The Small Business Lending Fund was cleverly named by its authors last Congress. Since its implementation, however, it would appear a more appropriate name would be the Bailed Out Bank Refinancing Fund. When Barney Frank and other supporters proposed the SBLF, it was believed banks would leverage the fund leading to hundreds of billions in small business loans. In their world, Congress was to allocate, Treasury was to disburse, banks were to lend and small businesses were to grow. Seems like an airtight plan, right? Then came reality. More than …
With our freedoms under assault on so many fronts—at the Supreme Court, in Congress, in the Executive Branch, and at the state level—how can Americans stay up-to-speed on current public policy concerns? To better provide the news and analysis you need, in the format you want, this week Heritage has given our website a major overhaul. Now all ten landing pages in Heritage’s ten-year Leadership for America campaign feature an easy-to-use, organized layout. From hot topics like Health Care and Enterprise & Free Markets, to important issues affecting our future including Energy & Environment and Entitlements, these ten landing pages link to …
With the 2014 Afghan troop withdrawal quickly approaching, a recent House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia hearing stressed the need to press Pakistan to fight terrorists who find sanctuary on its soil. In this most recent hearing, the four witnesses, including former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalizad, presented a united stance on the need to hold Pakistan accountable for its actions in the region. Lisa Curtis, a senior fellow for South Asia in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation, has been encouraging the U.S. …
How’s that Russia “reset” going? Not so well, as the news this week shows. In addition to blocking tougher sanctions on Iran for its illicit nuclear weapons activities after a damaging report by the U.N.’s watchdog, Russia is “studying” building more reactors at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant. Recently, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R–OH) blasted the Administration’s “reset” policy with Russia, saying: “Over the last two and a half years,” Russia “has been the beneficiary of American outreach and engagement. [Yet it] has continued to expand its physical, …
Children in Indiana born to single parents are more than six times more likely to live in poverty than children born to married parents. In fact, nearly three-quarters of all poor families in the state are headed by single parents. According to a new Heritage report, the breakdown of marriage in Indiana is a major cause of the state’s poverty. Unfortunately, as the data reveal, the rate of unwed births in the Hoosier State has grown dramatically over the last five decades, from just over 5 percent in 1960 to …
A number of military and veterans groups are expressing concern over a letter that Senator John McCain (R–AZ) has sent to members of the congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction suggesting they adopt earlier proposals from a March report of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for scaling back military health care benefits and increasing fees. These groups are right to be concerned, but Senator McCain’s underlying views about the growing costs of the military health care system cannot be ignored. The costs are growing too quickly. The CBO proposals …
Sixty years ago this November, a recent Yale graduate published a book that outraged the distinguished university’s administration and launched a young conservative’s career. The book was God and Man at Yale. The man was William F. Buckley, Jr. The book’s success led Buckley to found National Review in 1955, which quickly became the preeminent conservative publication in the United States. As conservative historian George Nash noted, “Without Buckley, the movement might have floundered indefinitely in its search for sophisticated leadership.” Before there was a Tea Party, Ronald Reagan, or even …
Today, we at The Heritage Foundation are proud to honor Veterans Day by pausing to remember the men and women in uniform who serve this country. They are some of the finest this nation has to offer. Among those who have served throughout the years, the recipients of the Medal of Honor (MOH) deserve our utmost respect and admiration. They wear this august award for those who did not come home. They never refer to themselves as “winners” but see themselves as caretakers of the Medal of Honor for all …
In this week’s Heritage in Focus, Julia Shaw discusses Occupy Wall Street. Click here to listen. Are there any similarities between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party? What are their differences? Do they share any common ground? Be sure to click the above link to get answers to those questions and more! To get regular updates on Heritage in Focus podcasts, visit our RSS feed or subscribe on iTunes. To listen to more Heritage in Focus podcasts, visit our podcast page.
The Obama Administration announced it would delay the construction of the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline that would bring in more than 700,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta, Canada, to the Texas Gulf coast. What this delay really means is that President Obama is putting off an important election year decision in which two of his largest supporters—labor unions and environmentalists—are split on the issue. This tactic allows the decision to be delayed until after the 2012 elections. More importantly, this means a delay in access to easy …
