Earlier this week, The Foundry’s Conn Carroll wrote that under the Senate’s version of Obamacare, insurers and employers would have justification to refuse coverage for annual mammograms as a cost-cutting rationing measure, pursuant to the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. On Sunday’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” the debate on mammogram rationing grew heated when Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) explained that the Task Force’s guidelines on mammograms “become the law” under the Senate bill, meaning that rationing would occur. In response, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) accused …
Before Barack Obama accepts his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the White House announced that the president will swing by the climate change summit in Copenhagen to outline the country’s climate goals. The AP reports: The president will lay out his goals for reducing the United States’ carbon dioxide emissions, pledging to cut heat-trapping pollution by about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. That target reflects the still-unfinished climate legislation on Capitol Hill.” This comes immediately after President Obama agreed to a green partnership with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan …
As if the Administration’s stimulus program didn’t have enough problems, the Government Accountability Office has now issued a report raising concerns on the handling of $7.2 billion in broadband communications grants warning the programs “present risks of waste, fraud and abuse“. The agencies – the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service were charged with awarding grants to help build out broadband Internet infrastructure, such as bringing wireless broadband connectivity to 41 Minneapolis public housing high-rises. But the complete mapping data on where investment is …
In April of this year, when a student in Turkey asked President Obama how he was different from President Bush, Obama said, “When it comes to climate change, George Bush didn’t believe in climate change. I do believe in climate change, I think it’s important.” In this response, Obama is pointing to a crucial facet in the rhetoric surrounding the climate change debate, which is the rift between those who believe that climate change is a crisis and those who believe that climate change is not a crisis; between those …
Of the many influences that shaped the American concept of liberty, the first and most formative was faith. More than anything else, religion formed the backbone of colonial culture and defined its moral horizon. This religious character was largely a product of the fact that many came to the New World in search of religious liberty—to freely practice and spread their faith. As a whole, America’s Founders were strongly religious. Thanksgiving proclamations, as official statements of the American president, underscore the Founders’ faith. Some were more traditional, such as John …
On November 23, 2009 the Congressional Budget Office issued “Economic and Budget Issue Brief: The Costs of Reducing Greenhouse-Gas Emissions.” This brief echoed many of the points The Heritage Foundation has made in its reports, WebMemos, blogs and our responses to a request from Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. For example: A. The CBO correctly notes that efficiency mandates (standards) don’t lower the cost of cap and trade. Here’s how they say it: “However, standards would tend to increase the costs of a cap-and-trade …
Organized labor has demonstrated why workers should spend some time this Thanksgiving giving thanks for the secret ballot. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) “have been sparring for the right to represent 10,000 home health-care workers” in California. The SEIU has not exactly been using kid gloves. One SEIU organizer admitted that “he was encouraged ‘to pressure voters to change the ballot’ and that on one occasion he himself changed a vote to SEIU’s favor.” Other workers reported that SEIU organizers made …
In the midst of a downturn, it’s easy to lose perspective. It feels at the moment like America’s position in the world is slipping and Asia is taking our place. Permanently. On a longer view, that turns out to be only half-right: Asia is rising but America is not falling. With sound policies, the U.S. will be by far the world’s most important economy for a long time. One of those sound policies is strengthening our ties with Asia. To get a better sense of the current situation, go back …
Speaking to the press after reports that the White House will send 34,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, President Barack Obama said, “it is my intention to finish the job.” While we wish Obama would have definitively said “I will finish the job” instead of just expressing his intent to try, his sentiments were far more preferable than those of the leftist majorities in Congress who chose the opportunity to threaten the American people with even more taxes, should they support winning the war in Afghanistan. Specifically, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told The …
It is a well known economic policy rule that if you want less of something you tax it, and if you want more of something you subsidize it. Policymakers frequently follow this rule to influence behavior. This is why there are “sin taxes” on things like alcohol and cigarettes, and also why “cap and trade” taxes carbon. This is why there are subsidies for education and for “green” technologies. If taxes and subsidies make any sense at all, they make sense when used to tax “bad” things and subsidize “good” …
