Obama Replaces Costly High-Speed Rail Plan With High-Speed Bus Plan Last month, after the governor-elects of Ohio and Wisconsin (John Kasich and Scott Walker respectively) each declined to waste any more taxpayer money on high-speed rail boondoggles, the Obama administration quickly announced they would take federal transportation dollars away from those states and give them to California’s high-speed rail project. As we noted at the time, even Californian Democratic lawmakers have dubbed the California project a Super Train to Nowhere. Finally, The Washington Post is also taking notice:
When it comes to finding a constitutional authority to validate congressional action, the General Welfare clause is like a box without bottom: there is no project too local or too narrow not to fall under the rubric of “general welfare.” The scope of the General Welfare clause was hotly debated in early America. Alexander Hamilton favored a more expanded reading to enable spending on internal improvements to the Union, but James Madison advocated a more limited reading. To be sure, Congress’s current practices would make both men blush (even Hamilton …
On March 16, 2006, when our national debt stood at $8.27 trillion, a young Senator from Illinois announced his intention to vote against raising our nation’s debt ceiling to $9 trillion, explaining: The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I …
If it is allowed to be implemented, Obamacare will eventually do deep and irreparable harm to our nation’s budget deficit. But while Obamacare is more of a long-term threat to fiscal health at the federal level, it is a clear and present danger to the states. Of the 34 million Americans who gain health insurance through Obamacare, over half (18 million) will receive it through Medicaid. While Obamacare will pay for all of the benefit expansion for the first three years of the law, and 90% of it after that, …
Our new video asks, “Is the American Dream dead?” With the release of the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom, one element of the report should be inescapable to American readers: out-of-control spending is a serious threat to our country’s prosperity. The enormity of the problem should not be underestimated—last year, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman even called our frighteningly high debt the “most significant threat to our national security“. For the second year in a row, the United States remained mired in the “mostly free” category and while economic …
The Constitution has returned to Congress. It began with a ceremonial reading of the document on the House floor for the first time in US history. While the event had some problems, the act of reading the document that provides the authority for Congress in the first place sets the tone and defines the core purpose of the new Congress: to restore constitutional limits on the federal government. The real test comes with the debates over the new House rule requiring that each piece of legislation cite its constitutional authority. …
A new study published by School Choice Wisconsin finds that students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP)—the largest voucher program in the country with more then 20,000 students—had a graduation rate 18 percent higher than students in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). Author John Robert Warren of the University of Minnesota finds that: Overall, had MPS graduation rates equaled those for MPCP students in the classes of 2003 through 2009, the number of MPS graduates would have been about 18 percent higher. That higher rate would have resulted in 3,939 …
This morning, The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal released the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom, and while the news is good for many countries, it is depressing for the United States. All told, 117 countries, mainly developing and emerging market economies, improved their Economic Freedom Index score. Meanwhile the U.S. dropped to 9th place, remaining “mostly free,” weighed down by the burden of President Obama’s spending spree. Of course, we should all celebrate the improving lot of many impoverished people across the globe. The data in this year’s …
Hours before Secretary of Defense Robert Gates landed in China, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) staged a test flight of its new stealth fighter, possibly termed the J-20. In some quarters, it is being argued that this flight was deliberately scheduled to upstage the American visit. In the mystery that is Chinese politics, it is almost impossible to say whether this is actually the case or not; it is certainly just as possible that this was the result of bureaucratic scheduling.
Many leftist journalists, bloggers, and talking heads are shamelessly exploiting last weekend’s tragedy in Tucson, Arizona. To them, there is a lesson to be learned in this senseless act of violence by an undeniably troubled man. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman says he was even “at some level, expecting something like this atrocity” to happen. Krugman concludes: “If Arizona promotes some real soul-searching, it could prove a turning point. If it doesn’t, Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning.” This fear-inducing argument is a tired and worn-out Progressive prescription, …
