President Obama is busy crossing the country and appealing to young Americans on the issue of student loans. He’s warning them of the possibility of increased interest rates this summer, which are set to double. Of course, there’s much more to the story than the president lets on. Douglas Holtz-Eakin explains on National Review’s “The Corner”: [The interest rate increase] sounds serious. After all, there are 39 million Americans with student loans owing over a trillion dollars of debt, and interest rates doubling from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent would be a …
April 29 marks the third year in which the U.S. Senate has not passed a budget — a staggering dereliction of duty, particularly given the country’s near-$16 trillion debt. But that’s not the Senate’s only blockbuster failure under the leadership of Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). From spending to jobs to energy policy, the Senate has totally dropped the ball, leaving one to wonder, “What’s the Senate thinking?” But it’s not just a matter of a simple failure or benign neglect, like forgetting to take out the trash. The way …
Over the past week, President Obama has been on the road making an appeal to young Americans, offering a sales pitch on lower interest rates for their burdensome student loans. What he didn’t mention, though, is the even bigger nightmare they’ll face down the road. The president’s meme is one that USAToday picked up on this morning, describing the plight of Millennials, their piles of debt, and their high rate of unemployment: Today’s twentysomethings hold an average debt of about $45,000, which includes everything from cars to credit cards to …
There’s a bunch of good news coming from one senior official in the State Department. According to this unnamed source, “the war on terror is over,” and “people who once might have gone into al Qaeda see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.” That may be true if—and only if—you accept the Obama Administration’s outlook on the Muslim world and the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan—and if you believe that Islamist ideology can, in fact, be legitimate. The news of this new perspective comes from the National Journal, which …
With a handful of words, the Founders set forth a simple principle that protects a central liberty enjoyed by all in this Republic — the freedom of speech, as recognized in the First Amendment. Yet after more than 200 years of history, liberals in Congress — including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — aim to set that freedom on its head so they can further their efforts to silence their political opponents. The proposal, which is known as the “People’s Rights Amendment,” would amend the Constitution and hold that …
Today’s New York Times offers a stunning revelation for anyone who hasn’t been following the news out of Washington for the past three years: President Barack Obama is bypassing Congress and using his executive authority to unilaterally implement his policies of choice, irrespective of the will of the people. The Times cites an episode last fall when the president declared in a White House meeting “that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional obstructionism.” And so was born the president’s “We …
The General Services Administration blew through $820,000 in taxpayers’ money in a lavish ”team building” trip to Las Vegas, and President Barack Obama is “apoplectic” at the news, according to the president’s campaign advisor, David Axelrod. Obama, he says, has devoted his efforts to saving “tens of billions of dollars” in cutting waste, fraud and inefficiency in government. Yet under President Obama’s leadership, government spending keeps growing irresponsibly, and neither he nor his allies in Congress are doing anything about it. The latest example came last week when Democratic leadership in the …
Earlier this week we learned that former Obama Administration official Elizabeth Warren is calling for a repeal of one of Obamacare’s many taxes, and today The Hill is reporting that several Democrats in Congress are starting to regret President Obama’s signature health care law. First there’s Representative Brad Miller (D-NC), who is retiring at the end of this session of Congress: “I think we would all have been better off — President Obama politically, Democrats in Congress politically, and the nation would have been better off — if we had …
If you ask the American people, they don’t have much good to say about the U.S. economy. According to a new poll by Quinnipiac University, most say they are worse off financially than they were four years ago, and they don’t expect it to get better anytime soon: The surge of economic optimism may have stalled as American voters say 41 – 35 percent they are worse off financially than four years ago, and 51 percent don’t expect their personal financial situation to change in the next 12 months, while …
For the past several years, it’s not been an uncommon sight in Anytown, USA, to drive down the street and see home after home for sale after going through foreclosure. They are the still-lingering hangover from the housing crash that began in 2007. Though the true cause of what burst America’s housing bubble is still debated, two of the culprits — housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are still going strong even though both essentially failed in 2008 and are under government control. Economists and politicians alike …
