President Ali Abdullah Saleh, although badly wounded, plans to return to Yemen on July 17 to celebrate the 33rd anniversary of his ascent to power. The United States has contributed to the international pressure for Saleh to agree to a peaceful and speedy transition of power in Yemen, but the political process has stalled due to his refusal to compromise and prolonged absence after being wounded in an assassination attempt.
Ever since the debate over the debt limit began in earnest at the start of the year, the Obama Administration, led by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, has implied that the U.S. might default on its publicly held debt. In his press conference today, the President said that “it is not acceptable for us not to raise the debt limit and to allow the U.S. government to default. We cannot threaten the United States’ full faith and credit for the first time in our nation’s history.” The fear of default and …
The latest unemployment numbers, released Friday, showed that the economy created a net 18,000 jobs in June, far below the roughly 150,000 needed to keep pace with new job market entrants. The unemployment rate ticked up to 9.2 percent. Since President Obama had not yet been asked directly about June’s unemployment numbers, it was inevitable that the topic be raised in his Monday press conference on the stalled debt limit negotiations with congressional Republicans. But if the president has learned anything from the apparent failure of his policies to spur …
Any budget agreement should include an improvement of the accuracy of Social Security’s annual cost-of-living allowance (COLA) payments. Press reports say this is now on the table. COLAs are designed to protect retirees against inflation eroding the value of their benefits, but the index used to calculate those payments is inaccurate and overstates inflation by about 1 percentage point a year. Back in 1996, a commission led by economist Michael Boskin proved this, and since then, experts have been pushing for a more accurate measure. A more accurate measure would …
Illinois’s and New York’s recent recognition of same-sex couples has raised religious liberty concerns for Catholic and other agencies providing adoption and foster care services. Now, more than 50 Members of the U.S. Congress have signed onto a bill that would go much further, posing a challenge to religious liberty, civil society, federalism, and the best interests of children. Originally introduced by Representative Pete Stark (D–CA) in 2009, the “Every Child Deserves a Family Act” would deny federal funds to any adoption agency that “discriminates” against prospective adoptive or foster …
In an interview Friday on Fox Business Network, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao took head on the notion that persistent, high unemployment is the new way of life in America. Chao says it doesn’t have to be that way: This administration is trying to say that there’s a new norm, and that we’ve got to get used to an unemployment rate in excess of 9 percent, and that is simply not true. The economic conditions are effected greatly by government policy, and if the government spends too much, borrows …
Last night, President Barack Obama and U.S. congressional leaders failed to reach agreement on a deal to raise the nation’s debt limit. Meanwhile, it has been more than 800 days since the U.S. Senate passed a budget, liberals in Washington are pushing for higher taxes, unemployment is soaring, the deficit keeps growing, and America is careening toward an economic future as the Europe of the West. That’s a future of crippling debt, spending, and permanently high unemployment that some in Congress are trying to avoid. On Saturday, Speaker of the …
The House will begin its week on Monday by considering amendments to the Energy and Water Appropriations bill. They will then move to the Better Use of Light Bulbs Act, which will rescue incandescent light bulbs from a congressional ban on their production that will soon go into effect. One the table for the remainder of the week are a bill to reform the federal flood insurance program, the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act, the Financial Services Appropriations bill and potentially a reauthorization of the FAA.
Republicans and Democrats left the White House last night without a deal on the debt limit, but they’ll be back at work this morning after a weekend of maneuvering. Expect to learn more at 11 a.m. when President Obama talks to the press. Both houses of Congress are in session this week. The House takes up the ban on incandescent light bulbs as the Senate debates a resolution expressing support for hiking taxes on millionaires. Heritage Action’s Josh Robbins has the details.
The April 20, 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico devastated the Gulf economy, which, more than a year later, has yet to fully recover from the disaster. In en effort to explore relief efforts and “lessons learned” from the spill, the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship will hold a field hearing in Pensacola, FL, on Monday. Witnesses for the hearing will include Florida Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Adam Putnam, Pensacola Chamber of Commerce Chairman Collier Merrill, and others involved in the local economy. The hearing …
