There are at least six key differences that need to be resolved before the House and Senate can cut a deal, in secret, to pass Obamacare. Maybe the most difficult issue to resolve is the issue of using federal tax dollars to fund abortion. It seems clear, from a reading of the House- and Senate-passed health care bills, that their positions on the federal funding of abortion are at odds and will be difficult to reconcile. During the House debate, an amendment was added by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) (the …
Today’s Labor Department jobs report is a study in contrasts. For example, on the one hand the labor market is notably less weak than in recent months. December’s 85,000 drop in employment according to the payroll survey is markedly better than the monthly average of over 275,000 jobs lost during the third quarter and followed a 4,000 job gain in November. On the other hand, the Obama jobs deficit – the difference between current employment and the level President Obama promised when he sold his economic plan to the American …
Our Tweet of the Week comes from the folks at Gallup. They’ve got good news for the conservative movement. According to a Gallup poll, 40% of Americans considered themselves “conservative” in 2009, higher than any other ideological group (liberals were 21%; moderates were 36%). From Gallup, here’s the Tweet of the Week: @galluppoll Conservatives Finish 2009 as No. 1 Ideological Group http://bit.ly/5rMmTs You can follow The Heritage Foundation on Twitter @Heritage.
The House and Senate still have to iron out six key differences between their versions of the legislation before Obamacare can be signed into law. But getting past the House and Senate may just be the beginning of the plan’s problems. Not only are the attorneys general of13 states jointly investigating whether Sen. Ben Nelson’s (D-NE) Cornhusker Kickback violates the Constitution, but multiple public interest law firms are promising to also challenge whether the scheme’s individual mandate meets constitutional muster. Now conservative activists are adding yet another post-passage hurdle for …
The attempt by a 23-year old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit on December 25 starkly reminds us that the roots of terror run deep into Africa as they do into the Middle East or AfPak. For two decades terrorists like Osama bin Laden, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the mastermind of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and Kenyan-born Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a major al-Qaeda terrorist killed in a commando raid in Somalia in September 2009 have …
It may have taken President Barack Obama two weeks to deliver a speech on the failed Flight 253 bomb attack without blaming President Bush, but he should still be commended for finally owning up for the massive intelligence failure. President Obama told the American people yesterday: “The U.S. government had the information . . . to potentially uncover this plot and disrupt the attack. Rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence, this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had. … Ultimately, the …
Earlier today the White House promised a “shocking” report on the intelligence failures leading up to the aborted Christmas Day bombing and an address by the President directly from the White House. Neither the report nor the President’s remarks told us much new nor anything particularly shocking. It was pretty clear from the outset that government screwed up big time. It is hard to be in awe of an administration that seems to behind the rest of us. Likewise, the President’s laundry list of remedies seem like cold comfort. Trying …
One of Obamacare’s biggest dirty little secrets is that in both the House and Senate versions of the bill, over half of those who gain health insurance do so through Medicaid. Both bills force more people who are currently eligible for Medicaid to enroll–and the states would be left to pick up the tab without any additional federal funding. For states already on the brink of insolvency, Obamacare will be a financial disaster unless they can all secure deals like the one Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) secured for Nebraska. California …
One of the main arguments President Barack Obama and other Democrats have made on behalf of the health care bills that have passed the House and the Senate is that they would reduce the federal budget deficit in the coming decade and in the years following as well. Their claim is backed up by the official cost estimates provided by the Congressional Budget Office that show modest improvements in the budget outlook through 2019 if the bills become law. But there are important reasons to be very skeptical that a …
“I just think what’s pervasive through the country, and has been now for a number of years, is a complacency, an inertia, a business-as-usual. You ask anyone, is this an important problem? They say yes of course it is, then they stack it up with 150 other priorities. You either have to give this top priority or not. We have not given it sufficient priority. And as a result, there is a complacency, there is a business-as-usual attitude that I think is harmful … including the president, including the leaders …
