The Washington Examiner today exposes a dirty little secret about Washington bureaucrats: Federal employees are bringing home twice as much pay as the average private-sector worker. Data compiled by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reveals the extent of the pay gap between federal and private workers. As of 2008, the average federal salary was $119,982, compared with $59,909 for the average private sector employee. In other words, the average federal bureaucrat makes twice as much as the average working taxpayer. Add the value of benefits like health care …
As the Senate moves closer to another cloture vote on Senator Dodd’s legislation, we are again reminded of the several flaws found in the Dodd-Frank approach to financial regulatory reform. Beginning with the rescue of investment bank Bear Stearns in the spring of 2008, the Federal government has committed trillions of taxpayer dollars to institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Citigroup and Bank of America, out of fear that the demise of any of these “too big to fail” institutions would trigger a systemic crisis and collapse of the …
The President’s deficit commission met yesterday to begin its task to address the mounting fiscal crisis facing the nation. As we show in our 2010 Budget Chart Book, the estimated federal deficit in 2010 will be $1.54 trillion, and spending on entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) and interest on the federal debt is slowly squeezing out other programs. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) outlined a way forward for the commission yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, and while we agree with Leader Hoyer on the gravity of …
Twelve-year-old Ansche Hedgepeth grabbed an order of French fries after school on her way to the Tenleytown/American University Metrorail station in Washington, D.C. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had decided to kick off a week of “zero tolerance” enforcement of “quality of life offenses.” When a police officer noticed Ansche, unaware of the no-eating rule on the metro, consuming her first French fry, she was immediately searched; her jacket, backpack, and shoelaces were confiscated; and she was handcuffed and taken to the Juvenile Processing Center in a paddy wagon. …
It makes a future market melt-down more likely. Today the Senate takes up Senator Blanche Lincoln’s amendment to regulate over-the-counter derivatives. The Lincoln bill is very, very bad, but don’t take out word for it, ask the Federal Reserve. Fed Staffers released a four page, seven point critique saying the Lincoln bill would “impair financial stability and strong prudential regulation of derivatives; would have serious consequences for the competitiveness of US financial institutions; and would be highly disruptive and costly, both for banks and their customers.” The first point of …
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday handed a defeat to activists and other litigants whose extreme views motivate them to try to eliminate from public life almost every symbol and expression of religion. By a slim 5-4 margin, the Court in Salazar v. Buono reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and allowed an 8-foot cross in the Mojave Desert to continue to stand – at least for now. The cross is part of a national memorial for the over 300,000 American soldiers who died in World War …
Small businesses will bear a significant burden under Obamacare. New regulations, mandates, taxes and numerous costs will impact how companies operate. The National Federation of Independent Business counted all of these new requirements and came up with 25 ways the new health care law changes life for business owners over the next 10 years. Its video puts some perspective on what’s to come in the years ahead. Earlier this week Heritage’s John Ligon revealed four ways Obamacare penalizes small businesses: higher health care costs, an ineffective small business tax credit, …
The latest word today is that the GOP is standing down from its standoff over the Senate’s financial-regulation bill. Specifically, word is that Republican leaders will now let the bill proceed to the floor, having received assurances that provisions for creditor bailouts will be removed. That’s not an insignificant improvement, despite the fact that President Obama has said that it is not “legitimate” to raise the issue of bailouts. But no one should think this bill is fixed. Far from it: Beyond the creditor bailout, I’ve counted at least 13 …
Yesterday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley confirmed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had submitted an application for a visa to attend the United Nations nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference in New York next month. Since Crowley also confirmed that Ahmadinejad is likely to be awarded the visa, the Iranian President can now look forward to witnessing first hand the failure of President Barack Obama’s Iran policy. At first the White House believed that President Barack Obama’s sheer power of personality and persuasion would be enough to convince the Iranian regime to give …
Rasmussen Reports had an interesting tweet about Obama’s Health Care Reform legislation: @RasmussenPoll: 60% Believe health care law will increase deficit, 58% favor repeal… http://tinyurl.com/RR1383 Not only do 60% of Americans believe that health care reform will increase the deficit, but 58% also believe that the correct thing to do is repeal the law. Digging deeper into the numbers, of the 58% who want to repeal the law, 47% strongly believe that we should repeal it, while only 29% strongly oppose repealing the law. Further still, only 19% think Obamacare …
