Amidst all the intense speculation about quickly passing the President’s health care agenda through the Budget Reconciliation process before the Easter Recess, ordinary Americans should remember one thing: the House of Representatives must first pass the 2,700-page, $2.5 trillion, Senate health bill. So, the next big step in the national health care debate is floor action in the House of Representatives, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must round up at least 216 votes. Heritage analysts have conducted some extensive research and analysis of the provisions of the giant Senate bill. …
During last month’s Blair House health care summit, President Barack Obama was forced to change the subject after Rep. Paul Ryan(R-WI) Blair House thoroughly refuted the President’s claim that his health care plan would reduce the deficit. It took over a week for the White House to respond to Ryan, but last Thursday they finally produced this blog post by OMB director Peter Orszag followed by a Washington Post op-ed Friday titled: Health reform that won’t break the bank. Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow James Capretta responded to the …
Raising taxes does not mean more overall revenue, recently seen in Montgomery County, Maryland, which has had a particularly bad fiscal year after a recent tax hike. The county, which is just across the northern border of the District of Columbia, saw many residents making over $1 million move out when a tax hike was introduced in 2008, and now there are not enough high-income residents in the county to pay their share of taxes. The result of the high tax flight? The county now runs a budget deficit. The …
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is attempting to do what couldn’t be done at the international climate change conference in Copenhagen last December: Transfer large sums of wealth from developed countries to developing ones in the name of climate change. From BusinessWeek: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, said the organization is helping to set up a “green fund” that would raise $100 billion a year by 2020 to mitigate the effects of climate change in developing countries. Strauss-Kahn indicated the fund may use its quotas, which reflect …
“No family change has come to the fore in modern times more dramatically, and with such rapidity, as heterosexual cohabitation outside of marriage,” writes David Popenoe, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Rutgers University and one of the preeminent family scholars in the country. The latest release by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) merely confirms Professor Popenoe’s conclusion. It reports that, in 2002, one in two women aged 15 to 44 has been in a cohabiting relationship, about a 10-percentage-point increase since 1995. Among women aged 25 and …
The same ethical advice for doctors also makes sense for Congress as it considers several pending global warming bills – first do no harm. Given serious questions about global warming science as well as the efficacy of costly proposals to address it, the best choice for Washington is none of the above. With economy-wide cap and trade stalled in the Senate, a number of slightly scaled back variants have been proposed, including measures targeting selected industries or a carbon tax. All threaten to do more harm than good.
A piecrust promise is one that is easily made and easily broken. The promise – more a rumor than anything else – that the U.S. Senate will use the reconciliation process to adopt a strong ban on abortion funding if the House passes the Senate-approved bill is flakier than most. Never before in the history of the 34-year abortion funding debate have pro-life members of Congress approved a bill containing abortion funding on the promise that a subsequent vote will fix the problem. The scenario being discussed in the media …
Despite as many as 100 explosions which killed at least 38 people in Baghdad, Iraqis defied a desperate insurgency yesterday and turned out in strong numbers to choose a new Parliament. According to The New York Times, “turnout was higher than expected, and certainly higher than in the last parliamentary election in 2005. … Sunnis who largely boycotted previous elections voted in force, and an intense competition for Shiite votes drove up participation in Baghdad and the south.” The NYT went on to describe the election as “arguably the most …
House Cloakroom: March 8 – 12, 2010 Analysis: Again, the question expected to dominate the discussion in Washington will be whether there are enough votes to pass the health care legislation on the House side. In order to move the ball forward it is expected there will be a health care reconciliation mark up in the Budget Committee sometime during the week. Besides the ongoing health care saga the House and Senate will likely put the finishing touches on a “jobs” bill this week. Two other likely votes include legislation …
Most everyone agrees that decreasing the number of the uninsured is an important goal of health care legislation. What is not agreed upon is the best way to achieve that goal. Obama’s health care plan depends on expanding the number of Americans enrolled in Medicaid – the government-run program for the poor and disabled. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the Senate bill would account for about 50 percent of the reduction in the uninsured population at a cost of $395 billion over 10 years. New research by Heritage’s health …
