The federal government ran a budget deficit last month of $223 billion, according to recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). With deficits consistently running to levels almost beyond human comprehension, it would be easy to miss the fact that this was the largest single-month deficit on record. So, what are Congress and President Obama doing about it? The House of Representatives took the first step to get deficit spending under control by passing a Continuing Resolution to fund the government for the rest of the year for $61 …
It’s no secret that Obamacare is chock full of favors for big labor. One example is the new law’s excise tax on “Cadillac” insurance plans, which won’t apply to collectively bargained health plans when it goes into effect. It doesn’t end there. Obamacare also created the Early Retirement Reinsurance Program, which subsidizes employer-sponsored health benefits for early retirees and their families. The program will cover 80 percent of health expenses between $15,000 and $90,000, and was intended to encourage employers to maintain coverage for the age group between 55 and …
Just yesterday NPR’s president and CEO stood before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and declared that the taxpayer-funded news organization exhibited no bias against conservatives. Vivian Schiller even dared conservatives to show her the proof. Less than 24 hours later, filmmaker James O’Keefe delivered the goods. Caught on camera was an NPR senior vice president calling “Tea Party people” a variety of derogatory names: “Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously …
In 1999, the Clinton Environmental Protection Agency released a report required by the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act which estimated the economic benefits of the legislation to be $170 billion in 2010. Sounds believable. Fast forward to last week, the Obama EPA released their own report on the economic benefits of the Clean Air Act in 2020. Total CAA benefits according to the Obama the EPA: $2 trillion. A more than 1000% increase. Did the Clean Air Act get 1000% better in just 10 years? Or did the …
In what will surely be a publicity boon for Apple, especially among political scientists, Hungary’s new constitution is being written on an iPad. Thus far, this is one of the best known bits of information concerning Hungary’s current constitution drafting process. But lovers of liberty should take note of Hungary’s project not because it is a technological milestone, but because it represents a rare moment for constitutionalism and the rule of law. It is also a singular, albeit uncertain, moment in Hungary’s history. As such, the proposed text and the …
What’s the Cowboy Poetry Festival? As Townhall.com’s Guy Benson learned from Senator Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), it’s a federally funded event without which the “tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist.” Senator Reid made these remarks on the floor of the Senate while opposing the cuts to the National Endowment of the Humanities and National Endowment of the Arts. To his credit, the Senator did not bring props as Rep. Jeff Markey (D-MA) did when he invited a giant Arthur the Aardvark to …
News flash: “We are in an information war, and we’re losing that war.” This source for this conclusion was not one of the at least 15 reports on U.S. public diplomacy that have appeared over the last decade; it was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 2. For years, the State Department has been in denial, and Clinton’s admission of failure is therefore particularly welcome. Maybe we can now have an adult conversation about what needs to be done to reverse the …
“In 1993, Sweden introduced a system of school choice and vouchers inspired by the ideas of American economists Milton and Rose Friedman,” writes Odd Eiken, the executive vice president of Kunskapsskolan, an innovative network of schools in Sweden, and an architect of the Sweden voucher model, in the Washington Examiner: Even though the system was just as controversial then as any U.S. voucher proposal, the right to choose your school and bring the funding with you is today … widely accepted by all political parties. Even Sweden’s Social Democrat party …
This year’s meetings of China’s National People’s Congress, which started March 5, roll out the 12th five-year plan covering 2011–2015. A flock of freshly minted experts assure us that five-year plans are sacrosanct: If the PRC makes a commitment in the plan, it will be met. Hardly. The PRC’s five-year plans give a general sense of the direction, whether new or old, that Beijing wants to go. But China often does not end up there five years later. Headlining plan 12 is the new, lower target for annual GDP growth …
The scandal and heartache of teen pregnancy has been exploited by producers of popular prime-time TV, who have made stories of 16-year-olds stumbling through accelerated adolescence into marketable drama. Likewise, news media have scrutinized the teen birth phenomenon for some time. The truly shocking and underreported story, however, is that of unmarried 20-something parents. While 21 percent of children born outside of marriage are to teen mothers, more than 60 percent of unwed births occur to women in their 20s. It is not the young girls studying for the SAT …
