Last week, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) launched an innovative new tool in the fight to cut spending called YouCut. It allows regular American citizens to vote to cut wasteful spending in Congress. Its purpose is to challenge the culture of spending that has dominated Congressional thinking and replace it with a renewed focus on savings. Weekly, YouCut will post several wasteful spending programs and give citizens a week to vote on which they favor most being eliminated. The results are announced the following week and House Republicans will …
Due to the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the nation’s health care system is on its way to undergoing a tremendous overhaul. The impact of the implementation process will be felt by all, but state and local governments will play a significant role. As former Heritage senior fellow Dennis Smith writes in a recent paper, “While the White House would like to give the impression that the debate on health care is over, the truth is that it has just begun. Like welfare reform legislation …
Today the U.S. House of Representatives will take up a new “jobs” bill, HR4849, that includes a $2.5 billion provision to expand the size of welfare rolls and pay states when they add people to their caseloads. The Senate defeated a similar amendment by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) earlier this month. However, it has been resurrected in the Ways and Means Committee and added to the “jobs” bill now before the House. The provision is actually a one-year extension of a new welfare program created as part of last year’s …
Government-sponsored text messaging? You got it. Welfare recipients in approximately 20 states–with more to follow– are currently eligible to receive a free cell phone with a limited number of monthly minutes. All individuals that qualify for state or federal welfare–food stamps, Medicaid, etc.–and have an income at or below 135% of the poverty level, are eligible. According to a Fox News report, the cell phone service is currently the fastest growing welfare program in the country. In 2008, the fund that foots the bill for this program contributed $819 million …
Ever since President Barack Obama made a campaign promise to move forward with comprehensive immigration reform early in his presidency, there has been a series of studies aimed at making the economic case for another amnesty. The newest, a study by the Center for American Progress (CAP), claims that legalizing the 11 million illegal immigrants inside the United States would increase GDP by at least $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Touting amnesty as an economic stimulus is weak on several points. First, these studies almost across the board assume that …
As Congress wraps up its final business for the year, there are at least a dozen detrimental policies included in the omnibus spending bill recently signed into law by the President. Taken as a whole, these policies devalue human life, weaken civil society, and undermine the family. Unfortunately, these provisions have largely gone unnoticed by the general public. The Dirty Dozen The Fiscal Year 2010 Omnibus Appropriations bill passed by Congress includes a slew of offensive items: 1. Elimination of abstinence education. Despite polling showing the vast majority of parents …
The 2074 page Reid Health Bill (H.R. 3590) generally follows the Senate Finance and HELP versions on Medicaid and in the creation of a new health care program, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act. Curiously, in the short term (2010-2013), the Reid bill helps fewer people gain coverage than the Senate Finance bill. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates 2 million will lose Medicaid/SCHIP coverage each year in this period compared to current law. But, by 2019, Medicaid/SCHIP enrollment will increase by 15 million, accounting for nearly …
Medicaid is a means-tested welfare program created in 1965 to provide health care for low income families. Despite the fact that it is one of the most poorly performing of all the federal welfare programs it has become the cornerstone of how health insurance is expanded under Obamacare. The Health care “reform” bills advancing in the House and Senate would expand Medicaid by making this government-run health plan available to all adults with incomes at or below 150% of the poverty line. The change would dramatically multiply eligible recipients, with …
Last week President Barack Obama announced he wants to give every Social Security recipient a $250 payment to make up for the fact that they will not get a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). The Washington Post describes this as a one-time payment. They are wrong. George Will explains: “This is the second continent-wide shower of $250 checks. The first came from the $787 billion stimulus package enacted in February. There will not be another such shower, until the next one.” Heritage fellow David John explains why these payments are undermining the …
This Morning Bell is the final installment of a five-part week-long series on how Obamacare will affect you. Lost in all of last weeks headlines on how the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) finally delivered a health care product that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was willing to say would reduce the deficit, was how exactly they achieved it. At a price tag of $829 billion, the SFC ’framework’ will reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 29 million, moving the overall percentage of nonelderly Americans with health insurance from 83% in …
