In the week leading up to the G-20 Summit in Toronto this weekend, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has added his voice to the growing discussion about the United States’ recession spending spree. In a response to President Obama’s call for further international recession spending, Schäuble stated “governments should not become addicted to borrowing as a quick fix to stimulate demand. Deficit spending cannot become a permanent state of affairs.” As if there were any doubt about the United States’ spending addiction, Heritage budget expert Brian Riedl explains, “the annual …
The Senate hearing for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan starts on Monday, June 28. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has refused Republican requests to delay the hearing. The Republicans have a very good and justified reason for that request – the huge number of documents that they have just been inundated with, a volume of material so large that it will be virtually impossible for the Senators and their staff to give them any meaningful review prior to the hearing. But then, that may …
Following months of intense diplomacy between the United States and Russia focusing on “resetting” bilateral relations, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev visited the United States for two days. The tour included stops in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Stanford University, and a Washington, D. C summit with President Obama. In trying to move the focus of US-Russian ties beyond security and geopolitical issues such as arms control and Iran, the trip was intended to take the relationship to the next level—greater economic engagement. It was also intended to show the smiling face …
The goal of the Obama administration, made clear from almost day one, was to hit a “reset” button on US-Russian relations. The question of what we are re-setting, however, is something that has been all but ignored. In the mindset of the Russians, they have to change nothing. Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak stated in an interview to The Rossiyskaya Gazeta, “I do not think that our [Russia’s] attitude toward America changed greatly. I’d say that the Americans finally saw the error of their ways and began working …
The willingness of some in the media to accept even the most vapid of statements from international leaders as evidence of major policy change provides evidence daily that reporters, like the rest of us, can let their hopes get in the way of their judgment. A case in point is today’s editorial in the Washington Post by David Ignatius on the G-20 summit getting underway in Toronto. For Ignatius, President Obama’s recent letter to his G-20 counterparts, in which he called for restraint in easing government spending, fewer exports by …
They are getting together again. This weekend in Toronto, Canada, President Obama and German Chancellor Merkel reconvene at the G-20 Summit to figure out how to move the global economy forward. The two leaders are indeed extraordinary and remarkable in many ways. President Obama is the first African American President while Chancellor Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany. Oh, by the way, they are both for “change,” too. What appears even more extraordinary are their strikingly different choices of economics playbook for “change.” President Obama has chosen the …
President Obama has stated that his decision to relieve Gen. Stanley McChrystal and replace him with Gen. David Petraeus is a change of personnel, but not of policy. But many analysts believe that a change of policy is also in order. Daniel Serwer, Vice President of the Centers for Peacebuilding Innovation at the U.S. Institute of Peace, today wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post which advised President Obama to clearly state his desired end state for Afghanistan and adopt a more realistic timeframe for attaining his goal. Otherwise, Serwer …
In 1988, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act. Officials in Washington were firmly united in creating the single-largest expansion of Medicare since 1965. Fast-forward 22 years, and we’ve just witnessed a monumental government takeover of the private health care sector. But this doesn’t mean ObamaCare is set in stone. As we saw with the Medicare Catastrophic law, a focus on higher costs, disrupted health benefits and public revulsion to intrusive government bureaucracy helped ordinary America over the powerful players in Washington. What We …
A whopping 62 percent of Americans now say the United States is on the wrong track, yet President Barack Obama and liberals in Congress continue to steer the country in the same downhill direction toward bigger government. That runaway train picked up more speed this morning, as a House-Senate conference committee came to a final agreement on a Wall Street reform bill that’s packed with $19 billion in new taxes and fees on banks (which consumers will end up paying), a new consumer-unfriendly Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and a complete …
Sixty years ago today, North Korea brutally invaded the Republic of Korea. In doing so, Pyongyang revealed the true nature of its regime—its willingness to blatantly violate international agreements, its eagerness to use military attacks to achieve warped political objectives, and its utter disregard for the lives of the citizens of the Republic of Korea. Lest we forget, this is a regime whose brutal nature continues to this day and which is in fact trying to perpetuate itself at the moment through a second dynastic transition. On the southern side …
