When asked about ClimateGate, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed its importance, emphasizing that “climate change is happening.” Of course climate change is happening. Soon we’ll be calling press conferences to declare, “The earth is moving” or “It’s going to get dark tonight.” The reality is the climate has been changing ever since there was a climate, and part of that change was a cooling period as recent as the 1940s to the 1970s giving rise to fears of a coming ice age. When Gibbs spouts this rhetoric, he’s …
Yesterday, Heritage scholar Rea Hederman explained why new CBO estimates showing only small rises in health insurance premiums under Obamacare was not good news for Americans (in short: Americans with generous coverage would see benefits cut due to the tax on high-value plans and Americans with Spartan coverage would see their premiums increase due to increased coverage mandates and taxes on medical devices and insurers that would be passed on). Today at NRO, Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow James Capretta explains why even the low premium increases projected by …
Deep within the current debate over health care reform, the longstanding controversy between comprehensive sex education and abstinence education continues. The Senate health care bill allocates $75 million a year for comprehensive sexuality education programs and $50 million a year for abstinence education, which was zeroed out in President Obama’s 2010 budget. Earlier this fall, Senator Hatch (R-UT) was successful in amending the Baucus health care bill to reinstate Title V abstinence education funding. According to Valerie Huber, Executive Director of the National Abstinence Education Association, “The recent CDC statistics …
The U.S. House of Representatives will vote this week on a bill that would permanently extend the estate tax (known better as the death tax) at its current rate and exemption level. This extension would prevent the death tax from expiring as scheduled on January 1, 2010. As such it would be a significant tax increase. Before voting to extend the death tax, Congress should consider the devastating impact it has on family-owned businesses. Reliable Contracting, a family-owned business in Millersville, Maryland, for example, had to pay a death tax …
While most Americans were out shopping on Black Friday, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) was busy sending a letter to Barack Obama with an important message for the president to take to Copenhagen: Don’t forget about us. Senator Webb’s letter to President Obama said the following: Dear Mr. President: I would like to express my concern regarding reports that the Administration may believe it has the unilateral power to commit the government of the United States to certain standards that may be agreed upon at the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention …
Liberals in Congress and out are calling for a new tax to pay for the war on terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the same time, rising unemployment and falling political prospects have driven President Obama and friends to fumble for stimulus 2.0, the first $787 billion Obama stimulus having now so obviously if predictably failed. Only liberals could propose higher taxes and a jobs summit at the same time and not notice the conflict. Of course, the real purpose of the tax proposal is to bring additional leftwing pressure …
Confronted by discrepancies in the number of jobs created by the stimulus bill, officials in the Obama Administration eventually were forced to concede that their numbers could not stand up to scrutiny. Unfortunately, the lesson appears to have been lost on the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) in its exuberance to fire up public support for health care legislation. Once again, the Administration appears to be fudging the numbers. The Administration’s website, HealthReform.Gov, which is maintained by DHHS, includes a feature, Health Insurance Reform and Your State: The …
When President Barack Obama announces his new Afghanistan policy tonight at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York, Denise Young of Kokomo, Indiana, who has a 22-year-old son serving in Afghanistan, already knows what she wants to hear: “That he is going to let the generals make the decisions. They have asked for more troops. They should get them. There is safety in numbers.” Just what number President Obama decides, however, is still unknown. Some news organizations place the number of new troops he will announce tonight at …
