Blocking Children’s Path to a Better Future Omnibus Spending Bill Eliminates Opportunity: As it stands now, the House omnibus bill will eliminate the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP). Since the program’s inception in 2004, the DCOSP has given thousands of low-income students in the District of Columbia access to a better education. For Children in Need: About 1,700 children currently attend private school using opportunity scholarships. The average household income of a DCOSP family is $23,000. Safe and Effective Learning Environments: DCOSP has yielded positive results for its participants. Studies …
Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is once again taking steps towards increasing our energy dependence. Just a few weeks after the Obama Administration unnecessarily slowed the process of leasing offshore areas to energy companies for drilling; Secretary Salazar is now rescinding leasing plans for oil-shale development on federal land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The amount of oil available through oil shale is staggering. Some estimates have 1.2 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil available in the Green River Formation, an area which expands through most of Colorado …
NAME: Patrick McHenry OCCUPATION: Member of Congress, 10th District of North Carolina HOMETOWN: Cherryville, NC Patrick McHenry is serving his third term in the United States Congress where he represents North Carolina’s 10th District. He was elected to Congress in 2004, after serving in the North Carolina State Legislature. Congressman McHenry’s district comprises of ten counties in Western North Carolina, from the suburbs of Charlotte to the home of Nascar in Mooresville to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He has been an advocate for veteran’s affairs, mortgage reform, …
While many aspects of the Obama budget are questionable and just plain wrong, they recognize the need for more Americans to be able to save for retirement. The budget includes the Automatic IRA, a cross-ideological proposal developed jointly by The Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution which will give up to 80 million workers a simple and easy way to save for retirement. It also has support from publications as diverse as National Review and the New York Times. The Auto IRA allows employees who don’t have any other types …
According to various news outlets, including the Washington Post, al-Marri (also known as Abdulkareen A. Almuslam), the last remaining unlawful enemy combatant in the United States, is about to be indicted in federal district court in the Central District of Illinois. The news stories indicated that he will be charged with, among other things, material support for terrorism. This is a significant development, and a clear break from the Bush administration’s policy with respect to al-Marri. As readers of this blog are well aware, the Supreme Court had taken up …
Budget Trickery The President also employs budget trickery on spending. He first assumes that Iraq spending will continue indefinitely at 2008 levels (which was never going to happen, according to the military’s own Joint Campaign Plan), and then calculates $1.5 trillion in savings against that baseline. If you eliminate that gimmick, President Obama increases spending by nearly $500 billion over ten years – not even counting the $634 billion health care reserve fund The budget proposes $1.133 trillion in regular discretionary spending in 2010, and claims that is a 7 percent …
Yet another controversy involving Congressional earmarks is brewing in Washington. This time around a lobbying firm, the PMA group (raided by the FBI in November), is accused of making fraudulent donations to members of Congress in exchange for federal pork directed toward their clients. Given mounting news reports of scandal involving earmarks, you’d think Members of Congress would jump at the opportunity to prove they’re clean. You’d be wrong. Two illuminating pieces of pork legislation were passed by the House yesterday. The first vote, the 2009 Omnibus appropriations bill, churned …
President Obama’s budget document lacks the details necessary to judge fully his tax proposals. What we have are proposed streams of revenues over 10 years and short tag lines describing the proposals. A full assessment of his tax program will therefore have to wait. The initial impression, however, is that the President intends to carry through on his campaign promises to sacrifice future economic growth at the altars of redistributionism and nationalized health care. For all liberals’ posturing in recent years, including by President Obama, about the irresponsible Bush tax …
On Tuesday, The Heritage Foundation lost a distinguished colleague, mentor and friend, Ambassador Harvey Feldman. Harvey Feldman’s leadership throughout his career in the U.S. Foreign Service and for more than a decade at Heritage helped define America’s long-term interests in Asia and around the world. He was a valued counselor, a wise observer of foreign affairs, and a great patriot. He was also a patient and understanding person with whom many of us were privileged to travel and to learn from. Harvey Feldman retired from the U.S. Foreign Service after …
Over the past few months, we’ve seen a seemingly endless parade of bailouts from Washington — for banks, for automobiles, and just about everything else. Today, Congress may be voting on yet another bailout — this time for liberal media. This afternoon, the Senate is expected to take up a proposal by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois which would clear the way for a restoration of measures designed to chill speech considered too conservative. The Durbin measure is being offered as a substitute to a contrary measure by Sen. Jim …
