It is bad enough that, after more than 1,000 days since passing a budget resolution, the Senate has decided to forgo this fundamental obligation once again this year. Even worse is the absurd excuse by Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D–NV) that a budget resolution is unnecessary because Congress already has one—in the form of the Budget Control Act (BCA). Reid and other Senate leaders contend that the spending cap in the BCA, the product of last year’s debt ceiling debate, is a sufficient proxy for a budget resolution. This …
As budget season approaches, premium support is gaining traction as the only viable option to save Medicare. In a recent Politico article, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D–MD) is quoted as saying liberals will use Obamacare’s new provisions to combat a conservative budget that reforms Medicare using premium support. Hoyer told reporters, “Yes, we need to make Medicare viable. We believe that the health care bill—and very frankly CBO (Congressional Budget Office) believes the health care bill will do something that Medicare very badly needs, and that is to constrain …
President Obama unveiled a long list of economic policies during the State of the Union address that he wanted Congress to focus on this year. Click here to join us right now for our “Lunch with Heritage” chat. We are joined by Bill Beach, Heritage’s Director of the Center for Data Analysis, and he is taking your questions on the President’s proposals. Lunch with Heritage feat. Bill Beach
“Over a thousand Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires,” asserted President Obama in his State of the Union Address. President Obama referred to steep tariffs that his Administration imposed on tires imported from China. Not everyone sees it that way. According to the Tire Industry Association (TIA): TIA believes this was a politically motivated decision that will end up costing more jobs than it saves. These tariffs will not bring back the jobs that the union claims have been lost; it will not create …
In President Obama’s statement denying TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, he said, “The rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment.” The President referred to a five-page Department of State (DOS) report that echoed why he decided in November 2011 to postpone the decision until after the 2012 election. Despite a rigorous, three-year environmental review with multiple comment periods, DOS recommended that the current route was not satisfactory …
President Barack Obama began the new year on a controversial footing by signing the highly disputed National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA 2012) into law. Defense authorization bills are traditionally passed by Congress and signed with little controversy by the sitting President. But the NDAA 2012 has been the focus of particular rancor from often unlikely parties, and the signing statement written by President Obama, which was included with the bill as an informal addendum, is particularly troubling to those who value the integrity of our national defense strategy. …
They call themselves “las Damas de Blanco” (“the Ladies in White”). They are a prominent group of courageous Cuban women, many of them wives of political prisoners. They have fought not just for the rights of the unjustly imprisoned but for the rights of all the Cuban people to have a voice in the way their country is governed. Their tactics are entirely peaceful: They take to the streets of Havana and Santiago de Cuba each Sunday and silently march in protest against human rights violations of the Castro regime …
Obama made a big splash last week when he appointed a new head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and three appointments to the National Labor Relations Board without confirmation of the Senate even though they were technically in session. These appointments were an abuse of presidential power. Click here to join us right now for our “Lunch with Heritage” chat. We are joined by Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky and he is taking your questions about the legality of the appointments and the ramifications of them. Lunch with Heritage …
The President traveled across the river to the Pentagon today to preview a new defense strategy to chase down falling defense budgets. Obama was quick to declare that the “tide of war” is receding for the United States and our military. But what he left out is that it is not always up to us when we engage in conflict or respond to terrorism here at home or prevent hostilities from getting worse in key oil shipping lanes, for example. Just because Washington announces truth does not mean that it …
In his recent speech in Kansas, President Obama accused Republicans of advocating “you’re on your own economics”—a philosophy that supposedly holds that “we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.” The implication is that unless you favor raising taxes and levying stricter economic regulations, Obama assumes you want to leave poor people out in the cold. In contrast, the President promotes his own economic ethic in the following terms: “We are greater together than we are on our own.” While …
