Kiplinger has a post up today discussing the most recent attempt to paint an amnesty as an economic stimulus. This time the focus is on Social Security. Mark Willen argues that somehow this almost broke system would be saved if only we would bring the 11 million illegal immigrants here in the U.S. “out of the shadows” and make them legal. But this is not the right approach and would instead bankrupt the United States, leaving the Social Security system in a far worse condition. It’s not that immigrants do …
Earlier this month the Treasury Department found that all 19 banks subject to government “stress tests” passed. Now this past Sunday, White House Director of the Office of Management and Budget Peter Orszag announced that: “The freefall in the economy seems to have stopped.” Economic catastrophe was the only rational supporting both the $700 billion TARP and the $787 billion stimulus. Now that the “freefall” is over it is time to repeal TARP and repeal the stimulus.
A national energy tax, which masks as a cap-and-trade program, could produce a substantial public backlash. According to a recent CNN poll, a majority of Americans already believe that such a job-killing energy tax that produces little or no environmental gain is not a good idea. This is not the first time our nation’s policymakers have toyed with an unpopular energy tax, though. Rewind to 1993. With a large majority and emboldened by the election of President Bill Clinton, House Democrats advocated and passed (barely) a national energy tax known …
This Sunday on This Week, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) echoed a point we’ve been making for months: Guantanamo Bay is a distraction. The real issue is how to best establish a system for holding accountable and incapacitating terrorists in a detention framework that is lawful, durable, and internationally acceptable. Or as Webb put it: I think Guantanamo has become the great Rorschach test of how we feel about international terrorism. We should, at the right time, close Guantanamo. But I don’t think that it should be closed, and in terms …
Harvard University professor Niall Ferguson writes in the New York Times: Human beings are as good at devising ex post facto explanations for big disasters as they are bad at anticipating those disasters. It is indeed impressive how rapidly the economists who failed to predict this crisis — or predicted the wrong crisis (a dollar crash) — have been able to produce such a satisfying story about its origins. Yes, it was all the fault of deregulation. There are just three problems with this story. First, deregulation began quite a …
The New York Times reported Saturday: How did cap and trade, hatched as an academic theory in obscure economic journals half a century ago, become the policy of choice in the debate over how to slow the heating of the planet? … The answer is not to be found in the study of economics or environmental science, but in the realm where most policy debates are ultimately settled: politics. … Cap and trade, by contrast, is almost perfectly designed for the buying and selling of political support through the granting …
The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson writes: From 2010 to 2019, Obama projects annual deficits totaling $7.1 trillion; that’s atop the $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009. By 2019, the ratio of publicly held federal debt to gross domestic product (GDP, or the economy) would reach 70 percent, up from 41 percent in 2008. That would be the highest since 1950 (80 percent).
Ivo Daalder was sworn in last Friday as United States Ambassador to NATO, and will be responsible for handling America’s most important multilateral alliance at a time when it is facing serious challenges. To confront these challenges and uphold U.S. interests within the alliance, Ambassador Daalder should adopt the following principles: Uphold the Primacy of NATO in the Transatlantic Security Architecture. The EU’s duplicative security arrangements should not undermine or supplant members’ obligations to NATO, whose primacy in the transatlantic security architecture is supreme. Pursue a NATO-First agenda. Although this …
Today the House Energy and Commerce Committee will begin a multi-day markup on the Waxman-Markey energy tax bill. Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has been busy lobbying his own caucus for the necessary 30 votes to get the bill out of committee for weeks, but the bill’s fate is still in doubt. Considering that global warming legislation is a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s agenda (he needs the tax revenues to fund his other big spending priorities), why can’t the Obama administration convince their own party that their energy tax …
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Cindy McCain (wife of Senator John McCain) makes a heartfelt call for the U.S. to increase its support and aid for the victims of chaos in eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After giving a broad description of the great suffering occurring in the region due to lack of governance, instability, and corruption she states: Only the international community and the struggling government of the Democratic Republic of Congo can restore real order to the country. But until then, the United States …
