The Morning Bell

[Captain Stanman]

A Six-Hour Infomercial Can't Save Obamacare

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. The New York Times reports: "In making the gesture on Sunday, Mr. Obama is in effect calling the hand of Republicans who had chastised him for not honoring a campaign pledge to hold health care deliberations in the open, broadcast by C-Span, and for not allowing Republicans at the bargaining table."

And the reality is that Democrats have no intention of including conservative ideas this late in the game. The Washington Post reports that White House officials "said the president will come to the health-care summit armed with a merged version of the two bills that Democrats strong-armed through the two chambers with almost no GOP backing." And The Post adds that Congressional Democrats show no signs of intending to listen to new ideas either: "In separate statements Sunday, Democratic leaders praised the president for calling the bipartisan summit but made clear they are not prepared to give up on the progress they made last year."

The White House continues to operate on the assumption that the American people would support their plan, but that President Obama just has not explained it well enough to the American people. The exact opposite is true. The American people have a very good idea of what is in President Obama's health care plan, and they do not like it. The President's plan takes the worst part of the status quo - a slow-motion federal government takeover of health care - and makes the problem much, much worse. Tacking-on one or two conservative ideas will not change the fundamental direction Obamacare would take our country.

Take for example the President's insistence that his plan includes the conservative idea to allow individuals to purchase health insurance cross state lines. The problem is the President's plan also gives czar-like powers to unaccountable federal bureaucrats to decide what does and does not qualify as health insurance for the entire country. These regulations would squeeze-out any real competition among private health plans anywhere, making competition across state lines useless.

If the President were really interested in bipartisan reform, he should have reached-out to conservatives months ago. Even before the President was sworn into office, our conservative health care analysts here at The Heritage Foundation have been reaching-out with common sense, free-market-friendly ideas that can ensure access to affordable health insurance. But for more than a year, the President chose not to listen. If the President truly is interested in bipartisan health reform, he needs to step back and start over. His six-hour February 25th Hail Mary pass just isn't going to cut it.

[Captain Stanman]

Snow Slows Obama's Second Stimulus

The snowstorms that have already dumped over two feet of snow on the nation's Capitol and that are threatening to dump another 12 to 16 inches, have grounded the legislative process to a halt. But that might not be such a bad thing. Senate Democrats had hoped they could pass President Barack Obama's second stimulus today, but with only three of the Senate’s 100 lawmakers able to make it to the chamber, that vote has been postponed indefinitely. And the more we learn about what might be in President Obama's second stimulus, the better a little delay looks.

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.

The other major provisions of Obama's second stimulus are also job killers. The $5,000 new worker tax credit does not create any incentive for already-struggling companies to begin long-term hiring. What's worse, it could even increase unemployment; companies would delay existing plans to create jobs so they could take advantage of the tax credit. And it would add to our national debt. Then there's the TARP-funded government-subsidized loans for small businesses. It's a big-government program destined to fail since the Small Business Administration has a terrible record of effectively allocating capital to the private sector.

For months, the American people and small businesses have been trying to tell the White House and Democrats in Congress that federal regulations and spending are part of the problem, not part of the solution. According to the latest National Federation of Independent Businesses survey, small business owners identified high taxes and government regulation as two of the top three problems facing their business.

Instead of piling on more debt and more regulations, the federal government should move in the opposite direction. For example, suspending the Davis-Bacon rules for the construction industry could fund 160,000 new jobs. Rescinding the unspent dollars from Obama's first failed stimulus would signal business owners that they will not face crippling new taxes enacted to cover the deficit. Killing the economically-devastating cap-and-trade legislation and prohibiting the EPA from regulating carbon-dioxide under the Clean Air Act would stabilize the regulatory environment so businesses could safely make long term decisions again.

There are things this Congress could do to help spur job creation. Notably, those job-creating ideas do not include more regulations and more deficit spending. Maybe a good thaw is what Washington needs to get back on the same page as the American people.

[Captain Stanman]

February 11, 2010 | By Nathaniel Ward

Global Warming Hysteria Strikes Again
Despite recent heavy snows in Washington that have shuttered the federal government and canceled Congressional votes, The Heritage Foundation's experts continue to advance conservative ideas.

Writing in today's Morning Bell, Heritage's Conn Carroll explores the Left's latest hysterical claims about global warming:

Tomorrow, NBC (which is owned by General Electric) will begin broadcasting the 2010 Winter Olympics from Vancouver, Canada. Only two events are scheduled for the opening day (alpine skiing and ski jumping), but even those events will be difficult to pull off. Why? There is no snow in Vancouver. And International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge knows exactly what is to blame: global warming. Rogge tells AFP: “Global warming of course is a worry, it is a worry for the entire world.”

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.

No snow, too much snow. It does not matter to the enviroleft crowd. For them, global warming always is to blame. That is the whole reason the movement made a deliberate decision earlier this decade to stop calling it “global warming” and start calling it “climate change.” That way they could expand the universe of terrible things they could plausibly blame on global warming. One British citizen even maintains a comprehensive list of everything the enviroleft has tried to blame on global warming including: Atlantic ocean less salty, Atlantic ocean more salty, Earth slowing down, Earth spinning faster, fish bigger, fish shrinking, and (most importantly) beer better, beer worse.

The media are not the only ones complicit in the climate fear industry. The 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which is the most prestigious scientific body charged with determining what is and is not settled science) has also been found to be cooking the books. In just the past year, the IPCC’s 2007 report has been exposed for overstating the science on glacier loss in the Himalayas, crop loss in Africa, Amazon rain forest depletion and damage from weather catastrophes.

Here is what we do know: the cap-and-trade system in Europe is completely failing to reduce carbon emissions; the cap-and-trade system proposed here in the United States would do nothing to affect global temperatures, but would do trillions of dollars of damage to the U.S. economy.

Something to think about while you shovel out your driveway today.

You can subscribe to the Morning Bell and receive this sort of policy analysis in your inbox every weekday morning.

> Other Heritage work of note
Heritage's Rea Hederman and James Sherk break down the January unemployment numbers in the Daily Caller and explain what lawmakers should do now. "The biggest news is the revisions to the employment numbers, which show an additional 1.2 million jobs lost since the recession began, thereby bringing the total to 8.4 million. To turn the economy around, Congress should promote private-sector job creation by removing barriers to entrepreneurship. Better policy solutions such as a no-cost stimulus, tort reform to promote new investment, and the lifting of barriers to domestic energy development are the right way to get there."
Next Monday, many schools and businesses will close to celebrate a holiday erroneously known as President's Day. Heritage's Matthew Spalding explains why the holiday is officially known as Washington's Birthday and why it's important we give special honors to our first president.
Nathaniel Ward is the editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.

[Captain Stanman]

The President Must Stop Voting "Present" on Iran

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."

But the Iranian nation is not nearly as unified behind the current regime as yesterday's production was meant to show. The supporters in Azadi Square had actually been bussed in by the regime from around the country. For weeks before the anniversary, the government had arrested students, photographers and journalists in an effort to disrupt the Green Movement which had successfully organized mass opposition demonstrations last year following Ahmadinejad's fraudulent reelection. The government also slowed Internet service and shut down some social networking services to disrupt opposition communications. But even that wasn't enough. When the Green Movement did manage to stage smaller counter-demonstrations, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia fired tear gas and beat them with clubs until the crowds dispersed.

And Ahmadinejad's nuclear claims also might not be all they are cracked up to be. Former U.S. officials and independent nuclear experts tell The Washington Post that Iran's main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz has experienced declining output levels due to possible technical problems and possibly sabotage. Ahmadinejad's "nuclear state" shows that the regime is determined to push ahead with its nuclear program despite international opposition. And it is clear that Iran continues to increase its stockpile of enriched uranium, which it could use to build a nuclear weapon.

That is a nuclear weapon which, coupled with Iran's growing ballistic missile capability, could annihilate Israel. And Ahmadinejad did not ignore Israel on Tehran's 31st anniversary. In a call to Syrian leader Bashar Assad, he warned Israel against attacking Syria, Lebanon or elsewhere in the region. Ahmadinejad’s phone call is a pointed signal to Israel that if it launches a preventive strike at Iran’s nuclear program, then Tehran will order Hezbollah to launch terrorist and rocket attacks against Israel. As Heritage scholar James Phillips has detailed, an Israeli strike on Iran would have serious implications for U.S. national security.

It is far past time for the Obama administration to admit its "don't rock the boat" approach to the Iranian regime has failed. The Obama administration's efforts to seek sanctions through the United Nations are a nice thought, but considering guaranteed opposition from China and Russia, any realistic strategy must also look outside the United Nations. Washington therefore must think outside the U.N. box and press its allies and other countries to impose stronger sanctions outside the U.N. framework. Iran would be hard hit by bans on foreign investment, gasoline exports, trade with firms affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and other measures undertaken by the European Union, Japan, India, the Gulf Cooperation Council or other countries.

The Obama administration should also take a lesson from Ronald Reagan and step-up its public diplomacy efforts to support the Green Movement. The U.S. government should announce that regime change is official U.S. policy, step-up support for Radio Free Iran, and continue to work with Iranians abroad setting up pro-democracy Web sites. The administration's current course is heading to a dangerous place. The President cannot keep doing the bare minimum and hope the Iranian regime plays nice.

[Captain Stanman]

First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Hearts of His Countrymen

This season’s snow falls and Snowpocalypse presents a great opportunity to remember our president who also suffered through the cold to save the Republic.

Happy William Henry Harrison Day! No wait. That is not right. Failing to wear a coat in cold weather is not the same as defeating the British during a blizzard.

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.

What makes George Washington a great president, worthy of such celebration, and example to all other presidents? In short, he was committed to the principles of the American Founding. Liberty, Natural Rights, Equality, Religious Liberty, Economic Opportunity, the Rule of Law, Constitutionalism, Self-government, National Independence: these are the truths that George Washington held.

Matthew Spalding, in his latest book We Still Hold These Truths, explains each of these first principles in depth and often points to Washington as an exemplar practitioner. For instance, Spalding points to an important series of letters to different religious congregations as an example Washington’s commitment to the principle of religious liberty. In a letter to a congregation of Jewish people, one of the most persecuted religious minorities in all history, Washington explains:

The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Washington understood that citizenship did not require professing particular religious doctrines. Nor does the possession of rights depend upon one’s membership in a certain race or social class.

Not all presidents are George Washington. But all presidents—and all Americans—can and should dedicate themselves to preserving American’s First Principles.

[Captain Stanman]

Don't Celebrate First Failed Stimulus with a Second One

Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or as it is more accurately described, President Barack Obama's Failed Stimulus. When President Obama signed the now $862 billion deficit-spending bill into law, the unemployment rate stood at 7.6% and the U.S. economy employed 133.5 million people. At the time President Obama promised the American people that, thanks to his stimulus, unemployment would never go higher than 8.2% and the U.S. economy would support 138.6 million jobs by December 2010.

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. But as Heritage Policy Analyst Karen Campbell has documented, the CEA report relies on completely arbitrary benchmark projections that fail even basic standards of economic analysis. If the Administration had used other economic forecasts, the results would not have been as impressive - in fact, some would have shown that the economy lost more jobs after the stimulus package was implemented.

Armed with their CEA propaganda, President Obama is dispatching his Cabinet officials to 35 communities across the country this week to try and convince the American people that his Failed Stimulus is in fact, a success. The President faces an uphill climb: according to the latest poll from The New York Times only 6% of Americans believe the stimulus has created jobs and 48% of Americans believe it never will.

One might hope that after $862 billion in failed stimulus spending, that liberals in Washington would take a break from spending other people's borrowed money. No such luck. The House has already passed a new $154 billion stimulus package and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is pushing a$15 billion plan in the Senate, $13 billion of which is a temporary Social Security payroll tax exemption for new hires. This temporary tax break will further increase our Social Security system's existing deficits, will cost $1 million per only eight temporary new jobs according to the Congressional Budget Office, and will do nothing to decrease long-term unemployment.

While this would be President Obama's second stimulus, it would actually be this recession's third. In February 2008, President George Bush passed an equally useless mix of temporary tax cuts and mortgage grantees for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac totaling $168 billion. That stimulus did nothing to stop the recession and neither will President Obama's second stimulus. Our nation simply can't afford wasting hundreds of billions of dollars and deficit Keynesian stimulus spending every February. Now is a good time to stop.

[Captain Stanman]

Washington Subsidies Can't Save Nuclear Power

Facing new polling showing that 52% of the American people believe that he does not deserve a second term in office, President Barack Obama attempted to reach out to conservatives yesterday by promising $8.33 billion in federal loan guarantees for a pair of nuclear reactors in Georgia. The President told an enthusiastic audience of union officials in Lanham, MD: "Those who have long advocated for nuclear power — including many Republicans — have to recognize that we will not achieve a big boost in nuclear capacity unless we also create a system of incentives to make clean energy profitable."

In other words, 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. In reality, the $8.3 billion announced yesterday is actually just a first down payment on the $18.5 billion in loan guarantees that were authorized under the Energy Policy Act of 2005. While the administration should be applauded for following the law, loan guarantees are not enough to recreate a robust nuclear industry in the United States. Indeed, an expansion of the program could do much more to stifle the industry’s growth than to help it.

And expanding the nuclear loan guarantee program is exactly the approach the Obama administration plans to pursue. Their 2011 budget provides an additional $36 billion in loan guarantee authority to nuclear energy projects. When added to the $18.5 billion previously authorized under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the American taxpayer will now be subsidizing $54.5 billion in loans to the nuclear industry. But just as conservatives do not support subsidies for wind, solar or biomass energies, conservatives should not support subsidies for nuclear power, either. Heritage Research Fellow Jack Spencer explains:

Expansive loan guarantee programs, however, are wrought with problems. At a minimum, they create taxpayer liabilities, give recipients preferential treatment and distort capital markets. Further, depending on how they are structured, they can remove incentives to decrease costs, stifle innovation, suppress private-sector financing solutions, perpetuate regulatory inefficiency and encourage government dependence.

President Obama's bureaucratic/special interest/Washington approach to energy policy is clear: tax and regulate those energies unpopular with his political base while subsidizing and mandating the use of those energies that his supporters favor. This is the same approach the United States tried in the 1970s under President Jimmy Carter, and it was a colossal failure.

What America really needs is a true free market approach to the energy sector, and the nuclear industry is a great place to start. Specifically, the federal government should: limit the loan subsidies of Energy Policy Act of 2005 to existing law; avoid creating a government-dependent nuclear industry; remain committed to scientific conclusion on Yucca Mountain; introduce market principles into nuclear waste management reform; and focus the government on key responsibilities like establishing predictable and effective regulation that will ensure safety and security.

Just as with the health care debate, the White House seems to believe they can win conservative support for their big government policies by buying off selected industries. What the White House continues to fail to realize is that true conservatives are pro-market, not pro-business. Subsidies and mandates are never the answer to an ill-functioning market. A predictable and reliable regulatory framework where firms and consumers can find the best solutions through undistorted price signals is the better approach for energy, health care ... and really just about everything.

[Captain Stanman]

Mt. Vernon Statement.

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.

Constitutional Conservatism: A Statement for the 21st Century

We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.

These principles define us as a country and inspire us as a people. They are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other in the world. They are our highest achievements, serving not only as powerful beacons to all who strive for freedom and seek self-government, but as warnings to tyrants and despots everywhere.

Each one of these founding ideas is presently under sustained attack. In recent decades, America’s principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The selfevident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.

Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead — forward or backward, up or down? Isn’t this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?

The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God. It defends life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It traces authority to the consent of the governed. It recognizes man’s self-interest but also his capacity for virtue.

The conservatism of the Constitution limits government’s powers but ensures that government performs its proper job effectively. It refines popular will through the filter of representation. It provides checks and balances through the several branches of government and a federal republic.
A Constitutional conservatism unites all conservatives through the natural fusion provided by American principles. It reminds economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and national security conservatives that energetic but responsible government is the key to America’s safety and leadership role in the world.
A Constitutional conservatism based on first principles provides the framework for a consistent and meaningful policy agenda.

* It applies the principle of limited government based on the rule of law to every proposal.
* It honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life.
* It encourages free enterprise, the individual entrepreneur, and economic reforms grounded in market solutions.
* It supports America’s national interest in advancing freedom and opposing tyranny in the world and prudently considers what we can and should do to that end.
* It informs conservatism’s firm defense of family, neighborhood, community, and faith.

If we are to succeed in the critical political and policy battles ahead, we must be certain of our purpose.

We must begin by retaking and resolutely defending the high ground of America’s founding principles.

The Heritage Foundation was founded to uphold the very principles articulated in this document. Our mission statement reads: “To formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values and a strong national defense.” Our vision statement is “to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.” That is the same mission, the same vision embraced by the founders and articulated in the Mount Vernon Statement. We’ve been bound, voluntarily and enthusiastically, to those ideals since Heritage’s founding in 1973. I hope you share these principles, and join me in supporting this framework and signing your name here.

By Edwin J. Feulner, President of The Heritage Foundation

[Captain Stanman]

A No-Cost Stimulus That Can Create Real Jobs for the American People

In today's Wall Street Journal, former President Bill Clinton's pollster Doug Schoen writes: "Sen. Evan Bayh's stunning decision to retire should serve as more than a wake-up call to Democrats. It should spur a fundamental re-examination and reorientation of the party's policies, practices and approaches leading into the fall election. Let's be clear. The Democratic brand is in trouble — big trouble. ... The Democrats need to do a number of things. First and foremost, they need to recognize there is only one fundamental issue in America: jobs."

Unfortunately, the White House is not getting the message. Where Schoen urges President Barack Obama to "go back to square one" on health care, The New York Times is reporting that the Obama administration is doing the exact opposite: they are set to introduce their own health care bill on Monday that is specifically designed to pass the Senate through reconciliation on a strictly partisan vote. And when the left is not continuing to shove a government takeover of health care down the throats of the American people, they are working on a second stimulus plan that repeats all of the same big government borrow-and-spend mistakes of the first.

And there is no debate: by any objective measure, President Obama's first stimulus was a complete failure. When President Obama signed the $862 billion first stimulus, the unemployment rate stood at 7.6% and the U.S. economy employed 133.5 million people. The President promised that, thanks to his stimulus, unemployment would never go higher than 8.2% and the U.S. economy would support 138.6 million jobs by December 2010. Today, unemployment is 9.7%, after rising above 10%, and the U.S. economy has lost almost 6 million jobs, leaving the White House 9 million jobs short of the 138.6 million they promised to deliver. The White House may claim their stimulus "saved" 2 million jobs, but they have zero real world evidence of this. As Heritage fellow Brian Riedl explains:

Specifically, the White House’s “proof” that the stimulus created jobs is an economic model that they programmed to assume that stimulus spending automatically creates jobs. How’s that for circular logic?

The idea that government spending creates jobs makes sense only if you never ask where the government got the money. It didn’t fall from the sky. The only way Congress can inject spending into the economy is by first taxing or borrowing it out of the economy. No new demand is created; it’s a zero-sum transfer of existing demand.

If deficit spending were the path to real-world economic growth, then the Greek economy would be booming. It's not. There is an alternative. There are some no-cost measures our federal government could take that could create the space for American entrepreneurship and private investment, resulting in real long-term job growth. Heritage fellow James Sherk identifies eight such measures, including:



Freezing all proposed tax hikes and costly regulations at least until unemployment falls below 7 percent;

Freezing spending and rescinding unspent stimulus funds;

Reforming regulations to reduce unnecessary business costs, such as repealing Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act;

Reforming the tort system to lower costs and uncertainty facing businesses;

Removing barriers to domestic energy production;

Suspending the job-killing Davis-Bacon Act (DBA);

Passing pending free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama; and

Reducing taxes on companies' foreign earnings if they bring those earnings home.


Those wishing to score cheap political points against the conservative movement often falsely claim that conservatives hate the federal government. Nothing could be further from the truth. As The Mt. Vernon Statement, signed Tuesday by a broad coalition of conservative leaders, attests, our nation's Founding Fathers ratified a U.S. Constitution that "created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law." But while government is necessary to establish the rule of law required for any free market to function, that government must also be limited so that it does not create the uncertainties in the marketplace that undermine economic growth. The specific measures outlined above are consistent with these principles. And Doug Schoen is right - the Obama administration "needs to understand that the American people, particularly those who support the tea party movement, will only come back to Democrats if it demonstrates that it understands voters' desire to return to the kind of limited government the movement endorses."

[Captain Stanman]

Can They Make Obamacare Worse? Yes They Can!

Flacking for President Barack Obama's "new" health care plan, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters assembled for yesterday's press briefing: "The president posted ideas of his on the White House website today. We hope Republicans will post their ideas either on their website, or we'd be happy to post them on ours, so that the American people could come to one location and find out the parameters of what will largely be discussed on Thursday." And this might have been a small bit of successful Obama administration gamesmanship on health care and transparency in government except for one small problem: reality. Not only do House Republicans already have their own health care plan, not only is it already available online, but the White House's own website already links to it!

And speaking of the President's behind-closed-doors plan, don't believe any of those headlines showing a $950 billion price tag. That is an Obama administration-created number that should not be afforded any more credibility than Gibbs' grasp of the contents of his own website. In fact, the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published this about the President's new plan yesterday:

Preparing a cost estimate requires very detailed specifications of numerous provisions, and the materials that were released this morning do not provide sufficient detail on all of the provisions. Therefore, CBO cannot provide a cost estimate for the proposal without additional detail, and, even if such detail were provided, analyzing the proposal would be a time-consuming process that could not be completed this week.

In other words, even with over a year to prepare for the moment they would finally release their own plan, the White House could only manage to obtain an "incomplete" grade from the official budget scorekeeper in Washington. So every time you hear the President say "my plan is paid for" or "my plan reduces the deficit," just remember you are going to have to take his word for it.

And where the President's plan is more firm than fuzzy, it only makes the scheme worse:

Cornhusker Kickback for All: Instead of just eliminating the Cornhusker Kickback, the White House chose to solve their Medicaid problem by extending the deal to all 50 states. Now all new Medicaid spending through 2017 and 90% after 2020 will be picked up by the feds.

Weakens and Delays Cost Control: The White House's proposal is silent on whether all collective bargaining agreements will be exempt from Obamacare's new health insurance tax, but the new plan does go ahead and weaken what was the only thing in the entire bill that even liberal health care experts thought had a chance of containing health care costs. The plan delays implementation of the new tax until 2018 (when President Obama is well out of office) and raises the threshold for taxation to $27,000.

Steals More Money from Medicare: To pay for Cornhusker Kickbacks for all, increased subsidies for health insurance, and the health insurance tax delay, the White House raises the Medicare payroll tax and extends it for the first time ever to investment income. This new $120 billion in taxes should be used to help plug Medicare's existing $38 trillion unfunded liability, not fund a brand new entitlement.

Creates New Price Control Authority: The President's plan also creates a new Federal Health Insurance Rate Authority, which would provide federal “assistance and oversight” to the states conducting reviews of “ unreasonable rate increases” and “unfair practices” of health insurance plans. This, of course, establishes for the first time a legislative basis for the imposition of price controls on health insurance. If government can control both health benefits and health care pricing, that’s the proverbial ball game. Private health care is private in name only.

Providing an overview for the President's new plan, the Associated Press reports: "Starting over on health care, President Barack Obama knows his chances aren't looking much more promising. A year after he called for a far-reaching overhaul, Obama unveiled his most detailed plan yet on Monday. Realistically, he's just hoping to win a big enough slice to silence the talk of a failing presidency." The problem is, the plan the President released yesterday is not a "start over" ... it is just a continuation and expansion of the same Washington-centric policies that the American people have clearly rejected over the past year. There still is a chance for Obama to save his presidency, but yesterday's plan will not do it.