more than twice as much experience to work in a nail salon than it does to deliver medical care in an ambulance. Yet, if occupational licensing laws were really designed to protect public safety, you'd expect the opposite to be true. Just look at the numbers. In 1950, fewer than 5% of U.S. workers had to be licensed for their jobs. Today, nearly one in three needs a license. According to research by Institute for Justice, a non-profit law firm, California is the second-most "onerously licensed" state in the country. And Utah isn't far behind, coming in at number 12. On average, aspiring workers in the ever-increasing number of licensed professions nationwide must pay more than $200 in fees, spend at least nine months in training and pass at least one exam, just to meet their respective states' education and experience requirements. Occupational licensing laws erect unnecessary barriers for many, but the effects are especially pronounced for low-income and minority communities. Most low-income workers don't have the savings or free time to enroll in required training programs, let alone to pay hundreds of dollars in fees just to earn an honest day's wages. Additionally, a recent study showed that stiffer occupational licensing requirements reduced the number of low-income Americans taking the risk to start their own businesses by as much as 11%, compared to states with simpler requirements. The effects on our economy are stark. According to one estimate, licensing requirements run amok have cost the U.S. economy as many as 2.85 million jobs and cost consumers an astounding $203 billion a year. How'd we get in this mess? It's best to start by how examining how a state decides to license a given profession in the first place. Usually, a group of workers in a particular field band together and lobby state government set up a requirement. Next, a state licensing board is formed and invariably controlled overwhelmingly by practitioners of that industry. Standards are then adopted, administered and enforced by the board. Anyone who doesn't meet the industry insiders' requirements can be shut down on their command. The conflict of interest is painfully obvious. Existing professionals in a given field control the board, licensing requirements and who enters and leaves the market. They use this power to shut out competition, drive up pricing or, worse, lock out innovative new market disruptors that threaten their way of doing business. Further, since the boards often run with little oversight from state, they've become so rife with abuse that the Supreme Court has even begun to take notice. In 2015, the Court ruled that state licensing boards can be held legally liable for unfairly blocking competition after the North Carolina Board of Dentistry tried to prevent mall-based teeth-whitening services by requiring the procedure to be performed only by licensed dentists -- despite the fact that countless Americans safely self-administer teeth whitening products at home every day. Though the decision raised questions over whether it may make it harder for states to recruit knowledgeable citizens, who are often market participants, to volunteer to staff licensing boards, the Supreme Court's decision was a victory for American workers and consumers. More importantly, however, it gave Congress an opening to curb the worst excesses of these occupational licensing regimes. Building on this decision, we introduced the Restoring Board Immunity Act. The bill uses the Court's decision to incentivize states to make necessary and long-overdue changes to their occupational licensing regimes by giving states two options: either bring the licensing boards under direct oversight of the state or create a way for citizens to challenge whether a given requirement is truly necessary for the public's health and safety. Occupational licensing reform is a rare and growing area of bipartisan agreement that's drawn the attention of lawmakers and think tanks all across the spectrum from the libertarian-minded Cato Institute, to the left-leaning Brookings Institution -- even the Obama Administration, which put out a report in 2015 detailing the need for change. As consensus continues building Congress should seize the moment at once and come together to sweep away the most burdensome of these regulations and give countless Americans a better opportunity to improve their lives.