As state budget reforms work their way through legislatures and courts around the country, a new front in the fight has opened up in an unlikely location: Massachusetts. Last night, the Massachusetts House of Representatives voted 111 to 42 to curb the bargaining power of state employees in an effort to control spiraling health care costs. As Massachusetts House Ways and Means Chair Brian Dempsey (D) explained, the bill was necessary to ensure that essential state programs could continue to receive adequate funding. “The cost of health insurance is going …
The liberal attack machine is operating on overdrive to attack Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan, but it’s failing to convince a large number of Americans, according to two new polls. A surprising USA Today/Gallup poll today revealed that a plurality of Americans over the age of 30 — including Gen Xers, Baby Boomers and seniors — support Ryan’s proposal to reduce the deficit over President Obama’s plan. The only age group preferring Obama’s plan were those aged 18-29. “Pluralities of middle-aged Americans as well as those 65 and older prefer …
It seems like there’s a demagoguery machine working full tilt these days to churn out scaremongering from the left over House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R–WI) 2012 budget resolution passed by the House earlier this month. Much of it focuses on Ryan’s proposal to provide premium support to Medicare enrollees, assisting them to purchase a health care plan of their choice. As Heritage’s Robert Moffit and Kathryn Nix write, it’s modeled after the plan that federal workers and employees enjoy, and it would introduce intense competition in a consumer-driven market, which …
Liberals’ solution to rising health care costs has consistently been to take control of health care decisions away from patients and their doctors and to place it in the hands of government. Obamacare does this by allowing unelected bureaucrats to define and reward value in the Medicare program, and the President’s proposal for deficit reduction would further empower government to interfere in the practice of medicine. This is the wrong way to reduce costs, and will have severe consequences for patients, physicians, and the quality of health care in the …
The President plans to move Leon Panetta from heading the CIA to heading the Pentagon. As Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Panetta will have to be confirmed by the Senate. With the President’s doctrine for foreign policy and national security proving mostly a bust, the Senate should expect the new Secretary to help turn around the Administration’s sad record. Furthermore, Obama has called on the Pentagon to conduct a new review of defense needs. Since the U.S. Armed Forces are already overstretched, the new Secretary will have to provide an …
The same Washington press corps that hammered President George W. Bush relentlessly when prices were still well under $3 a gallon—well before the $4 a gallon peak, which lasted only six weeks in 2008—have given President Obama a pass thus far on the recklessness of his energy policy. In fact, in the first two years of his presidency, as gas prices steadily rose to over $3 a gallon, the press corps never asked the President about gas prices in any of his press briefings. Even when he called a press …
Today’s Wall Street Journal carries a stunning piece about a meeting that took place on April 16 in Kabul between Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The article asserts that Gilani sought to convince Karzai to break relations with the U.S. and instead seek an alliance with Pakistan and China, both of which are not keen on the prospect of permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan. The Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. has denied the veracity of the report, and the Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesperson went …
When faced with losing one of the most brilliant companies in the country, Twitter, even San Francisco can have a moment of revelation regarding tax policy. Burdened with heavy California taxation—and San Francisco’s on top of that—Twitter presented a letter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors giving them an option: either exempt Twitter from the city payroll tax for six years or watch the tweeting company walk. The board decided in favor of Twitter’s proposal, and Twitter signed its new lease last Friday.
Another budget battle looms on the horizon as Congress returns from recess next week to continue work on the nation’s finances and debates whether to raise the debt limit, now at $14.3 trillion. In the last year, no single issue has captured the attention of Americans more. And for good reason. Spending and debt are skyrocketing, causing many to question what kind of course we are on. Hyper-drive spending is what last year’s elections were really all about. To understand what that all really means — and why deep spending …
Yesterday, the Supreme Court denied Virginia’s motion to bypass the appellate court and go directly to the Supreme Court in its challenge to the Obamacare litigation. The Court’s decision not to hear the case, delivered in an order without comment, was not surprising. While the procedure exists for the Court to hear cases after a decision of the district court but before a decision of the court of appeals, it almost never does. And when I say “almost never does,” let me be clear: Playing the lottery probably has better …
