President Obama headed overseas to collect his Nobel Peace Prize and make his pitch for collective action on climate change. Of course, if our president commits us to any binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, our jobs will be heading overseas too. The Senate’s 1997 Byrd-Hagel Resolution warned not to enter into any global warming treaty, at the time the Kyoto Protocol, which leaves out developing nations or hurts the American economy. Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-CO) is taking Byrd-Hagel one step further by introducing House Resolution 945, which says the …
The Nobel Committee’s choice of President Obama for the Nobel Peace Prize was baffling, to Norwegians and Americans alike. Even President Obama himself was amazed. As he admitted in his acceptance speech today, compared to other recipients, he has indeed accomplished “very little.” (And he had accomplished even less when the nomination was made last February, just days into his presidential term.) In some ways, it has made a joke of the entire idea of the Norwegian Peace Prize. Yet, looked at from the perspective of creating controversy, the Nobel …
Just as the housing market is showing definite signs that it is stabilizing after a lengthy drop in housing prices, the House of Representatives is about to vote on proposal that would destabilize it once again while also raising the cost of mortgages for future home buyers. The proposal – to be offered by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) as an amendment to the financial regulation bill now before the House -would allow bankruptcy judges to reduce the principal owed on a mortgage, a practice often referred to as a “cramdown.” …
MOSCOW – The rest of the world’s passions may be boiling over in Copenhagen this week, but Russia is paying no attention. There is an impression that the government and public opinion – quite in the classical liberal laissez faire spirit – share the conclusion that global warming has a moderate and non-unprecedented nature, its impact on human health and wildlife is largely positive and that carbon emissions are hardly the primary factor in climate shaping. Thus, it is not a crisis and there is no need to resort to …
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) addressed The Heritage Foundation yesterday on the unconstitutionality of congressional action that forces Americans to buy health insurance under Obamacare. In Sen. Hatch’s opinion, that mandate would not pass muster under the Constitution, and it would be an entirely unprecedented action that is beyond the scope of Congress’ powers:
Yesterday, members of Congress released the text of their $446.8 billion spending measure – the Omnibus Appropriations bill – which will likely be enacted before December 18. To the dismay of low-income parents in the District of Columbia, the omnibus also contains language seriously jeopardizing the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program – despite the wishes of the D.C. City Council and other leaders, District residents, and most importantly, District families. The omnibus language blocks new entrants to the Opportunity Scholarship program, stating explicitly that the funding can be used “only for …
Washington is making the rest of America dizzy. The latest “breakthrough” agreement on health care will be the 8th major version this year (each exceeding 1,000 pages)—far more than most Americans can keep up with. The public deserves ample time to review and scrutinize each version before Congress votes. So far, nobody’s seen the new 8th edition; it’s not even in writing yet! The new version is a major makeover, with its enlargements of Medicare and its massive new grant to the White House of control over insurance. But as …
You don’t hear President Barack Obama make this promise anymore, but when he was first selling his health insurance plan, Obama repeatedly promised the American people: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Lost in the November 18th Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) version of Obamacare, was the CBOs latest confirmation that Obama’s statement is blatantly false. Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee Ranking Member Mike Enzi (R-WY) asked the CBO to clarify their analysis …
In the midst of resolving conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama briefly mentioned another war in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech: the war on climate change. He said, “The absence of hope can rot a society from within. And that is why helping farmers feed their own people – or nations educate their children and care for the sick – is not mere charity. It is also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we …
The latest Senate leadership health care compromise is a “Bumper Sticker.” There are no details yet, but the Bumper Sticker tells us enough about where this compromise is heading: a massive concentration of political control over the health care system. While the Senate leadership has decided to turn the outlines of their latest “breakthrough”- perhaps even the legislative text- to the Congressional Budget Office for a cost estimate, we know something about what they have in mind. The broad outlines tell taxpayers a great detail about where the congressional liberals …
