Yesterday, the Obama Administration held a closed-door immigration conference, bringing together key members of Congress. It has been reported that this meeting focused on finding a way to push for comprehensive immigration reform in Congress this year. During the 2008 Presidential elections, then-candidate Barack Obama made a promise to take up immigration reform within his first year in office. He reiterated this pledge when he spoke to the Hispanic Congressional Caucus shortly after he was elected. But all too often, comprehensive immigration reform has been another name for amnesty. Amnesty is …
A paper released today by the United Nations Environment Program and the World Trade Organization acknowledged that cap and trade legislation would be expected to have significantly harmful economic consequences, likely including a serious loss of international competitiveness. In response, governments considering such a policy would likely want to consider a border tax adjustment (BTA) system to mitigate the loss of competitiveness. The report goes on to say that such a BTA system would be permissible under the world trading system. While it’s shocking in and of itself that a …
In a move that is hardly inspiring New York students to work hard and achieve greatness, the AP reports that you can now make $70,000 a year sitting around and doing nothing for eight hours a day. All you have to do is become an ineffective New York City public school teacher. The city’s policy of paying teachers not to work is more than just a waste of money. It adds to the utter lack of accountability that plagues the system and undermines any reason to teach students well. Because …
Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee has suggested that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the now bankrupt housing finance giants, should relax their lending standards. This suggestion is farcical. One’s immediate reaction after the laughter has subsided might well be, “will we never learn?” For many years, analysts of diverse stripes warned that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing finance giants, were a disaster waiting to happen. But the financing giants also had giant friends in Congress, and so efforts to rein in Fan and Fred …
Yesterday, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest Long-Term Budget Outlook and the news is grim. The preface opens, Under current laws and policies, rapidly rising health care costs and an aging population will sharply increase federal spending for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Unless increases in revenues kept pace with escalating spending, or spending growth was sharply reduced, soaring federal debt would weigh heavily on economic output and incomes.” Make no mistake, the pressure put on the federal budget by out of control entitlement spending is massive …
What are Iranians protesting? Many Iranians were outraged by the alleged landslide re-election victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s prime challenger, charged that the regime had tampered with the ballot count and had stolen the June 12 election from him and the Iranian people. Over time, the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have shifted their focus from protesting the widely-doubted election results to denouncing the legitimacy of the regime itself. Chants of “Death to the dictator” have replaced “Death to America” on Iranian streets. …
Later today, the House of Representatives is slated to vote on the most convoluted attempt at economic central-planning this nation has ever attempted: cap and trade. The 1,200-plus page Waxman-Markey climate change legislation is nothing more than an energy tax in disguise that by 2035 will raise: Gasoline prices by 58 percent Natural gas prices by 55 percent Home heating oil by 56 percent Worst of all, electricity prices by 90 percent Although proponents of the bill are pointing to grossly underestimated and incorrect costs, the reality is when all …
Only politicians determined to spend $1 billion a day to “stimulate” the economy could balk at committing tens of millions less than that to bolster our national defense. So it was good news this evening when the Senate Armed Services Committee added funds to buy seven more F-22 fighters and a backup engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, as Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told Bloomberg.
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American families would receive $5,000 and individuals $2,000 to buy health insurance if their employers didn’t offer it, according to new health reform legislation introduced yesterday by U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). In addition to providing families and consumers with vouchers, the Health Care Freedom Plan also: • Expands Americans’ use of health savings accounts (HSAs) to pay for insurance premiums • Creates a nationwide market for health insurance by allowing consumers to buy health insurance in any state • Provides block grants to states to develop innovative models for …
