The Obama Administration has another problem on its hands. The mighty hand of the federal government has its grip on education in the form of the No Child Left Behind federal law on public education, but the trouble is that the law isn’t working. Instead of a top-down approach to education, it’s time for restoring state and local control over education, while downsizing the Department of Education. That’s a lesson that Education Secretary Arne Duncan needs to learn. In an interview last week, Duncan expressed frustration at the “slow motion train …
“That core idea of America—that if you work hard, if you do right, if you’re responsible, that you can lead a better life and most importantly pass on a better life to your kids—that American Dream feels like it’s getting further and further out of reach.” Who said this last week to justify his decision to run for President? Was it Herman Cain, who pitched himself as the “American Dream” candidate? Or was it Tim Pawlenty, who kicked off his campaign last month with a promise “to keep the American …
In April, I visited South Korea and met with government and military leaders to promote vital U.S. interests in East Asia. Among those priorities is the long overdue passage of the South Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), which has been stalled in typical Washington fashion since 2007. If ratified, KORUS will stimulate America’s economic recovery – without government spending – by increasing U.S. exports and creating jobs in the U.S. According to analysts in the Democrat-led Senate Finance Committee, data taken from the independent, nonpartisan U.S. International Trade Commission …
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO do not agree on much. But they have joined forces to persuade Congress to spend more on infrastructure. On the surface it looks like a story of right and left uniting for the common good. As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the Chamber’s board of directors: “We’re pretty strange bedfellows. There have been many times we haven’t agreed, and I’m sure there will be many more. But in the end, I think we all want the same thing: productive and profitable businesses, prosperous families …
On Tuesday, Senator Mike Enzi (R–WY) took a stand against the Department of Education’s (DOE) assault on the for-profit college sector, walking out of a hearing on the DOE’s new regulations limiting access to higher education. The new “gainful employment” rule issued by the DOE on June 2 restricts access to student loans for students attending for-profit universities. Enzi noted in a statement released after the hearing: Many of these affected schools provide important training for those who choose to become mechanics, plumbers and electricians. This rule uses a heavy …
Here’s an amazing statistic: Texas created 37 percent of all jobs since the beginning of the economic recovery, more than any other state. Excluding New York and Pennsylvania, Texas has created nearly as many jobs as all other states combined. How did Texas do it? According to the Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, “Texas is doing so well relative to other states precisely because it has rejected the economic model that now prevails in Washington. . .all states labor under the same Fed monetary policy …
Economic freedom, enhanced by limited government, is critical to economic dynamism and job creation, as documented in the Index of Economic Freedom, an annual cross-country policy analysis by The Heritage Foundation. The individual economies of our 50 states are no exception to that. The strongly positive linkage between economic freedom and economic dynamism holds true for states as well as nations. High-stakes policy battles are going on in all 50 states about whether to move toward more limited government and greater economic freedom. According to a 2011 state-level study by …
“The Obama administration continues to demonstrate its penchant for bargaining away missile defense,” write James Woolsey, chairman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and Rebeccah Heinrichs, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former manager of the Congressional Missile Defense Caucus, in their most recent op-ed. This is indeed the case, as shown by negotiations over New START and other Administration steps pertaining to missile defense. New START’s preamble links strategic offensive and defensive …
President Obama has kept at least one campaign promise: agreeing to meet with nefarious world leaders. Yesterday, President Ali Bongo Ondimba from Gabon added his name to the guest book at the White House. As director of Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center, Nile Gardiner, states, “In yet another display of extraordinarily bad judgment, the Obama Administration is extending the hand of friendship to another prominent tyrant.” Such actions are unbecoming of an American President. Bongo and his family, the subjects of a 2010 Senate Subcommittee on Investigations Special Report, are known for …
In his farewell address in Brussels, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates delivered a blunt warning to America’s European allies: there is the real possibility of “a dim, if not dismal future for the transatlantic alliance” unless NATO member states undertake a firm commitment to increase defence spending and make a bigger commitment to NATO operations. As Gates points out, only five members of the 28-member alliance currently spend the agreed minimum 2 percent of GDP on defence: the US, UK, France, Greece and Albania, and defence spending in Europe has declined …
