Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) today swung hard against a public-relations campaign by the Obama Administration to clean up its tattered image over its handling of the war on terrorists, and especially Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. In a major address at The Heritage Foundation, McConnell gave a point-by-point refutation of all of the administration’s failures in this area, from the decision to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay to the botched attempt to try some terrorists in New York. But McConnell took special aim at the administration …
Participants at a recent conference in Washington blamed Mexico’s failure to achieve above-average economic growth in the past decade on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This criticism is unfair and unwise. The NAFTA agreement is one of the best examples in recent history of a successful, mainstream, and bipartisan project. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in the 15 years since NAFTA came into force annual U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico has tripled to nearly $1 trillion. More than 100,000 small and medium-sized U.S. firms now …
House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) was quoted in The Hill earlier this week discussing the country’s economic outlook. Despite the President’s recent efforts to talk about savings, Rep. Clyburn took a different tack, saying that “wouldn’t help alleviate the recession.” He added, “We’re not going to save our way out of this recession. We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession, and I think most economists know that.”
The Educate to Innovate campaign recently announced by President Obama may become the latest addition to the Department of Education’s hall of inefficient and costly federal programs. The President revealed a plan to increase taxpayer funding for teaching programs by $10 million and lauded a promise by 75 public universities to graduate thousands of new science and technology teachers over the next 5 years. Dave Saba, President and CEO of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), a non-profit organization that provides an alternative route to teacher certification …
President Barack Obama reiterated his “jobs will be our number one focus” State of the Union talking point in New Hampshire on Tuesday, but all indications are that he is continuing down the path that led America to less economic freedom – and fewer jobs – in 2009. Heritage’s Brian Riedl conducted a quick analysis of President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget and found that the President’s policies would hike taxes by more than $2 trillion over the next decade (counting health care reform and cap-and-trade), raise taxes for 3.2 …
As President Obama’s recently-released budget for 2011 reveals, with or without a health care reform bill, Medicaid stands to receive a big, taxpayer-funded bailout. Again. The 2011 Budget includes $25 billion in additional funding for state Medicaid programs as an extension of the bailout that was included in the 2009 economic stimulus bill. As Heritage analysts Dennis Smith and Nina Owcharenko argued then, depending on federal bailouts to carry Medicaid through economic hardships is bad policy. The stimulus bill provided increased federal matching rates for Medicaid programs in all fifty …
UPDATE: Here is the video of Sen. Mitch McConnell. You can read his remarks below: “Thank you. It’s an honor to be here. For nearly four decades, Heritage has equipped lawmakers with the tools they need to advance a conservative agenda based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, freedom, and a strong defense. That work is as important today as ever. Our nation faces many urgent challenges, and among the toughest, most persistent of these are those that we face in the ongoing War on Terror.” “More than …
Yesterday, a new study was released showing that abstinence education programs were effective in reducing teen sexual activity while conventional safe sex programs had no positive effects. Ironically, this finding comes at a time when President Obama and the Pelosi/Reid Congress have abolished all federal funding for abstinence and created a new funding stream to promote so-called “comprehensive” sex education. In order to understand this issue, it is important to dispel common myths about abstinence education and sex ed in general. Myth: Abstinence Programs Don’t Work. The newly released study …
Yesterday, Iran’s hardline regime accused the United States of fueling “Iran phobia” by deploying missile defense systems in several Persian Gulf countries that increasingly feel threatened by Iran. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehrmanparast complained that “We regard these (U.S.) measures as a conspiracy and a ploy by foreign countries to create a sense of Iran phobia.” He attacked U.S. officials for spreading fear: “Because they have lost their presence in Iran, they feel they have no foothold and in order to justify their presence (in the region) they make such …
In the wake of the historic election of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, observers have expressed interest in the strategy behind his online campaign. Three members of the Scott Brown team visited The Heritage Foundation yesterday to talk about the campaign’s incredible success. Afterwards, we sat down with Robert, one of the chief architects of their web strategy.
