This week, Judge Roger Vinson of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida became the second federal judge to strike down Obamacare’s individual mandate. In doing so, Vinson struck down the entire law concluding “the individual mandate and the remaining provisions are all inextricably bound together in purpose and must stand or fall as a single unit.” Judge Vinson’s decision has prompted a long overdue national debate over the limits of the federal Leviathan. Specifically, is there anything, any form of human activity or, more importantly, …
Entrepreneurs fret daily over economic uncertainty. Case in point: Even with passage of the lame-duck tax deal, they still don’t know what their tax burden will be two years from now. Approval of that deal lifted what The Wall Street Journal dubs the “world of the temporary tax code” to unprecedented heights. The Journal explains: The U.S. will have no permanent regime governing levies on salaries, capital gains and dividends, the Social Security tax, as well as a slew of targeted breaks for families, students and other groups. This on …
Last month the Pew Research Center reported that only 22% of Americans trusted the government to do the right thing always or most of the time. And that was the good news for incumbents: Favorable ratings for both major parties, as well as for Congress, have reached record lows while opposition to congressional incumbents, already approaching an all-time high, continues to climb. Significantly, a majority of Americans (52%) see the members of Congress themselves as the source of their dissatisfaction. Only 38% attribute their frustration to “a broken political system.” …
According to the official site of the House Rules Committee, “questions of privilege” relate to “matters affecting the safety, dignity or integrity of the House, or the rights, reputation or conduct of a member acting as a representative.” House leaders are poised to use a procedural tactic of questionable constitutionality to move the single most consequential piece of legislation in over seven decades through the House without a vote. Here’s the idea: (1) pass a rule to bring to the floor a “reconciliation” measure that would detoxify certain provisions in …
With the dust settled on the health summit, it is clear that the president and his allies on Capitol Hill intend to plow forward with their sweeping proposal to overhaul the nation’s health sector. As the Los Angeles Times observed, it is also clear that “they will have to do it by themselves.” And there’s only one way they can “do it by themselves”: an arcane budgetary procedure known as “reconciliation.” Reconciliation lets lawmakers “expedite” consideration of proposals to reduce projected budget deficits, and it allows Senate leaders to circumvent …
Scott Brown’s shocking victory in Massachusetts on Tuesday was a shot across the bow of the liberal ruling class in Washington and declared one clear message: Americans do not like the direction the country is heading, and they’re not going to stand for it, even in the solidly-blue Bay State. The United States’ direction today is a dangerous one, even when compared to the country’s state of affairs just one year ago, as revealed in the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, which we are releasing this morning in a joint …
Live from the Senate Finance Committee Mark-up During the Senate Finance Committee mark up of the Baucus health bill today Senator Bunning of Kentucky put forth an innovative amendment. This amendment stipulated that before voting on the measure in Committee, legislative language would have to be accessible to the public for 72 hours and that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) would need to publish an official tally of how much this bill will cost the American people and what the real impact will be on health costs. There are …
Sunday’s unprecedented presidential tour of (most of) the network news represents a subtle admission on the part of White House strategists that surely must unnerve his liberal allies. Obama, they seem to have concluded, is the only Administration official capable of making the case to the American people. Where, one must ask, are the usual suspects who traditionally man the battlements and carry the president’s message on major policy initiatives? Take another look at those YouTube videos of Sen. Arlen Specter’s raucous early August town hall meeting with Health and …
The debate over health care reform need not be an all-or-nothing affair. Lawmakers should take a deep breath and remind themselves that there’s a great deal of agreement on the major goals of reform. Both sides of the aisle want to restrain spiraling costs, give consumers more choices and improve quality of care. Yes, liberals and conservatives disagree greatly over which policies would best achieve these objectives. But that doesn’t mean they must slug it out until one side wins at the other’s expense or—worse—everyone walks away without making any …
