Budget Sense, a bi-weekly newsletter from The Heritage Foundation, delivers the most recent developments in the struggle to bring America’s fiscal house in order and save the American Dream. Each issue of Budget Sense features the latest work from Heritage experts giving timely information, commentary, and analysis on the issues …
The Obama Administration has effectively gutted the work requirements of the bipartisan welfare reforms of 1996. In doing so, it is trampling on the central policy that made welfare reform work. The lesson for policymakers from those reforms was that good principles, good policy, and good results go hand in …
This session, Congress has consistently increased criminal penalties through legislation. In what type of bills are they doing it? In appropriations bills, of course. Where else would Congress increase criminal penalties? For example, in the fiscal year (FY) 2013 Foreign Relations Authorization Act, the maximum penalties for violation of Arms …
The stopgap spending agreement reached by House and Senate leaders may be the only way Congress will escape a post-election “lame duck” showdown over funding government agencies. It also presumably helps clear the agenda so Congress can focus on Taxmageddon and the scheduled defense-devastating sequestration—two other major fiscal problems lawmakers …
“I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible,” economist Milton Friedman once said. So the Nobel Prize winner would undoubtedly be concerned this year as Taxmageddon, the one-year $494 billion tax increase that is poised to strike the …
Check out and share our new infographic on the impact of Taxmageddon.
On the afternoon of another discouraging assessment of the nation’s economic growth, the Obama Administration late Friday quietly released its mid-year update of the budget. The synchronicity made clear just how far from reality the President’s fiscal and economic policies have drifted—and the imperative of a prompt course correction. Friday …
In case no one connected the dots, a report this week from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) held the solution to a serious problem plaguing Congress: How to replace the devastating spending cuts scheduled to carve up the Pentagon starting in January. Answer: Repeal Obamacare. If that sounds too simple, …
Understanding what Washington is up to is as simple as one-two-three: 1. Unacceptable Choices Under President Obama’s leadership, Americans have been presented two unacceptable choices. For Washington to continue to pay its bills under the limitations of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), which the President signed into law, …
The Obama Administration has created a firestorm by claiming the authority to waive the work requirements of the popular 1996 welfare reform law. But the damage doesn’t stop there. The same July 12 guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) states that HHS will not approve policy …