Here’s a not-so-bold prediction: Congress will vote to spend more money today than it will cut over 10 years from any grand deal. Later today, the House will consider the additional $50 billion in Sandy aid in two parts (they already passed another $9.7 billion two weeks ago). The House will first try to pass a bill (H.R. 152) to provide about $17 billion to | Read More »
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Arthur Brooks to discuss the debt, education reform and the moral argument for conservatism.
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Maybe the Administration took this idea off the table (if that indeed remains the case) because they wanted to avoid a scene like this outside the Federal Reserve Building.
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I am in favor of not raising the debt ceiling unless the President and Democrats come up with meaningful spending cuts and reforms. Contrary to a lot of the Democrats’ spin, the federal government will not default if the debt ceiling is not raised. Only if Little Timmy Geithner decides to not pay certain debts will the government default. It is his choice. But I | Read More »
An activist is dead, by his own choice. He also chose to commit crimes to push his agenda. Nobody denies he did it. They only deny that he should have been prosecuted.
I can understand the man’s family and friends feeling grief, and lashing out. But for anyone else to attempt to use this event to push an agenda, discredits his agenda. If you need to use the suicide of a criminal in order to advance your policy goals like a vulture, your policy goals probably don’t have much going for them.
And that’s all I have to say about that for now.
Read More »Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gives some revealing insight into how he sees the Senate’s priorities this spring – priorities, in line with his support back home in Nevada, that are long on addressing immigration and not so high on banning “assault weapons”: Calling for a “cautious” approach to gun control, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid downplayed the chances of the Senate renewing an assault-weapons | Read More »
A bill that was authored by an Ironworkers’ union organizer to expand union-only Project Labor Agreements–to include Hurricane Sandy cleanup and reconstruction–passed the New Jersey Senate on Monday along party lines 23-13.
The Ironworkers’ union organizer who drafted the pro-union bill, Steven Sweeney, also happens to be the president of the New Jersey Senate and recently accused New Jersey Governor Chris Christie of “praying” for Hurricane Sandy to hit New Jersey.
Read More »Because apparently math is hard. The White House has informed House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) that it will miss the legal deadline for sending a budget to Congress. Acting Budget Director Jeff Zients told Ryan (R-Wis.) late Friday that the budget will not be delivered by Feb. 4, as required by law, a House aide said.
Although Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Atlantic Coast more than 2 months ago, the debate over disaster relief is still raging. While more than $2 billion in aid has been spent by FEMA on the recovery from Sandy, the controversy began after the House failed to vote on a $60 billion Sandy aid bill in the last session of Congress. The bill was denied passage | Read More »
Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson embodies the ineffectiveness of the Republicans Party in promoting limited government. He represents one of the most conservative states, yet he uses his position as one of the 12 appropriations “Cardinals” to block any effort to cut spending. Simpson is an ardent supporter of earmarks. He is also a big supporter of government-run healthcare, and refuses to cut even small programs | Read More »
A recent study from the Tax Foundation and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy looking at cigarette taxes and cigarette smuggling reminds us, yet again, of how big government always ends up legislating the Law of Unintended Consequences. Tax That Smoker Behind The Tree You have to tax something to fund government, and if you’re taxing sales, cigarettes are as good a target as any: | Read More »
Two years ago, several newly elected conservative Governors were planning their legislative agendas. When Gov. Scott Walker proposed his public sector collective bargaining reforms, the Left seemed giddy that a Governor in a purple state would make such a conservative proposal, thinking it would be easy to defeat him in his next election. However, the voters in the June 5, 2012 Recall election, rewarded his | Read More »
The Republican Party lost the presidential election of 2012. Here in California, my own state doubled down on big government by adding a novel surcharge to its already high 11.3 percent income tax rate and ignored spending cuts and entitlement reforms needed to modify a deficit-driven state budget. The California state Legislature now is firmly in the hands of a Democratic supermajority. Thus, Republicans are | Read More »
As the gun control debate rages in America following the abominable events in Newtown, eventually, perhaps inevitably, the media will ask itself, “What would Jesus do?” They’ve done it for years as it relates to wealth redistribution and Obamacare. Obama gave an entire speech about taxes in which he used Jesus for his justification. I’d wager that the tactic is designed to hit God fearing | Read More »
During the fight over the FY 2011 budget in 2011, conservatives were told to stand down and wait for the debt ceiling. At that point, “we would begin to cut trillions,” promised GOP leaders. They wound up caving on the debt ceiling in return for nothing. Then they said we would fight for the FY 2012 budget. Well, once we agreed to lock in the | Read More »
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