In another affirmation of the truism, “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time,” President Obama’s base has noticed that his promise to push through an amnesty bill looks pretty hollow. “Thirty-seven words,” writes Ruben Navarrette Jr for CNN, “In this week’s State of the Union address — which was more than 7,000 words long and lasted longer than an hour — all President Obama devoted to the issue of immigration reform was 37 measly words.” Ruben is right. Something is afoot. The White House commitment to …
Last week, the evidentiary phase of the trial in Perry v. Schwarzenegger came to an end. Perry is the federal court lawsuit in California that claims, in effect, that the U.S. Constitution contains a right to same-sex marriage. Specifically, the lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the November 2008 amendment to the California constitution that effectively reversed a California high court decision redefining marriage to include homosexual unions. If the claims asserted in this lawsuit prevail, the 45 states that recognize marriage as the union of husband and wife …
In the February 1, 2010 edition of StateNet Capitol Journal, Lou Cannon notes that “only 12% of Californians with homeowners insurance also have quake insurance” as offered by the California Earthquake Authority. Cannon cites premiums costing “several hundred dollars a year and the deductible is 15 percent of the home’s insured value” as the reason that 88% of Californians don’t buy quake insurance. To protect California’s already bankrupt budget, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) and Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Diane Feinstein (D-CA) have introduced legislation that would provide a federal …
President Obama released his fiscal year 2011 budget this morning; his budget provides $28.4 billion for the Department of Energy (DOE) and $10 billion for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Both sections in the budget reflect the president’s message in the State of the Union address delivered last week: a government attempt to facilitate America’s transition to a clean energy economy. Highlights of the DOE budget include: $36 billion for Nuclear Loan Guarantees: Many are writing that nuclear is one of the big winners this year because of the $36 billion …
While the federal government already spends as least $25 billion on the existing 69 preschool and child care programs, the Obama administration is calling for #70—proposing $9.3 billion for a new “Early Learning Challenge Grant”. As we wrote last year, the Early Learning Challenge Grant fund would push states to spend more on preschool programs, when evidence is mounting that preschool programs aren’t delivering the benefits their proponents promise.
In an unusually harsh report released yesterday, the government’s Special Inspector General for TARP blasted the bailout program, charging that it has not only failed to meet its goals, but that — absent change — it may have made things worse. Among other things, Inspector General Neil Barofsky concluded that because of the bailouts, the market is “more convinced than ever that the Government will step in as necessary to save significantly significant institutions.” This, he says, creates a moral hazard, through what he calls a “heads I win; tails, …
The Obama Administration has been quick to point out that it has exempted the defense budget from its proposed freeze on other elements of discretionary spending in its budget. While the Administration has announced in the budget that it is requesting a $33 billion supplemental appropriation for defense in the current fiscal year and is providing modest real growth in the overall defense budget in fiscal 2011 over its new fiscal 2010 baseline, the five-year defense budget is well below “freeze” levels. This is because it proposes to reduce the …
In a recent press release touting a federal fire grant, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) noted that because “firefighters put their lives on the line every day,” we face a “moral issue” that required us to use federal funds to buy the Somerville Fire Department equipment. The reality is that despite billions in grants across the United States, the Fire Act program has not reduced the number of firefighter deaths or fires. As David Muhlhausen pointed out in his seminal data analysis paper on the Fire Act program, “fire grants, including …
From the creator of Obama Budget Cuts Visualization and The National Debt Road Trip, now comes, What Does The Federal Budget Freeze Look Like? For common sense conservative solutions to our nation’s budget deficits, see:
The Washington Post asks: “Recently, a U.N. scientific report was found to have included a false conclusion about the melting of Himalayan glaciers. That followed the release of stolen e-mails last year, which showed climate scientists commiserating over problems with their data. Is there a broader meaning in these two incidents, and should they cause the public to be more skeptical about the underlying science of climate change?” You can’t call them isolated incidents now that they are coming in droves. It is clear that global warming science has been …
