White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel wasn’t kidding when he said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and according Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), it was anything but wasted. “Indeed, the period of panic that everyone was facing opened a tremendous opportunity for the left to start establishing the principles of social democracy,” Brooks said this week at The Heritage Foundation. As the recession abates, confidence slowly builds and a dynamic is born where panic is receding and anger is setting in …
Ever heard of the phrase “no such thing as a free lunch”? If you’ve taken Economics 101, you likely have. But evidently, this falls on deaf ears in the Obama administration. Six months after taking office, the President vows that his “reform” will insure the uninsured and rein in health spending. What he covers up in his flowery rhetoric, however, is how he intends to control these costs and eliminate waste. Writing today in the Washington Post, columnist Robert J. Samuelson says, “his ‘reform’ isn’t likely to compel needed changes, …
This week’s bloggers’ briefing brought the biggest crowd yet; standing room only. What was the draw? Matthias Shapiro, mastermind of the 10,000 pennies videos that have become a viral sensation, showed the eager bunch how to utilize the overused rhetoric and statistics of the day to instead communicate the numbers coming out of Washington in a way that people can digest. Through his use of visualizations, Shapiro puts real value to seemingly unfathomable amounts of money like millions, billions, and trillions of dollars. We’ve posted these videos before, but they …
At yesterday’s Bloggers Briefing at Heritage, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, touted a 26-page report that holds the government accountable for the housing crisis through its unsustainable drive to increase homeownership. The report sheds light on the unnecessary interference of government in the housing market. It singles out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to show how the U.S. entered an economic downturn that rippled around the world. (Heritage has long argued for reforming Fannie and Freddie by breaking up their stronghold …
Under the government-proposed public health plan, “people will involuntarily lose their coverage and will be bled into the new plan,” said Heritage’s senior policy analyst for health care Nina Owcharenko at yesterday’s Blogger Briefing. “They expect they would have their private insurance plans competing with the public plan but at the end of the day the public plan will be the last one standing,” she said. Owcharenko explained that the legislative process isn’t moving at the rapid pace once anticipated. So far, the Kennedy-Dodd bill is still incomplete. The House has introduced …
The federal government’s bailout parade wasn’t enough to save California this week. In a move that drew praise from some conservative quarters, President Obama refused to send federal aid to the Golden State. California had asked the Treasury Department to help with its $24 billion deficit. But rather than open the U.S. treasury to ailing states, Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner decided California must first get its budget in order before relying on a federal bailout. Reacting to the news at this week’s Bloggers Briefing at The Heritage Foundation, …
