After suffering major electoral and legislative defeats last month, President Barack Obama took to the campaign trail in Nashua, New Hampshire, pitching his administration’s latest new plan to lower our nation’s double digit unemployment rate. This time, the President hopes to do for small businesses what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did for home mortgages. Specifically, he wants to create a new $30 billion “Small Business Lending Fund” which will loan money to banks with assets under $10 billion at favorable new rates, as long as they comply with a slew …
Politico reported yesterday that “The second-ranking House Democrat signaled Tuesday that the White House is reconsidering a plan to move Guantanamo detainees to a prison in northwest Illinois … Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he agrees that the Obama administration should reassess the plan to move terrorist suspects from the Cuba military base to Thomson Correctional Facility in the state’s northwest corner.” If Hoyer is sincere and his assessment of the White House is accurate … well, that it is almost too much to hope for. Could the president actually be …
In Arizona, Louisiana and a few other states, well-meaning citizens would like to recall their U.S senators. Fair enough. But while this opinion represents a commendable movement to make Congress more accountable for its actions, it tramples on the U.S. Constitution and undermines the rule of law. Contrary to popular Web sites, the recall of members of the U.S. Congress has never been permissible according to the Constitution, and no member of the Congress has ever been removed by such means. That’s because the U.S. Constitution sets the qualifications and …
Credit the Pittsburgh Tribune Review for being one of the nation’s first newspapers to editorialize about last month’s national Head Start evaluation, which found that the program provided children with zero lasting benefits. They editors write: “That it took the feds more than 40 years for a proper analysis suggests it’s the spending that matters, not results. And yet Congress is moving ahead to increase early childhood education programs with $8 billion in new spending. Mr. Obama has said, repeatedly, that federal programs without benefit should be dumped. Well, Mr. …
Fiscal reform has become a hot topic in Washington as spending hits all-time highs and Congress and the President continue to push several new high-ticket items closer to law. Lawmakers and concerned citizens alike are shifting focus to the looming fiscal crisis that will be caused by from entitlement spending on the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security programs. But for Social Security, that red ink isn’t so far off in the future—in fact, it’s scheduled to arrive in 2010. In the Washington Post, business columnist Allan Sloan highlights a report …
Yesterday the U.S. Constitution and federalism won a key battle. The Virginia Senate, which has a Democrat Majority, passed a bill prohibiting a requirement for Virginians to purchase health-care insurance. Five Democrats from swing districts joined all of the Senate Republicans in voting in favor of the measure. And with a Republican State House and Governor, this bill is expected to make it into law. Some would argue that the legislative implications are negligible as the federal government, if it wants, can override state law and that an individual mandate …
No, it’s not a joke. It’s the finding from a new paper published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The argument is school choice leads to more driving which results in more vehicle emissions. The abstract says, “that eliminating district-wide school choice (i.e., returning to a system with neighborhood schools only) would have significant impacts on transport modes and emissions” and the findings “underscore the need to critically evaluate transportation-related environmental and health impacts of currently proposed changes in school policy.” George Mason economist Don Boudreaux appropriately responds in …
The United States health care system is not nearly as free market and consumer driven as it should be. And while government continues to slowly takeover our health care system, and Obamacare would fast-forward that development, the U.S. system is still more free than the Canadian “single-payer” system. And how is government run health care working for Canada? This past summer the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority considered cutting more than 6,000 surgeries to make up for a $200 million budget shortfall. British Columbia Medical Association president Dr. Brian Brodie called …
President Barack Obama asked Congress not to “walk away” from health care reform in his State of the Union address and to send him ideas for improving health care. Heritage’s Bob Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies, says there’s a problem with the Congressional health care plan the President would like to sign – the American people don’t want it. Moffit also has three specific ideas for health care reform that Congress should consider. Watch the video below, then join the debate in our comments forum:
Increasing spending on the State Department and international affairs while freezing discretionary domestic spending is probably not likely to endear President Obama further to constituencies on either side of the Congressional aisle. Yet, the State Department is one of the few winners in President Obama’s FY 2011 budget request, continuing a five year commitment made last year to increase capacity at Foggy Bottom. The way the funding request is structured tells you much about the President’s priorities in foreign policy, which hold fairly closely to traditional Democratic priorities. It certainly …
