First Washington decided auto makers needed bailing out, next it was auto parts suppliers, not to mention “too big” insurance companies. Now one Congressman is proposing federal bailouts for individual auto dealers. At today’s House Financial Services Committee hearing one Congressman floated a new proposal: Federal Floor Plan Financing. Auto dealers generally pay for new cars when they arrive at the dealership. Until recently, auto manufacturers offered their own “floor plan financing” loans for this purpose. Some automakers now find themselves unable to offer these loans to dealers. There are …
Should the federal government have broad authority to seize private financial institutions on the verge of collapse to keep them from harming the economy? President Obama and his treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, are arguing just that – saying that such power would have eased problems associated with recent bailouts. “(It) is precisely because of the lack of this authority that the AIG situation has gotten worse,” Obama said in a press conference on Tuesday. They do have a point. In any sector of the economy, failure should be an option. …
Writing in the Washington Post over the weekend, self-proclaimed school choice supporter Jay Matthews argued that its time to give up on the D.C. school voucher program: My problems with what is formally known as the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program are political and cultural, not moral. The program provides up to $7,500 a year for private-school tuition for poor children at an annual cost of about $12 million. Vouchers help such kids, but not enough of them. The vouchers are too at odds with the general public view of education. …
The credit crunch is hitting Washington, DC, as Uncle Sam maxes out his credit cards. In addition to the enormously costly Obama budget, all the multi-trillion dollar bailouts, stimulus, and government expansion plans depend on one thing—the ability of the U.S. government to get money and spend it. Uncle Sam gets his money from one of three ways: taxes, borrowing, or just printing more currency. Raising taxes during a recession is near-universally panned, except for the most die-hard liberals. The ability to borrow is now in trouble, after Wednesday’s effort …
Last Monday, Jackson Diehl wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, which highlighted some necessary steps for success in Afghanistan. Writing from his position in the country, Mr. Diehl noted that troops continue to stream into Afghanistan and the counter-insurgency strategy by General David Petraeus, which was so successful in Iraq, is being implemented. Further, “Polls show a chance to win over the population: Less than 5 percent say they support the Taliban, while more than 60 percent still accept the presence of foreign troops.” Yet, “McKiernan believes the Afghan …
A paper by Chinese central bank chief Zhou Xiaochuan — arguing the world should move off the dollar system — has attracted much attention. Like so many economic stories involving the PRC, there is less here than meets the eye. It is hardly a new thought. Beijing has wistfully imagined for almost a decade a future where the dollar has been replaced, most prominently when it claimed (falsely) to have decoupled from the dollar in July 2005. There are gigantic practical problems Zhou is well aware of. Any sudden move …
This Fox News story perfectly encapsulates why American workers deserve to keep a secret ballot for union organizing consistent with our democratic principles. Whether the union needs 51% of workers to sign on, or 75% of the workers to sign on; without a secret ballot, they will intimidate workers at their work, home and elsewhere until they get what they want. As the video shows, this method tears businesses, communities and friendships apart.
In the past 12 months the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration, and the Democrat controlled Congress have laid out $1.2 trillion in the name of stimulus, $700 billion for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, and over $400 billion for the Omnibus spending bill in debt on future generations of America. As big a hole as all that deficit spending has already put us in, the long term entitlement spending explosion is just as much of a fiscal threat, if not worse. As President Barack Obama said Tuesday, “The biggest problem …
Taxing Every American Even Obama’s “95%”: President Obama’s energy policies will cost Americans more money, limit their access to America’s resources, and provide little, if any, environmental benefit. It is an extreme environmental agenda. Climate “Revenue”: The President’s budget proposes a $646 billion cap-and-trade tax that would cost each household in America between $650 and $1,200 annually. Superfund: The budget would reinstate unnecessary excise taxes that expired in 1995 to fund Superfund’s efforts to clean up toxic and contaminated areas, which may be admirable if these clean-up goals weren’t already supported …
