Welfare spending is projected to skyrocket over the next 10 years, costing taxpayers $10.3 trillion and driving the United States toward bankruptcy. To make matters worse, a new report shows that the United States is seeing large percentage of its immigrant population exacting a costly toll on the welfare roles. According to Steven A. Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies: In 2009 (based on data collected in 2010), 57 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal and illegal) with children (under 18) used at least one welfare program, …
Virtually in the shadows of the seat of our nation’s government and the crowds gathered for the National Cherry Blossom festival, the residents of the Benning Terrace public housing development are mourning a triple tragedy. Two of their young people have been murdered, 13 youths have been indicted—virtually sealing their lives’ trajectory—and, perhaps most tragically, there may have been a way to prevent this devastation. A televised news report on the indictments included a statement from Bob Woodson, founder and president of the DC-based Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE), who …
On March 1 the U.S. Senate passed a resolution by unanimous consent calling for a no-fly zone in Libya. Many Senators are angry, because they feel like they were the subject of a bait and switch. The resolution was advertised as a condemnation of the human rights situation in Libya, yet this Administration has used it to provide the fig leaf of congressional authorization for hostilities in that country.
Ethanol. Henry Ford called it the “fuel of the future” in the 1920s. Decades later, policymakers put laws in place to increase the amount of ethanol in our fuel supply. Environmentalists and the Midwest sold it as a way to decrease American dependence on foreign oil and a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But it’s accomplished neither and instead become an industry reliant on subsidies, mandates and protectionism. Washington needs to reverse these policies and Senator Coburn’s (R-OK) amendment to repeal the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) is …
One negative provision of Obamacare is back in congressional crosshairs. The CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Support) Program, a new long-term care entitlement, has already endured withering criticism. In July 2009, the American Academy of Actuaries released a blistering report on its structural flaws. Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), Chairman of the Budget Committee, referred to CLASS as a Ponzi scheme during the Obamacare debate. And more recently, President Obama’s deficit commission recommended repealing or significantly revamping the program. Secretary Sebelius has repeatedly asserted that CLASS is unsustainable. She has …
America needs to change course. Our current direction is fiscally and economically unsustainable and politically and culturally bankrupting. It is threatening the well-being and future of our country. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R–WI) budget proposal, for the first time in recent memory, sets our nation on a different and better path. It tackles the massive spending excesses of the recent past and the entitlement crisis that is beginning to command our fiscal future. It rejects the politics of government dependence, massively higher taxes and the inevitability of national …
The Sugar Act is often overshadowed by its infamous cousin: the Townshend Act and its tax on tea. But the outcome of the Sugar Act, instituted on this day in 1764, is significant enough to stand alone in American history. Though it did not have the flair of war-painted men seasoning the Boston Harbor, the imposition of the Sugar Act marks one of the first times the colonists gathered together to protest Parliament’s encroaching authority. The British Parliament instituted the Sugar Act for the reason most taxes are imposed: to …
As Heritage expert J.D. Foster, Ph.D. noted in his January 2011 paper “Congress Has Time and Options on Debt Limit“, Congress had time to discuss how it wants to proceed on the debt limit. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner’s letter of April 4, 2011 estimates that the Federal Government will not reach the statutory debt limit before May 16, 2011 and that the Treasury can use special measures to extend that date to about July 8, 2011. Thus, it remains clear that Congress has sufficient time to proceed carefully and …
Iran is getting dangerously close to developing a nuclear weapon, according to Richard Weitz’s recent article, which is informed by the documents and reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA believes that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons within one to five years. Iran has continuously ignored IAEA’s requests for information about its nuclear facilities and heavy water projects, and it refuses to provide information about its Fordow Enrichment Site near Qom. In addition, the IR-40 reactor that it is building in Arak is very similar to reactors …
The Supreme Court has reversed the Ninth Circuit Court’s ruling in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, which sought to end the Arizona Tuition Tax Credit Program. The program allows individuals to receive tax credits of up to $500 ($1,000 for married couples) for contributions made to scholarship-granting organizations, which in turn provide vouchers to children to attend private schools of their choice. During the 2008 fiscal year, more than $54 million in scholarships was awarded to children through the tax credit program.
