For the last couple of decades, Social Security analysts, public trustees, and even both Republican and Democratic Presidents have warned that unless the program is fixed, it faces perpetual cash-flow deficits. And now, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that those perpetual deficits have arrived. As a result, it is even more urgent that Social Security is fixed and placed on a firm fiscal footing. While the program will be able to pay the benefits that it has promised older Americans, younger workers can expect a 22 percent across-the-board benefit …
History is not a strong point of this Administration. Last month it was President Obama declaring another “sputnik moment” for America–only to rattle off a list of big government ideas completely at odds with how Eisenhower responded to Sputnik. Yesterday, it was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs delivering another dose of “say what?” history. What’s been happening in Egypt over the last week or so, he informed the press, “are events that many people have not seen — nobody has seen in their lifetime.” Gibbs was born in 1971. …
Mere hours after senior federal Judge Roger Vinson, a United States Naval Academy graduate, became the second federal judge to find Obamacare’s Section 1501 (the individual mandate) unconstitutional, an anonymous White House official called in to question Judge Vinson’s entire ruling, telling reporters, “There’s something thoroughly odd and unconventional about the analysis.” The only thing “odd and unconventional” here is that a White House official felt it imperative to undermine the legitimacy of a coequal branch of government. Unfortunately this incident just fits into a larger pattern of behavior that …
A large number of Senators went on record tonight opposing ObamaCare. The House spoke on a bipartisan basis on a measure to fully repeal the President’s health care law by 56 votes last month. Just yesterday, a Florida federal court issued a decision declaring the individual mandate, and the whole law, unconstitutional. If one of the many cases challenging the constitutionality of ObamaCare makes it to the Supreme Court, move the President’s health care reform law into critical condition. Tonight, the Senate voted 47-51 on an amendment to repeal ObamaCare …
As expected, President Hosni Mubarak’s promise not to seek re-election has not appeased the huge crowds of Egyptians who are determined to remove him from power immediately. The regime mobilized thousands of supporters, who clashed with protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Such clashes are sure to inflame the situation and risk dragging the army, the most important force for stability in Egypt, into a spiraling series of confrontations with opposition demonstrators egged on by radical anti-democratic groups. Such an escalation of political violence would discredit the army and undermine its …
Last week, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing titled “The United Nations: Urgent Problems that Need Congressional Action.” At that hearing, Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R–FL) made a statement: Ambassador Susan Rice says that the U.S. approach to the U.N. is, “We pay our bills. We push for real reform.” Instead, we should be conditioning our contributions on “reform first, pay later.” In the past, Congress has gone along by willingly paying what successive Administrations asked for—without enough oversight. This is one of the first true …
The principal issue addressed in Federal District Court Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling Monday on the case of Florida vs. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is the application of the Constitution’s “interstate commerce” clause with respect to Obamacare’s individual mandate. But two other parts of his ruling send an important judicial “tough love” message to state and federal lawmakers that the courts cannot—and should not attempt to—solve their political and policy problems for them. In the case of state lawmakers, Judge Vinson dismissed the states’ argument that the federal …
The buzz word to praise Barack Obama’s second State of the Union address is “Reaganesque.” Time magazine gushed that Obama’s emphasis on innovation, nod to American Exceptionalism, and deft use of storytelling places him “squarely — with Reagan — on the side of sunshine and enterprise.” As one conservative commentator remarked, “ever so slowly, liberals are attempting a subtle revisionism” of our 40th president. Though Reagan was portrayed as a simpleton B-movie actor (lacking compassion for the little man or good sense about policy) while president, liberals now reinterpret his …
This week, Judge Roger Vinson of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida became the second federal judge to strike down Obamacare’s individual mandate. In doing so, Vinson struck down the entire law concluding “the individual mandate and the remaining provisions are all inextricably bound together in purpose and must stand or fall as a single unit.” Judge Vinson’s decision has prompted a long overdue national debate over the limits of the federal Leviathan. Specifically, is there anything, any form of human activity or, more importantly, …
Under the Progressive notion of a “living” Constitution, almost every aspect of the Constitution has been subject to reinterpretation. One section that would seem to defy a new interpretation, however, is Article I, Section 7, Clause 2 – or the “Presentment Clause” – which clearly outlines the process by which a bill becomes a law. As Michael Rappaport explains in the latest Constitutional Guidance for Lawmakers essay, “The Presentment Clause ultimately drafted by the Convention was one of the most formal provisions in the Constitution. The Framers apparently feared that …
