House Republican leaders said Thursday that they do not support or intend to pass a bill that would allow Iowa to receive $14.5 million in federal money for extended unemployment benefits. Iowa is one of nine states that have yet to request the benefits.

"The Labor Committee is going to look at that, but the House Republican caucus is not interested in making it harder to be an employer in the state of Iowa," said House Speaker Kraig Paulsen (R-Hiawatha). "What's going on with unemployment compensation right now is making it harder to be an employer."

The Iowa Senate approved the measure on a 27-22 vote this week. The money would benefit the more than 7,000 Iowans who have been out of work for more than a year. Democrats urged the House and governor to act on Senate File 303 by March 10, or they said the state will almost certainly lose the $14.5 million in federal help for the unemployed.

After decades of dominating every tiny aspect of life in his legislative chamber, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan now appears to want his members to grow up a little and do some things for themselves.

One of the first steps in that process to adulthood is handing more power to the House's five appropriations committees and the House Revenue Committee.

The appropriations committees have been toothless kittens for decades. They listen to a parade of agency directors outline their upcoming budget requests and press them about jobs for various constituencies, minority and otherwise. Occasionally, an appropriations chair will briefly have a seat at the bargaining table when the governor and the leaders sit down to talk turkey. But, for the most part, they've been cut out of the process. That's especially been the case the past two years, when the General Assembly has sent "lump sum" appropriations to the governor to avoid specifying cuts.

(Editor's note: The following is Andrew P. Napolitano's closing argument on his FreedomWatch Presidents Day special, which featured Tom DiLorenzo and Tom Woods. It is reproduced with Napolitano's permission.)

Does the government work on behalf of the people, or do the people exist for the benefit of government? Is history a recollection of things that have actually happened, or a narrative deployed to legitimize power and the crimes that led to the acquisition of that power?

In the last hour, we've heard that some of the presidents often billed by historians and the public as "the greatest" were anything but. To be fair, it's difficult to be a great person when your job is to head an organization such as the state that is rooted in deception, theft, and murder. And we know from Lord Acton that no great man is a good man.

From the beginning, any claim that the American government is good because some Americans are exceptional does not make any sense. The individual virtues of human beings cannot possibly extend to the government. By definition, the government lies, cheats, and steals. After all, it has no resources of its own, only those it appropriates from the people. No one may lawfully compete with it. We are forced to pay its bills and accept its so-called services. There is no escaping it. The ideas behind a nation may be exceptional, but they are not manifested by the government. And, of course, we must never mistake the government for the people it claims to represent.

In a debate that spanned eight hours, the Iowa Senate voted 48-1 late Thursday afternoon for House File 45, a bill that once made $500 million in budget cuts over three years and would now make a $6-million cut in the current fiscal year.

The near-unanimous vote came only after a party-line 26-23 vote for the Democratic strike-after amendment that pared back the House bill. Senator Jeff Danielson (D-Cedar Falls) said the end result is a bill that increases efficiency; increases transparency by creating a searchable budget database with both tax-expenditure and -comparison information; and deappropriates $6 million this fiscal year.

But Senator Roby Smith (R-Davenport) compared a box of tissues to a tack of 10 office boxes on his desk to illustrate the $6 million of savings in this bill compared to the $500 million in savings over three years in the version approved by the Iowa House. "I just don't understand how we can justify such little savings," he said.