April 29 marks the third year that the U.S. Senate has not passed a budget. Now more than ever, it is crucial that Americans understand what our nation’s spending, taxes, and debt mean for them and their families and why Congress must urgently get back to budgeting. The Heritage Foundation’s newly released Federal Budget in Pictures 2012 edition (previously called the Budget Chart Book) offers a unique tool to learn about the federal budget in a clear and compelling way. Debt and Deficits chart 1 shows that publicly held debt …
Should we raise the minimum wage? The editors at Bloomberg think so. They maintain that low-wage jobs are expanding and that a minimum wage hike would boost the economy. Despite these notions, hiking the minimum wage remains a bad idea. Bloomberg first laments that low-wage jobs are becoming the norm: “It’s also becoming clear that many Americans are being forced to take lower-paying jobs and that a low-wage bias is creeping into the economy.” However, the percentage of minimum wage jobs has declined. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, …
In The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez present a rambling defense of higher taxes on the rich to fund an engorged federal government. That they needed to throw out so many tired and errant arguments shows their entire argument is so much hot air. Of course higher taxes would slow economic growth. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Diamond and Saez start out by arguing that, because the share of income earned by the top 1 percent of earners has doubled since …
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 …
Two political thinkers and writers who pioneered neoconservatism, Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz, were celebrated Saturday night when The Heritage Foundation presented them with the Clare Boothe Luce Award, our highest honor for contributions to the conservative movement. Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner joined Board Chairman Thomas A. Saunders in making the presentations to Decter and Podhoretz at a dinner ceremony at the Grand Del Mar resort in San Diego during our annual Leadership Conference and Board Meeting. Saunders praised the husband-and-wife team – former liberals, they married in 1956 …
When insurance giant AIG paid lucrative bonuses to top executives after receiving federal support, President Obama asked, “How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?” But three years later, numerous green energy companies backed financially by the administration are paying out large salaries and bonuses to their executives, even as the companies struggle to stay financially solvent. Scribe recently reported that Ecotality, a stimulus-backed electric vehicle charging station manufacturer that has received about $141 million in Energy Department grants, increased “executive and director” …
The Senate is poised to consider S. 1925 this week, the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Despite the law’s good intentions, more recent reauthorizations—including the bill before the Senate—are seriously flawed and veer away from the legislation’s original goals of protecting vulnerable women. As Heritage research fellow David Muhlhausen and Independent Women’s Forum visiting fellow Christina Villegas explain in a recent Heritage Backgrounder, the problems with S. 1925 are significant. In addition to broadening the classes of covered victims to include men and prisoners and expanding existing, …
Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) swore to support and defend the U.S. Constitution upon taking office. The founding document weighs heavily on him with each vote, and it’s the reason Amash is the only member of Congress to justify each of those votes on his popular Facebook page. He’ll speak today at noon ET at The Bloggers Briefing along with Katie Pavlich, author of “Fast and Furious,” a new book about the Obama administration’s gun-walking scandal. Breitbart TV, in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, will air it live. Amash’s approach to …
