President Obama repeatedly asked members of Congress to pass the American Jobs Act last week. But when no Democrat filed Obama’s bill after he presented it to Congress, a conservative congressman swiped the name for his own legislation. The American Jobs Act introduced in the House of Representatives looks quite different from the version President Obama outlined in his speech to Congress. Instead of hiking taxes on working Americans to pay for another stimulus, Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-TX) legislation offers a tax cut. UPDATE: Gohmert’s bill now has a number. …
Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the direction of the Middle Eastern revolutions this year has been a concern. Attempts by the new governments to shut down media coverage of demonstrations suggest that freedom of the press cannot be taken for granted. Without law and order, the future of the Arab revolutions is in question. Conditions in Egypt have from the beginning been among the most troublesome. And now the violent mob attacks on the Israeli embassy in Cairo over the weekend have spurred a new round of trouble …
During the Republican debate Monday night in Tampa, Florida, Governor Rick Perry (R–TX) said that President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus created zero jobs. CNN “fact-checked” this statement and determined it was false. To review, in 2009 just before the stimulus was enacted, the unemployment rate stood at 7.5 percent. Today—two years after the unprecedented spending experiment—the unemployment rate is 9.1 percent. In fact, 1.7 million fewer Americans are working today than were employed when the stimulus was enacted. Nevertheless, CNN decided that because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and other private forecasters claim …
President Barack Obama proposes to pay for his $447 billion jobs bill mainly by limiting tax deductions for wealthy Americans. Unfortunately, if enacted, this policy will likely dampen charitable giving and further shift perceived responsibility for social welfare from individual donors to the state. The President’s plan calls for lowering the rate at which wealthy taxpayers can take itemized deductions—from the current rate of 35 percent down to 28 percent, beginning in 2013. The change would affect individuals making more than $200,000 (and families making more than $250,000) per year. …
In a interview with Chicago’s Don Wade & Roma radio show this morning, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky claimed that Americans aren’t entitled to all of their own money. Toward the end of a wide-ranging interview, the hosts played a clip from this week’s Republican Presidential Debate where California teenager Tyler Hinsley asked, “Of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think I deserve to keep?” Co-host Don Wade asked Schakowsky to answer the same question. After some initial back-and-forth, she replied, “I’ll put it this way, you don’t deserve …
While opinions about America’s post–9/11 policies come and go, facts remain: The U.S. has thwarted 40 terrorist plots through an aggressive and prioritized plan of offense to protect America. That is not a plan to abandon now, in an age of increasingly high-tech terrorism. As John Yoo, a former official in the U.S. Department of Justice between 2001–2003, said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation, “The most important thing to happen in the U.S. in the last 10 years was nothing… the most important question to ask is why and whether …
This afternoon, the District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania became the latest court to strike down the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (Obamacare) individual mandate, holding that “[t]he power to regulate interstate commerce does not subsume the power to dictate a lifetime financial commitment to health insurance coverage.” The challenge was brought by a Barbara Goudy-Bachman and Gregory Bachman, who are both self-employed and have chosen to drop their health insurance because it exceeded their monthly mortgage payments. Instead, Bachmans opted to pay for health care out …
A top congressional investigator said on Tuesday that he believes more companies that benefitted from the stimulus bill’s renewable energy loan guarantee program will go bankrupt before all allotted funds are spent. The program, which guaranteed a $535 million loan to Solyndra before the company declared bankruptcy last week, still has $8-10 billion in authorized funding that has yet to be spent. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said he had called on the administration to hold off on awarding …
The House passed today H.R. 2887, a bill to reauthorize expiring aviation and surface transportation programs for a few months. Senator Tom Coburn (R–OK) is expected to hold up the bill in the Senate because of something called Transportation Enhancements (TE) included in the legislation. TE is a program run by the Department of Transportation to force states to build bike paths, “highway beautification,” and transportation museums. In the past, federal funds have been used by states to build animal highways for salamanders, frogs, and turtles. And liberals say there …
On September 17, 1787, delegates from each state signed the Constitution. At 224 years old, the Constitution is now the longest lasting, most imitated national constitution in the world. It unified the country during a time of tremendous instability by providing a stable national government over the 13 separate states. Hearkening back to the first principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution creates the processes through which we consider and evaluate the policy questions of today. Therefore, every September 17th we celebrate this fundamental document—our United States Constitution. And …
