Iran’s Green Movement opposition has proven to be a stronger and more persistent political force than many advocates of diplomatic engagement with Iran’s dictatorship had expected. This development, as well as the regime’s continued duplicity and foot-dragging on the nuclear issue, has led some to revise their thinking about supporting regime change in Iran. For example, Richard Haass, a self-professed “card-carrying realist” who formerly opposed the Bush Administration’s support for regime change, now has changed his mind. He has written an essay in the current issue of Newsweek that assesses …
Over 2,500 business leaders are flying in from around the world on carbon-spewing planes to the Swiss ski resort Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF). If they were planning on taking a sports utility vehicle (SUV) or a limousine from the airport to the resort, they better think again: Conference organisers have asked the business elite to leave their gas-guzzling limousines and SUVs, the traditional mode of transport for any self-respecting banker, at home. However, those who insist on turning up in their ostentatious cars will not be banned …
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) today released a ten-year budget baseline showing $6 trillion in deficits over the next decade. Yet because Congress requires the CBO to include all sorts of unrealistic assumptions (that all tax cuts will expire, that the AMT will never again be patched, that discretionary spending will barely move for a decade), some adjustments must be made. After building a true budget baseline, the sobering result shows ten-year deficits of $13 trillion. The annual budget deficit never falls below $1 trillion. By 2019, the debt is …
“We slipped up.” That’s what Patrick F. Kennedy the Undersecretary of State for Management said at a Senate hearing last week about the Christmas Day bomb plot and the arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He has a gift for understatement. But the real question isn’t whether we “slipped up” – everyone knows we did. It’s rather how and why we did? The truth is that this was a failure of policy, not of law. We did it to ourselves. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the Defense Advanced Research Projects …
In a recent poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC news, a majority of Americans expressed their frustration with the approach our government has taken in response to the financial crisis and economic slowdown. Just 43 percent of the respondents expressed satisfaction with how President Obama has handled the economy, a decline of 13 percentage points from a year ago. The disapproval vividly reflects disappointment toward economic policy decisions and management over the past year. As the downward-trending poll numbers suggest, a majority of our fellow citizens are not comfortable …
Tonight in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama is expected to propose a “freeze” on government spending. Obama’s spending “freeze” will only last three years, will not start until 2011, will only apply to a $447 billion slice of the federal government’s $3.5 trillion budget, and will not apply to any of the unspent $862 billion stimulus plan, his health care plan or the House of Representatives’ additional $156 billion stimulus plan. Despite all the loopholes, time limits and procrastination, the President should still be commended for …
The Senate this week is considering amendments to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) legislation to raise the debt limit. Reid’s bill is a substitute to the version that passed the House, which would add $925 billion to the federal debt ceiling, but his would hike the limit by $1.9 trillion so that the Senate does not have to take another troublesome vote on the debt limit before the 2010 election. Raising the debt ceiling to some degree is, unfortunately, necessary to avoid a default with perhaps catastrophic financial consequences for …
Tomorrow, join The Heritage Foundation as we discuss President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. Here’s how you can be part of the debate: Chat Live on Facebook: Visit our Facebook Fan Page beginning at 8:30 p.m. EST for a live chat on our Facebook Wall to share your real-time reaction to the President’s speech and to hear the latest analysis from Heritage experts. Tweet Chat on Twitter: Would you rather chat on Twitter? Join us in our Twitter chat room at http://tweetchat.com/room/heritagesotu to chat with fellow Tweeters and …
The Los Angeles Times reports that President Obama plans to call for a “$1.6 billion increase in federal funding for child-care programs” in his upcoming State of the Union address. The report frames this proposal as part of a larger effort to “help the middle class.” Some parents will probably welcome the news of more subsidized child care. But they need to remember that their children are the ones who will end up paying for the billions that will be added to the ballooning national debt, which is set to …
After a presentation this afternoon at the weekly Bloggers Briefing held at The Heritage Foundation, Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) sat down with us for his first interview following today’s announcement that he will not challenge Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) for his seat in the U.S. Senate. In this exclusive interview, Pence discussed his future plans, the prospects for the conservative movement, and what he believes the President and Congress can do to spur growth in the economy.
