Today, the Foundry presents our first installment of In the Green Room. This new feature offers Foundry readers behind-the-scenes access to distinguished guests of the Heritage Foundation. Every day, Heritage plays host to some of the most powerful leaders and thinkers of our time. Now you can join them, here at The Foundry. Today’s inaugural guest: Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Health Care Reform. Go here to read more on solutions to America’s health care problems.
It takes an expensive lawyer…scratch that. It takes a very expensive lawyer, from Sullivan & Cromwell no less, to explain to the Supreme Court that when your client’s CEO said he would “never walk away” from a certain deal, what he really meant was that he would run away from the deal at the drop of a hat. So what does this mean in terms of the Kabuki at the Supreme Court? It’s hard to say. But there’s a real possibility that the U.S. government, Chrysler, and Fiat are overplaying …
Economists at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis are digging deeper into the effects of the Waxman-Markey climate change legislation that includes a cap and trade plan to reduce carbon dioxide by 17 percent below 2005 levels in 2020 and by 83 percent below 2005 levels in 2050. Today’s victim: Farmers. Our CDA analysts found that Waxman-Markey would adversely affect farmers in a number of ways: • Farm income (or the amount left over after paying all expenses) is expected to drop $8 billion in 2012, $25 billion in …
President Obama today is promoting a Pay-as-You-Go (PAYGO) statute requiring that tax cuts and entitlement expansions be collectively deficit-neutral. Congress is likely to take up the proposal later this month. Since 2007, Congress has had a PAYGO rule mandating that each new tax and entitlement bill be deficit-neutral. Because it is merely a congressional rule, lawmakers can (and do) waive it easily. By contrast, a PAYGO statute—which existed from 1991 until 2002—would operate differently. Instead of requiring that each tax and entitlement bill be deficit neutral, this law would keep …
MOSCOW – The June 4-6 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum shed a spotlight on Russia’s economic situation, clearly indicating that the Russian leadership is uncertain about the scope of the economic downturn and how to deal with it. President Dmitry Medvedev’s much anticipated keynote address was a great disappointment. He did the best he could to avoid offering precise assessments of the present and future state of Russia’s economy, instead reiterating the Kremlin’s ambitious old ideas.
Considering how Big Labor has been forcing our government to treat them, the only surprise is that this didn’t happen sooner: WHISTLER, B.C. — Canadian mayors have ended their annual conference with a renewed call to shut out U.S. bidders from municipal stimulus spending. Mayors narrowly passed a resolution saying as much at their annual conference in Whistler, B.C., on Saturday in retaliation for a “Buy American” policy south of the border that some say is costing jobs in this country. Jean Perrault, outgoing president of the Federation of Canadian …
Our nuclear deterrent will be a strong defensive means…as well as a merciless offensive means to deal a just retaliatory strike to those who touch the country’s dignity and sovereignty even a bit… –Kim Jong Il’s government referring to its nuclear arsenal as “offensive” for the first time according to the Associated Press, via Pyongyang’s state-run Minju Joson newspaper.
The Brookings Institution released their own analysis of analysis on the costs of cap and trade yesterday. Unlike Heritage’s recent Center for Data Analysis study, the Brookings effort does not analyze any particular bill, but does look at the economic costs of four policy scenarios. Their conclusions: Welfare effects Loss in Personal Consumption of $1 to $2 trillion present value Incremental stringency produces high incremental cost, e.g. extra 8 % reduction increases costs 45% US GDP in 2050 lower by 2.5% Employment effect -0.5% at peak in first decade
As liberal environmentalists and tax-happy politicians scheme over strategies to hike international flight rates to raise funds to address alleged global warming, North Dakotans are celebrating snowfalls in June. Anomalies like snow in June certainly don’t refute that the planet is warming, but there does exist a widening of disconnect between hard evidence indicating global warming and the policy prescriptions designed in its name. This new levy on international air travel, proposed by a coalition of the world’s 50 least developed nations, intends to raise money from wealthy countries in …
In yesterday’s Washington Post, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote about North Korea’s nuclear program: More emphasis would need to be given to missile defense. It would be essential to redesign the American deterrent strategy in a world of multiple nuclear powers—a challenge unprecedented in our experience. The eventual existence of ”multiple nuclear powers” has long been a driving force of Heritage Foundation analysis of missile defense. Last March, Heritage fellow Baker Spring summed up the findings of nuclear war games conducted by policy experts in 2004 and 2005:
