Following passage of a one-thousand-page omnibus spending bill, the Senate reconvened to continue consideration of HR 3590, the Senate health bill. Middle Class Taxes. Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) offered an amendment to recommit the Senate health bill back to the Senate Finance Committee with instructions to protect Americans who make less than $250,000 from tax hikes in the bill. In effect, the Crapo amendment would reinforce President Obama’s high-profile promise that Americans making less than $250,000 would not face tax increases. In the Senate health bill, there are several provisions …
The Obama Administration is currently negotiating with Russia to establish a treaty to succeed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expired on December 5th. As the Heritage Foundation has documented, the Administration’s mishandling of strategic nuclear arms control discussions to date has resulted in a hasty and overambitious process that has threatened to circumvent the U.S. Senate’s role in treaty-making and undermine vital national interests. Yesterday, 40 Republican senators and one independent voiced their concerns about the process and pointed out how a START follow-on may threaten U.S. national …
The Left is starting to recognize some of the perils of health care legislation that would create a whole new way for government to control its citizens. Democracy for America (run by Howard Dean’s brother) is now warning its left-wing allies, “The bill doesn’t actually “cover” 30-million more Americans – instead it makes them criminals if they don’t buy insurance.” How true. Projections are that 8-million to 14-million Americans would pay billions of dollars for failing to buy insurance under the House bill. To Democracy for America, this is wrong, …
The Heritage Foundation’s Steven Groves and Ben Lieberman are live at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference reporting from a conservative perspective. Follow their reports on The Foundry and at the Copenhagen Consequences Web site. It is hard to do any more wrong by the American people than cap and trade. Whether done by domestic legislation or international treaty, significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions (like the 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 in the House Waxman Markey bill which the Obama administration had hoped to match at …
At the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, National Review Online’s Charles Krauthammer wrote: “The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.” If you had any doubt that environmentalism was not the New Socialism, then please watch the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela get enthusiastic ovations from the Copenhagen delegates as he quotes Karl …
President Obama is reported to be considering an Executive Order creating yet another commission to consider options for curtailing Washington’s deficit addiction. Even at a time when action is desperately needed, such an Executive Order is likely worse than doing nothing. The Executive Order approach represents Congress’ latest embarrassing retreat in the fight against deficit spending. Conservative and moderate “Blue Dogs” in Congress have joined many of their Republican colleagues in refusing to support a $1.8 trillion hike in the debt ceiling unless they get a vote on a real …
Earlier this month President Obama announced his plans for a new way forward in Afghanistan. He laid out clear objectives for a troop level increase, underscored the importance of strengthening Afghan security forces and outlined the strategic necessity of success in the region. I believe the President made a very compelling case for why it is absolutely critical that America defeat al Qaeda and prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies. The most significant aspect of the President’s announcement was his call for a deployment of 30,000 additional …
The global-warming economics coming out of Washington doesn’t match the global-warming economics of Copenhagen. For instance, according to Senator John Kerry (D-MA) cutting CO2 creates jobs and stimulates the economy. At least that’s what the press release describing his cap-and-tax legislation claims. But in Copenhagen this view of economics gets turned on its head. In Copenhagen Senator Kerry talks about the need to pay other countries to adopt the CO2-limiting regulations that supposedly create jobs and stimulate an economy. If the mandates, regulations, and energy taxes needed for carbon caps …
In a recent White House video, Vice President Joseph Biden urged Americans to ask their doctors, the most trusted source for medical information, about the health care reform efforts in Congress. Heritage Foundation Center for Health Policy Studies Director Bob Moffit did. Watch
An Issue Brief released yesterday by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (RWJF) concludes that small firms would largely benefit from the reform efforts that have been put forth in both the Senate bill (HR 3590) and the House bill (HR 3200). While the benefits from these bills to small businesses already are uncertain – and likely even deleterious – the latest version of the senate bill is even less likely to result in actual benefits for small employers. Previous Heritage analysis has shown that small businesses would be affected by …
