America was victorious in killing Osama Bin Laden but the war against terrorism wages on. Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Vice-Chair of the House Republican Conference, traveled to Afghanistan just days after Bin Laden was killed and came away strengthened by a novel idea: empowering women in Afghanistan is an …
The just released 2011 Medicare trustees report does not contain any big surprises. Much of what the trustees say in this report they have said before: Medicare poses enormous challenges for patients and taxpayers alike, and its financial condition continues a downward slide. Some key findings: Medicare’s unfunded obligations increased …
Yesterday, members of the House Armed Service Committee, under the leadership of Representative Michael Turner (R–OH) increased the funding for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program in the fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget. Members of the committee decided to increase the funding for this program by $100 million above the …
Over the past few months, the House Education and the Workforce Committee has been conducting a series of hearings to examine the impact of the federal role in education on local schools. Presentations by school superintendents, education policy experts, and charter school operators painted a picture of the burden of …
How Will This Report Affect the Social Security Debate? The debate about whether Social Security faces a problem and needs to be fixed is over. The 2011 trustees report, which was released this afternoon, shows that the program already faces massive permanent annual deficits. In 2010, Social Security spent $49 …
Rewarding failure is a fundamental precept of The Bureaucratic Code, which helps to explain why government’s regulatory powers grow in spite of its incompetence. Examples are legion, of course, including the recent case of the State Department and passport fraud. The General Accounting Office (GAO) has on several occasions investigated …
