The presidential Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform convened Tuesday at the White House to address what leaders of both parties agree is one of the greatest threats to the country’s economic future: the rising national debt. Recently President Obama and members of his economic team voiced their support for a European-style value-added tax, or VAT, as one solution to our ever-growing 13 trillion dollar federal debt. I flatly reject this suggestion. A tax-and-spend economic policy that includes a value-added tax is precisely the wrong medicine for our ailing economy …
Economic freedom boosts job growth, as the Heritage Foundation’s 2010 Index of Economic Freedom empirically demonstrates. Now, there is more evidence in a state-level study just released by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, “Economic Freedom and Employment Growth in the U.S. States.” According to the Fed research, “states with greater economic freedom – defined as the protection of private property and private markets operating with minimal government interference – experienced greater rates of employment growth.” The authors of the study further note, “Our results suggest that policy-makers concerned …
Obamacare was marketed to the American people as health care reform that would expand coverage to reduce the number of uninsured. One of the ways this would be accomplished, proponents said, was by making it easier for small business to offer insurance. Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy and have the greatest potential to create the jobs that Americans are currently desperate for. Unfortunately, Obamacare will hinder the growth of these businesses. In a recent paper, Heritage’s John Ligon explains how the new health care laws will …
The government is announcing its approval of the nation’s first off-shore wind farm today after a contentious, nearly decade long debate including many interested parties. Millions have been spent on lobbying both to move the project forward and stop it in its tracks. This is nothing new to energy projects. Coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear and renewables each have supporters and naysayers. Overregulation and special-interest politicking are two problems that are unlikely to disappear any time soon, but given the small percentage of energy that renewables provide and the ambitious …
Roger Clegg and I recently reported on the lawsuit filed in the first week of April on behalf of residents of Kinston, N.C., contesting the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 is the supposedly temporary “emergency” measure first passed in 1965 that requires states like Alabama to submit any voting changes, no matter how minor, to the Justice Department or a three-judge panel in the District of Columbia for approval before they can take effect. A second lawsuit was filed yesterday by Shelby County, Alabama …
Somebody spilled the beans Tuesday, telling the truth about the financial reform bill being debated in Congress. But most media ignored it. Rather than being the targets of this bill, Wall Street financiers will be rewarded by it. The chairman of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, told a Senate subcommittee, “The biggest beneficiary of reform is Wall Street itself.” So why does President Obama instead want us to believe the legislation is our revenge against Wall Street, a chance to get our money back after so many bailouts?
This week, efforts are underway to begin considering a bill sponsored by Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) which he and the President have claimed would bring real financial reform to Wall Street. As our latest video explains, in its current form, it can better be described as a Wall Street Bailout bill. In his latest paper, Heritage scholar James Gattuso identifies 14 “fatal flaws” and reports that the bill would actually make another financial crisis or bailout more likely to occur. Some of its more worrisome features:
On the stump, Candidate Obama identified government entitlement spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as the largest contributor to the federal deficit. If Congress doesn’t rein in the costs of these programs, he said,, these three programs will “consume all of the federal budget.” Candidate Obama was right. (Still is: just check out The Heritage Foundation’s new 2010 Budget Chart Book.) Unfortunately, the President’s health care law will only exacerbate the entitlement crisis. While Obamacare seeks some cost-savings (witness its ham-fisted treatment of popular Medicare Advantage plans), it does …
There is much hand-wringing in the mainstream media about the Senate Budget Committee’s 6.8% cut of $4 billion last week to the Obama Administration’s massive $58.5 billion Fiscal Year 2011 request to fund the foreign affairs “150 Account” budgets that include the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). What the critics of congressional cost-cutting conveniently gloss over is that the budgets of the foreign affairs agencies have grown by more than 30 percent in just the past two years! Of course, the $4 billion reduction barely …
The Dodd financial reform bill is beginning to scare executives. However, it is not necessarily scaring bankers or Wall Street fat cats. It is scaring motor cycle manufacturers, college presidents, retailers, car dealers, and even coffee shop executives. All of these people and more are waking up to the Dodd bill’s threat to their businesses. If you read the Dodd financial reform bill carefully, the words “bank” or “financial” could refer to many more people than just bankers. Those words apply to any provider of “financial products” even if the …
