Prior to his September 9th, health care “make or break” press conference, the Wall Street Journal estimated that President Barack Obama had by that time already given 27 speeches entirely devoted to health care and he had mentioned the issue prominently in another 92. While the September 9th presser bumped approval of Obamacare all the way up to 51% in Rasmussen’s tracking poll by September 13th, today that number is down to 43% with a record high of 56% disapproving. Undaunted the White House again plastered President Obama on as …
Senate Analysis – All eyes will be focused on the Senate Finance Committee, as they begin their markup of Senator Baucus’ health care reform proposal. As the media and American people focus on health care, the Senate will also tackle several additional appropriations measures, which further expand our national debt. Several issues could flare up during those debates, including EPA regulation of greenhouse gases, the investigation into CIA activities and missile defense funding. Major Senate Floor Action – Senators are likely to find themselves in a pitched global warming debate …
Heritage Trustee, and former candidate for Governor of California, William E. Simon Jr. addresses Heritage trustees on the danger of predatory government encroachment into the realm of philanthropy. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZwjTGDkN7w[/youtube]
Does the Federal Communications Commission have a “speech czar”? That was the question before Julius Genachowski yesterday, as he testified for the first time before Congress as FCC chairman. At issue was the appointment of ex-journalist Mark Lloyd to be the agency’s “chief diversity officer,” a position quickly dubbed “the diversity czar,” or the “speech czar.” For weeks now, Lloyd has been a cause celebre on conservative talk radio and other media, where he has been portrayed as yet another in a long line of powerful and unaccountable Obama policy …
Sometime next month the Senate will be forced to raise the federal debt limit beyond a record $12.1 trillion. While the current recession has exacerbated the problem, our rising national deficits are actually a structural problem a long time in the making. In the coming decades, the cost of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits will leap from 8.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) to 18.6% of GDP—an increase of 10.2% of GDP. To educate Americans about our nation’s large and growing fiscal imbalance The Heritage Foundation has, since 2005, …
The U.N. wants to negotiate an Arms Trade Treaty. The Heritage Foundation recently published a lengthy study of this proposal. It found that the Treaty, if brought into being as currently projected, will be used not to restrict the access that dictators and terrorists have to conventional arms, but to reduce the ability of democracies like Israel to defend their people against terrorism. This week brought further evidence of the U.N.’s impending failure. First came the announcement of a major arms deal between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. …
A bipartisan team of seven former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency wrote a letter to President Obama today urging him to exercise his constitutional authority over Attorney General Eric Holder reverse the re-opening of criminal investigations into the CIA’s treatment of detainees following the attacks of September 11. The seven former directors include: Michael Hayden and Porter Goss, who served under President George W. Bush; George Tenet, who served under Bush and President Bill Clinton; John Deutch and R. James Woolsey, who served under Clinton; William Webster, who served …
President Obama doesn’t want to run the auto industry, but he had to, temporarily of course, to save the economy. And Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Lisa Jackson doesn’t want to regulate carbon dioxide, but the EPA seems intent on moving forward regardless. Fortunately, Congress could shorten the EPA’s long, regulatory leash by amending the Interior-Environment appropriations spending bill early next week. The Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposed endangerment finding in April, saying that global warming and climate change pose a serious threat to public health and safety …
Sunday’s unprecedented presidential tour of (most of) the network news represents a subtle admission on the part of White House strategists that surely must unnerve his liberal allies. Obama, they seem to have concluded, is the only Administration official capable of making the case to the American people. Where, one must ask, are the usual suspects who traditionally man the battlements and carry the president’s message on major policy initiatives? Take another look at those YouTube videos of Sen. Arlen Specter’s raucous early August town hall meeting with Health and …
Why Reconciliation Exists What Is Reconciliation? Reconciliation is an optional step of the annual budget process that allows legislation to be approved by 51 votes in the U.S. Senate rather than the traditional 60 votes necessary to withstand a filibuster. This could also be achieved with 50 votes plus Vice President Biden as the 51st.This process is a shortcut that limits debate, including floor debate, to only 20 hours. The Purpose? Reconciliation was created to streamline Senate rules to make it easier for lawmakers to achieve the spending and tax …
