The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act set Jan. 31, 1998 as the deadline to opening the Yucca Mountain repository for spent nuclear fuel. Today marks the 10 year anniversary of that mandate. Thanks to a hand full of myopic politicians from Nevada, few would argue that the nation is any closer today than it was a decade ago to opening Yucca Mountain. This is not because of science. The Department of Energy has done numerous studies and Environmental Impact Statements that declare the Yucca repository safe. It is not because …
Heritage Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Rae Hederman reacts to the Senate’s recently passed stimulus package: In a period of a sluggish economy, it’s disappointing that the Senate has placed special interests over what is good for the economy. While the stimulus bill passed by the House has many problems, the House bill does not have unnecessary spending and is refreshingly clean of goodies handed to the preferred industries of politicians. The Senate Bill contains billions of wasteful spending that is targeted to industries in the home state of certain Senators …
We agree with Glenn Reynolds that this is a “striking graphic” from Larry Kudlow’s show on the perhaps not so coincidental relationship between government pork projects and total government spending: One minor addition though … the “earmarks are a gateway drug on the road to the spending addiction” line is actually from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK). Although Coburn probably doesn’t mind if Dick Armey borrows the line to get the message out.
The collapse of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California health plan was anti-climactic. For months, it was clear that the complex $14 billion proposal reached by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and liberals in the California state legislature was a political non-starter. In the process of hammering out the details with the help of liberal health policy analysts, the Governor managed to alienate entire classes of groups and institutions which should have been his natural allies: the business community, doctors and hospitals, Republicans in the state legislature and the conservative voters in the state, …
For global warming crusaders nothing is more important than reducing the carbon humans emit into the atmosphere. The problem, as the more honest environmentalists have noted, is that all of these carbon limiting schemes (whether they be cap-and-trade or a gas tax) would significantly harm the economic growth that is vital to people everywhere. However in the more enlightened in the environmental movement largely ignore an energy source that is clean, affordable, and emits nothing into the atmosphere: nuclear power. The problem for the green movement is that they spent …
Just days before the GOP primary debate in California, state legislators voted down Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s $15 billion health care proposal. Since health care is the third most important issue for voters (behind economic growth and the war in Iraq) and failures like Schwarzenegger’s mean the health care debate will shift to Washington, now is a good time to review what a conservative health care plan ought to look like. The principle idea behind a conservative approach to health care reform is to expand personal ownership and control of health …
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen is calling for the elimination of emergency supplemental spending used to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is instead pushing for the inclusion of war funding in the annual defense budget. In the DefenseNews.com article, “Mullen Wants Supplemental Spending Rolled Into Annual Baseline Budgets,” he argues that supplemental appropriations “have taken on, in many ways, a life of their own.” Often times these supplemental bills have provided more than just emergency funds for war fighting, and his solution …
A new study shows that merit-based pay for teachers can improve student test scores, The Washington Times reports. The Achievement Challenge Pilot Project (ACPP) covered five schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. Teachers could earn as much as an $11,000 bonus based on how much their students’ test scores improved. Researchers from the University of Arkansas report: “Students of teachers who are eligible for performance bonuses enjoy academic benefits. Further, many of the criticisms of merit pay programs simply have not proven true in Little Rock.”
The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission recently came out with recommendations to increase the federal fuel tax by over 200%. However, the report is worse than that, and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will have a hearing on this issue tomorrow. The Commission proposes establishing a new bureaucracy for our transportation system, including a new commission of ten appointed officials serving 6 year terms called the National Surface Transportation Commission. This new commission would be given tax and spending powers to execute the national surface transportation plan …
Only 19 days after credit rating service Moody’s announced the United States was at risk of losing its top-notch triple-A credit rating due to soaring healthcare and social security spending, Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) said he would “insist” his committee vote on a proposal to create a bipartisan commission to study the long-term fiscal problem proposed by Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. BNA (subscription required) reports that Conrad “was adamant” fellow Senators vote on his plan to create a 16-member commission in 2008. The panel would consist of …
