The Foundry

Archive for the ‘Ongoing Priorities’ Category

• House and Senate Cloakroom: March 1-5, 2010

  Posted March 1st, 2010 at 9:00am in Ongoing Priorities with 2 comments

  The House Cloakroom: March 1 – 5, 2010 Analysis The House will be in for a short week, only taking votes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The fallout from President Obama’s health care summit will continue to take center stage this week as negotiations continue to bring a health care vote to [...] More

• What Transparency Looks Like to the Obama White House

  Posted February 28th, 2010 at 9:00am in Ongoing Priorities with 22 comments

  Things that are transparent: Saran Wrap, glass, water. Things that aren’t transparent: brick walls, mountains, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Or so it would seem, if you take a look at the CEQ’s response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request issued by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in which the Chamber [...] More

• Pentagon Report Underscores Urgent Need for More Taiwan Arms

  Posted February 27th, 2010 at 1:21pm in Ongoing Priorities with 3 comments

  With the public release of a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report on Taiwan’s air power, there is now a public US government assessment of Taiwan’s ability to fend off Chinese attack. And while the report does not directly state how well Taiwan would do against the PLA, there is little reason for optimism under current [...] More

• Video: Reconciliation Maneuvers Around the Will of the People

  Posted February 26th, 2010 at 3:45pm in Health Care, Ongoing Priorities with 6 comments

  In yesterday’s White House health care summit, Americans heard some talk of “reconciliation” being used to pass health care through Congress, but the true purpose and history of the procedure is likely something of a mystery to most folks, except for a few inside-the-beltway wonks. In this video, Heritage’s Director of Senate Relations, Brian Darling, explains [...] More

• Video: Paul Ryan Destroys Obamacare’s Deficit Reduction Claims

  Posted February 26th, 2010 at 1:06pm in Ongoing Priorities with 3 comments

  Yesterday at the Blair House health summit, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) directly challenged the White House’s deficit reduction claims. From the transcript: Look, we agree on the problem here, and the problem is health inflation is driving us off of a fiscal cliff. Mr. President, you said health care reform is budget reform. You’re right. We [...] More

• Free Flow of Information: A Great Tool Against Totalitarianism

  Posted February 25th, 2010 at 1:00pm in Ongoing Priorities with 2 comments

  Of all the isolated places on earth, North Korea is a strong candidate for the most dismal. Yet it is the case in the information age that no country can be 100 percent hermetically sealed from the rest of the world. Even in North Korea, cracks are appearing in the government’s information monopoly, which should [...] More

• VIDEO: Want Health Care Summit Success? Start Over.

  Posted February 24th, 2010 at 6:00pm in Health Care, Ongoing Priorities with 2 comments

  Tomorrow, President Barack Obama will host a summit to discuss health care reform, but as Heritage’s Nina Owcharenko notes in this video, if the President is serious and sincere about making the summit a success, he should simply start over. Owcharenko, who is Heritage’s Deputy Director of the Center for Health Policy Studies, says that the [...] More

• A Hawaiian Punch to the Constitution

  Posted February 24th, 2010 at 5:00pm in Ongoing Priorities with 14 comments

  What do you think most Americans would say if the U.S. government created a new and exclusively race-based government with the authority to exempt itself from the U.S. Constitution and state authority at its own discretion? As ridiculous as it sounds, that is exactly what the House of Representatives voted for yesterday by a vote [...] More

• The Health Care Summit: Getting Reform Done Right

  Posted February 24th, 2010 at 3:30pm in Ongoing Priorities with 0 comments

  Thursday, Democrats and Republicans will convene at the President’s request to discuss the way forward on achieving bipartisan health care reform.  In a recent paper, Heritage’s Nina Owcharenko discusses how congressional Democrats and the President can use this meeting to start over on health care reform by enlisting Republicans to pass legislation both sides agree [...] More

• In Their Own Words: Blue Dogs Leader Says White House Should Focus on Jobs, Not Healthcare

  Posted February 24th, 2010 at 2:00pm in Ongoing Priorities with 1 comments

  Yesterday, the Daily Caller posted a story on its website about the confusion on Capitol Hill on both sides of the aisle about the future of Obamacare. It featured a quote from Congressman Heath Shuler (D-NC) on the White House’s healthcare strategy: “I was actually surprised that they’re pushing it again. The most important thing is [...] More