Just one day after meeting with the oil and gas industry in Houma, La., last week, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar unveiled the Obama administration’s “Smart from the Start” initiative to speed up the permitting process. Only this wasn’t permitting for offshore oil drilling, but wind farms off of the East Coast. “To fully harness the economic and energy benefits of our nation’s vast Atlantic wind potential,” Salazar said, “we need to implement a smart permitting process that is efficient, thorough, and unburdened by needless red tape.” If only Salazar would …
After yesterday’s Senate vote against an earmark ban, we again made the case that the damage earmarks do to our nation’s deficits go far beyond the nominal amounts spent on the earmarks themselves. The problem is that the votes earmarks secure from the sponsoring legislators then allow for ever higher levels of spending on other federal programs. Now, just one day after eight Republican Senators voted to protect earmark spending, CQ confirms our fears: New Hope for a Spending Package. The 15-day stopgap bill, or CR, buys Democrats the maximum …
In their most recent Wall Street Journal article, Adam Entous and Jonathan Weisman write that Russia has moved short-range tactical nuclear warheads to facilities near NATO borders this spring. This revelation comes amidst the Obama Administration’s efforts to pass New START, a strategic arms control agreement with Russia, in the “lame duck” session of the Congress. Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Council of the Federation (the upper house of Russia’s parliament) foreign affairs committee, brushed off the news, stating, “We have relations of trust now with our American partners and …
For two election cycles in row, a frustrated American people voted to throw out the incumbent party because they did not like how Washington was operating. In 2008 the Republicans lost the White House and in 2010 the Democrats lost the House. The message from the American people is clear: stop the cynical back room deal making and start addressing our nation’s problems in a principled way. But some in Washington just refuse to hear this message. The Washington Post is reporting that the White House is offering to allow …
Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), does not like President Obama’s call for a two-year pay freeze. He writes: [The freeze]…will only enlarge the degree to which federal pay lags that of the private sector (a gap of 22%, according to the federal pay agent’s report. See Table 4.) ….and in the process [it] reinforces conservative myths, in this case the myth that federal workers are overpaid. This statement is not merely false, but also intellectually inconsistent. First the “false” part: Labor economists have been documenting a …
Should bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., set rules for the Internet? Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), thinks so. In remarks today, he stated that he had developed a new plan to impose so-called “net neutrality” rules on Internet service providers, setting a vote on the issue for December 21. Details of the plan are yet to be released, but the chairman indicated that the plan was based on a legislative proposal floated a month ago by Representative Henry Waxman (D–CA). That plan, however, was soundly rejected …
Ratification of the New START treaty was high on the agenda of the so-called “slurpy summit” between President Obama and leaders from both parties at the White House yesterday morning. The President has made adoption of the nuclear arms reduction agreement between the US and Russia by year’s end “a national security imperative.” While the meeting took place behind close doors, the President had this to say about his two-hour chat with the Democratic and Republicans leaders of the House and the Senate: I reminded the room that this treaty …
Getting America’s fiscal house in order ought to be a priority, but it should not come at the expense of protecting the American people. Here are 10 reasons why gutting defense is wrong. #10. We are a nation at war. Even the White House acknowledges that the U.S. will be conducting operations in Afghanistan through 2014 and that America will remain engaged in Iraq as well. Cutting defense would mean that wars would be funded by robbing resources from readiness, training, and buying new equipment. Our troops would suffer. #9. …
The report of the President’s Fiscal Commission is due today. As a stalemate appears increasingly likely, what appears to be an updated “chairman’s mark” to guide the commission’s discussions over the next several days was released. Like its predecessor, the report, puzzlingly titled “The Moment of Truth” (as if this will somehow garner enough votes), has some strong elements, both positive and negative. Overall, this proposal does much the same as the previous report, though it would cut spending deeper and faster, bringing discretionary spending to 2008 levels (adjusted for …
Today marks the deadline for the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to vote on a proposal to reduce the federal deficit and put runaway entitlement spending on a sustainable path. From the current looks of things, it is unlikely that the labors of the bipartisan commission will result in little more than the expected partisan gridlock. Though the supermajority needed to send a proposal to Congress may not be in the stars, several members of the commission have offered their own proposals to successfully open the dialogue …
