The chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee blasted the president’s self-styled “accommodation” of religious employers required under the Obamacare law to provide contraceptive services to employees in apparent violation of the Constititoin’s protection of religious liberty. “Under the President’s proposal,” explained Heritage’s Jennifer Marshall, “employers and employees will still bear the cost of paying for […]
America’s military is witnessing yet another attempt to recast the negative impact of massive defense cuts, this time in a report by the Council on Foreign Relations that attempts to illustrate the effect that slashed spending will have on U.S. forces and security. Unfortunately, the report uses some of the same ill-founded assumptions that the […]
With debt and spending out of control, the good news is that the House Budget Committee is taking important steps toward focusing Congress on its most basic duty: budgeting. By speedily passing several budget process reform bills, Chairman Paul Ryan (R–WI) and others on his committee are moving Congress in the right direction—toward controlling spending […]
Health and Human Services Department (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that average premiums in Medicare Advantage (MA) for 2012 have fallen by 7 percent, and enrollment has increased by about 10 percent. This is great news for the program, which allows seniors to receive Medicare […]
Americans are held as protests continue in Cairo, Egypt. Relations between Egypt and the United States reached a new low yesterday when Egyptian officials published a list of 43 people, including 19 Americans, accused of interfering in Egypt’s internal politics. The Americans, including Sam LaHood (son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood), who is the country […]
The Obama Administration’s mandate under the Obamacare statute that many religious employers provide health care coverage for contraception, abortifacients, and human sterilization tramples upon their constitutionally guaranteed free exercise of religion. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently announced the Administration policy. Many faiths have united in opposition […]
Think back 20 years ago. What were you doing? Whatever answer you came up with, it probably had nothing to do with the Internet, which was just coming of age. As James Carafano points out in his article in the Washington Examiner today, the discovery a valuable new world brings with it the need to […]
Saturday marks the anniversary of the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act, which in 1887 created the first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Although those who created the ICC had no intention of establishing the modern administrative state we now have, the creation of the ICC was an inadvertent first step toward […]
President Obama has used his executive power in many ways to expand the role of government. But there’s one area that stands out: Obama’s frequent and repeated use of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to issue emergency and disaster declarations. Heritage’s Matt Mayer reports that Obama “eviscerated the record books by issuing 243 declarations in […]
The U.S. Department of Transportation imposed new regulations on airlines Jan. 24 that were supposed to benefit consumers. The rules require all government taxes and fees to be included in advertised fares and allow passengers to withhold payment for 24 hours after making a reservation, if it’s one week before the flight’s departure. Some consumers […]
