Americans are rightly concerned that a government-run health care plan will lead to changes with their own health insurance. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to draw the conclusion that employers will drop coverage once the government starts meddling with the financial incentives. This is a problem for the White House, and it’s why President Obama uses every opportunity to tell Americans, “If you have | Read More »
President Obama told the American people in January that the stimulus would work immediately in his sales pitch to Congress. Now that it’s failed to produce jobs — and the 9.5% unemployment rate is worse than the administration’s projections — Obama is changing his talking points. This is how you lose credibility, Mr. President.
President Obama today hailed passage of a Democrat-sponsored bill in the Senate HELP Committee as a positive development in his quest to impose government-run health care on America. He even had the gall to suggest it was a bipartisan bill — despite the fact not a single Republican voted for it. It’s a plan that was debated for more than 50 hours and that, by | Read More »
Is the White House’s well-oiled communications machine coming undone less than six months after President Obama took office? Based on the past few days of mounting criticism regarding Obama’s top achievement — passage of the $787 billion stimulus — it appears that cracks are beginning to form. The administration wants to avoid distractions from its quest for government-run health care, but the mismanaged stimulus, combined | Read More »
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), ranking member on the House Budget Committee, has done the American people a great service as the debate commences on President Barack Obama’s budget. We’ve all heard the argument from congressional Republicans: “It spends too much, borrows too much and taxes too much.” Put those words next to pictures and you begin to realize their significance. The following 11 slides should | Read More »
The U.S. Senate had the opportunity tonight to give 1,700 low-income children in the District of Columbia the chance for a better education. Instead, voting mostly along party lines, 58 senators sided with liberal special interests to defeat an amendment saving the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who attended a private high school and sent his kids to private school, inserted a | Read More »
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was unable to secure the 60 votes needed for cloture on the $410 billion omnibus spending bill tonight, setting the stage for a showdown Monday on the future of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Democrat leaders tried in vain to prevent amendments to the omnibus. But it was ultimately three of their own — Sens. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Russ | Read More »
The audacity of congressional Democrats is absolutely astonishing. Less than two months into the 111th Congress, they have made one of their top targets ending a popular scholarship program for 1,700 low-income D.C. students. The $7,500 scholarships are the best thing that’s happened for District of Columbia students in the past decade — and one of the best investments Congress has made in education reform. | Read More »
The best thing President Barack Obama can do for the economy is keep quiet. A day after delivering an address that won widespread praise from the chattering class, Obama’s big-government policies were rejected by traders on Wall Street. Wall Street’s negative reaction to Obama is nothing new. Ever since Election Day, Obama’s words have failed to inspire investors. “When the President speaks, the market listens | Read More »
The Senate is poised to pass its version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act today, setting the stage for a conference to reconcile its differences with the House. Throughout the debate over the economic stimulus bill, there has been plenty of talk about transparency but little done to achieve it. There is, however, another opportunity. The Sunlight Foundation is spearheading an effort to convince | Read More »
President Barack Obama’s nominee for deputy secretary of state said in written congressional testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that taxpayer funding of abortions is constitutionally protected under the First Amendment in the United States. The nominee, James B. Steinberg, was defending Obama’s repeal of the Mexico City Policy in response to a question from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). The answer, which DeMint posted | Read More »
Republicans hadn’t even wrapped up their economic hearing this morning with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (read his testimony) and former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman when congressional Democrats released the first version of their so-called stimulus. And to no one’s surprise, it’s full of government spending that will do little to boost economic growth. (Read it here and here.) Despite a promise from President-elect | Read More »
President-elect Barack Obama believes government spending is the best way to bailout America from its economic woes, and liberals in Congress are having no trouble finding ways to spend your hard-earned money. The price tag of the so-called stimulus plan has steadily increased from $775 billion last week to $850 billion today. Liberals like to say the New Deal programs of their hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt | Read More »
Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay and a potential candidate for California governor, will join Mitt Romney at a hearing Republicans are holding this week on the economy. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is bringing together a star-studded cast for Thursday’s testimony. The hearing comes a week after Democrats held their own gathering on Capitol Hill with five sympathetic witnesses who promoted | Read More »
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor wants you to have a seat at the table as Congress debates the best way to promote economic growth. The Virginia Republican opened his website to public comments and encouraged citizens to send video submissions via YouTube. Cantor has made transparency an important factor in the economic stimulus debate. Earlier in the week, he challenged Obama to create a real-time | Read More »
President-elect Barack Obama is trying to bribe Republicans with $300 billion in tax cuts as part of a much larger economic stimulus proposal. Will the GOP take the bait? As hard as it might be for Republicans to walk away from a large tax cut, they shouldn’t be fooled by Obama’s big-spending approach. The president-elect wants to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on unemployment | Read More »
Well, it’s Christmas Eve, have you figured out how to fix America’s health care system yet? If you haven’t, skip the family dinner and make it your top priority. Scrooge Daschle wants to drop socialized medicine down your chimney tonight wrapped in a bright red bow. Think I’m kidding? President-elect Barack Obama’s nominee for Health and Human Services has given the country two weeks, including | Read More »
President-elect Barack Obama doesn’t take office until Jan. 20, but his liberal allies on Capitol Hill want to move quickly on the nomination of Attorney General designee Eric Holder. There’s good reason. The more time conservatives have to dig into Holder’s past, the more dirt they’re likely to find. Legal Times reports today that “Republicans have fastened to Holder as their best chance to politically | Read More »
Listening to Barack Obama rail about earmarks, you’d think he was a Porkbuster. Far from it, in fact. Obama, who spent the week attacking Sarah Palin, is directing his criticism at the wrong vice presidential candidate. Rather than criticizing Palin for her role in canceling the Bridge to Nowhere, Obama ought to hold his own running mate to the same standards he demanded of Hillary | Read More »
Few would argue that Sen. Jim DeMint is one of the Senate’s top reformers when it comes to pork-barrel spending. But even DeMint only recently kicked the habit. It was less than two years ago that the South Carolina Republican swore off earmarks after the GOP’s drubbing in November 2006. DeMint now calls himself a “recovering earmarker” who equates pork-barrel spending to a disease. My | Read More »
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