President Obama’s proposal to keep interest rates on one type of student loans below market level obscures the fact that, if Taxmageddon strikes, the tax hike young adults entering the workforce would face would vastly outpace the savings they might enjoy from Congress continuing to subsidize their interest rates. Taxmageddon is a massive tax hike that will strike all taxpayers—and the economy—on January 1, 2013, unless Congress and President Obama act to stop it. It is made up of a series of expiring tax policies, such as the Bush tax …
Having spent nearly 30 years as a doctor in Oklahoma, Sen. Tom Coburn thinks like a physician even when he’s working in the nation’s capital. He identifies symptoms that manifest from a disease. And when it comes to our nation’s debt crisis, that disease is the political class in Washington. Coburn outlines this critique in a new book called “The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting America.” He visits The Heritage Foundation to speak at The Bloggers Briefing today at noon ET. Breitbart TV will air …
The House Armed Services Committee clearly acted in the U.S. interest when it voted to modernize the Smith–Mundt Act last week, as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. Since 1948, Smith–Mundt has prohibited agencies of the U.S. government from informing the U.S. public in print or on the airwaves about their activities. In the age of the information revolution and the global war of ideas, these prohibitions have become obsolete and worse. As noted by Juliana Pilon in the Heritage paper “Obsolete Restrictions on Public Diplomacy Hurt U.S. …
The Department of Health and Human Services has inked a $20 million contract with a top public-relations firm to sell aspects of the Obamacare law to the American public. According to a report in PR Week, HHS’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has awarded the contract to PR firm Porter Novelli. The firm has offices worldwide, and boasts PepsiCo, Hewlett Packard, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as existing clients. According to The Hill, the Porter Novelli campaign is “designed to educate the public about how to stay healthy and …
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that our country would be based on the rights (among others) to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But how can we get there from here? In his new book, The Road to Freedom, Arthur C. Brooks offers a map. Brooks explains that it isn’t money that makes people happy—it’s having the opportunity to earn success. And the free enterprise system is the best way humans have yet devised for individuals to earn success. During a recent speech at The …
Back in 1982, President Ronald Reagan decided not to sign a treaty known as “Law of the Sea” (LOST), a United Nations convention that would raid America’s treasury for billions of dollars, then redistribute that wealth to the rest of the world by an international bureaucracy headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica. But today, the Obama Administration has revived that treaty, and tomorrow Senator John Kerry (D-MA) will hold hearings designed to illustrate its supposed benefits and generate support for its ratification. Without a doubt, Reagan’s decision should stand, and LOST should …
Earlier this month, schools across the country celebrated National Charter Schools Week. This commemoration comes 20 years after Minnesota passed the first state charter school law and City Academy in St. Paul became the first charter school to open its doors. Since then, 40 more states and the District of Columbia have adopted some form of charter school legislation, providing new options to parents who are seeking a choice in their children’s education. Ursula Wright of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) described the basic goal of charters: …
Twelve separate lawsuits were filed today in district courts around the country on behalf of 43 separate religious organizations against the Obamacare anti-conscience mandate. The complaints demand relief from the mandate that will force almost all employers to provide and pay for coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization regardless of the employers’ moral or religious objections. The lawsuits span from the dioceses of Washington, D.C., and Joilet, Illinois, to Catholic Charities of Jackson, Mississippi, and the Michigan Catholic Conference. The range of the 43 institutions that have joined the …
Europe is in bad shape, there’s no doubt about it. The sovereign debt crisis continues to roil the continent, Greece may leave the euro, Spain may have to revise its budget deficit upward for the second time because of bad loans, and France has a new socialist president pledging more spending instead of austerity. So when the G8 leaders met last week, President Obama had some words of advice to offer — “Look at me and learn from my stellar example!” OK, that’s a paraphrase, but his actual words aren’t …
Today the University of Notre Dame filed a legal challenge against an Obamacare regulation that requires health care plans to include abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization procedures. Many religious institutions, including Notre Dame, object on religious or moral grounds to providing, paying for, and/or facilitating insurance coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and/or sterilization procedures. If the federal government is permitted to “override our religious purpose” and “use religious organizations to advance policies that undercut [their] values,” said Notre Dame President Father John Jenkins, then religious organizations will become “mere …
