Yesterday the Senate beat back an amendment offered by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) to the tax extenders bill that would have continued for another six months a policy aimed at undoing welfare reform. The policy was originally created as part of last year’s infamous Stimulus package in the form of the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) Emergency Fund. It was supposed to be a “temporary” measure, however, the President in his 2011 budget and now Congress are actively looking for ways to extend it. This anti-reform fund pays states …
When President Obama held his health care summit at the White House, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) pointed out that a key part of containing medical costs was completely missing from the debate: medical malpractice legal reform. The cost of defensive medicine alone (without taking into account the direct costs of such claims) “could be as high as $239 billion” according to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers cited by Camp. So what was President Obama’s response? He basically interrupted Camp and told him to “finish up.” On March 3, when Obama gave …
Chris Horner from the Competitive Enterprise Institute is at it again, doing his best Sherlock Holmes imitation. After a Spanish study warned that renewable energy policies destroy more jobs than they aim to create, the Department of Energy released a strong rebuttal, claiming the report lacked rigor. A CEI-submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request shows how the DOE’s critique of the foreign study came to fruition. What transpired is difficult to discern with precision, as DOE continues to withhold numerous responsive documents. But it is clear that senior staff …
While Congressional leaders are feverishly plotting to jam the hugely unpopular Senate health bill through the House of Representatives the moment Speaker Pelosi thinks she has the votes, House liberals are also tinkering around with the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). This is the program that covers federal workers and retirees; it is a consumer-driven program of competing private health plans. Through more regulation, Congressional liberals would like to make it look a lot more like Obamacare. Historically, the success of the FEHBP as a consumer-driven and competitive system …
The state of California likes to sell itself as a leader in the transition to a green economy. The only problem is, their policies are making that transition harder—and they’re not producing the job boom that politicians have been promising. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) recently reviewed the impact of the state’s 2006 climate change legislation, which mandated a cut in GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. A letter from the LAO to the state senator that requested the analysis stated that the aggregate net jobs impact of …
Last Friday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its analysis of the president’s 2011 budget submission to Congress. This report hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves. When the administration released its budget in early February, the news seemed bad enough. By its own reckoning, the Obama administration’s budget plan would result in massive deficits and borrowing if adopted in full. According to the administration’s estimates, the president’s budget plan would produce deficits totaling $10.1 trillion over the period 2010 to 2020, and by 2020 federal debt would reach $18.6 …
The Health Care Nuclear Option is still the stated plan to get Obamacare to the President’s desk. The latest wrinkle is designed to allow pro-life Democrats to vote for the Senate’s taxpayer funded abortion language while still claiming they never voted for taxpayer funded abortions. Don’t be fooled. First, let’s be clear that the Senate bill allows tax dollars to be used for abortions. According to Chuck Donovan of The Heritage Foundation, the Senate passed Obamacare bill funds abortion in several ways, even creating an appropriation for Community Health Centers …
The first president of Iran after its 1979 revolution, Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr, has added his voice to the growing chorus calling for regime change in Iran. Bani-Sadr said in an interview that “We would also like the regime to be replaced by a democratic system. However, the position of the west with regards to the current regime is not clear.” He complained that “From my perspective the west needs to be unambiguous about its wants and wishes so that the Iranian people are reassured that it is not looking for …
While legislators finalize yet another round of stimulus spending, they should self-impose a time-out to assess the ineffectiveness of the last two years of government-directed stimulus. After two years of repeated government stimulus programs, the economy remains either in recession or in very slow recovery and yet the federal government continues to tinker with new ‘stimulus’ programs financed with bloated deficit spending. Recent NBER research focusing on the 2008 tax rebate stimulus reveals that there was only a modest per dollar stimulus effect. Indeed, households that found themselves short of …
President Barack Obama is touring the country asking for an up-or-down vote on his health care plan. Forget for a second that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) can schedule an up-or-down vote on the Senate health care bill any time she wants, and keep in mind that while Democrats are trying to create the legislative text for President Obama’s “new” health care proposal, Senate Democrats are also pushing to include student lending provisions in the reconciliation bill. What does student lending have to do with health care you might ask? Nothing. …
