Just last week Congress revived PAYGO legislation which is supposed to force legislators to offset any new spending with spending cuts elsewhere in the budget. While this won’t come as a shock to most Foundry readers, The Hill reports that “the ink is barely dry on the pay-as-you-go law, and Democrats are seeking to bypass it to enact parts of their job-creation agenda.” The problem with PAYGO is not its intent–serious efforts to reduce the deficit should be met with genuine interest by all conservatives–the problem is its inevitable implementation. …
Recent reports indicate that House and Senate leaders are considering using reconciliation as a means to pass Obamacare (again). The reconciliation process is a fast-track way to bypass the normal legislative process and to speed up consideration (and passage) of such a bill. And The Hill reports that there are political reasons to go with reconciliation: “reconciliation is enormously appealing to Democratic lawmakers and the White House because it would let them finish up health care reform by a simple majority in the upper chamber, where passing major bills usually …
Liberals are trying to take a big victory lap today over the stimulus. They proudly proclaim that the stimulus created more than two million jobs. They base these findings on models that simply multiply government spending by a multiplier to produce the net growth to jobs and GDP. Digging a hole in the ground is good for the economy as long as the government is paying for it in these models. Yes, the labor market has stabilized. Job losses are not as big, but job creation is slow and sluggish. …
A discussion on the Stimulus – One Year later with Reps. Eric Cantor, Shelley Moore Capito, Scott Garrett and Tom Rooney was held at The Heritage Foundation on Thursday, February 18. Viewers on Facebook asked questions of the speakers. The archived video will be here later in the day.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) recently introduced the “Roadmap for America’s Future”, a plan to reduce federal spending, pay off the national debt, and ensure future American prosperity. The Roadmap would create long-term fiscal solvency in the three federal entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—which otherwise promise to drive the nation into bankruptcy. Rep. Ryan’s legislation is currently the only comprehensive proposal to reverse the federal government’s budgetary woes. The only acknowledgment Democrats have offered of Rep. Ryan’s proposal has been largely criticism. Alternative solutions heard from the left amount to …
On the stimulus’s first anniversary, keep in mind one number: 9 million. That is the Obama jobs gap — the difference between the 3+ million net jobs President Obama said would be created (not just saved) and the nearly 6 million additional net jobs that have since been lost. By the president’s own logic, the stimulus failed. So Obama has shifted his argument. Sure, the economy lost jobs, he now says, but without the stimulus it would have lost nearly 2 million more jobs. This “it would have been worse” …
Yesterday, I joined a broad coalition of conservative leaders representing a wide spectrum of the movement including fiscal, social, cultural and national security conservatives, to sign The Mount Vernon Statement. In light of the challenges facing the country and the need for clarity, we needed to produce this defining statement of conservative beliefs, values and principles. It is the culmination of a thoughtful deliberation about our nation’s principles. I was proud to participate in that discussion, and to chair the committee that drafted the statement. Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for …
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute just released a new report that exposes the diversity of health care across the country on a county-by-county basis. What’s striking about the interactive report is the high level of variance found in health care for counties within a single state. For example, Montgomery and Howard counties ranked in the top slots in Maryland while Baltimore City and Allegany County trailed at the bottom. “In health care, one size does not fit all,” said Dr. Donald Shell, …
With over a week of in-class instruction lost to two blizzards and many Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland schools forced to contemplate longer school years, a few Maryland teachers found an effective, online alternative to letting snow drifts reduce student achievement. Even as record snowfalls threatened most lesson plans, online learning proved to be an efficient tool for academic instruction for the few students and teachers fortunate enough to participate. As The Washington Post reports, the accessibility of virtual chat rooms, whiteboards, and quizzes allowed some students to keep up …
On February 2nd, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Congress that the military needs no additional C-17 aircraft and that the production line should be shut down in 2011. His testimony drew bipartisan criticism from several senators, including Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). Senator McCaskill protested “we keep hearing…this is something that the military doesn’t want.… Then I go over there [to Afghanistan and Iraq], and that’s not their attitude at all.” Sen. Inhofe added that he believes America’s airlift capacity is in “dire straits,” and …
