Entries for 'Heritage Foundation'

Yesterday, I joined a broad coalition of conservative leaders representing a wide spectrum of the movement including fiscal, social, cultural and national security conservatives, to sign The Mount Vernon Statement. In light of the challenges facing the country and the need for clarity, we needed to produce this defining statement of conservative beliefs, values and principles. It is the culmination of a thoughtful deliberation about our nation’s principles. I was proud to participate in that discussion, and to chair the committee that drafted the statement.

As newspapers across the country have noted this morning, President Obama's nuclear loan guarantee announcement is really nothing more than a transparently cynical attempt to revive his moribund cap-and-trade/energy tax proposals currently languishing in the Senate.

At the one year mark unemployment is now 9.7%, after rising above 10%, and the U.S. economy has lost 4 million jobs leaving the White House 9 million jobs short of the 138.6 million they promised to deliver by December of this year. By any objective measure President Obama's $862 billion stimulus must be judged as a complete failure.  

Undeterred by these facts, the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) published a report on the economic effects of the Administration's economic stimulus plan claiming that there are 2 million more jobs in the economy than there otherwise would have been had the President's stimulus not become law.

The third Monday in February has come to be known—wrongly—as President’s Day. But, this is not a day to celebrate every president in our Nation’s history: like one who served only a month in office. This is the day that we celebrate the man who led America to victory in the War for Independence, who was instrumental in the creation of our Constitution, and whose character forever shaped the executive branch. We celebrate George Washington. That’s why it’s Washington’s Birthday; not President’s day.

Yesterday in Tehran's Azadi Square, hundreds of thousands of Iranians turned out to listen to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech marking the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Ahmadinejad did not disappoint the adoring crowd, defiantly announcing that Iran had become a "nuclear state," adding: "The Iranian nation is brave enough that if one day we wanted to create an atomic bomb, we would announce it publicly and would create it."

Considering that NBC/GE  has already received billions in TARP bailout cash from the Obama administration and is actively lobbying for a global warming energy tax bill so that it can receive billions more in government green-energy subsidies on top of the millions it already receives, we are sure to hear lots from NBC announcers about how the lack of snow in Vancouver is just another reason Washington needs to act now to stop global warming.

But back in Washington, the global warming scare-monger crowd is singing a slightly different tune. Facing record snowfalls, Time is reporting: "Snowstorm: East Coast Blizzard Tied to Climate Change." But do not confuse this headline with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s column from two years ago claiming that global warming was causing "anemic winters" in the Washington region.

Yesterday, USA Today ran an editorial on the Obama administration's handling of terrorism, writing: "Officials’ handling of Christmas Day attack looks like amateur hour." Graciously given the space to respond to this charge, Obama administration Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan replied: "Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda."

The Las Vegas Sun reported this weekend that big labor leaders are pushing to include their long-sought "card check" provisions into Obama's Second Stimulus. This legislation would effectively end a worker's right to fight unionization through secret ballot elections, would give the federal government the power to run small businesses and would cost the American economy thousands of jobs.

Right before the Super Bowl, President Barack Obama spoke about health care reform with CBS News' Katie Couric: "I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."

According to aides, the President envisions a half-day meeting on February 25th held in Blair House (a building across the street from the White House) presumably televised by C-SPAN. President Obama's conciliatory rhetoric aside, everyone knows this publicity stunt has nothing to do with actually considering conservative health care reform ideas and everything to do with the appearance of transparency and bipartisanship.

Holder replied: "Well, I mean, it's hard to interrogate him at this point now that he has a lawyer and now that he is here in the United States. But to the extent that we can get information from him, I think we should."

And just where does the President plan to get this new $30 billion? The President explained yesterday: "This proposal takes the money that was repaid by Wall Street banks to provide capital for community banks on Main Street." In other words, TARP - the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program first signed into law by President George Bush, and then used by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to force many financial firms into taking taxpayer money they never wanted in the first place.

After a year of fairly steady criticism from the right, the Obama foreign policy received a second look--and a wave of rather favorable consideration--after his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, in which he acknowledged the existence of evil, the importance of America in sustaining peace, and the occasional necessity to wage war. This led to some enthusiastic talk about a new Obama Doctrine variously described as a kind of Christian realism, Niebuhrian tragic-mindedness, or a fusion of realism and idealism.

I hate to rain on this parade, but I find it hard to join the general swooning over this newfound foreign policy sophistication. It's good that we have a President who says publicly that Gandhi would not have done very well against Hitler, but is this really a great philosophical advance? For a President of the United States? It's the kind of issue that you dispose of in your first bull session in the freshman dorm.

“The spending bills that you've signed into law, the domestic discretionary spending has been increased by 84 percent. You now want to freeze spending at this elevated level beginning next year. ... So my question is, why not start freezing spending now?"

Washington, DC February 1: President Barack Obama will submit a $3.8 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2011 to Congress today. One might hope that given last year's $1.4 trillion budget deficit was an all-time high and the President promised a spending "freeze" in last week's State of the Union, this budget might signal a change in direction from the White House. No such luck. President Obama's new budget is full of billions of dollars in new spending for failed government programs, higher taxes on American families and businesses, and deficit spending for as far as the eye can see.

Thursday, the White House ordered the Department of Justice to begin considering places other than New York City to host the civilian criminal trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorists. The New York Times describes a decision to move the trials out of New York as "a retreat by the administration" and reported that the Obama administration "was scrambling" to find a new way forward.

The more things change, the more things stay the same. A little over a year ago, President Barack Obama came to office expecting to pass a "big bang" of policy changes all in the first year: health care, cap-and-trade, and banking regulation. With the big-bang strategy officially a failure, President Obama's State of the Union address last night desperately tried to keep all of these legislative efforts alive while also acknowledging that the country has firmly rejected his policy agenda.  The result was an incoherent mess....

Tonight in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama is expected to propose a "freeze" on government spending. Obama's spending "freeze" will only last three years, will not start until 2011, will only apply to a $447 billion slice of the federal government's $3.5 trillion budget, and will not apply to any of the unspent $862 billion stimulus plan, his health care plan or the House of Representatives' additional $156 billion stimulus plan. Despite all the loopholes, time limits and procrastination, the President should still be commended for beginning to acknowledge reality. And as a new report issued yesterday by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows, the reality is this: the U.S. government has an insatiable spending problem.

You must recognize, Mr. President, that the State of the Union is not good. You need a new approach and fresh domestic and foreign policies. The caps on spending which reports last night said you were considering are but an exceedingly modest first step, and the devil is in the details. The caps will do virtually nothing to improve the nation’s fiscal health unless you tackle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Shifting tactics and stoking populism will be both cynical and condescending to the voters, who will see through this strategy. Mr. President, it’s the policies you need to change, not the spin.

Tuesday's election in Massachusetts sent shockwaves across Capitol Hill as voters rejected the idea that the only true course for health reform was to raise taxes, raise spending, raise premiums and put the federal government in charge of yet another unpaid-for entitlement crisis.  Campaigning as the 41st vote against Obamacare and the fiscally-irresponsible policies of the Obama administration, Senator-elect Scott Brown (R-MA) seized on the frustration Americans feel toward the direction Washington is heading.  But saying 'no' to Obamacare is only a first step.  It's also critical that conservatives continue to offer alternative solutions to the health care and entitlement problems that our nation faces.

From the President who brought you unaccountable, constitutionally-questionable czars comes the latest innovation in pass-the-buck leadership: a White House executive commission designed to solve the behemoth of a spending problem plaguing the federal government.  Members of Congress have described the commission as a “nothing burger,” a “fig leaf” and “something that is put in place to kind of cover [President Obama’s] rear end." Colorful critiques aside, it’s an executive commission tasked with making policy recommendations aimed at reducing the country’s projected $1.4 trillion deficit.

Scott Brown’s shocking victory in Massachusetts on Tuesday was a shot across the bow of the liberal ruling class in Washington and declared one clear message: Americans do not like the direction the country is heading, and they’re not going to stand for it, even in the solidly-blue Bay State.

The United States’ direction today is a dangerous one, even when compared to the country’s state of affairs just one year ago, as revealed in the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, which we are releasing this morning in a joint project with The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. The Index analyzes just how economically “free” a country is, and this year America saw a steep and significant decline, enough to make it drop altogether from the “free” category, the first time this has happened in the 16 years we’ve been publishing these indexes. The United States dropped to “mostly free.”

One year ago, President Barack Obama delivered his inaugural address at the foot of the Capitol, laid out an agenda of “big plans” for his administration, and chided “cynics” who “fail to understand that the ground has shifted beneath them.” One year later, as voters head to the ballot box in Massachusetts, it seems that the ground very well may have shifted under President Obama.

And that ground shift might spell trouble for the President’s health care magnum opus.

The real deadbeats that are not giving us "our money back" are not the banks, but the union-backed car companies and failed government mortgage modification programs. But guess what? The White House has chosen not to include the car companies among the institutions that will pay this so called "Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee." Also exempted are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored entities that helped create the crisis.

And just what deals were Big Labor, the leftist majorities in Congress and the Obama administration making behind closed doors? How to pay for President Obama's likely $1 trillion health care plan without raising taxes on one of the President's most loyal constituencies: labor unions. Specifically, Big Labor reportedly has struck a deal with health care negotiators to exempt union members from the 40% excise tax on high-priced health insurance premiums. By some estimates, the tax would hit one in four union members. Now Big Labor will get all of the big government health care spending they always wanted, but they will not have to pay for it.

Even where infrastructure spending has been spent, the hard evidence shows that there has not been any positive effect on unemployment. According to an Associated Press analysis reviewed by independent economists at five universities, the $20 billion spent nationwide on infrastructure so far "has had no effect on local unemployment rates."

The much-anticipated trial to determine the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8 is scheduled to begin this morning in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. What's at stake in this case, filed in federal district court in San Francisco on behalf of two gay couples, is not just the right of California voters to reaffirm the definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman, but also whether marriage may be otherwise defined in any state.

 The President promised he would direct “our intelligence community immediately begin assigning specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats so that these leads are pursued and acted upon aggressively — not just most of the time, but all of the time.” And he added: “In addition to the corrective efforts that I’ve ordered, I’ve directed agency heads to establish internal accountability reviews, and directed my national security staff to monitor their efforts.”

But this failure of our intelligence system was not just about lack of accountability. It was about empowerment - or more specifically the lack thereof. The system simply moved too slowly because there was a lack of urgency about the war on terror. Intelligence personnel were not empowered to employ their ingenuity and resourcefulness to connect the dots. Adding layers of “internal accountability reviews” will only make the bureaucratic stupor worse.

The Democratic Party was shaken to its core on Tuesday when Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Gov. Bill Ritter (D-CO) announced they would not run for re-election in 2010, all on the same day. The source of these Democrats’ fears in facing the American people at the polls is no secret: the American people believe the state of the economy is poor and getting worse. Responding to this dismal environment, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) told the Fremont Tribune on Tuesday: “I think it was a mistake to take health care on as opposed to continuing to spend the time on the economy.”

A reporter reminded Pelosi about President Barack Obama’s frequent promises to the American people throughout 2008 that he would ensure C-SPAN was allowed to televise exactly such negotiations, to which Speaker Pelosi quipped: “There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail.”

Speaker Pelosi is right: President Obama’s broken health care promises are legendary. According to reports, Speaker Pelosi wasn’t even referring to Obama’s whopper from last month that he never campaigned on the public option. No, Speaker Pelosi is apparently most upset with Obama’s support for the Senate’s tax on high cost health plans, which she believes is a violation of Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.

Politico is reporting that President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will meet at the White House today (joined by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) via conference call) to set the parameters for reconciling the House and Senate versions of health care legislation. However, instead of proceeding with the usual public and open conference committee process, the White House is going to take a very active role in secret behind-closed-door meetings between the House and Senate. The Sunlight Foundation explains the implications for the American people: “Both House and Senate rules require that all conference committee meetings be open to the public unless a majority of conferees votes in open session to close the meetings. Senate rules require all conference committee reports be publicly available for at least 48 hours prior to a final vote. Without conference, there is no mechanism to provide for openness in the final discussions regarding the health care bill.”

This past weekend the American public learned that not only was the Obama administration briefed about the bombing technique attempted on Flight 253, not only did the United States have information that a Nigerian was being prepared for a terrorist attack by al Qaeda in Yemen, but our government also knew that an “Umar Farouk” was involved. 

Following these revelations, the Obama administration again took to the Sunday shows to defend their national security record. Last week Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano tried to convince Americans that “the system worked”. She failed. This Sunday, Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan did admit that the system failed on Christmas Day but still insisted: “Every other day the system has worked this year….The system is working.”

While millions of Americans are more than ready to put 2009 behind them, they should know that Congress failed to reauthorize dozens of tax breaks for individuals and businesses before the Members scurried home for the Holidays. These “expiring provisions” affect every American in one way or another as individuals or businesses. By allowing them to lapse, Congress has enacted tax increases at time when these taxpayers can least afford it.

Yet despite the facts that PETN is easily detected and Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father warned the U.S. embassy in Nigeria about his son this November, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had the audacity to go on television yesterday and say “the system worked” and that the suspect was properly screened. The “system worked?” The 278 passengers on flight 253 could be dead today but for a faulty syringe and the Obama administration considers that a success? That is pure idiocy. Idiocy that is a direct threat to the security of this country and that goes to the heart of the Obama administration’s approach to the war on terror.

On Christmas Day, 1776, a small band of colonial forces under the command of Gen. George Washington, having retreated all the way from New York, again crossed the Delaware River and brought battle at Trenton, New Jersey. Washington not only won the battle but regained the initiative and turned the war in the patriots’ favor. One week later, Washington defeated the British at Princeton and forced the enemy to withdraw, preventing its advance on Philadelphia, seat of the Continental Congress.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) wrote in 1994: “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”

This morning at around 8 AM, the Senate passed, again on a straight party-line vote, Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) manager’s amendment to the Senate’s version of Obamacare. This keeps the Senate on pace to pass the bill at 9 PM on Christmas Eve despite the fact that Americans overwhelmingly opposed the legislation. But even after the Senate gives President Barack Obama his $2.5 trillion Christmas present, the bill, assuming it is to be considered in regular order, still must go through a House and Senate conference.

This bill will only make every single problem with our health care system worse: higher spending, higher deficits, and worse care. Former-Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean said on Meet the Press yesterday, “[This bill] simply sets us on a track in this country which is expensive and where we’re going to have lots more political fights.” Dean is dead on. President Barack Obama’s signature on this health care bill settles nothing: it is only the beginning of a much larger health care fight.

A cloture vote limits debate to 30 hours.  The next vote can be held as early as 7am (EST) Tuesday morning (2AM HST).  A third vote would be held thirty hours later at 1PM (EST) Wednesday (8AM HST) followed by the final vote, which requires only a simple majority at roughly 7PM (EST) Christmas Eve (2PM HST).  Each of the two remaining cloture votes requires that all 60 Democrats show up.  If one Democrat misses the vote or changes his vote, the entire bill fails.

Throughout the conference, one of the biggest obstacles to an agreement was the insistence of developing nations that rich countries sign a binding treaty that included a large transfer of wealth to the developing world. If there were any doubts that wealth distribution was at the heart of climate cap-and-trade agreements, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Hugo Chavez put them to rest when he delivered his anti-capitalist diatribe that drew thunderous applause from the convention’s delegates Wednesday....

Explaining why he would vote against the Senate version of Obamacare if he were a Senator, former-Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told MSNBC last night: “You’re going to be forced to buy health insurance from a company that is going to take on average of 27% of your money … and there is no choice about that. If you don’t buy that insurance you are going to get a fine.” For this heresy, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs suggested Dean was irrational....

This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. And, honestly, the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill and go back to the House … You have the vast majority of Americans want the choices, they want real choices. They don’t have them in this bill. This is not health care reform and it’s not close to health care reform.

The climate treaty negotiations inside Copenhagen’s Bella Center at the United Nations Climate Change Conference ground to a halt yesterday when the G-77, the largest group of developing nations, walked out. These poorer nations demanded that richer nations sign a treaty that includes a large transfer of wealth to the developing world to compensate for the developed world’s historical contribution to global warming. The G-77 countries ended their walkout after less than two hours, perhaps because global warming has had no apparent impact on December Copenhagen temperatures.

Obamacare is not dead yet. Speaker Pelosi has signaled that she will quickly pass anything that comes out of the Senate, so Reid could still cave on almost everything and get a terrible bill from everybody’s prospective on the President’s desk by New Years. But Senators thinking about moving quickly should remember that the public strongly opposes this bill, and that opposition is only rising.

A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.

Next week Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is expected to attach a provision to the Department of Defense appropriations bill that would increase our national debt limit by $1.925 trillion. This debt limit raise would authorize the U.S. Treasury to borrow as much as $14 trillion, which is 30% higher than the $10.8 trillion limit that was in place when President Barack Obama took office.

If you are one of the few Americans who still subscribes, your morning newspaper probably has a headline like this: Democrats Reach Deal on Health Plan. Don’t believe it.  Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is still light years away from producing the 60 votes necessary to pass Obamacare out of the Senate. And the few details that have leaked out about this new “broad agreement” only reveal just how desperate Reid is to get any bill on to President Obama’s desk by the New Year.

Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant under the Clean Air Act, granting itself authority for an enormous, unprecedented regulatory undertaking that would greatly expand the EPA’s power. Because 85 percent of the U.S. economy operates on fossil fuel, the EPA would essentially have the ability to regulate every aspect of life in America – and it would be able to enact draconian climate-change policies without any accountability to American voters.

Plutocrats from around the world have marshaled over 1,200 limos and 140 private planes to travel to and around Copenhagen over the next two weeks. When they are not participating in the world’s oldest profession, conferees will be negotiating over a successor treaty to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which obligated most developed nations to reduce their greenhouse emissions by 5 percent below 1990 baseline levels by 2012.

Undeterred by the complete failure of their past job creation efforts, leading leftist luminaries are again calling on the liberal majorities in Congress and President Obama to approve billions more in government spending for a third stimulus. Yesterday, President Obama hosted a “jobs summit” where academics, union leaders, and select big business leaders made their pitch for government largess. Among the ideas reported: Teamsters leader James Hoffa called for higher barriers to trade, President Obama insisted that all future aid to states go to preserving government jobs and not tax cuts, and others pushed to bring the “success” of Cash for Clunkers to a new Cash for Caulkers program.

The Senate began debate on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R.3590) this week. Senators on both sides of the aisle offered amendments to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s huge, 2074 page health care bill. The first votes to take place concerned preventative services for women.