Food-stamp fraud and the government’s failed attempts to stop it were the focus of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing yesterday. Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) called the hearing in response to a Scripps Howard News Service investigative report exposing widespread abuse. The investigation revealed that retailers who lost authorization to accept food stamps were still conducting business despite their restrictions. “[D]ozens of individuals who had been banned as food-stamp vendors nonetheless remained in the business in New York; Los Angeles; Phoenix; San Diego; Tulsa, Okla.; West Palm Beach, …
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is the ranking Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee dealing with environmental issues. He is currently working to end subsidies for wind power, an energy source that he dubs “a scam.” “We don’t have the money” to continue the subsidies, Alexander told Heritage in our latest segment of In the Green Room. “It’s a puny amount of electricity,” he added, “and it’s destroying the environment in the name of saving the environment.” Alexander agreed that subsidies for other energy sectors should also be eliminated, but he stressed …
It’s a rare moment indeed when Catholic priests speak from the pulpit on political issues, but across the country, pastors and bishops are taking a stand in opposition to Obamacare’s attack on religious liberties. Those individuals are joining with leaders across many faith backgrounds in saying “enough is enough” — they refuse to stand idly by as the White House mandates that virtually all religious employers, with the exception of churches, provide health care coverage for contraception — including abortion-inducing drugs — thereby trampling upon their constitutionally guaranteed free exercise of religion. …
Vice President Biden didn’t get the story quite straight. As the Obama Administration reels from the backlash for Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate that forces religious employers to provide coverage and pay for abortion-inducing drugs, Biden yesterday set out to convince America that the Administration has a “new” version of the mandate that respects religion. The only problem is, the version is neither new nor respectful of religious liberty. To set the record straight, we’ve put together a point-counterpoint response to the Vice President’s remarks. Simply put, the federal government should not …
Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s comments last week, in which he equated state lawmakers who question the Common Core national standards push with conspiracy theorists, are another indication that the Common Core Initiative is not the states-based movement the Administration claims it to be. Indeed, national standards have become the cornerstone of the Department of Education’s efforts to increase federal control over the content taught in local schools. As the Pioneer Institute has recently reported, national standards adoption will cost states nearly $16 billion—an amount far exceeding any grant money doled …
As we inch closer to the April 1 by-elections in Burma, during which Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) will contest some 46 parliamentary seats, Western observers need to step back, assess the conditions on the ground, and determine whether the recent reforms in Burma—coupled with a free and fair election—merit easing sanctions. Indeed, European nations (and the U.S. to a lesser degree) are touting successful elections as the benchmark for lifting sanctions, yet at a panel discussion hosted by Walter Lohman and The Heritage …
Efforts to repel the Obama Administration’s attack on liberty of conscience suffered a setback today on the floor of the U.S. Senate, but in the process kept alive an issue on which an extraordinary variety of Americans are willing to continue fighting – and with good reason. The core hubris of President Obama’s attack on conscience is his apparent belief that manipulations of language alone can defuse the controversy over his preventive services mandate and its destructive effects on religious entities and other employers. But there is subject matter that …
The U.S. Senate will consider legislation on Thursday that would prevent the Department of Health and Human Services from forcing religious employers and insurers from being forced to violate their constitutionally-protected beliefs. The so-called “Blunt Amendment,” named for its sponsor, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), seeks to preserve the longstanding conscience protections in the face of HHS’s decision to move forward with a rule that would require religious employers to fully fund contraception for their employees, even if doing so would violate their religious views. The mandate “is only the beginning …
Britain’s Liam Fox has a warning for America: Fix the debt problem now or suffer the consequences of less power on the world stage. The former U.K. secretary of state for defense visited Heritage to explain why America’s debt is a national security issue. >> Watch the full 45-minute speech, “Warning to a Superpower” Fox faced cuts to the armed forces in the United Kingdom during his tenure. He said the amount of interest Britain pays on its debt is larger today than its budget for defense. Fox explained that …
