The Wall Street Journal recently reported on bureaucratic barriers for patients covered by both Medicare and Medicaid. These two programs serve the elderly and the poor, respectively, and people who fall into both categories—the “dual-eligibles”—should get better-quality care with more efficient taxpayer spending. According to the WSJ, an estimated 9.7 million Americans fall under the dually eligible criteria. They account for 16 percent of the Medicare population but 27 percent of Medicare spending, and 15 percent of Medicaid’s population but 39 percent of its spending. More efficient financing for this …
Republican congressional leaders will meet in the White House today with their Democratic counterparts and President Obama in an effort to reach an agreement on the debt ceiling. Reports are sketchy as to whether they will succumb to arm-twisting by the White House, amplified in the media, to cut a deal in which “everyone has to give a little”—or fill your preferred cliché. It is thus an appropriate time to remind everyone that Americans have already given all they can, especially to the IRS, and, no, it isn’t time to …
President Obama had no shortage of things to say at yesterday’s Twitter town hall meeting, even if he didn’t always have firm grasp of the facts or reality. A reader ran the numbers: Obama used a total number of 8,519 words in his answers — or roughly 38,703 characters. At 140 characters each, that’s about 276 tweets (excluding space for @replies, links or hashtags). In the course of the conversation, Obama didn’t let the facts get in the way of his answers. Heritage investigative reporter Lachlan Markay noted Obama’s false …
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce holds a hearing today in response to the National Labor Relations Board’s recent proposal to dramatically alter union election procedures. “Rushing Union Elections: Protecting the Interests of Big Labor at the Expense of Workers’ Free Choice” begins at 10 a.m. Expect the hearing to reveal the potential impact the proposed rule will have on employers and workers. Lachlan Markay will be on hand to report from Capitol Hill. Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Jena Baker-McNeill will also be on the Hill today to testify …
“If the girls give me trouble I hurt them.” These are the words of human trafficker Aktham Zuhair Salem Madanat. Known for trafficking girls from Cuba to the United Kingom, Madanat had no qualms about openly discussing how he lured 10- and 11-year-old girls into the sex trade. In fact, Madanat is one of many involved in the lucrative human trafficking market throughout Cuba and beyond. In order to fight human trafficking, the State Department annually presents its Global Trafficking in Persons Report, a survey of 184 countries that measures …
President Obama offered few concrete proposals for promoting fiscal responsibility during his “Twitter town hall” on Wednesday. One that he did mention was his drive to freeze federal employee salaries, though he offered the measure as an example of an effort to “make these adjustments that are necessary during these difficult fiscal times…in a way that preserves collective bargaining rights.” “We froze federal pay for federal workers for two years,” Obama claimed. “Now that wasn’t real popular, as you might imagine, among federal workers,” the president added. But even federal …
The President isn’t the only one engaging Americans on Twitter. On June 28, the notice went out from the State Department’s spokesman that Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Judith McHale would field her first “Twitter Q & A” the following morning. Under McHale, State has launched a number of new ventures on the Internet. The power of the technology combined with low overhead has made Public Diplomacy 2.0 a highly inviting tool for U.S. diplomats. Social media is the latest tool in American public diplomacy, whether the goal is democracy …
Catching you up on clips, commentary and news of the day. Sign up for the daily email update from Scribe. What would the founders do about welfare? – David Weinberger Law of Sea Treaty Could Cost U.S. Trillions – Steven Groves Obama’s Soft Socialism Herarlds a Gutless New World – Brian Darling Obama’s Medicare plan is an open secret – Robert E. Moffit Man Without a Plan: Obama’s Short-Sighted View of U.S. Politics – Michael Kazin Freedom as a Bargaining Chip? – Tom Messner & Kathryn Jean Lopez Lies, Damned Lies …
Seeking to make virtue out of vice, the political Left has launched a desperate, devious and dangerous ploy to prevent the spending cuts that the public demands. They are laying the groundwork for President Obama to bypass negotiations and to ignore the $14.3-trillion statutory ceiling on federal debt. They want him to instruct the Treasury to borrow whatever it needs to satisfy grandiose spending designs, by claiming that the borrowing limit is unconstitutional. If this happened, it would add a constitutional crisis to our economic crisis. And it would worsen …
Moments ago in his Twitter Town Hall chat, President Barack Obama said he “wouldn’t be president if someone hadn’t helped provide some scholarships for my school.” At age ten, President Obama received a scholarship to attend the prestigious Punahou School in Hawaii. President Obama’s remarks today underscore the life-changing significance of school choice—an opportunity most students trapped in failing and often violent public schools never get. (To hear the stories of a few who have had their horizons expanded by the school choice, watch our documentary Let Me Rise.) Sadly, the President …
