House Cloakroom: March 15 – 21, 2010 Analysis: It’s crunch time on health care. The Budget Committee will meet Monday to start marking up a shell of a Reconciliation Bill. The Rules Committee will then meet as early as Wednesday to hollow out whatever the Budget Committee passed and then insert a new bill from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) office. The Majority is still planning to use the “Slaughter Rule” that would allow the House to pass the Senate health care bill without voting on it. Final votes are expected …
Rather than being inevitable cesspools of crime and sin,” says Howard Husock of the Manhattan Institute, “cities are, rather, the key foundations of prosperity and economic dynamism, the places where social and economic freedom [take] root and bear fruit.” Husock joined a panel at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in DC—“Saving Freedom in Urban Centers”—where panelists discussed conservative solutions to inner city challenges such as poverty, crime and education. The solutions focused on the need to restore human dignity and empower individuals by encouraging personal responsibility through relationships. …
When President Barack Obama first nominated long time missile defense critic Philip Coyle to be associate director for national security and international affairs at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy back in October, we immediately noted that this nomination signaled a major shift in our ballistic missile defense policy. Now others are also taking note. At The Weekly Standard, John Noonan writes: “If theology has crept into the missile defense debate, Coyle is the high priest of nay saying. There’s an inherent danger in placing ideologues, particularly …
A story by CNSNews today discussed how the U.S. State Department has been quietly holding meetings and soliciting comments on America’s human rights record for inclusion in a report it must submit this fall to the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC). Designed to be an improvement over the discredited U.N. Commission on Human Rights, the HRC has proven gravely disappointing. In its first four years, the HRC has been weak and ineffectual in promoting fundamental human rights, in large part because influential countries opposed to strong HRC scrutiny of human …
The debate over nuclear power in recent months has revolved around taxpayer backed loan guarantees for new nuclear projects. Not only has the President announced $8.3 billion in federal loan guarantees for a two-reactor project in Burke County, Georgia, his budget proposal includes tripling the nuclear loan guarantee program from $18.5 billion to over $54 billion. Unfortunately, some groups have used this debate to disguise their anti-nuclear agenda in anti-loan guarantee rhetoric. The basic construct of their argument is that nuclear energy is so risky and so expensive that using …
Since the New Deal, the American people have witnessed the federal government steadily overstep its authority established by the U.S. Constitution. But that just laid the groundwork for the damage that has occurred over the past two years. The snowball started with bailouts for the two housing giants, Fannie and Freddie, followed by the banking and auto bailouts, and then lawmakers drafted an overhaul of our financial industry to establish permanent bailouts. Now Washington is trying to takeover our entire health care system, our energy-supply, and even the job market. …
The Keeping Children Safe Act might sound laudable in name, but it represents the most recent intrusion of the federal government on local public and private schools. H.R. 4247, which passed the House last week by a vote of 262 to 153, prescribes federal regulations on seclusion and restraint disciplinary procedures used by teachers to control violent students. While the intentions may have been to protect children, the compliance requirements make the legislation another unnecessary and unfunded federal burden on states and local schools. The bill contains an unprecedented mandate …
After the panel, Professor Zywicki, a Senior Scholar of the Mercatus Center and contributor to the popular legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy, sat down with us for an “In the Green Room” segment. We talked about the problems we face if Congress enacts the CFPA, the real causes behind our current financial crisis, and what principles should undergird real financial regulatory reform.
In 2009, Democrats chose to proceed with a health-care bill under the regular order – that is, they sought to pass the legislation under normal House and Senate rules. They did not put together a budget reconciliation bill with health care in it, something that could have passed the Senate with a simple majority vote. They conceded that such an approach would likely produce a flawed product, as many non-budgetary provisions in a health-care plan would not survive the reconciliation process. And so they decided to try and pass a …
Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives appear to have abandoned their efforts to persuade a small band of pro-life members of their party to vote for a Senate bill that contains numerous provisions that subsidize elective abortion. Instead, the Democratic leaders are daring those pro-life members not to vote for the permissive Senate bill and take what they believe will be heat for defeating health reform. In something of a reverse grief cycle, Speaker of the House Pelosi has moved from bargaining to anger. It remains to be seen …
