President Obama is touring the country and campaigning against the spending cuts under sequestration, such as cuts to energy research. The Department of Energy (DOE) itself has claimed that it may have to “curtail vital programs” and furlough employees in light of sequestration. The Heritage Foundation has already identified wasteful …
The White House warns that sequestration “would reduce loan guarantees to small businesses by up to $902 million”—loans that it claims are “investments that are helping grow our economy.” Setting this flawed Keynesian line of thinking aside, it’s worth investigating whether or not there is room to reduce spending at …
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) made it onto an Obama Administration fact sheet listing the “most damaging effects of a sequester on the middle class.” According to the White House, under sequestration the agency “would be forced to delay or halt vital scientific projects and make hundreds of fewer …
The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women (NTF), a front group for organizations dependent on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) grant funding, recently released a highly flawed and misleading review of why the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (S. 47) is an …
Should government agencies use the best information possible? For more than 80 years, the Labor Department has answered that question in the negative. The Davis–Bacon Act (DBA) of 1931 requires federal construction contractors to pay their workers at least the “prevailing wage” in their locality. The Act charges the Labor …
Author Christopher Horner joined the Bloggers Briefing this week to discuss his new book, The Liberal War on Transparency, and how citizen journalists can use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to hold the government accountable. “You’ve got Issa oversight, and you’ve got you oversight—FOIA and state open records laws,” …
Lost amid the scuffle of fiscal cliff negotiations and holiday preparations was the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) December 20 statement confirming that only 13 states were deemed REAL ID compliant and that the remaining states would receive another extension. Unfortunately, that means DHS isn’t sure whether 37 states are …
Senator Tom Coburn (R–OK) and others in Congress have repeatedly expressed concerns about “fragmentation, overlap, and duplication” in non-emergency food aid programs administered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). But a study released this month by the United States Government …
