With General Motors slated for nationalization, and the government holding major stakes in Chrysler and several major banks, many concerned observers have been asking when it will all end. President Obama, however, has not even ventured a guess. The omission is an odd, and dangerous, one: the president who campaigned on the need to set a deadline for U.S. withdrawal from Baghdad has failed to establish one for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Detroit. Now comes Senator John Thune of South Dakota, joined by John Cornyn of Texas, with …
If the Obama administration succeeds in passing the Waxman-Markey energy tax, and it works perfectly, it will only reduce global temperatures by nine hundredths of one degree Fahrenheit. In other words: it will do nothing. The only possible benefits from Waxman-Markey occur if the rest of the world, including the globe’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases– China– also reduces its emissions. So how are those negotiations going? Financial Times reports: China and the US failed to achieve a breakthrough at their latest round of climate talks yesterday, raising the stakes …
President Obama has appointed yet another czar. This time it’s a pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, to monitor the compensation paid to seven companies currently under the opiate influence of federal bailout money. We’re long past czar fatigue. The political usefulness of a czar is that it allows the President to underscore the importance of an issue. The czar does not acquire any powers not already resident in the office of the Executive, but does have more than the usual influence accorded a federal bureaucrat by virtue of his presumed access …
Defending the Obama administration’s government-run health insurance option, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday: I think if you listen to the debate on Capitol Hill about health care you’re likely to hear two very important words: choice and competition. A public option that you’re referring to is nothing more than the ability to provide more choice through competition. Those, I think, are values that you’ll hear throughout this debate as being held near and dear to the hearts of not just people on Capitol Hill, but throughout the …
Last month, the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis released a study of the Waxman-Markey energy tax bill showing that by 2035 it would raise electricity rates 90 percent, reduce aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) by $7.4 trillion, and destroy over 1,900,000 jobs. The Natural Resources Defense Council recently responded with a critique of our analysis, claiming we “concealed” the fact that GDP would actually grow under the Waxman-Markey bill. This is just plain false. Of course the U.S. economy would still grow under Waxman-Markey… it will just grow a …
In his statement yesterday announcing that 10 banks would be repaying $68 billion in TARP bailout funds, President Obama proudly asserted that the step would reduce the national debt: “And as this money is returned, we’ll see our national debt lessened by $68 billion — billions of dollars that this generation will not have to borrow and future generations will not have to repay.” But apparently, he didn’t check with his treasury secretary first. In an op-ed in the New York Times last month, Timothy Geithner said that the returned …
The draft resolution on North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs reportedly agreed to by the security council’s permanent five members, plus Japan and South Korea, is nothing new. In fact, it is full of references back to unenforced provisions of previous resolutions, particularly from October 2006. More than anything else, its weakness points to two things: The critical need for missile defense and China’s unhelpful role in addressing the problem of a nuclear North Korea.
On a blogger conference call this morning, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) discussed a bill he introduced last week that would distribute the Federal government’s recently acquired GM and Chrysler stock to taxpaying Americans. “Instead of the Treasury owning 60 percent of shares in the new GM and 8 percent of Chrysler, you would own them, if you were one of about 120 million individuals who paid taxes on April 15,” Alexander explained. “This is the fastest way to get the stock out of the hands of Washington and back into …
WHY TARP NEEDS OVERSIGHT The announcement that the government would provide $30 billion dollars more in TARP funds to General Motors in exchange for a 60 percent ownership interest in the company is unprecedented and almost unbelievable. Who ever imagined the taxpayers would wake up Monday morning and find out a deal was cut behind closed doors to make them majority owners of General Motors? If you add all of the government aid GM has or will receive, the taxpayers, with zero input, have invested $50 billion dollars in a …
