New legislation introduced in the U.S. House yesterday would prohibit the use of federal money for advertisements attacking products like Coke and Pepsi. Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) introduced the bill to counter a growing trend of anti-obesity ads that are funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Scribe reported in October the money was included in President Obama’s economic stimulus law. The federal government has provided $230 million in funding to at least 25 communities for a …
Citizens across America will have a powerful tool to hold their elected leaders accountable come January. The House of Representatives today adopted new standards that increase transparency and improve access to legislative data. All of the information will be publicly available in a searchable format on one website. “With the adoption of these standards, for the first time, all House bills, resolutions and legislative documents will be available in XML in one centralized location,” said House Administration Chairman Dan Lungren (R-CA). “Providing easy access to legislative information increases constituent feedback and ultimately …
President Obama’s economic stimulus was supposed to revive America’s economy and put people back to work. But nearly three years after Democrats rammed the bill through Congress, it’s a clear-cut failure. The nation’s 8.6 percent unemployment rate stands out as one of consequences. Then there is the high-profile Solyndra scandal and countless other government schemes gone awry. In a new video from Reason.tv, Jim Epstein takes a closer look at other examples — in a setting just a few miles from Capitol Hill. In Silver Spring, MD, government contractors pocketed …
In an exclusive interview with The Heritage Foundation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sharply criticized President Obama for engaging in class warfare and accused him of shifting the focus away from his own failed policies in advance of next year’s election. “My view is he’ll have a hard time convincing Americans he deserves four more years of this,” McConnell said. “There’s nothing he’s done that the American people approve of, so of course, he’s trying to change the subject.” McConnell addressed a range of issues during the interview, from …
As part of President Obama’s economic stimulus, the federal government has doled out $230 million for communities to combat obesity rather than create jobs or boost the economy. In many cases, the funds are being used to attack American-made products like Coke and Pepsi. Advertisements undermining soft drinks can be found in cities from coast to coast. New York’s “Pouring on the Pounds” campaign used grotesque pictures and misleading information that even the city’s chief nutritionist called into question. The city received $15.5 million in federal funding for its anti-obesity …
The concept of a Keynesian stimulus never seems to tire among politicians eager to grow the economy artificially by spending other people’s money. Recently, Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack encouraged expanding SNAP, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program aimed to help the poor, as a way to stimulate the economy. “Every dollar of SNAP benefits generates $1.84 in the economy in terms of economic activity. If people are able to buy a little more in the grocery store, someone has to stock it, package it, shelve it, process it, ship …
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) is convinced that President Obama has no viable plan to revive the economy and reduce unemployment. Two years after the failed stimulus and a year since the administration’s “summer of recovery,” the unemployment rate now stands at 9.1 percent. Without much hope coming from the White House, Hensarling said lawmakers in Congress are forging ahead with an agenda focused on job creation. “Issues of spending and jobs are inextricably linked,” said Hensarling, who spoke at this week’s Bloggers Briefing at Heritage. “The greatest impediment to job …
Today marked the two-year anniversary of President Obama’s economic stimulus law. But based on the reaction from Capitol Hill, there was little reason to celebrate. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) held a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Wednesday morning with Heritage’s J.D. Foster, George Mason University economics professor Russell Roberts, and Stanford University economics professor John Taylor. Jordan intentionally left two empty seats as placeholders for Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, architects of the $787 billion plan. Both declined to attend and Jordan turned down an offer from the …
In an op-ed from last week, Paul Krugman again called for greater government control of the economy to combat unemployment writing: “A rational political system would long since have created a 21st-century version of the Works Progress Administration — we’d be putting the unemployed to work doing what needs to be done, repairing and improving our fraying infrastructure.” Well The Onion has some good news for Mr. Krugman, under the header Revamped WPA To Create 50,000 New Jobs By Disassembling, Reassembling Hoover Dam, they report: In an effort to boost …
It doesn’t matter who asks the question (CNN, Gallup, Pew, Fox, ABC, or CBS) the answer is always the same: the American people believe President Barack Obama’s $814 billion economic stimulus failed. The White House believes that this is a failure of communications not a failure of policy. Enter newly minted White House Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and 1991 college National Debate Team of the Year champion, Austan Goolsbee. Goolsbee has begun doing a series of videos trying to convince Americans that, despite nearly a trillion dollars …
