Jeffrey Anderson is a conservative policy analyst and writer who was one of The Weekly Standard's most prolific contributors, writing over 1,100 pieces for the magazine between 2003 and 2017. He covered health care policy extensively, with particular focus on the Affordable Care Act, as well as polling data and political analysis critical of the Obama administration. He later served as director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics during the Trump administration.
On Sunday afternoon, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee awarded the sport’s fourth and final playoff spot to Alabama over Ohio State. It’s clearly the most controversial pick of the committee’s four-year tenure. One immediate question is this: What four-team playoff field would the…
When Auburn upset #1 Alabama in the Iron Bowl on Saturday evening—a day after #2 Miami managed to lose by double-digits to #70 Pittsburgh (5-7)—it seemed like chaos was once again reigning over college football. And in a sense, it was. Yet, at the same time, Alabama’s loss actually helped shrink…
The best regular season in sports is heading toward its climax. On Halloween, 17 teams still had a shot of making the College Football Playoff (CFP), and I predicted that many top teams would lose in the weeks to come. Two weeks later, the number of undefeated or 1-loss teams has dropped from 17 to…
On Saturday morning, ESPN College GameDay host Rece Davis speculated about which conferences might not get a team into the College Football Playoff (CFP), saying, “I think the Big Ten is in a little bit of trouble if they don’t have an undefeated champion, or even if Wisconsin is the undefeated…
Perhaps more than any other major sport, college football revels in predictions. The sport’s preseason polls get a lot of attention, and the expectations they set continue to influence the rankings for much of the season. But at some point—like about now, with the season’s midpoint nearly upon…
Congressional members and staffers generally act like their fellow Americans sit around waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to release scoring of major legislative proposals, much like they await the release of March Madness brackets. The truth is that most Americans hardly care what the…
In passing Obamacare, its supporters promised the moon. Obamacare was allegedly going to cost $938 billion over ten years, result in 23 million people getting insurance through its exchanges as of 2017, reduce the typical family's premiums by $2,500 a year, and make sure that if you liked your…
With Obamacare unraveling in almost all ways, it's time to unravel the phony accounting practices that have allowed it to hide some $104 billion in federal spending. Under Obamacare, this money has been paid directly to insurance companies as outlays, yet it has gone into the books as "tax cuts."…
There has been a lot of speculation about what will happen to various people if Obamacare is repealed and replaced with a conservative alternative. Would millions lose coverage, as some have claimed, because they couldn't keep their plan and couldn't afford a new plan? Or would people be freed up…
Republicans rode their near-unanimous support for repealing Obamacare to big wins in the elections of 2010, 2014, and 2016. Now, having won control of the House, Senate, and White House largely on the strength of that clear and courageous commitment, some Republican officeholders are thinking that…
Part of why Obamacare is so unpopular is that it is neglects the typical American. As Republicans deliberate over an alternative to Obamacare, this provides a huge opening.
In the pre-dawn hours (stateside) on Sunday January 29, arguably the two greatest players in tennis history will take the court in the Australian Open final. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, the only two men to have claimed at least 14 grand slam singles titles while winning each of the four slams,…
In Federalist 48, James Madison writes that, far from having three "coequal" branches of government—an erroneous claim that's commonly asserted today—the "legislative department derives a superiority in our governments" from having "more extensive" constitutional powers that are "less susceptible…
It is an amazing fact that the individual mandate to buy health insurance largely originated with policy wonks and politicians on the conservative side of the aisle. This ill-conceived and unconstitutional (despite the opinions of five justices) idea eventually became perhaps the most despised part…
On the last full day of the Obama White House—a phrase conservatives have waited eight long years to utter—it's worth recalling the Obama administration's own arguments about the connection between Obamacare's "community rating" mandate and runaway health costs.
A new report, cited in various media outlets, claims that repealing Obamacare would "cost roughly $350 billion" over a decade and "leave no funds available for 'replacement' legislation." In truth, repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a good conservative alternative would cut federal spending…
When it comes to trying to decide what the worst part of Obamacare is, there's no shortage of contenders. From a constitutional standpoint, the worst part is its unprecedented individual mandate. From the standpoint of the republic's overall well-being, the worst part is its consolidation and…
Since November 8, Democrats have been searching for a scapegoat. Hillary Clinton's defeat couldn't possibly signal voters' rejection of the liberal policies that Barack Obama advanced and Clinton vowed to continue, so progressives are on a quest to find the real culprit. They have thus far floated…
Since November 8, Democrats have been searching for a scapegoat. Hillary Clinton’s defeat couldn't possibly signal voters' rejection of the liberal policies that Barack Obama advanced and Clinton vowed to continue, so progressives are on a quest to find the real culprit. They have thus far floated…
Opponents of Obamacare should be greatly encouraged by President-elect Donald Trump's pick of House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Price, an M.D., has advanced the most serious Obamacare alternative to date on Capitol Hill. His legislation…
Tuesday night, the College Football Playoff Selection Committee will declare which four teams would make the playoff if the regular season were to end today. A week from now, the committee will decree what four teams will make the playoff for real. As with all progressive-style "elite" or "expert"…
The College Football Playoff Selection Committee is charged with deciding which four teams to invite to college football's postseason playoff. It's hard to imagine an easier scenario for the 12-person committee than for there to be only four major undefeated teams, one from each of the four…
In the small town of Geneva, Ohio, 50 miles to the northeast of where the Indians and Cubs split the first two games of the World Series, Donald Trump lit into something just a tad less American than baseball or apple pie: Obamacare.
In 2008, the year that Barack Obama was elected as president, the combined annual profits of America's ten largest health insurance companies were $8 billion. Under Obamacare, the ten largest health insurers' annual profits have risen to $15 billion. This is another fine example of the natural…
President Obama and Hillary Clinton love to talk about the "20 million people" who've allegedly been added to the health insurance rolls under Obamacare. But in truth, a lower percentage of Americans have private health insurance now than in 2007, even though Obamacare is the law.
If further evidence were needed that this country faces two choices going forward on health care, a leaked Hillary Clinton email just provided it. The choices we face are (a) the repeal of Obamacare and its replacement with a conservative alternative, or (b) a government monopoly. Obamacare cannot…
Amid ongoing concern that President Obama will bail out his insurance company allies who've lost money selling Obamacare, his own Justice Department has now effectively admitted that he has no legal authority to do so. In a brief filed in federal court, the Justice Department argues that the…
College football's polls rank teams even before the season starts, speculating about how good teams will be before they ever play a down. But the Anderson & Hester College Football Computer Rankings (which I co-created) reward teams for what they've actually done this season, and only this season,…
President Obama got a fair amount of good press a few weeks ago when it was reported that Americans' incomes had risen. But that was from 2014 to 2015. During 2016, Americans' incomes have dropped.
Hillary Clinton's campaign has been critical of Donald Trump's alleged coziness with Russia. This could boomerang on Clinton, however, and not just because of her own lead role in the Obama administration's failed attempt at a Russian "reset." Perhaps because it hit the newsstands before the…
Hillary Clinton doesn’t want to talk about Obamacare, but her husband clearly feels no such reluctance. Bill Clinton—who has his finger on the pulse of public sentiment to a greater degree than either President Barack Obama or Hillary—spoke rather freely about Obama's signature legislation early in…
From September 25 to October 1, Donald Trump spent more than eight times as much on television and radio advertising as he did during the prior week, according to newly released tallies from the Associated Press. Trump also widened the map and adopted a more offensive posture, adding five…
The conventional wisdom among Donald Trump's supporters is that his success doesn't rely much on political ads. The evidence suggests otherwise. As Trump's ad spending has risen, the race has tightened. As it has dipped, his polling deficit has widened.
In his latest assault on the separation of powers, President Obama seems poised to take unilateral executive action—in direct defiance of legislation he signed—to bail out insurance companies under Obamacare. In its above-the-fold story on Friday, the Washington Post mischaracterizes Obama's power…
While waiting for a chance to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a conservative alternative, there are right ways and wrong ways to address its 2,400 pages of shortcomings. The right way was recently demonstrated by a group of five Republican senators, who proposed a bill to offer millions of…
One of the most discouraging things about the future of our republic is the creeping indifference, on all sides, to the constitutional separation of powers.
Barack Obama reportedly had Tim Kaine on his shortlist for consideration for vice president in 2008 but was concerned about Kaine's lack of foreign policy experience. Kaine has since helped shore up that hole in his resume by being on the Senate Armed Services Committee for the past three years.…
One of the most pervasive myths in American politics is that a “Big Blue Wall" will protect Democratic presidential nominees, perhaps even those who lose the popular vote. In truth, this electoral Blue Wall is more like a collection of disconnected forts—some imposing, some not—and the loss of any…
In the Washington Post, Michael Gerson argues the thing that might cost Hillary Clinton the election is something that neither presidential candidate is spending much time talking about: Obamacare. He writes that immigration may be "the main motivating issue" that gets voters to turn out, but "the…
On Wednesday, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post all ran above-the-fold, page-1 headlines touting recent gains in income for the typical American household. President Obama appeared at a political rally in Philadelphia and, after citing these gains and the existence of…
It's bad enough when the federal government compels private American citizens to buy a product from a private company for the first time in all of United States history. It's worse when there's no choice of product.
For the Washington Post editorial board, nothing about Donald Trump's immigration positions—his determination to enforce United States immigration laws, his focus on American workers, his commitment to stopping President Obama's unconstitutional executive actions—makes much sense. (Amusingly, the…
It's hard to think of a more irresistible morsel of dubious conventional wisdom than the claim that, driven by demographic change, the presidential electoral map now greatly favors the Democrats. The latest propagation of this myth is found in a long piece by National Review Online's chief…
It has long been obvious that it's not too hard to design a health-care plan that beats Obamacare. Nonpartisan scoring now finds that the House Republican health-care plan (released earlier this summer) would beat Obamacare in terms of reducing premiums, reducing federal spending, increasing access…
Many Obamacare supporters have been taking solace in their belief that Aetna's recent decision to pull out of all but four government-run exchanges was a result not of Obamacare's slow-motion death spiral but of Aetna's playing politics with the Department of Justice, which has blocked the…
Recent polling finds that Democrats Russ Feingold (Wisconsin), Evan Bayh (Indiana), and Michael Bennet (Colorado) are all doing quite well in their respective Senate races versus Republicans Ron Johnson, Todd Young, and Darryl Glenn. But essentially all of that polling was done before Aetna…
There has been a lot of speculation in recent days about whether Donald Trump is profoundly changing his position on immigration. On Wednesday night in Jackson, Mississippi, he sure didn't sound like it.
With Aetna’s announcement that it is pulling out of most government-run exchanges, Obamacare's death spiral has begun to accelerate. Few but the sickest or most heavily subsidized people want anything to do with the (inaptly named) Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's high-priced,…
The problem with Democrats' approach to tax reform is that they want to increase taxes, and their plans would generally stymie growth. The problem with Republicans' approach to tax reform is that their plans, while pro-growth, too often neglect Main Street Americans and too often aren't fiscally…
Coming into Rio, few people expected 31-year-old Michael Phelps, swimming in his fifth Olympics, to become the most decorated swimmer in this year's games. With the swimming competition now completed, however, that's exactly what transpired. Phelps finished with five gold medals (the most of any…
My friend Jay Cost (a fellow non-fan of the current Republican nomination system) outlines a scenario in which Donald Trump could lose to Hillary Clinton by an electoral-vote tally of 396 to 142. This is certainly possible, if the Trump campaign goes into a complete tailspin. But if Trump gets out…
In the wake of the Democratic convention, some foot-in-mouth comments by Donald Trump, and a poll bounce for Hillary Clinton, much of the political class has decided that the presidential race is all but over. But across most of America, voters are at least as apt to be swayed by issues as by a…
The recent release of anemic quarterly economic-growth numbers for 2016 has revived the debate over the Obama economy. Some say it has been okay; some say it has been lousy. In truth, the economy under President Barack Obama has been historically bad. How bad? Adjusted for inflation, average yearly…
In a Health Affairs article, Loren Adler and Paul Ginsburg from the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution make the rather counterintuitive claim that Obamacare has actually lowered health insurance premiums. They boldly assert that "average premiums in the individual market actually…
As Jonathan Last recounts, Barack Obama's speech Wednesday night was the most motivated, focused, and impassioned address that he has given in some time And that certainly isn't due to his long-time love of Hillary Clinton. Rather, with Donald Trump having pulled even—or slightly ahead—in the…
As of 5:00 P.M. EST on Tuesday, FiveThirtyEight's state-by-state, polls-only forecast for the November 8 general election showed a projected tally of 269 electoral votes for Hillary Clinton and 269 for Donald Trump. FiveThirtyEight projects Trump to win all 24 of the states that Mitt Romney won,…
Washington, D.C., isn't the only place where the separation of powers and constitutional forms are under attack. In Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe was rebuked by his state's Supreme Court on Friday for his attempt to circumvent the language of the Virginia Constitution—and the will of the…
On Tuesday night, House speaker Paul Ryan gave a surprisingly enthusiastic speech on behalf of Donald Trump, imploring Republicans to give it their all in 2016 and "unify this party" in the interest of achieving "a conservative governing majority."
One thing that it would seem nearly all conservatives and/or Republicans could agree upon is that, in the midst of a crime uptick and in the waning months of a soft-on-crime liberal presidency, now is not the time to pass "criminal justice reform" of that president's liking. But apparently that's…
Hillary Clinton has escaped indictment, but the FBI’s characterization of her as having been "extremely careless" in using multiple "personal servers" to send "Top Secret" emails—and as perhaps not having been "sophisticated enough" to understand classified markings while serving as U.S. secretary…
NBC News's First Read has the list of those "in the hunt" to be Donald Trump's vice-presidential pick down to five names, the same number that Trump gave Monday morning to the Washington Post. Both lists include one name that would likely doom Trump's candidacy: retired Army general Michael Flynn.…
A recent WEEKLY STANDARD editorial highlighted how the federal government is hiding some $104 billion in federal spending by falsely labeling Obamacare's outlays to insurance companies as "tax credits." Now a 157-page investigative report released by two powerful House committees—Ways and Means in…
Four months out from the general election, most pundits and commentators are acting as if Obamacare will have little effect on the results of this year's races. But given Obamacare's extraordinary unpopularity, that's hard to believe. Obamacare is horrible for middle-class Americans: It worsens…
For six years, it has been abundantly clear that Americans want Obamacare to be repealed—but only if a well-conceived conservative alternative is positioned to take its place. That's why the recent release of the House GOP health care plan is a big deal. The new plan would of course repeal…
As I highlighted in a recent WEEKLY STANDARD editorial, Obamacare has invented a dangerous new way to hide federal spending, including more than $100 billion designed to look like tax cuts.
As Chris Deaton reports, President Obama thinks “VFW halls all across America" have a warped view of the economy. Thanks to "some cable news stations" and "right-wing radio"—as Obama tells it—Americans falsely believe that the economy isn't roaring, that a lot of people are paying more in income…
At the Federalist, Rachel Lu grants that it's likely good politics, as I argued at National Review Online, for Donald Trump to oppose the Obama-led "criminal justice reform" efforts currently being debated in Congress. (Trump did in fact recently criticize such efforts.) She writes, however, that…
Obamacare has raised Americans’ health-insurance premiums, sapped their liberty, caused millions to lose their doctors, and funneled huge amounts of power and money to Washington. It has become a vehicle for executive lawlessness - a federal judge recently ruled the Obama administration has been…
As Congress follows up its serious flirtation with open-borders "immigration reform" by debating open-jails "criminal sentencing reform," and as the Obama administration calls young criminals "justice-involved individuals" (you can't make this stuff up), Donald Trump has now weighed in strongly on…
In its latest assault on traditional Americans mores, federalism, the separation of powers, and common sense, the Obama administration is now claiming that a federal law passed more than 40 years ago (Title IX) somehow requires all public schools across America to provide access to bathrooms and…
Obamacare has caused health insurance premiums to skyrocket. It has caused millions of Americans who liked their health plans to lose their health plans. It has caused doctor and hospital networks to narrow. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obamacare exchanges in Alabama and Alaska will…
There have been two defining moments in Paul Ryan’s political career: The first was his leading the opposition to Obamacare in 2009 and 2010. (Can anyone forget the "Health Summit," or his short speech on the night of the Obamacare vote in the House?) The second was his getting essentially the…
Republicans and their allies seem determined to try to blame their electoral woes on anything other than their own poor messaging, their failure to listen to Main Street voters (a fact that Donald Trump capitalized on) and their woefully deficient nomination process (which has now produced Trump as…
It has long been hard to see why John Kasich has remained in the presidential race. The slim rationale for his candidacy going into last night was that, even though Kasich had lost every state but his own and had failed to come within ten points of the winner in 32 of 34 states, he would do well in…
Donald Trump continues to argue that the Republican presidential-selection process is “rigged" and that any result other than his getting the party's nomination would be an affront to democracy. The response that "Trump knew the rules" is true but isn't the strongest rebuttal to his claim. The more…
Donald Trump was asked this week, “Do you believe in raising taxes on the wealthy?" He replied, "I do. I do—including myself. I do."
In recent weeks, John Kasich’s most important support has come from the Wall Street Journal editorial board. The Journal's opinion pages have published perhaps a handful or two of pro-Kasich pieces—roughly as many as the number of counties that Kasich has won to date outside of Ohio. It is…
There is no denying the dominance of Donald Trump’s performance in his home state of New York, in which he got 60 percent of the vote. Still, it is perhaps interesting to note that, with more than 99 percent of the vote counted in the Empire State, Ted Cruz got more votes in Wisconsin (a state with…
John Kasich has now won his first county in more than a month—Manhattan. That brings Kasich's nationwide tally for number of counties won, outside of his home state of Ohio, to 7. So for every state won by Donald Trump (20, not counting New York) or Ted Cruz (10, not counting Texas), Kasich has won…
If you like your UnitedHealthcare Obamacare plan, that doesn’t mean you can keep your UnitedHealthcare Obamacare plan. That's because the nation's largest health insurer is bailing on the central policy initiative of the Obama presidency.
In a recent piece at New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait writes that “Republican alternatives to Obamacare have lain just over the horizon for half a dozen years" yet somehow never come into view. He asserts, "The reason the dog keeps eating the Republicans' health-care homework is very simple: It is…
The key domestic policy fight of 2017 will be over Obamacare. If it is repealed, then the centerpiece of the Obama presidency will lie in ruins. If not, then President Obama will have been what he set out to be: a sort of Reagan of the left—a transformative president who will have profoundly…
Exit polling from the Wisconsin primary shed some light on which of the three remaining GOP candidates might have the best chance of uniting the Republican party going into November. Voters were asked about their "feelings" if Donald Trump, John Kasich, or Ted Cruz were elected as president.
With his win in Tuesday’s open primary in the blue state of Wisconsin, Ted Cruz has now beaten Donald Trump in 11 of 21 states that have been contested to date outside of the South. Cruz has now beaten Trump in three Midwestern states (Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota—with Cruz having finished second…
On three separate occasions, I’ve written about the determined struggle of one man in the face of appalling political correctness, anti-Americanism, and bureaucratic senselessness. In Orcutt, California, about an hour north of the Reagan Ranch on the beautiful Central Coast, Steve LeBard has been…
Three years ago, on the eve of Obamacare’s implementation, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that President Obama's centerpiece legislation would result in an average of 201 million people having private health insurance in any given month of 2016. Now that 2016 is here, the CBO says…
John Kasich is now 0-for-30 in races outside of his home state of Ohio, and he has managed to finish second in just four of those states. Ted Cruz, meanwhile, has eight wins and thirteen runner-up finishes, not counting the win in his home state of Texas. One would think there would no longer be…
Many Republicans likely went to bed last night with Donald Trump dominating in Arizona, on his way to 58 electoral votes there. But on the night, Trump once again failed to get 50 percent of the vote. In fact, based on the 99 percent of precincts that have reported (as of 3:30 PM EST) in Arizona…
Charles Krauthammer, Chris Wallace, and others have recently speculated that part of John Kasich’s purpose in staying in the Republican presidential race—thereby preventing Ted Cruz from having a one-on-one shot at Donald Trump—is the Ohioan's desire to be Trump's running mate. Whether that is…
At the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone offers an excellent analysis of why John Kasich’s continued presence in the Republican presidential race enables Donald Trump, even as many Republicans and Republican-leaning pundits try to avoid facing up to this reality. In a piece entitled, "Only Ted…
The wide swath of Washington and New York Republicans and Republican-leaning pundits who really don’t want a Ted Cruz or Donald Trump presidency are moving deeper into denial. Their latest fantasy is that John Kasich can still become the GOP nominee. Never mind that Kasich has already been…
With the March 15 slate of Republican primaries in the books, 29 of the 50 states have now voted. Donald Trump, the leader, not only hasn't won half of the votes to date (and hasn't even won half of the votes in a single state), but he hasn't even won three-eighths of them. Rather, Trump has won 37…
Donald Trump deserves credit for coming out with a sketch of an Obamacare alternative. Unfortunately, his plan would not rescue us from Obamacare. Instead, it would further balloon the national debt, keep one of the worst parts of Obamacare in place, not encourage people to shop for value, keep…
From the perspective of the majority of Republican voters who don’t want Donald Trump to win the party's nomination, last night was a mixed bag. On the one hand, Trump won three out of four states, including by far the biggest one (Michigan), winning all three by double-digits or (in the case of…
Amid the incessant talk of Trump “inevitability," voters' verdicts seem to be telling a rather different story. For the week including "Super Tuesday" and "Super Saturday," Donald Trump won 300 delegates (40 percent of the 750 delegates allotted across those 15 states and Puerto Rico), while Ted…
With 100 percent of the precincts reporting in Saturday’s four GOP presidential contests, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz were separated by only 234 votes (out of a total of 622,579 cast), as Trump got 230,443 votes to Cruz's 230,209. The candidates' respective percentages of the vote on "Super Saturday"…
In Thursday’s Republican presidential debate, Ted Cruz called Obamacare "the biggest job-killer in America." Chris Wallace had asked Cruz what he would do to bring manufacturing jobs back to Detroit (the site of the debate) and the rest of the country, and the Texas senator replied, "The way you…
Fifteen states have now voted in the Republican presidential race, or 30 percent of the total. Those states have accounted for 28 percent of the delegates that will ultimately be awarded nationwide. (They will eventually account for 29 percent, once all of their delegates have been allocated.) So,…
With Super Tuesday now behind us, 15 of the 50 states have voted. If this were the Indianapolis 500, only 150 of the 500 miles would now be completed. Donald Trump has won won a plurality of the vote in 10 of the first 15 states—while Ted Cruz has won a plurality in 4 and Marco Rubio in 1—but the…
In winning Texas by 16 points, winning Oklahoma, winning (as of this writing) Alaska, and finishing second in Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Tennessee, Ted Cruz has now solidified his grip on second place in the GOP presidential race. He increased his lead over Marco Rubio in states won, votes…
Having inexplicably loomed beneath the surface during most of the GOP presidential campaign, has Obamacare now emerged as a major weakness of Donald Trump? The issue's ultimate effect on the Republican frontrunner will largely hinge on whether Ted Cruz decides to release an Obamacare alternative…
During the last Republican presidential debate in Texas, Donald Trump spoke of his sister, a liberal activist judge who he says would make a “phenomenal" Supreme Court justice, and defended her against criticism she has received "for signing a certain bill"—his words—from the bench. He then said…
A great many people have argued in recent days that Marco Rubio's strategy—of not attacking Donald Trump, playing for second, and hoping the field gets culled—looks like a political loser. A newly released Florida Quinnipiac poll offers further evidence to support this claim. The poll finds that,…
The notion of Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee, once widely thought to be an impossibility, is now widely being described—in respectable circles, nonetheless—as a near-inevitability. Generally sensible and level-headed people are starting to concoct all sorts of crazy plans to…
GOP voters are in a fighting mood. They aren't much interested in business-as-usual, political niceties, or even conservative purity. They want someone who will take it to Washington—someone who will go there and fight for change.
In his speech following the South Carolina Republican primary, Ted Cruz said that “we are the only campaign that has beaten, and can beat, Donald Trump." The second part of that (the "can beat" part) is certainly debatable—Marco Rubio would beg to differ, and perhaps neither one of them can beat…
The most unpopular part of Obamacare now has a champion in the Republican presidential field. Via the Right Scoop, Donald Trump was asked on Thursday night by CNN's Anderson Cooper, "If…there's no mandate for everybody to have insurance, what's to—why would an insurance company not have a…
To hear some on the left tell it, the Supreme Court would be hamstrung if it had to function for a year or more without a ninth justice. What to do in the event of a 4-4 tie? This would not have been viewed as a problem, however, by America's Founders, who created a Court with an even number of…
The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that, for the first time in the past 100 days (based on polling listed by Real Clear Politics), Donald Trump trails nationally in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. The WSJ/NBC poll was taken entirely after the South Carolina GOP…
In the South Carolina Republican debate, Ted Cruz said of fellow Republican senator Marco Rubio, “Marco went on Univision in Spanish and said he would not rescind President Obama's illegal executive amnesty on his first day in office." Rubio replied, "I don't know how he knows what I said on…
Ronald Reagan’s "eleventh commandment"—"thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican"—may be an unnecessarily strict standard, but the Republican presidential field could at least try to observe a twelfth commandment: Thou shalt avoid calling one's fellow Republican a liar.
The sad passing of Justice Antonin Scalia—who did more than any other member of the judicial branch over the past three decades to exercise judgment instead of will, thereby becoming one of our finest-ever "bulwarks of a limited Constitution"—makes the upcoming presidential election even more…
Now that Bernie Sanders has routed Hillary Clinton by 22 points in New Hampshire, the American people might be curious to learn more about some of his specific policy proposals, starting with his tax plan. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has scored Sanders's plan and has found it would cause the…
Among the two candidates whose results look at all like those of an eventual GOP presidential nominee, polling suggests that Ted Cruz would do significantly better than Donald Trump in the general election. According to the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls, Cruz would fare 5 points…
With more than 90 percent of the New Hampshire returns having come in, here are a few thoughts:
The American Founders designed a federal government of separated powers: They authorized Congress to pass the laws, the president to execute them, and the Supreme Court (and "such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish") to apply them in judicial proceedings. But…
In the aftermath of the 2012 election, conservatives/Republicans generally split into two camps about where the movement or party needed to head next. One camp thought the key was to do a better job of making the case for conservative principles and policies (and to do a better job of developing…
The Des Moines Register, whose poll is generally regarded as the gold standard of Iowa polling, has released its final results before Monday’s Iowa caucuses. It finds Donald Trump in first place, with 28 percent support, and Ted Cruz in second, with 23 percent support. No one else is within a dozen…
Nobody dominated the final pre-Iowa Republican debate, but it was a spirited affair that will likely affect the outcome of the caucuses. The questions from Fox News were a bit all over the place and sometimes seemed to be asked more from the perspective of the Obama White House than from that of…
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who has expressed concerns about Donald Trump's commitment to conservatism and the Constitution, campaigned for Ted Cruz in neighboring Iowa on Tuesday and followed that up by campaigning on Wednesday for Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. In between campaign stops, Sasse…
When Barack Obama took office, America’s national debt was $10.6 trillion. It's now $19.0 trillion—an increase of $8.4 trillion in just seven years, or $1.2 trillion per year.
The Real Clear Politics average of recent polls finds that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are each ahead of Hillary Clinton in head-to-head polling, while Clinton is ahead of Donald Trump. Clinton leads Trump by a tally of 45 to 43 percent. Meanwhile, Rubio leads Clinton by 46 to 44 percent, and Cruz…
Bill Kristol argues that because Republican presidential candidates aren’t focusing on such issues as Obamacare and Supreme Court appointments—crucial issues on which Donald Trump is quite vulnerable—GOP voters are becoming "increasingly comfortable" with the notion of casting a ballot for Trump. A…
Obamacare is closer than ever to being repealed. Congressional Republicans recently took one of their most assertive actions against it to date, while the centerpiece of the Obama presidency is playing out even worse than most of its opponents predicted. What’s missing is a presidential contender…
Monday night’s terrific championship game between Clemson and Alabama—the same matchup the old Bowl Championship Series system would have produced—capped yet another splendid college football season. Unlike in so many other sports, the format produced a champion that actually was the best team on…
President Obama vetoed legislation today that would have repealed most of Obamacare. Congress passed the legislation using the same "reconciliation" process that Democrats used to get Obamacare across the finish line in 2010. That process allows senators to circumvent the filibuster and pass…
Ten prominent policy experts have released a new Obamacare alternative published by the American Enterprise Institute. The most important part of any Obamacare alternative is how it would address the longstanding inequality in the tax code (which favors employer-based insurance over individually…
With a deadline looming, congressional leaders unveiled "sweeping" tax and spending legislation late last night. The result makes one wonder whether congressional Republicans negotiate directly with President Obama on these deals, or whether they just send corporate lobbyists to do so, thereby…
When the Democrats passed Obamacare (without a single Republican vote), part of how they were allegedly going to pay for it was through a "Cadillac tax" on expensive employer-based insurance. Yet, this week, many Republicans are working with Democrats to delay or even repeal this tax. For three…
The College Football Playoff Selection Committee's 4-team playoff field generated very little controversy this season, but the process—and the rankings that it yielded—raised two concerns for future seasons.
Obamacare has an incurable preexisting condition: It eats away at the private insurance market on which it relies. That market cannot survive Obamacare's hubristic mandates, and Obamacare cannot survive the collapse of that market. On their present course, both are doomed.
With the conference championship games all set for this coming weekend, we are now down to nine teams vying for four playoff spots. The Big 12 champion, Oklahoma (#3 in the Anderson & Hester Rankings), will all but certainly be one of those four teams. (The Big 12 has no conference championship…
There are only two weeks remaining in college football’s regular season (three, counting Army-Navy), and it’s becoming pretty clear which teams still have a shot at making the 4-team playoff field. Last week, 16 teams still appeared to be alive. Now, with Houston, TCU, and Utah having lost, that…
With just three weeks remaining in the best regular season in all of sports—a regular season whose greatness largely results from the smallness of the playoff field to follow—various teams’ prospects for making the 4-team College Football Playoff are starting to take shape. Here’s a rundown of…
We are just a year from November 8, 2016, and the election that will largely determine the fate of Obamacare, and the news isn’t good for President Obama’s centerpiece legislation. Premiums continue to rise, doctor and hospital networks continue to shrink, Americans continue to balk at buying…
Pop quiz: Was the percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born higher in 1860, 1880, 1920, or on July 1, 2015? If you answered “2015,” you’re right. The portion of the U.S. population that is foreign-born is now 13.5 percent, surpassing even the tallies for 1860 (13.2 percent), 1880…
For 16 years, the Bowl Championship Series focused fans’ and reporters’ attention on teams’ actual success in winning games against strong opponents. Just over a year into the new Selection Committee era (in which 13 people determine which teams will be invited to a 4-team playoff), it’s clear…
Today, in his remarks to the House of Representatives following his election as speaker, Paul Ryan reiterated his belief that “we can renew the America idea.” This recalls Ryan’s excellent speech on the fateful night of the Obamacare vote, on March 21, 2010, when he proclaimed,
On a crazy college football Saturday that saw Michigan State pull out about the most improbable win since Stanford’s band came onto the field against Cal 33 years ago, the LSU Tigers beat previously undefeated Florida and claimed the top spot in the Anderson & Hester Rankings. In three weeks, the…
It has been clear for some time that Republicans need just two things in order to repeal Obamacare—a winning alternative and political willpower. The jury is still out on how much of the latter the party possesses. But when it comes to uniting around a well-conceived alternative that can pave the…
I largely agree with Lee Smith’s take on the collision between Ruben Tejada and Chase Utley in the bottom of the 7th inning at beautiful Dodger Stadium on Saturday. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Utley isn’t “to blame for Tejada’s injury”— to me, Utley’s excessively late slide deserves a…
With crime rising in America and police increasingly under siege, many Senate Republicans have decided it’s a good time to liberalize federal sentencing policies—and to do so “quickly.” One has to wonder at Republicans’ timing. At what would appear to be a Richard Nixon or Rudy Giuliani moment,…
One of the least-reported substantial policy victories in recent years was stopping Obamacare’s insurer bailout through last fall’s CRomnibus bill. Now we can attach a price-tag to that victory: $2.5 billion. That’s how much taxpayers would have been funneling to President Obama’s…
The Republican congressional leadership has been nominally--but sometimes it seems only nominally--committed to repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a conservative alternative. Now one of the two leading candidates for House majority leader—the number-two position in leadership—is Dr. Tom…
Donald Trump’s newly released tax plan would add a staggering $10 trillion to the national debt over a decade, according to scoring by the Tax Foundation, a well-respected (especially in conservative circles) nonpartisan source. To put that into perspective, that’s more debt than Barack Obama—by…
Jake Tapper and CNN pretended during the Republican presidential debate that Obamacare doesn’t exist. But Republican voters won’t follow suit. Instead, they are likely to cast their votes largely based on who looks most committed to repealing President Obama’s tenuously perched signature…
One of the worst things about Obamacare is that it provides taxpayer funding of abortion. This is one of the nearly countless reasons why Obamacare must be repealed, and it’s one of the core reasons why it is crucial for Republican presidential candidates to show they have an alternative that…
At a speech at President Reagan’s alma mater on Thursday, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker challenged his GOP rivals on Obamacare. Walker highlighted his own Obamacare alternative, promising he would send it to Congress on Day One. Observing that members of Congress “need a little incentive to get…
THE WEEKLY STANDARD has long observed that Obamacare, which President Obama pitched as a great deal for Americans of all stripes, is really only for the near-poor and near-elderly—at the expense of the middle class and the young. While only a small minority has benefitted from the 2,400-page…
So far, the Republican presidential contest has been light on Obamacare, with Scott Walker — who has essentially championed the 2017 Project’s “Winning Alternative to Obamacare” — providing a noteworthy exception. Since Obamacare is the biggest issue of Barack Obama’s presidency, why are most GOP…
One of the most disturbing aspects of living through the Obama presidency is reading every week or two about some new decision that has been decreed by the executive branch rather than voted upon by the legislative branch. Time and again, things that — in a constitutional republic — should be…
On August 18, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker became the first leading Republican presidential candidate to release a full-fledged Obamacare alternative. Walker’s alternative would fully repeal Obamacare and provide the sort of real reform for which Americans have long been waiting. But there has…
The opening Republican presidential debate was a spirited affair, but missing was any serious discussion of Obamacare, the domestic centerpiece of Barack Obama’s presidency. The moderators asked only two Obamacare-related questions. One elicited Donald Trump’s assertion that a government monopoly…
About five hours south of San Francisco, where Kate Steinle was murdered in broad daylight by an illegal immigrant, another illegal immigrant has been charged with raping and savagely beating an Air Force veteran to death with a hammer. According to police, Marilyn Pharis, 64, was sleeping in her…
While liberals have expressed their outrage at the cruel killing of Cecil the Lion while mostly ignoring the grisly Planned Parenthood videos, the response from conservative pundits has largely been to emphasize the moral hierarchy of the two crimes. Conservatives have argued that what Planned…
The mainstream press corps and (at least privately) many Republicans officeholders have adopted two seemingly irreconcilable positions. They claim Obamacare is politically toxic for Democrats yet is somehow immune to repeal by Republicans (even after President Obama leaves office). A recent piece…
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in King v. Burwell, most signs point toward Obamacare becoming the defining issue in the 2016 election. That puts Republicans in an advantageous position, as it’s a lot easier to propose and defend an alternative to Obamacare than to defend Obamacare. …
After the Democrats passed Obamacare without a single Republican vote, Republicans generally (and wisely) united around the notion that they shouldn’t pursue partial repeal or “fixes” to Obamacare. Rather than willingly giving Obamacare a newly bipartisan sheen, they publicly committed to…
In the initial years following Obamacare’s passage, Republicans remained solidly united on one crucial point: Obamacare needs to be repealed and replaced, not “fixed.” But some Republicans and center-right pundits have since decided that trying to fix the president’s signature legislation is a…
According to Gallup, only 7 percent of Americans want immigration levels to increase, while 86 percent either want them to remain at current levels (47 percent) or decrease (39 percent). With most current and prospective Republican presidential candidates tripping over each other to vie for that 7…
Scott Walker’s recent comments suggesting that the United States’s policy on legal immigration should be focused on what’s good for American workers — a seemingly obvious point that nevertheless has ruffled feathers — offers further evidence of the Wisconsin governor’s political savvy. When two of…
If there is anything that liberals and Big Business can seemingly agree upon, it’s that we don’t need an approach to immigration that benefits Main Street. It remains to be seen whether anyone running for president will seize this opening and buck the liberal-corporate consensus, but in the…
Now that the Supreme Court has held its oral arguments in King v. Burwell, the case has somewhat receded from the headlines. But conservatives would be wise to use this period between the oral arguments and the Court’s ruling, expected in late June, to encourage Republicans to unite around a…
The Wall Street Journal editorial board greets the announcement of Ted Cruz’s presidential candidacy by taking the Texas senator to task for, of all things, being too much like President Obama. The Journal notes that both men decided to launch a White House run as a 40-something first-term senator…
It has now been five years since President Obama signed Obamacare into law — and more than two years and two months since any poll found it to be popular. The last time a poll found Obamacare to be popular was during Obama’s first term.
The consensus across America, and perhaps especially along the I-95 corridor, seems to be that Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are on a nearly inevitable collision course, with one or the other poised to be declared president-elect on November 8, 2016. At a minimum, they are viewed as the…
Given that Obamacare’s supporters like to take the Congressional Budget Office’s overly optimistic scoring of the president’s signature legislation as gospel, it’s fun to look at how poorly Obamacare is actually doing in relation to earlier CBO projections. When the Democrats rammed Obamacare…
Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who rode his opposition to Obamacare to a seat in the Senate, has introduced legislation that should help Republicans avoid turning a potential victory at the Supreme Court into a defeat for the cause of repeal. Sasse’s bill, introduced yesterday evening, is designed to keep…
Five years ago this month — on the night the Democrats passed Obamacare through the House without a single Republican vote — Paul Ryan proclaimed on the House floor, “This moment may mark a temporary conclusion of the health-care debate, but its place in history has not yet been decided. If this…
Over the past few days at CPAC, Sean Hannity has asked various prospective Republican presidential candidates to list their “top five agenda items.” Former governor Jeb Bush’s list did not include repealing Obamacare.
Next Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether the Obama administration has been illegally providing taxpayer-funded subsidies in 36 states under the guise of implementing Obamacare, and there’s been much debate about what Congress should do if the Court rules that the…
Obamacare is an affront to American principles. It amounts to an unprecedented consolidation of money and control in the hands of the federal bureaucracy. It forces private citizens to buy a product or service of the government’s choosing for the first time in history, and it bans millions of…
On Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, which really does merit a federal holiday, it’s worth noting that there is no federal holiday called “Presidents’ Day” — nor should there be. The lone federal holiday in February is “Washington’s Birthday.” (If only more Americans would call it that!) Many states,…
The Huffington Post’s Jeffrey Young and Jonathan Cohn declare that “putting together a real Obamacare alternative will take more time — and more genuine interest — than Republicans have.” In truth, such Obamacare alternatives are already available to Republicans. These include the 2017 Project’s…
In today’s Wall Street Journal, my friend Tevi Troy and Scott Gottlieb unwittingly demonstrate why King v. Burwell has always been a dangerous case for advocates of repeal. As they highlight, a favorable ruling at the Supreme Court may give Republicans just enough rope to hang themselves.
In the official Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, newly elected Iowa senator Joni Ernst stressed the importance of combating liberals’ “stale mindset” that has “led to failed policies like Obamacare,” while reaffirming Republicans’ commitment to…
Wednesday evening’s Fox News Special Report featured the following exchange between Bret Baier and House Speaker John Boehner:
In a 60 Minutes interview with Scott Pelley, parts of which aired on Sunday, House speaker John Boehner and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell made it sound like they are no closer to producing the elusive Obamacare alternative than they were five long years ago.
Republicans have now won two Obamacare elections, the first in 2010 and the second in 2014. (In 2012, their presidential nominee chose not to engage on the issue.) In the lead-up to their latest victory, Republicans ran far more ads against Obamacare than either party ran for or against anything…
While college football fans were riveted to the two playoff games on New Year’s Day (make that one-and-a-half playoff games, as the second half of the Rose Bowl was hardly must-see T.V.), some commentators could hardly wait to seize the moment to criticize the Bowl Championship Series (BCS),…
Most college football fans are happy that the sport has adopted a 4-team playoff. The method of selecting those four teams, however, is another matter. This past offseason, McLaughlin & Associates asked self-described college football fans this question: “As you may know, college football will…
In Thursday’s lead editorial, the Wall Street Journal argues that congressional “Republicans can’t win by shutting down the government”; thus, they should not attempt to deny President Obama the funding he needs to carry out his unconstitutional executive amnesty for 5 million illegal immigrants. …
For the past decade, the Bowl Championship Series unfailingly provided the matchup for college football’s national title game that reflected the public consensus. (In the six years prior to that, the BCS’s record was spottier, but after 2003-04, its formula was wisely streamlined, and its…
With just two weeks to go before it announces its 4-team playoff field, the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee is underrating teams from the two strongest conferences — the Southeastern and Pac-12 — and overrating those from the other three major conferences—the Big 12, Big Ten, and…
On Sunday, President Obama tried to explain why his decision to violate his duty to faithfully execute the laws on immigration, in plain defiance of the constitutional separation of powers, won’t pave the way for future presidents to do the same on tax laws. It didn’t go well:
George Washington, 1796:
Congressional Republicans’ internal debate over how to respond to President Obama’s impending lawless executive amnesty is being characterized as a battle between “immigration hawks” and those who want “to show Republicans can govern.” But that description is inapt, and it does a disservice to the…
With three weeks to go in college football’s regular season, Alabama has vaulted to #1 in the Anderson & Hester Computer Rankings. The 1-loss Crimson Tide, which beat previously undefeated Mississippi State on Saturday to move up from #3, edged undefeated Florida State in this week’s rankings…
Two well-placed sources on Capitol Hill say that the Congressional Budget Office effectively used Jonathan Gruber’s model to score Obamacare. That model favors government mandates over market competition and claims that essentially the only way to achieve a large reduction in the number of…
Does this week’s battle between Mississippi State and Alabama involve the nation’s #1 and #3 teams, or #1 and #5? Well, it depends whether you ask the College Football Playoff (CFP) Selection Committee or the Anderson & Hester Computer Rankings. Pretty much across the board, the former has a…
Jonathan Gruber, a key architect of Obamacare (and also of Romneycare), has been caught on camera by the Daily Signal offering up insights on the “stupidity of the American voter” and on the importance of using a noble lie (or lies) in passing Obamacare.
President Obama has always wanted to be a historic president. In an election that was driven by Obamacare, he took another big step toward that end on Tuesday — just not in the way he intended.
Anti-Obamacare ads are dominating the airwaves in the election’s stretch run. According to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, Republicans ran nearly 13,000 anti-Obamacare ads in Senate races during the week of October 20-26. That’s after they ran nearly 12,000 anti-Obamacare ads during…
It is becoming increasingly clear how important it is to liberals to try to insulate Obamacare from what is shaping up as another “shellacking.” Sure, a few months after House Democrats passed Obamacare (over unanimous Republican opposition), they lost more House seats (63) while also losing…
Ed Gillespie continues to close the gap on Mark Warner in the Virginia Senate race, causing Real Clear Politics to move the race from “Likely Dem” to “Leans Dem.” Virginia is currently the only Senate race in that category, which suggests it’s the GOP’s best chance to stage a substantial upset on…
Without offering an alternate theory for President Obama’s 42 percent approval rating — which was about the same even before it became obvious his foreign policy had tanked — the mainstream media is insisting that Obamacare isn’t driving this election. But Republican ads in Senate races say…
A Gallup survey earlier this month showing that Americans oppose Obamacare by a margin of 53 to 41 percent was the 150th poll listed by Real Clear Politics during President Obama’s second term to find Obamacare unpopular. The number that found it to be popular was zero.
Entering the final fortnight of the Senate races, something of a pattern has started to develop. Republicans are leading in the Real Clear Politics average of recent polling in all states that were to the right of the national average in the 2012 election (which President Obama won by 4 points),…
In the wake of their passage of Obamacare, the Democrats have repeatedly claimed two things: Republicans don’t have an alternative, and in any case the health care debate is over. But a Washington Post editorial published Saturday makes it clear that neither of these claims is true.
A headline in the Wall Street Journal reads, “U.S. Deficit Shrinks to Level Last Seen in ’07.” The problem with this headline isn’t its accuracy (although it should say ’08 unless it’s speaking as a percentage of GDP). The problem is that readers are likely to come away with the false perception…
Analysis of Congressional Budget Office projections by the Senate Budget Committee finds that Obamacare will increase the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next decade.
Half of this college football regular season (7 of 14 weeks) is now in the books, and neither of the two standout teams to date has won a conference championship, let alone a national championship, in the past half-century. Each played in a bowl game in Tennessee last year (the Music City Bowl and…
In 2009, Walmart, the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress, and the Service Employees International Union, wrote a pro-Obamacare letter touting “the promise of reduced health care cost increases” that would come from “health care reform.” Walmart and friends wrote, “We are for shared…
If James Carville is still remotely right that “It’s the economy, stupid,” then it’s no wonder that it has been tough sledding for Senate incumbents this fall. Members of the Senate class that’s up for reelection this year were, of course, elected (or reelected) in November 2008 and began their…
After finishing the season ranked #29 last year, the Arizona Wildcats — hot off their upset win at Oregon — have claimed the top spot in the inaugural 2014 Anderson & Hester Rankings. The second and fourth spots are held by two schools from Mississippi — #2 Mississippi and #4 Mississippi State —…
A new poll finds that three-fifths of likely voters support the repeal of Obamacare. A large plurality — 44 percent — wants to see Obamacare repealed and replaced with a conservative alternative. A much smaller group —16 percent — wants to see it repealed but not replaced. Less than one in three…
A new poll from Public Opinion Strategies, commissioned by Independent Women’s Voice, finds that people who care about the issue of Obamacare really don’t like Obamacare. On the flip side, people who like Obamacare really don’t care about it very much. That’s a bad combination for pro-Obamacare…
A new poll finds that 58 percent of likely voters are “more likely” to support members of Congress who vote to stop Obamacare’s taxpayer bailout of insurance companies. Half of that 58 percent (29 percent) are “much” more likely to do so. Meanwhile, only 15 percent of likely voters are “less…
Confident about the upcoming election, and afraid they’d fumble a handoff, House Republicans have apparently decided to take a knee until voters cast their ballots. But this timid run-out-the-clock mentality has the potential to hurt the party in both the short term and the long run.
Slowly but surely, the anti-repeal wing of the Republican party is starting to reassert itself. The latest effort comes from Lanhee Chen, who was the top policy advisor on the Mitt Romney campaign. As readers will likely recall, that campaign refused to advance an alternative to Obamacare, failed…
The Palm Beach Post reports that Florida Blue CEO Pat Geraghty is characterizing as “unfair” Marco Rubio’s argument that American taxpayers should not be forced to provide a bailout for health insurance companies that lose money under Obamacare. It’s not entirely clear whether Geraghty thinks it’s…
During President Obama’s second term, about the only thing more common than seeing him out on the golf course has been seeing polls highlighting the striking unpopularity of his signature legislation. Obama has golfed a reported 79 times so far in his second term (compared to a reported 24…
Publicly, President Obama loves to demonize insurance companies. But behind the scenes, Big Government and Big Insurance maintain a cozy alliance that the Obama administration actively nourishes, often at taxpayer expense. Indeed, as emails recently obtained by the House Oversight Committee show,…
The New York Times has described M.I.T. economist Jonathan Gruber as “a card-carrying Democrat” whose “position as an adviser to the influential Congressional Budget Office also left him perfectly positioned to advise the White House on health reform.” Moreover, the Times writes, “After Mr. Gruber…
In March 2010, Obamacare was about to be voted upon by the House of Representatives, and the Democrats were in the process of deciding whether to ignore public opinion at their peril. At that time, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that Obamacare would cost $938 billion over a decade…
In the past week alone, President Obama has twice been rebuked by the Supreme Court for having run afoul of the Constitution (a 9-0 decision) or federal law (5-4). Unchastened, he brazenly picked the very day that the second decision was announced to reassert the Obama Doctrine — namely, that if…
Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Obama administration has violated federal law in its implementation of Obamacare. Specifically, it has violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a law passed (almost unanimously) twenty years ago by a Democratic House and Senate and signed…
After the upset of House majority leader Eric Cantor at the hands of GOP primary voters, many congressional Republicans may be looking for ways to show they are listening to their constituents. One way they can do so is to take renewed aim at Obamacare.
President Obama felt the need to weigh in on the U.S. national soccer team, declaring, “We’re a middle-of-the-pack team. We’re not Germany yet. Or Italy or France, but — or Argentina or Brazil — but we're now in the mix.”
Most Americans don’t think it’s their job to bail out insurance companies who lose money under Obamacare, but that’s exactly what’s poised to happen. Obamacare’s risk-corridor program — which President Obama has been using as a slush fund to placate his insurance allies and keep them quiet about…
If there is any realm of policy that the American Founders were most firmly committed to having be decided by the most representative branch — the Congress — it was presumably the realm of taxation. Those who wrote the Constitution were not content even to let the Senate initiate tax policy. …
Over at Forbes, Peter Ferrara has written an interesting assessment of the state of the debate among conservatives on how to advance an alternative to Obamacare that will lead to its repeal. His analysis gets many things right. Most especially, he is right that it will not be possible to move…
Before President Obama took office, the federal government left Americans free to buy only those products or services they chose to buy. Under Obamacare, however, that has changed. For the first time in our nation’s 200-plus-year history, the federal government now compels private American citizens…
It's a question often asked these days in conservative circles: Do you really think Obamacare can be repealed? Usually uttered behind closed doors, the question reveals both an un-Reagan-like pessimism and something of a disconnect from political reality.
In advance of tomorrow’s Nebraska Republican Senate primary — one of the most hotly contested in the nation — Ben Sasse’s final two television ads note his opposition to Obamacare. The first begins, “Conservatives are rallying in Nebraska against Obamacare and for Ben Sasse,” and it features Sarah…
When the government provides medical care, it normally delegates the task. Under Medicare, Washington doesn’t employ doctors, nurses, and hospitals to treat the elderly. It has to coax them to participate. Similarly, Obamacare functions only if big insurance companies are willing to play ball with…
Nebraska Senate candidate Shane Osborn seems to have made a habit of, one might say, overreaching during this campaign.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that President Obama’s notion of governance is that federal laws should be passed to cover as much of human life as possible, and that he should then decide which of those laws to enforce, when, and against whom. The latest example of Obama’s selective…
Nebraska’s Republican Senate primary has long looked to be shaping up as a battle between Midland University president Ben Sasse and former state treasurer Shane Osborn. Throughout the campaign, Sasse has emphasized his determination to repeal Obamacare and fight the “Obamacare worldview,” while…
Recent polling conducted by McLaughlin & Associates for the 2017 Project asked Americans, “If you could undo one thing that President Obama has done as president, what would it be?” The choices that the poll provided were “overregulation of the economy,” “high deficit spending,” “tax increases,”…
Republican leaders have often expressed a bit of surprise, even a sense of being unfairly maligned, when rank-and-file Republican voters make clear that they don’t fully trust GOP leaders’ commitment to repealing, rather than “reforming,” Obamacare. Such skepticism certainly won’t be reduced by the…
It is becoming increasingly hard to tell whether Obamacare is the law of the land, or just the law of the parts of the land that don’t reside in (or aren’t in the good graces of) the executive branch. One wonders: Is it really too much to expect an administration that championed the passage of a…
Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare, the CBO projected that 9 million people would buy Obamacare-compliant insurance through newly established government-run exchanges. Now, after an enrollment period that his administration expanded by about two months—to more than half a…
“In the end, history is not kind to those who would deny Americans their basic economic security. Nobody remembers well those who stand in the way of America’s progress or our people. And that’s what the Affordable Care Act represents.” President Obama, who made that statement last week, has never…
Dr. Ben Carson has just launched the Save Our Healthcare Project, the goal of which is “to replace Obamacare with positive, patient-centered reforms to ensure all Americans have access to high-quality care.” In the launch’s initial phase, Carson lists his seven core principles of real health care…
A newly released ABC News/Washington Post poll has some liberals feeling giddy. The poll shows Obamacare suffering from only a 2-point public-approval deficit among registered voters—with 48 percent in support and 50 percent in opposition. According to RealClearPolitics, that’s the best polling…
In school, a child who gets a 67 percent will generally get a D. But for Obamacare, 67 percent is apparently grounds for an A. Talk about grading on a curve.
Would President Obama prefer that you have health insurance of which he doesn’t approve, or no health insurance at all? Well, based on the penalties in play under his signature legislation, it would appear that he prefers for you to have no insurance at all than to have the “wrong” insurance (as…
One of President Obama’s greatest political challenges has been hiding the fact that Obamacare is largely financed by siphoning huge sums of money out of Medicare. In particular, Obamacare cuts—or guts—Medicare Advantage, the popular program that allows seniors to get their Medicare benefits…
The Washington Post's report on two surveys suggesting that Obamacare's heavily taxpayer-subsidized exchanges "appear to be making little headway in signing up Americans who lack insurance," contains this additional nugget about the Obama administration's level of foresight and competence:
The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday afternoon to make the fine/“tax” for violating Obamacare’s individual mandate $0 for this year, and it did so by the wide margin of 90 votes (250 to 160). That’s 83 more than the 7-vote margin (219 to 212) by which Obamacare passed the…
Mike Lee, perhaps the United States Senate’s leading voice for a conservative reform agenda, has now endorsed Ben Sasse in Nebraska’s Senate race. Lee declared, “Nebraskans need Ben Sasse to represent their values, reformers in the Senate need his conservative vote, our country needs his voice.” …
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on Wednesday to reduce the fine/“tax” for violating Obamacare’s individual mandate this year to $0. It will be interesting to see how Democrats in both the House and Senate react. President Obama has plainly violated the law—and the constitutional…
President Obama has just announced the creation of a new program, which he calls myRA, as part of an overarching agenda he’s implementing, which could well be called myConstitution.
Continuing his pattern of intruding upon every major event (or at least the ones he’s aware of), President Obama appeared on Friday night’s broadcast of the Winter Olympics, just before the Opening Ceremonies. When Bob Costas asked, “[D]o you have a message for the United States team?” Obama…
Testifying before the House Budget Committee yesterday, Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf said of Obamacare, “[T]he act creates a disincentive for people to work.” He declared, “[B]y providing heavily subsidized health insurance to people with very low income and then…
Remember back when the Democrats tried to sell Obamacare to a skeptical citizenry as health care “reform” that would cost “only” $848 billion—far less than a trillion—over a decade? Indeed, that was the alleged 10-year gross cost of Obamacare’s coverage provisions, according to the Congressional…
Ezekiel Emanuel—Rahm’s older brother and the man who, as far back as 2009, current Nebraska Senate candidate Ben Sasse warned was “quarterbacking the details” of Obamacare—has authored a New York Times op-ed in which he criticizes the proposed alternative released last week by Senators Coburn,…
There are a lot of Republican politicians who ostensibly favor the repeal of Obamacare. But there are a lot fewer who give the impression of having the ability and determination to lead the way in bringing about that nation-defining result.
Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? …
Has there ever been a better season of college football? The final game of the Bowl Championship Series, which ranks among the finest ever played, further confirms what has been clear for some time: This is the golden age of college football.
At least they have their health. When it comes to purchasing insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, young adults don’t have much else going for them.
College football wasn’t always like this. The eyes of the nation weren’t always riveted on a massive stadium in a tiny town in southeastern Alabama, wondering whether the two-time defending national champion Crimson Tide could really—against all probability—be knocked off by archrival Auburn.…
Former president Bill Clinton said recently that Obamacare “only works . . . if young people show up.” But it won’t work—because young people won’t show up. Obamacare gives them too many reasons not to do so.
Can your health insurer auto-enroll you in Obamacare? The Daily Caller reports that, at least in some cases, the answer is yes:
It has certainly been a rough ride for Obamacare to date, to say the least. But in an eye-opening indication of just how close Obamacare might be to really going off the rails, the reliably left-of-center Yahoo! featured an article yesterday afternoon entitled, “Obamacare Individual Mandate May Be…
Remember back (a few short weeks ago) when the Democrats were arguing that Obamacare was the law of the land, that it hadn’t been struck down by the Supreme Court (as if avoiding that ignominious fate by a razor-slim 5-4 vote were a selling point), and that Republicans—and the American people—just…
Obamacare has now been unpopular for more than an Olympiad—an amazing feat for a law that’s just now going into effect. It’s been unpopular since the summer of 2009—which, come to think of it, is about the time that President Obama first starting saying that if you like your health plan, you can…
Contrary to many pundits’ expectations, congressional Republicans seem to have zigzagged their way to a reasonable position in the ongoing budget battles. To be sure, their clumsy manner of getting there has helped to obscure this conclusion. Nevertheless, the GOP has the better argument in the…
Republicans seem to have been spooked by three recent polls suggesting that the American public is siding more with President Obama than with the GOP in the budget and/or debt-ceiling battles. But neither poll asked what is perhaps the key question: Do you know what the Republicans’ position…
While Republicans in the nation’s capital try to decide whether or not they’re committed to beating back Obamacare, a Republican Senate candidate from Nebraska is making his opposition to Obamacare the clear centerpiece of his campaign. During a speech earlier this week that officially launched…
Contrary to many pundits’ expectations, congressional Republicans seem to have zigzagged their way to a reasonable position in the ongoing budget battles. To be sure, their clumsy manner of getting there has helped to obscure this conclusion. Nevertheless, the GOP has the better argument in the…
Contradicting the Obama administration, Moody's Investors Service says that hitting the debt limit shouldn't be confused with default. The Washington Post writes:
The partial federal government shutdown is certainly serving to illuminate the stark divide between what everyday Americans care about—being free to visit monuments to American heroes on the National Mall, watching the Air Force-Navy football game—and what the modern Democratic party cares…
Showing the good sense for which it is famous, the federal government—specifically the Obama Department of Defense—has announced its plans to cancel the nationally televised Air Force-Navy football game on Saturday, thereby jeopardizing millions of dollars (and inconveniencing a great many…
As the Washington Post reports, nine Democratic members of the House of Representatives have voted to delay Obamacare’s individual mandate. The nine are as follows: Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Dan Maffei (N.Y.), Sean Maloney (N.Y.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Steven Horsford (Nev.), Ron Barber (Ariz.), John…
In the climactic scene of Star Wars (spoiler alert for those few who haven’t yet seen it), Luke Skywalker flies his Rebel X-wing fighter along a trench of the Imperial Death Star and, with one perfectly placed shot, hits a small exhaust port leading directly to the fortress’s main reactor—causing…
The question at the core of most of today’s debates in American politics is whether all people have an unalienable right to keep the fruits of their own labor—as the Founders believed and the Declaration of Independence (properly understood) asserts—or whether the government should funnel vast sums…
You know things are bad for President Obama when even Warren Buffett has soured on Obamacare and says that "we need something else." Money Morning writes:
Between now and the end of the calendar year, congressional Republicans and the Obama White House will engage in a protracted struggle over fiscal matters. The pile-up of must-do budgetary items now on the agenda makes that certain, starting with the need for stop-gap funding before October 1 to…
With Obamacare’s massive Patient Data Hub poised to open soon, a sloppy mistake by an Obamacare employee hasn’t exactly inspired confidence that Americans’ private information will be closely guarded by Obamacare’s powers-that-be. As the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports (and Andrew Johnson…
As was quite clear at the time, the biggest mistake that Mitt Romney’s campaign made in 2012 was not aggressively attacking Obamacare. What may well have been its second-biggest mistake, however, was less noticed: the striking silence in the face of President Obama’s announcement that he would no…
President Obama likes to talk about income inequality, but what matters far more is the actual income of the typical American. And how has the typical American household income fared on Obama's watch? Well, the economic "recovery" has now spanned an Olympiad, and during that time the typical…
It is becoming increasingly clear that President Obama does not approve of the American Founders’ notion that Congress’s role is to pass laws, and the president’s role is to execute them. On the heels of his unilateral decision not to start Obamacare’s employer mandate on the date that the…
As evidence of the extraordinarily sloppy drafting job that the Democrats did on their 2,700-page overhaul of American medicine, they apparently left congressional staffers out in the cold. Just four days ago, the New York Times wrote:
On the cusp of the July 4 holiday weekend, President Obama quietly announced (via an underling’s blog post) that he had unilaterally chosen to delay Obamacare’s employer mandate—its requirement that businesses with 50 or more workers provide federally approved health insurance. Obama claims to…
There has been a fair amount of discussion in recent days about whether Republicans should try to defund Obamacare. The instinct to do something about Obamacare is right. But Republicans can learn something from the American people. As polls have consistently shown, Americans like the idea of…
It is not often that a president announces his decision not to enforce a law as written, the House of Representatives responds by offering to restore the rule of law by amending that law to permit the delay the president wishes . . . and then the president threatens to veto that legislation if it…
A new Fox News poll says that independents support the repeal of Obamacare by a whopping 40-point margin (65 to 25 percent). That’s more than twice the margin by which Ronald Reagan beat Walter Mondale, or Franklin Roosevelt beat Herbert Hoover.
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll says that Obamacare is now more unpopular than at any time since the Democrats passed it into law (without a single Republican vote) more than three years ago. The poll shows that, by a margin of 13 percentage points (47 to 34 percent), Americans think…
If Barack Obama had an SUV, would it look like the one that George Zimmerman helped pull people out of? ABC News reports:
The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll indicates that the only group of Americans who remain strongly supportive of Obamacare are self-described “liberal Democrats.” Even “moderate or conservative” Democrats have started to jump ship en masse — as they’re now more likely to oppose Obamacare than…
As yesterday's comments by President Obama's press secretary Jay Carney highlight, the Obama administration's lawlessness is matched only by its arrogance. In response to those who are calling attention to the administration's striking failure (more than three years and three months after the…
After a year spent largely out of the limelight, Obamacare’s individual mandate is back — as the core symbol of Obamacare’s unprecedented threat to Americans’ liberty. In truth, the mandate never really left; it simply faded a bit from public view. The means of its reemergence, however, is clear: …
In a blatant exercise of arbitrary rule, the Obama administration announced this evening that it has unilaterally decided not to implement a key provision of Obamacare on schedule. By law, Obamacare’s employer mandate — its requirement that businesses with 50 or more workers provide federally…
Many Republican insiders continue to push the narrative that the GOP lost in 2012 because of the Hispanic vote and social issues, rather than because a badly broken Republican nomination process produced a candidate who didn’t emphasize Obamacare and didn’t motivate downscale rural white Americans…
Whatever one’s views on gay marriage, it is appropriate — in a sense — that this issue, which was illegitimately thrust onto the scene by willful judges at the state level, has now been illegitimately advanced by willful judges at the federal level. Accordingly, gay marriage has been propelled…
College football fans may soon have another thing to lord over the NFL. The Hill writes, “Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday she is in talks with the NFL to help promote new insurance options under ObamaCare.” The report continues, “Sebelius said the football league…
A new Gallup poll of small-business owners indicates that Obamacare is having a dramatic and deleterious effect on Americans’ employment prospects. More than 40 percent of small-business owners say that Obamacare has caused them to freeze hiring, while nearly a fifth say that it has caused them to…
The June Kaiser Health Tracking Poll indicates that Obamacare is now less popular than it has been at any time since October 2011 — about three months before Mitt Romney won his first Republican primary. (Romney, of course, chose not to emphasize Obamacare during the presidential campaign.) …
In the wake of his scintillating 2-for-22 shooting exhibition on the White House basketball court — complete with an air ball, a steady barrage of bricks, and a layup that didn’t so much as draw iron — President Obama is now reportedly trying to enlist the National Basketball Association to help…
The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll indicates that independents like the sound of “Obamacare” even less than they like the sound of the “health reform law.” By a margin of 11 percentage points (43 to 32 percent), independents have an “unfavorable,” rather than a “favorable,” view of the “health…
At least for now (although a statewide referendum may be pending), Arizona governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, has succeeded in her efforts to implement a key part of Obamacare in her state. Brewer has very aggressively — and entirely voluntarily — spearheaded the charge to implement Obamacare’s…
The authors of the Senate immigration bill are now openly admitting that citizenship for illegal immigrants — already a bridge too far — is no longer even being linked to strengthening the border. As Byron York writes in the Washington Examiner, Sen. Richard Durbin (D.-Ill.), a member of the Gang…
From the middle of 2009 onward, those opposed to President Obama’s attempted overhaul of American medicine have enjoyed a distinct, if underappreciated, rhetorical advantage. Taking a page out of the playbook that led to the defeat of Hillarycare in 1994, advocates of limited government and…
During his opening remarks at today's House Budget Committee hearing on the Department of Defense and the 2014 budget, Paul Ryan said, "The first duty of government is to keep us safe. And to keep us safe, our strategy should drive our budget. But under this administration, the budget is driving…
A big part of Obamacare is its massive expansion of Medicaid. Fortunately, this expansion can’t happen in most states without Republicans freely choosing to make it happen. Unfortunately, far too many Republican governors seem to be confused about the distinction between repealing Obamacare and…
Of all the scandals in his administration that President Obama knows nothing about, the one Americans find most appalling is the decision by the Internal Revenue Service to target the president’s political adversaries. What’s more, as subsequent congressional testimony has made clear, the IRS isn’t…
Supporters of President Obama’s overhaul of American medicine are touting the early evidence from California’s Obamacare exchange (still under construction) as good news for their side. But as the Los Angeles Times notes, the Golden State’s version of Obamacare will mean higher insurance premiums…
The Washington Examiner reports that the IRS chief visited the White House more than once a week under President Obama, after having visited less than once a year under President Bush. The IRS chief came to the White House a reported 118 times from 2010 to 2011 under Obama, compared to only once…
It would be a major understatement to say that Obamacare has had a bad spring. Around the time of Lincoln’s birthday, registered voters told Fox News that, by a margin of 6 percentage points (48 to 42 percent), it would “be better to go back to the health care system that was in place in 2009”…
During Tuesday’s hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Congresswoman Jackie Speier (D., Calif.) declared that failing to encourage people to sign up for government-mandated health insurance is downright “un-American.” Speier was referring to Congress’s refusal to fund…
The more the evidence emerges, the more one has to wonder: Could Obamacare have been designed any more poorly? Even those who don’t mind Obamacare’s striking consolidation of power and money in Washington at the expense of Americans’ liberty, or who don’t mind the medical overhaul’s $2 trillion…
In his prepared remarks on the IRS’s targeting of his political opponents, President Obama said that “we’re going to hold the responsible parties accountable,” but only once we determine “who is responsible.” In today’s Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel offers some helpful thoughts on determining…
From the federal overhaul of American medicine that brought us the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and Gator Aid, we can now add the Sebelius Shakedown. In what it calls an “unusual fundraising push,” the Washington Post writes, “Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius…
Under Obamacare, if you like your job, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll get to keep your job. The AP reports:
The April Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, which finds that only 35 percent of American have a favorable opinion of Obamacare, has been getting a lot of well-deserved attention. But this top-line finding misses a more compelling point: Even Kaiser, the most reliably pro-Obamacare of all of the…
When President Obama released his first budget — entitled with no hint of irony, “A New Era of Responsibility” — he projected that deficit spending over the next five fiscal years (2010-14) would total $3.767 trillion. Now, Obama has released his fifth budget (which doesn’t seem to have a name). …
In 2010, the Democrats rammed Obamacare through Congress in open defiance of public opinion, and an incensed citizenry responded by giving Republicans their biggest gains in the House of Representatives since before World War II. Now, coinciding with tomorrow’s 3-year anniversary of President…
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Jeb Bush writes that “America could be on the threshold of its greatest century.” Why? Well, here’s one reason he gives: “Technological innovation means that in the coming decades, driverless vehicles will flawlessly move people on highways, never getting lost,…
At the New Republic, Jonathan Cohn writes,“Paul Ryan has released his new budget proposal, ‘The Path to Prosperity.’ It looks almost exactly like his old budget proposal.” Cohn continues, “That tells us a lot about Ryan’s priorities — and how little interest he and his allies have in moderating…
Mitt Romney may have tied his dog’s kennel to the top of his car and made him ride in it, but at least he didn’t make it harder for everyone else’s dog to get to the vet. The same cannot be said of President Obama and his signature legislation.
In the aftermath of Mitt Romney’s defeat in last fall’s election, and the defeat of a myriad of Republican Senate candidates (establishment and Tea Party alike) in Romney’s wake, Republicans are getting no shortage of free advice. The quantity of that advice, however, is more apparent than its…
For someone who aggressively campaigned on the notion that the Republican party cares disproportionately about the rich, President Obama’s economic scorecard is rather illuminating. Since March 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average — which tracks the stock prices of 30 large blue-chip companies —…
When it comes to deficit reduction, President Obama and the mainstream press seem to have a fascination with the figure of $4 trillion. During last year’s first presidential debate, Obama falsely claimed, “I've put forward a specific $4 trillion deficit reduction plan,” even though he’d done…
President Obama has grown fond of saying that he’s “not a dictator,” “not a king,” and “not the emperor,” but is instead “the president.” Whether his tendency to clarify a seemingly obvious point reveals his inner desires or not, his actions in a variety of ways suggest that he doesn’t think the…
Americans have long had to fight City Hall, but now they have to fight an almost endless list of government bureaucracies at both the state and federal levels. Occasionally, however, the little guy still wins.
When Chris Wallace asked Mitt Romney on Fox News Sunday why he lost the election, one of the reasons Romney gave was, “Obamacare was very attractive, particularly [for] those without health insurance, and they came out in large numbers to vote, so that was part of a successful campaign.” Like much…
While American environmentalists focus primarily on saving field mice and frustrating development and energy production on the home front, there’s a growing need for genuine conservation and stewardship to protect the natural habitats of the world’s grandest animals. Take the cases of the rhino…
Yesterday, Chris Christie became the eighth Republican governor to capitulate on Obamacare’s massive Medicaid expansion, declaring his desire to implement it in his state. Yet while Christie wasn’t the first GOP governor to fold, he was presumably the first to offer the novel defense that his…
Much of Obamacare wasn’t passed as fixed law but rather as an open-ended invitation for the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to make law, our constitutional separation of powers notwithstanding. That’s how the requirement came about that essentially all health plans must hereafter give…
Having profoundly failed to enforce federal immigration law for the past several decades, the federal government is now angling to use the immigration debate as a means to accentuate its own power. The Wall Street Journal reports that Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), among others, supports a…
For three years, a private citizen named Steve LeBard has led the effort to build a privately funded memorial in Orcutt, California—a tranquil small town located on the Golden State’s gorgeous Central Coast—to honor military veterans. And for the better part of those three years, he has run into a…
It’s an old basketball adage that teams that apply a full-court press don’t like to be pressed themselves. They like to force the action, not have it forced on them. In a similar vein, those who seek to centralized power by spearheading the passage of new federal laws generally don’t like to obey…
In his ongoing zeal to remake American society according to the playbook of those who reside in the faculty lounges of the nation's most liberal colleges, President Obama now wants to engage women in combat with no apparent thought of the wider societal effects of such a decision. It therefore…
As Adam White discusses in detail, there’s nothing moderate or incremental about the increase in federal regulations — and hence in centralized executive power — under President Obama. To the contrary (as White notes), according to figures published by the Obama White House (see table 2-1), the…
On Friday, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously declared President Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to be unconstitutional. The judges rebuked Obama both because the Senate was actually in session when he made the…
While the mainstream press routinely reports that President Obama is riding high and that Republicans are reeling, Gallup tells a rather different story about the popularity of our newly reelected president. Across Gallup’s entire history of presidential job-approval polling — dating back to 1945…
Have you heard much about President Obama’s $787,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” (now estimated to cost $831,000,000,000) lately? In its last report, published in 2011, the president’s own Council of Economic Advisors released an estimate showing that, for every $317,000 in “stimulus” spending…
Today, President Obama’s belief in a “living Constitution” came up against a ruling that enforced our fixed Constitution. A 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously declared Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board to be…
In his second inaugural address, President Obama made every effort to tie his political philosophy to the ideals and principles of the American Founding, even as he made clear how little he understands those ideals and principles. The gist of Obama’s speech was that only government can grant…
Fifty years ago, in his “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory…
While the press was distracted by the misnamed “fiscal cliff,” we began the New Year with a 13-figure deficit and a 14-figure national debt—the result of today’s Americans borrowing vast sums of money and putting it on future Americans’ tab. The two parties offer rather different explanations for…
Perhaps the finest book ever written on the natural complementarity of the sexes and on marriage as the core building block of civil society was written by a Swiss who was then living in France. (The book is Emile, and the author is Jean-Jacques Rousseau.) So when Robert Oscar Lopez writes at the…
Yesterday, Congress passed a series of bills to promote gun control and mental health. Among other things, the bills aim to remove “unnecessary legal barriers…that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system,” to “give law enforcement the ability to run a…
At his press conference today, President Obama showed that he either thinks he can pull the wool over Americans’ eyes through the sheer force of his own outrageous rhetoric, or else he really believes his own rhetoric and is living in a fantasyland. The guess here is that it’s a roughly even mix…
Tonight, the 15th BCS National Championship Game will cap yet another extraordinary college football season. College football is the only major American sport that emphasizes the regular season over the postseason, like baseball did in its glory days (when the two league champions went directly to…
It has been widely reported that the recently passed “fiscal cliff” deal entails a tax hike with no corresponding spending cuts. Other reports claim that the deal imposes a 41-to-1 ratio of tax hikes to spending cuts. But neither of these claims is correct.
It’s symbolically appropriate that one of President Obama’s preferred forms of “green energy” crony capitalism has the effect of killing off the national bird. The federal wind production tax credit (PTC) is mercifully set to expire on New Year’s Eve. The PTC provides a financial boon, at great…
As we survey the political wreckage of 2012, it’s worth highlighting once again that Republicans lost the presidential election for two main reasons: They failed to get their best candidates to run, and their eventual nominee failed to make the case to voters. The result was a relatively lopsided…
As the tax debate continues, Republicans have a good opportunity to contrast their own support for small businesses with the Democrats' support for big business. As Kimberley Strassel writes in Friday's Wall Street Journal, big business is backing President Obama's refusal to stop the looming tax…
Forbes’s recently released list of “The Best States for Businesses and Careers” provides further evidence of the Democratic party’s striking erosion as a party of economic growth and prosperity. Based on their votes in the most recent presidential election, all but three of Forbes’s top-10 states…
It has become increasingly clear that the Obama-era Democrats view every major societal event as a new invitation to spend money, centralize power, or both. The horrendous shootings in Connecticut have the Democrats lobbying not only for new legislation, but new federal legislation — and hence…
Since Washington and the mainstream press corps are pretending that our deficit woes are the result of a roughly equal blend of excessive federal spending and insufficient federal taxation, let’s review the evidence. According to official government figures published by the Congressional Budget…
There is a lot of talk about whether Republicans should "give in" on raising taxes on the top 2 percent of income-earners. But the question isn't whether Republicans should "give in," but how they should react to a situation in which tax rates on that portion of Americans are going to rise whether…
If Republicans want to be the party of Main Street and let Democrats continue to be the party of big government and its natural ally, big business, there's one tax they should embrace. As Christine Gregoire and Sally Jewell write in today's Wall Street Journal, government tax policies discriminate…
Many states are wisely signaling that they aren’t interested in doing the Obama administration’s bidding on Obamacare. As a result, many if not most of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges — the heart of the beast — will have to be set up and run by the Obama administration at the federal level.
President Obama is enjoying a bit of a post-election honeymoon, but the same cannot be said for his signature legislation.
As hard as it is to believe, it’s been only a little over three weeks since Election Day. But there are already plenty of signs that Republicans are learning many of the wrong lessons from that debacle. For starters, there’s been a lot of excessive emphasis on racial demographics, which actually…
At Forbes.com, Larry Bell offers a nice summary of the unanswered questions surrounding the Benghazi-Patreaus controversy. He asks (and addresses) the following: “Did the White House blackmail General Petraeus to support a cover story?” “When did the President really learn about the Petraeus…
First off, it’s not a “fiscal cliff.” What we’re slated to hit as of New Year’s Day, as the Wall Street Journal notes, is a tax cliff. Our fiscal cliff, which drops off into a far deeper canyon, is what looms because of our $16,000,000,000,000 debt and the runaway entitlement spending that fuels it…
At yesterday’s press conference, Chuck Todd of NBC News asked, “Are you withholding judgment on whether you should have known sooner that there was a potential — that there was an investigation into whether your CIA director — potentially there was a national security breach with your CIA director?…
Mitt Romney’s campaign can effectively be boiled down into two parts. One was his first debate appearance, during which he aggressively attacked President Obama’s abysmal record and vigorously explained and defended his own policy proposals. During the other part of his campaign — encompassing his…
At Real Clear Politics, Tom Bevan and Carl Cannon rightly note that “[Mitt] Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan cheered fiscal and social conservatives within the Republican Party and provided a much needed shot in the arm for Romney’s campaign.” But they also argue that, “by choosing Ryan, Romney…
The Republican party’s brutal defeat in yesterday’s presidential and Senate races offers at least one clear, abiding lesson: Republicans can’t win without making their case.
Since the House passed Obamacare 961 days ago, on March 21, 2010 — two days before President Obama signed it into law — all eyes have been on November 6, 2012. As Bill Kristol wrote on March 22, 2010:
Politico writes that Nancy Pelosi’s “drive to regain the [House] majority for Democrats is on the verge of a complete collapse.” It adds, “Democrats are expected to pick up five seats at best — a fraction of the 25 they need. On the eve of the election, some party officials are privately worried…
Reuters writes the following about Mitt Romney’s Sunday night rally on the outskirts of Philadelphia: “The rally drew a huge crowd, but Romney arrived some 90 minutes after he was expected and hundreds of people streamed out of the rally as he spoke, angry and cold after waiting at a facility with…
Observers on both sides of the political aisle have noted, often with surprise, President Obama’s failure to offer an agenda for a second term in office. It would be a mistake, however, to assume Obama has no second-term agenda; he simply doesn’t have one he can express aloud. In truth, the…
Early this morning, the Hill reported that the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is relying on a private company — a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group — to play a central role in establishing and running Obamacare’s insurance “exchanges.” As the Hill writes, the…
The four polls taken this week in Iowa that are listed by RealClearPolitics show widely different results. NBC/WSJ/Marist shows President Obama up by 6 percentage points — 50 to 44 percent. Gravis Marketing shows Obama up 4 points — 49 to 45 percent. WeAskAmerica shows Obama up 1.5 points — 48.8…
The newly released October jobs numbers reveal that, since President Obama signed Obamacare into law in March 2010, we have now gone 31 consecutive months in which fewer than 59 percent of Americans have been employed. The Obama administration’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles such…
From December 1941 to August 1945, the United States of America joined the other Allied powers and fought against the Axis powers in Europe and the Pacific, during the greatest and most destructive war in all of human history. Victory required the complete dedication of the American citizenry, as…
Mitt Romney and President Obama are now tied in the RealClearPolitics average of recent national polling, thanks in large part to the United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll released Wednesday afternoon. That poll projects an 8-point advantage in turnout for Democrats…
In today’s Wall Street Journal, David Gamage — who teaches at Cal-Berkeley, worked for two years in the Obama administration, and regards himself as “an Obamacare supporter” — discusses “the perverse incentives” that Obamacare would provide to employees, employers, and romantic couples, alike.
The latest state-by-state polling from Rasmussen Reports shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by a tally of 279 to 243 in projected electoral votes. Among the nine key swing states, Rasmussen Reports now shows Romney leading in Florida (by 2 percentage points), Ohio (by 2 points), Virginia…
The latest polling of likely voters from Rasmussen Reports shows that Mitt Romney has now moved ahead of President Obama in Ohio. The poll shows Romney leading by 2 percentage points — 50 to 48 percent. This is the fourth poll listed by RealClearPolitics that has shown Romney ahead in Ohio this…
One week before the election that will likely determine Obamacare’s fate, Americans support its repeal by an even wider margin than they did in the immediate aftermath of its highly unpopular passage.
On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume highlighted Mitt Romney’s clear advantage in Gallup, Rasmussen, and other national polling, and said, “Now…if those polls are generally correct, it is difficult to imagine that Ohio would be all that different. Ohio has pretty closely tracked the national…
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein and I have finally found something on which we can genuinely see eye-to-eye. Klein writes, “The stakes this year are higher — and most voters know it.” He explains, “The most important fact of the 2012 election is that the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare] was…
The latest Wisconsin polling from Rasmussen Reports, taken yesterday and released today, shows Mitt Romney and President Obama tied at 49 percent apiece among likely voters. A week earlier, Obama led by 2 points in Rasmussen’s Wisconsin polling — 50 to 48 percent — so Romney is on the rise in the…
Newly released figures from Gallup show that the demographics of the American electorate (age, race, sex, etc.) have changed very little since 2008 except in one way: Party affiliation has swung dramatically toward the Republican party, and away from the Democratic party, during President Obama’s…
State-by-state polling by Rasmussen Reports now shows Mitt Romney narrowly leading President Obama in the projected tally of electoral votes — 261 to 253. Of the nine key swing states, Rasmussen’s polling (all conducted during the past week except for in Pennsylvania) shows Romney ahead in Florida…
The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll projects a 5-point turnout advantage for Democrats over Republicans (34 to 29 percent) yet still shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by 1 percentage point — 49 to 48 percent. This is Romney’s first lead since the summer in Washington Post/ABC…
Rasmussen Reports, the first polling outfit to release a survey from Ohio taken after the third and final presidential debate, shows that Mitt Romney has now pulled even with President Obama among the state’s likely voters — at 48 percent support apiece. This is the first time since the summer…
The Tampa Bay Times, the paper that puts out (and funds) the supposedly unbiased PolitiFact, has just enthusiastically endorsed President Obama for a second term. The Times writes that “[w]ithout hesitation” it “recommends Barack Obama for re-election as president.” The paper cites Obama’s “steady…
The latest polling of likely voters from Rasmussen Reports shows Mitt Romney with 50 percent support for the first time this fall, and with a 4-point lead over President Obama (50 to 46 percent) — his biggest of the fall. Romney now leads by 9 percentage points among independents. The poll was…
Several months ago, President Obama’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, initiated the Senior Swindle, an $8.35 billion ploy (far more than either presidential campaign will raise this year) to hide the effects of Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts from seniors until…
Rasmussen Reports’ latest polling of likely voters shows that, by a 10-point margin, Americans favor the repeal of Obamacare. The poll shows that 52 percent of likely voters support the repeal of President Obama’s centerpiece legislation, while only 42 percent oppose it. Repeal is popular among…
The latest polling of likely voters by Rasmussen Reports shows that, for the first time, Mitt Romney has hit 50 percent support in Colorado — a state that Barack Obama won by 9 percentage points (54 to 45 percent) in 2008. Romney now leads Obama by 4 percentage points in the Centennial State — 50…
In the Washington Post, Robert Samuelson highlights how Obamacare would needlessly complicate our society, make it more maddeningly litigious, give the I.R.S. more prominence, and make it harder for workers to get employers to give them so much as 30 hours a week.
The latest polling from Rasmussen Reports shows that President Obama’s net approval rating is lower today than it was two years ago. Today, Obama’s net approval rating among likely voters is minus-3 percentage points (48 percent approval to 51 percent disapproval), while his net approval rating…
The $831,000,000,000 economic “stimulus” that President Obama spearheaded and signed into law requires his administration to release quarterly reports on its effects. But “the most transparent administration in the history of our country” is now four reports behind schedule and has so far not…
In their first polls conducted partly after the second presidential debate, both Gallup and Rasmussen Reports show that Mitt Romney has extended his lead over President Obama among likely voters.
In the wake of the Treasury Department’s newly released summary of federal spending for 2012, it’s now possible to detail just how profligate the Obama years have been. Here’s the upshot: Under Obama, for every $7 we’ve had, we’ve spent nearly $11 (or, to be more exact, $10.95). That’s like a…
Today’s New York Times mentions but then quickly glosses over President Obama’s statement in early 2009, in which he said, “One nice thing about — the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I've got four years. And…— and — and —…and, you know, a year from now I…
“Well, we’ve gone through a tough four years.” That line from Tuesday night’s presidential debate wasn’t particularly surprising. It was, after all, exactly what one would expect Mitt Romney to say about President Obama’s tenure in office. What was surprising was that it wasn’t Romney who…
The latest polling from USA Today/Gallup shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by 4 percentage points — 50 to 46 percent — among likely voters in swing states. USA Today writes, “As the presidential campaign heads into its final weeks, the survey of voters in 12 crucial swing states finds…
Obamacare makes the ’62 Mets look like the ’27 Yankees. Since President Obama signed Obamacare into law on March 23, 2010, Rasmussen Reports has conducted 114 polls asking likely voters whether they’d prefer to keep Obamacare or repeal it. All 114 times, voters have said they’d prefer to repeal…
The newly released Washington Post/ABC News poll of likely voters says that if the election were held today, Democrats would enjoy a 9-point advantage over Republicans in voter turnout (35 to 26 percent), and President Obama would beat Mitt Romney by 3 percentage points (49 to 46 percent). The…
This is perhaps the most lucid, even-handed, and convincing examination to date of the threat that President Obama—and his potential reelection—poses to our republic. No one who reads I Am the Change will come away thinking this election is about the economy. In truth, this election pits America’s…
Over the past two days, Real Clear Politics (RCP) has moved four states from “Leans Obama” to “Toss Up” — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Michigan. RCP now rates all nine key swing states (Fla., Ohio, Va., Colo., Iowa, N.H., Pa., Wis., and Nev.) as toss-ups.
As Mike Warren highlights, moderator Martha Raddatz apparently didn’t think Obamacare was important enough to make the cut as one of the nine topics she brought up during the vice presidential debate. Two other closely related topics that didn’t make her cut were federal spending and the national…
Less than a year ago, voters went to the polls in Ohio and resoundingly rejected Obamacare’s individual mandate. Actually, that’s an understatement. Voters in all 88 counties of Ohio rejected it, and in all but seven of those counties they did so by a margin of at least 20 percentage points. Even…
During the vice presidential debate, Paul Ryan reiterated his opposition to abortion. Joe Biden explained that he’s personally opposed to abortion but doesn’t believe in protecting the unborn. President Obama has previously expressed his own position, which might best be described as not being…
Seven days ago, President Obama led Mitt Romney by 3.1 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polling. One week (and one debate) later, Romney now leads Obama by 1.1 points — a swing of 4.2 points in Romney’s favor. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that, for the first…
Exactly four weeks before Election Day, Mitt Romney has taken the lead in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average of recent polling. Of the six most recent polls, three show Romney ahead, two show President Obama ahead, and one shows the race tied. Overall, RCP shows Romney leading by a tally of 48…
Among the nine key swing states, Pennsylvania is the closest thing to a must-win for President Obama. Until the first presidential debate, he was comfortably ahead in the Keystone State. But two polls taken either entirely or partly after the debate show Obama’s lead having dwindled to just 3…
During last Wednesday’s presidential debate, President Obama claimed that the private sector just can’t match the leanness and efficiency of the federal government. He was speaking specifically about privately covered health care versus government-run health care. Obama said, “Jim, if I — if I can…
The latest poll of likely voters from Rasmussen Reports shows that, by a margin of 15 percentage points (54 to 39 percent), Americans support the repeal of President Obama’s centerpiece legislation. In the two-and-a-half years since Obama signed Obamacare into law, Rasmussen has conducted 113…
Gallup writes that Mitt Romney’s debate performance was the most dominant in the history of its polling on presidential debates, and that performance has now vaulted him into a share of the lead in the presidential race. Gallup’s post-debate polling shows that Romney and President Obama are now…
In May 2009, President Obama released his updated budget estimates, which projected that the federal deficit for fiscal year 2012 would be $557 billion (see table S-1). The Congressional Budget Office now says that the deficit for fiscal year 2012 (which ended on September 30) was about $1.1…
At a rally in Ohio last week, Mitt Romney said, “Obama-care is really Exhibit No. 1 of the president’s political philosophy, and that is that government knows better than people how to run your lives.” The GOP nominee added, “I don’t believe in a bigger and bigger government. . . . I believe in…
Thank goodness the everyday Americans of Main Street, U.S.A. have someone to run on their behalf against the out-of-touch rich guy. As the Hollywood Reporter writes, the candidate of the exceptionally rich and famous is arriving in town tonight for a $25,000-a-plate fundraising dinner (nearly half…
In its first national polling taken mostly after Wednesday night’s presidential debate, Rasmussen Reports shows Mitt Romney up 2 points on President Obama (49 to 47 percent). Before the debate, Obama was up 2 points on Romney (49 to 47 percent). Among independent voters, Romney now leads by 16…
One month and one day before the most important presidential election in the past quarter of a century and perhaps in the past century and a quarter, Rasmussen Reports shows the race being about as even as it could possibly be. At this point, Rasmussen’s state-by-state polling shows that President…
Newly released polls from Rasmussen Reports and WeAskAmerica show that Mitt Romney has overtaken President Obama in Florida in the wake of the first presidential debate. Three weeks ago, Rasmussen showed Obama with a 2-point lead in the Sunshine State (48 to 46 percent). That margin has…
President Obama and his allies are celebrating finally getting the unemployment rate down below the 8-percent level that, 44 months ago, they said it would never exceed if Obama’s $831,000,000,000 “stimulus” were to be passed (see Figure 1). But the celebration is rather premature — for the latest…
After staring in some amazement at PolitiFact’s ostensibly unbiased rulings on the truthfulness of various statements made during Wednesday night’s presidential debate, I finally realized what the problem is: PolitiFact’s self-described Truth-O-Meter is clearly broken. Thankfully, however, it’s…
Mitt Romney’s clear victory over President Obama in last night’s debate — during which the challenger didn’t land any knockdown punches but won essentially every round on the scorecard and dominated the bout from start to finish — was principally a result of his success in two areas. The first was…
Here are five questions as we head into the first presidential debate of 2012:
Have you ever watched a football game in which a team runs the ball seemingly at will and wins in a rout? And then, in a rematch, that same team for no good reason throws the ball repeatedly, with little success? Meet Team Republican. In 2010, it ran Obamacare down the Democrats’ throats. The GOP…
For all of the wishful thinking in the mainstream press about President Obama’s positioning 40 days before this election, Obama’s approval rating looks remarkably similar to what it was on this date in 2010 — shortly before his party lost a historic 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats. On September…
Americans must be wondering how much more of this “recovery” they can afford. New figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the typical American household’s real (inflation-adjusted) income has actually dropped 5.7 percent during the Obama…
President Obama’s supporters are obsessed with being “on the right side of history.” This is, after all, the essence of progressivism — history progresses, always upward (don’t ask about the Dark Ages), and progressives exist to speed up that “progress.” This, in turn, informs the view of this…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that independents overwhelmingly support the repeal of Obamacare — by 18 percentage points (55 to 37 percent) — which once again raises this question: How can an incumbent president hope to win reelection when his centerpiece legislation is this…
The release of Mitt Romney’s 2011 tax returns shows that he freely gave away more than $4 million to charity last year (about 30 percent of his income). In comparison, when Joe Biden was first running for vice president, his tax returns showed that he had given away just $3,690 to charity over the…
Highlighting “the dismantling of the space program over the last four years,” Paul Ryan said in Orlando on Saturday, “Today, if we want to send [our] astronaut[s] to the space station, we have to pay the Russians to take them there. [The crowd booed at the thought.] China may someday be looking…
Addressing the audience at an AARP convention today, Paul Ryan declared, "The first step to a stronger Medicare is to repeal Obamacare." He explained to those in attendance how Obamacare would turn "Medicare into a piggy bank," while also putting "15 unelected bureaucrats in charge of Medicare’s…
It’s a couple days old, but nevertheless worth watching: Here’s the clip of President Obama’s interview with David Letterman (which Steve Hayes discusses in greater detail here), during which Obama shows that he apparently has no idea how big our national debt is — apparently even to the nearest…
At a Univision forum last night in Florida, Mitt Romney was in part asked (through an interpreter), “If you’re elected president, will you repeal all of Obamacare, or just change parts of it? Which parts would you change?”
Among the reporting on Mitt Romney’s unfortunate comments at a private fundraiser, it’s interesting to see the mainstream media’s subtle attempts to try to redefine the nature of the income tax. Most Americans presumably (and rightly) think of the income tax as a tax on, well, income. The press…
As we get further removed from a Republican convention that, at least in prime time (and apart from Paul Ryan), didn’t emphasize the importance of repealing Obamacare, and a Democratic convention at which President Obama was praised for spearheading Obamacare’s passage regardless of the…
President Obama has just released this ad, which highlights the financial crisis of four years ago and then claims that, under Obama, the drop in employment has been reversed, and we're back on the right track for the middle class. Mitt Romney would be well served to run the following 30-second ad…
There are nine key swing states in this election (Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Nevada), with four other states (particularly Michigan, which President Obama must win, and North Carolina, which Mitt Romney must win) that also have some…
The verdict now seems to be in on the Romney campaign's strategy of generally avoiding making the case against Obamacare and choosing not to make President Obama's defining legislation a defining issue in this campaign. That strategy plainly seems to have benefited both Obamacare and Obama, and it…
In one of President Obama's TV ads, Bill Clinton says that the key question in this election is which candidate can figure out how "to return us to full employment." But as the federal government's own figures show, Obama might want to start by first figuring out how to get us back to the level of…
In his speech Wednesday night, Bill Clinton said, "President Obama started with a much weaker economy than I did. No president—not me or any of my predecessors—could have repaired all the damage in just four years." Yet, under FDR, who inherited a much weaker economy than Obama did, real GDP growth…
Always looking "forward," President Obama has asked Bill Clinton—who was elected to the presidency 20 years ago—to speak tonight and suggest to the American people (whether explicitly or implicitly) that this is really a choice between Clinton and George W. Bush, rather than between Obama and Mitt…
The latest Rasmussen poll shows that 50 percent of likely voters support the repeal of Obamacare, while 41 percent oppose it. In addition to these specific tallies, Rasmussen's survey draws attention to two things.
A newly released poll from the Hill indicates that President Obama and the Democrats face strong headwinds as they start their convention. The poll shows that, by a margin of 14 percentage points (54 to 40 percent), likely voters do not think Obama's job performance merits reelection. The basis of…
Of all the generally accepted claims that have been repeated throughout this presidential campaign, perhaps the most false is the assertion that President Obama was dealt a tough hand on the economy. In truth, Obama was dealt a winning hand; he simply had no idea how to play it.
At the official kickoff of his reelection campaign, President Obama offered a tacit (although unintended) admission of four years of failure, declaring, "We have to move forward, to the future we imagined in 2008. ... That’s why I’m running for a second term as president of the United States."…
President Obama's top strategist, David Axelrod, said today on Fox News Sunday that, under Obama, we've had "29 straight months of job growth." Yet, according to the federal government's own figures, 29 months ago, 58.5 percent of Americans were employed. Today, only 58.4 percent of Americans are…
The passing of Neil Armstrong is a sad occasion in the history of our nation. But it is also a reminder of one of the most glorious achievements in American history and in the whole history of humanity. Moreover, it's a reminder of an era when the efforts of brave astronauts and brilliant engineers…
In the summer of 2009, President Obama and congressional Democrats faced a dilemma. In the midst of a severe economic downturn, and less than a year after the national debt had reached the 14-figure mark for the first time in American history, they wanted to launch a brand-new federal health care…
The AP writes, "The recession that ended three years ago this summer has been followed by the feeblest economic recovery since the Great Depression." It adds, "Since World War II, 10 U.S. recessions have been followed by a recovery that lasted at least three years. An Associated Press analysis…
In the single most important test of his leadership prior to November 6, Mitt Romney chose the ideal running mate in Paul Ryan, who will now help Romney in a myriad of ways. Some on the left, however, appear giddy at the thought of running against Ryan’s proposed Medicare reforms, which would keep…
In addition to raising federal spending (by a whopping 13 digits), federal taxes, health insurance premiums, and overall U.S. health costs, Obamacare would cause the price of pizza to rise. Politico reports that Papa John’s CEO and founder John Schnatter conveys that Obamacare would “result in…
President Obama likes to say that he inherited a terrible economy but has gotten it headed in the right direction. But the employment figures released today by the federal government’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics tell a decidedly different story. During the final month of the 2008-09 recession,…
A new Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS News poll, which shows President Obama handily beating Mitt Romney among likely voters in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, has sparked justifiable concern among some Republicans. In the wake of that poll, it’s worth comparing the state-by-state polling from…
Rasmussen’s latest poll of likely voters shows that there’s at least one thing that unites the vast majority of the American citizenry: the desire to see Obamacare be repealed.
The latest CBO scoring of Obamacare, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision upholding the overhaul’s individual mandate as an allowable (although seemingly unprecedented) tax on inactivity, shows that President Obama’s centerpiece legislation would cost about $2 trillion over its real…
The San Diego Union-Tribune, the 3rd-largest paper in California, offers a scathing, point-by-point indictment of President Obama's presidency—focusing particularly on Obamacare—and asks whether we've ever had a worse president. The Union-Tribune writes of Obama:
The latest polling by Rasmussen Reports shows that independents think Obamacare would raise (53 percent), rather than lower (16 percent), health costs. They think it would reduce (50 percent), rather than improve (13 percent), the quality of health care. They think it would raise (56 percent),…
Conservatives are engaged in an interesting intramural debate over National Federation of Independent Business, et al. v. Sebelius—the Obama-care case. But whether they think Chief Justice Roberts deserves hearty praise or contemptuous blame or any of the countless permutations in between, whether…
The latest Quinnipiac poll shows that — by a 15-point margin — the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling makes voters less likely, rather than more likely, to cast their vote for President Obama. Twenty-seven percent of registered voters say that the ruling makes them “less likely” to vote for Obama,…
Over at National Review Online, Ramesh Ponnuru highlights a CNN story entitled, “Voters sick and tired of health care debate.” Ponnuru notes that the story offers essentially no evidence to support the claim made in its headline. It’s also worth noting that the CNN story cherry picks one question…
Now that Americans are becoming more acutely aware that Obamacare would be funded in large part through higher taxes, it’s all the more crucial for President Obama to keep voters from discovering the overhaul’s other principal source of funding — its Medicare raid.
For 280 consecutive months before President Obama took office — a span of more than 23 years — the portion of Americans who were employed always exceeded 60.0 percent (according to official tallies from the Bureau of Labor Statistics). In marked contrast, last Friday’s jobs numbers show that, under…
Former Democratic pollster Pat Caddell writes in a long piece at Breitbart.com that the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold (most of) Obamacare, but only on the grounds that its lynchpin provision is a tax, “has changed the nature of the 2012 elections.” Caddell argues that Obamacare was “the…
The New York Times reports that "a veteran Republican campaign consultant," speaking on the condition of anonymity and in an apparent time warp, said, "Anytime Republicans are debating taxes and the economy, we’re winning. Anytime we’re debating health care, they’re winning." In 2008, this might…
One hundred times since President Obama signed Obamacare into law in March 2010, Rasmussen Reports has asked likely voters whether they want to repeal Obama’s centerpiece legislation or keep it. In all 100 polls, voters have favored repeal.
A newly released Rasmussen poll asked likely voters, “If Mitt Romney is elected President and Republicans win control of Congress, how likely is it that the health care law will be repealed?” Only 40 percent of independents said that it’s “very likely.” The other 60 percent of independents’…
Apparently thinking that, in our republic, the president unilaterally passes laws and the Supreme Court unilaterally decides whether or not we’ll keep them, President Obama has been telling the American people that “the law I passed [Obamacare] is here to stay.” But former Senate majority leader…
In the wake of the Supreme Court's Obamacare ruling, President Obama seems to have forgotten exactly how our law-making process works. Yahoo! News reports that, at a rally in Ohio on Thursday, the former part-time constitutional law lecturer and current president declared that "the law I passed is…
On the day that the Supreme Court released its Obamacare ruling, my daughter and I had the opportunity to visit the Reagan Ranch. Located in the mountains in the Central Coast region of California, the ranch is where President Reagan spent nearly one out of every eight days of his presidency. As…
According to a Newsweek/Daily Beast poll of likely voters, Barack Obama now rates behind Jimmy Carter in the pantheon of great presidents. The poll asked likely voters to list the two best and the two worst presidents the history of the United States. Here are the tallies, based on net results:
According to a newly released Newsweek/Daily Beast poll of likely voters, the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling makes Americans more likely to vote for Mitt Romney and less likely to vote for President Obama. By a margin of 21 points (32 to 11 percent), voters say that they are now more, rather than…
Two days after the Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling on President Obama’s signature legislation, the president delivered his weekly radio address and didn’t utter one word about Obamacare or the ruling.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare, the principal choice now facing Americans on November 6 will be whether to keep Obamacare or to repeal it. The question is a binary one, and the answer — expressed almost entirely through their presidential…
The Supreme Court has ruled that Obamacare’s individual mandate exceeds Congress’s power under the commerce clause, but (in a 5-4 vote) it has upheld the individual mandate as a tax. Here is President Obama on national TV, ensuring the American people that the mandate — Obamacare’s cornerstone…
As the nation awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Obama’s centerpiece legislation, it’s worth reviewing the American public’s response to it across the 27 months since Obama signed it into law. Over that span, from March 2010 through a poll released this morning, Rasmussen has conducted…
A new report from the Treasury Department says that Obamacare “represents the largest set of tax law changes in more than 20 years and affects millions of taxpayers.” As the report notes, Obamacare’s “new taxes, fees, and penalties account for approximately $438 billion.” But, really, it’s even…
As the Los Angeles Times reports, for every $1 that President Obama’s campaign has spent in support of Obamacare, his administration has spent another $65 in taxpayers’ money. The Times writes that the Obama administration has spent $46 million of taxpayers’ money in support of Obama’s centerpiece…
Yesterday, I noted that we have generally had our strongest periods of economic growth coming out of our deepest recessions, and I compared FDR and Obama in this vein. Another good comparison is a more recent one — between Obama and President Reagan.
In his speech yesterday, President Obama said, “[M]y plan would reduce our yearly domestic spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy in nearly 60 years.” Such an amazing claim is made possible only by excluding the two domestic programs that have contributed the most to our nearly $16…
Today, President Obama said, “It has typically taken countries up to ten years to recover from financial crises of this magnitude.” In truth, however, the historical norm has been as follows: the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery.
We’re a long way from November 6 (145 days for those who are keeping score at home), but Rasmussen’s latest polling of likely voters in states across the land shows Mitt Romney currently leading President Barack Obama in the quest for electoral votes. In fact, if the 9 key swing states were each…
With the Supreme Court poised to rule on whether Obamacare was passed in defiance of the Constitution, there’s no question where the American public stands on President Obama’s centerpiece legislation. On Thursday, a New York Times/CBS News poll showed that more than two-thirds of all Americans,…
In trying to make the case that the Spanish national soccer team (“La Roja”) is having the greatest 5-year run of any team — in any sport — in history, the Wall Street Journal dismisses Casey Stengel’s 1949-53 Yankees because those squads, which won five straight World Series, “won only 71% of…
At this point in 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was running for reelection, the Yankees’ 24-year-old Mickey Mantle was on his way to winning the Triple Crown, 37-year-old Jackie Robinson was playing in his final season in the big leagues (eventually helping Brooklyn edge the Milwaukee Braves…
Now that President Obama has brazenly claimed that “federal spending since [he] took office has risen at the slowest pace of any president in almost 60 years,” it is worth succinctly revisiting his historic record of fiscal profligacy. Here are a few key facts, all based on official federal…
The Wall Street Journal reports, “Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio said he was considering introducing legislation requiring insurance companies to let consumers cover adult children on their plans up to the age of 31, charging an additional premium if necessary.” Contrary to what you might suppose,…
On the Senate floor this morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took exception to the Obama administration’s propensity to spend taxpayer money on pro-Obama propaganda. McConnell said, “There’s a pattern here that I, and I’m sure many other Americans, find pretty outrageous.”
The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes monthly tallies for the employment-population ratio. That stat shows something rather straightforward: Among those who are living in America and are free to pursue employment, what percentage are employed? (The bureau excludes those…
In the Daily Beast, Michael Medved encourages Mitt Romney’s campaign to take steps to avoid the “catastrophe” that would result from “the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama.” He adds, “Mr. Obama could prevail by…
The New York Times gushingly describes how President Obama’s unique background — he’s “a man from many worlds,” “a transcender of tribes,” and, yes, “a former constitutional law professor” — has allowed him to unearth a creative “middle way” on the question of redefining marriage. That “middle…
On July 24, 2008, candidate Barack Obama toured Europe and drew 200,000 spectators to a rally in Berlin. On May 5, 2012, President Barack Obama officially launched his reelection campaign—which he unofficially launched over a year ago—but couldn’t fill a 19,000-seat basketball arena in Columbus,…
A newly released Fox News poll includes 42 percent Democrats and only 34 percent Republicans — an 8-point Democratic edge — and shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney by 7 points (46 to 39 percent). Among independents, however, the poll shows Romney leading by 5 points (34 to 29 percent).
If you ever find yourself engaged in a debate over why our national debt — now $15.7 trillion —has risen $5.9 trillion over the past four years and $15.4 trillion over the past fifty years, NPR has released a useful chart (based on figures provided by the White House Office of Management and…
A newly released PPP/Daily Kos poll shows President Obama and Mitt Romney locked in essentially a dead-heat in Wisconsin — where Obama beat John McCain by 14 percentage points in 2008. The poll (which was taken shortly after Obama came out in favor of redefining marriage) shows Obama with 47…
The Washington Post reports on a new study by Bloomberg Government, which shows that the repeal of Obamacare would cost health insurance companies more than $1 trillion — yes, that’s trillion — over the remainder of this decade alone. Why? Because Obamacare would transfer colossal sums of money…
When President Obama came out last week in favor of redefining marriage, he couched his opinion in the context of federalism, saying, “I think it is a mistake to — try to make what has traditionally been a state issue into a national issue.” During that same interview, however, he declared that a…
Nearly half of all Americans (46 percent) now “strongly” favor the repeal of Obamacare, while barely a quarter (26 percent) “strongly” oppose it — according to the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters. Among independents, the split is even greater — 46 percent now “strongly” favor repeal, while…
Now that President Obama has announced that, having been for gay marriage (in 1996) before he was against it (in 2004 and 2008), he’s now for it again (in 2012), the Wall Street Journal editorial board comes perilously close to suggesting that Mitt Romney should change his position on the issue. …
President Obama was never likely going to win in North Carolina without a big win nationally. Yet his campaign insisted on pretending so, going so far as to locate the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. Now, on the heels of North Carolinians having handed a resounding victory to…
One aspect of President Obama's philosophically revealing — and mock-worthy — "Julia" web ad doesn't seem to have garnered as much attention as one might have expected. Just as Julia's life of government dependency isn't likely to inspire a new set of books along the lines of the celebration of…
Which group of voters’ support for (or opposition to) Mitt Romney will hinge the most on his vice presidential choice? According to a newly released Politico-George Washington University poll, the answer is: Republicans under the age of 45.
The most politically brazen feature of Obamacare has always been its looting of Medicare. About half of Obamacare’s costs are to be covered with money taken from an already nearly bankrupt program for seniors. And the most politically perilous aspect of this ploy is Obama-care’s cuts in Medicare…
To the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and Gator Aid, President Obama has now added the Senior Swindle — a ploy to spend $8.35 billion in taxpayer money to hide the effects of Obamacare’s Medicare Advantage cuts until after the election. Under Obamacare, millions of seniors would lose…
In the 39 months that President Obama has held office, party affiliation has swung 10 points against his party.
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that 26 percent of Democrats support the repeal of President Obama’s centerpiece legislation — which, of course, was a purely Democratic endeavor that passed without a single Republican vote. Moreover, the poll shows that most of these…
Presidential elections are won on the basis of personal appeal and the ability to provide compelling leadership on the biggest issues of the day. In the opening stages of the general election race, Mitt Romney's campaign seems prematurely willing to admit defeat on the first count, while telling…
Yesterday, Jay Cost discussed President Obama’s problem with independents, noting that Obama started to lose independents by the truckload when the debate over Obamacare heated up and “has never won [them] back.” Today, a new Quinnipiac poll further highlights the extent of the trouble that Obama…
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger writes about the similarities between President Obama’s campaign message and that of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1936 reelection message. Henninger argues that Obama won’t be nearly so successful as FDR was in championing a big government…
A month before President Obama signed Obama-care into law, his secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, said, “I think the president remains committed to the notion that we have to have a comprehensive approach, because the pieces of the puzzle are too closely tied to one…
Yesterday, President Obama said, “We have not seen a Court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on a economic issue, like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce — a law like that has not been overturned at least since Lochner. Right? So we’re going back to the…
Rather amazingly, President Obama stood at a podium between Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and Mexican president Felipe Calderon on Monday and declared that it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to strike down “a law that was passed by a strong majority” of Congress. The law…
Americans don’t look to be inclined to rely on the Supreme Court to determine the future of Obamacare. For the 30th consecutive time, Rasmussen’s polling of likely voters shows that Americans not only support the repeal of President Obama’s centerpiece legislation but support it by…
During yesterday’s arguments on the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate, Justice Stephen Breyer took exception to the states’ argument that the mandate imposes, for the first time in American history, a congressional obligation that private citizens must purchase a product of the…
The Washington Post editorial board essentially writes that, because Obamacare is good policy (in the editors’ estimation), and because it would involve the economy, it must also be constitutional. Here is the Post’s argument, in its entirety:
Senior White House advisor David Plouffe — President Obama’s campaign manager in 2008 — told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that, when it comes to dealing with our colossal deficits and debt, “the right approach is the president’s approach.” That approach, Plouffe added, “gets our deficit on a…
What do you do when the defining event of your presidency is the passage of a massive health care overhaul that bears your name, is wildly unpopular, and was passed into law without receiving a single vote from the opposing party? If you’re President Obama, you don’t abandon your well-worn strategy…
Rick Santorum’s 22-point margin of victory in yesterday’s Louisiana primary was the 2nd-largest in any GOP primary this year — and was the largest outside of any candidate’s home state. Santorum received 49 percent of the vote in the Bayou State, equaling the combined tallies of Mitt Romney (27…
At the time when President Obama signed Obamacare into law — two years ago today — the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that Obamacare would cost 3 million people their employer-sponsored health insurance by the end of this decade. Seemingly in commemoration of Obamacare’s anniversary,…
In USA Today, Mitt Romney argues that we need “to abolish” Obamacare, “root and branch,” and replace it with “a free market, federalist approach to making quality, affordable health insurance available to every American.” He writes, “Each state should be allowed to pursue its own solution in this…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely GOP primary voters, taken the day after Mitt Romney’s win in Illinois, shows Rick Santorum with a 12-point lead over Romney in Louisiana (43 to 31 percent). If Santorum’s lead holds up, it will continue the trend of Romney winning Democratic-leaning states,…
The following exchange should give Republicans a pretty good indication of whether President Obama would rather have the upcoming election be focused on Obamacare or the economy:
Today marks the 2-year anniversary of the Democratically controlled House’s passage of Obamacare (without a single Republican vote). For many of us, that date — March 21, 2010, immediately led our thoughts to two future dates: November 2, 2010 and, especially, November 6, 2012. Here’s what I wrote…
While it’s clear that regional variations have played a role thus far in the Republican primaries — with Mitt Romney doing well in the Northeast but not in the South, for example — breaking down the contests along other lines might help shed some additional light on the race. It’s perhaps…
At the end of 2008 — the year President Obama was elected —our national debt was $9.986 trillion. It’s now $15.542 trillion and counting — a increase of $5.556 trillion, or 56 percent, in just over three years. With that staggering — and unparalleled — record of fiscal profligacy in mind, let’s…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that Americans support the repeal of Obamacare by a margin of 17 percentage points — 56 to 39 percent. The margin of support for repeal is slightly higher among independents — 18 points (57 to 39 percent). Repeal is supported by a majority of both…
As is becoming increasingly clear, the legislation that was the principal cause of the Democrats’ historic defeat in 2010 isn’t getting any more popular as President Obama heads toward his day of accountability to the American citizenry. Four days before the 2-year anniversary of when Obama signed…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely general election voters in the “core four” swing states of Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina shows Rick Santorum leading President Obama by 4 percentage points (48 to 44 percent), while Mitt Romney trails Obama by 4 points (46 to 42 percent) — an…
Rasmussen’s polling shows Mitt Romney leading Rick Santorum by 9 percentage points (41 to 32 percent) in Illinois, yet likely primary voters in the Prairie State hold almost identically favorable views of each candidate. Romney’s net favorability rating is +38 points (68 percent “favorable” to 30…
In the biggest prize among November's swing states, the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows Rick Santorum faring slightly better than Mitt Romney versus President Obama. In Florida, Santorum trails Obama by 2 percentage points (45 to 43 percent), while Romney trails Obama by 3 points (46…
With the Alabama and Mississippi primaries now complete, and with the Hawaii caucuses counted, more than half of the states (accounting for 41 percent of the delegates) are now in the books in the Republican presidential race. Through these first 26 states, Mitt Romney has won 52.7 percent (496 of…
Summarizing President Obama's accomplishments to date, Jonathan Cohn writes in the New Republic, "Health care reform alone constitutes a major legislative legacy. The Recovery Act launched infrastructure and energy projects that could shape the economy and, by the way, education for a generation.…
During his interview yesterday with David Gregory on Meet the Press, Rick Santorum shared his thoughts on the economy, Obamacare, and how Republicans can beat President Obama.
Two new post-Super Tuesday polls show Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum running neck-and-neck for the lead in the Republican presidential race. An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Romney leading Santorum by 4 points (33 to 29 percent), while a CBS News/New York Times poll shows Santorum leading…
Rasmussen’s polling in Alabama and Mississippi shows Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich each having between 25 and 35 percent support in both states, suggesting true 3-man races in both upcoming GOP primaries. (In Alabama, Gingrich leads with 30 percent support, followed by Santorum at…
Mitt Romney’s campaign sent out a memo yesterday saying, “As the other candidates attempt to ignore the basic principles of math, the only person’s odds of winning they are increasing are Barack Obama’s.” The memo asserts that “the delegate math just doesn’t add up for anyone but Mitt.” Well,…
Back when Rick Santorum was driving around Iowa in the “Chuck Truck,” the ratio between Mitt Romney’s and Santorum’s respective fundraising hauls was far greater than the ratio between the respective payrolls of the Boston Red Sox and the Pittsburgh Pirates. For every $1 that Santorum raised in…
The two leading GOP candidates' speeches last night showcased the real divide in the GOP race. Here's what each of them said, in total, about Obamacare:
Super Tuesday coincides with the 28th consecutive Rasmussen poll showing double-digit support for the repeal of Obamacare. By a margin of 11 percentage points (53 to 42 percent), the poll shows that likely voters from across the political spectrum favor repealing President Obama’s signature…
According to a recent USA Today/Gallup poll, a whopping four out of five swing-state voters regard Obamacare’s individual mandate as unconstitutional. Somewhat incredibly, more than half of all Democrats nationwide (not just in swing states) agree. And voters in every last one of the 88 counties of…
Kim Strassel had an excellent piece in Friday’s Wall Street Journal about another issue — in addition to Obamacare — that President Obama has gift-wrapped for the Republican party and for the wider cause of limited government. She writes,
As BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski reports, USA Today published a health care op-ed by Mitt Romney on July 30, 2009 — just days before the start of the August recess that quickly became the August uprising against Obamacare. In his op-ed, Romney seems to encourage President Obama to move in a slower…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely general-election voters shows Rick Santorum trailing President Obama by 3 percentage points, which is within the margin of error, while Mitt Romney trails Obama by 6 points. Obama leads Santorum by the tally of 46 to 43 percent. He leads Romney by the tally of…
President Obama recently sat down to talk with ESPN’s Bill Simmons, and the two had the following exchange:
It has been said that there is very little difference between the policy preferences of the three leading Republican presidential candidates. This may well be true. But there is a big difference between what the candidates think this election is about.
Rick Santorum reportedly raised $9 million in February. That’s almost ten times what he raised in the entire fourth quarter of 2011 ($917,000), twice what he raised in January ($4.5 million), and 40 percent more than Mitt Romney raised in January ($6.2 million). The Santorum campaign reports that…
Speaking after his 3-point loss (41 to 38 percent) to Mitt Romney in Michigan, which will net him between 12 and 15 of the 30 delegates in Romney’s native state, Rick Santorum said:
A few months ago, when President Obama proposed to restrict the deductibility of charitable contributions made by relatively well-off Americans, I asked why Obama is so opposed to having money go directly to the needy, rather than having it first be filtered through the government. Yet last week,…
A newly released USA Today/Gallup poll shows that, by a margin of 13 percentage points (53 to 40 percent), swing-state voters want Obamacare to be repealed. The poll included registered voters in 12 key states: Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, New…
Since Mitt Romney and Ron Paul continue to make the curious claim that former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum isn’t a fiscal conservative, here’s a quick, pocket-sized overview of spending grade point averages (GPAs) during Santorum’s tenure in the Senate — based on grades awarded by the…
A Rasmussen poll of likely voters in the “four key states” of Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, shows Rick Santorum leading President Obama by 5 percentage points among independents, while Obama leads Mitt Romney by 3 percentage points among that crucial group of voters. The Rasmussen…
During Wednesday night’s Republican debate, moderator John King said, “Governor Romney, both Senator Santorum and Speaker Gingrich have said during your tenure as governor, you required Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims. And Mr. Speaker, you compared the governor…
A new Quinnipiac poll released today shows that, by a wide (and widening) margin, Americans want Obamacare to be repealed. By a margin of 13 percentage points (52 to 39 percent), Americans support the repeal of President Obama’s centerpiece legislation. That represents a swing of 8 points,…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney by 10 percentage points (49 to 39 percent) and leading Rick Santorum by 7 percentage points (48 to 41 percent). The poll was taken yesterday — on George Washington’s Birthday — mostly before the GOP debate. Obama’s…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows President Obama leading Rick Santorum by 3 percentage points and leading Mitt Romney by 6 percentage points. Obama leads Santorum by the tally of 46 to 43 percent, while he leads Romney by the tally of 47 to 41 percent.
During tonight’s GOP debate, Ron Paul took exception to Rick Santorum’s claim that Paul had finished “in the bottom half of Republicans this year” in ratings published by the American Conservative Union (ACU). Santorum made the comment immediately after having highlighted that the National…
The Obama administration’s recent decree — that, under Obamacare, Americans would no longer be free to offer or to choose new health plans that don’t include complimentary coverage of birth control, morning-after pills and the abortion drug ella — would likely lead a great many people to switch to…
Whatever the press corps may think the upcoming election will be about, one thing remains clear: Americans overwhelmingly support the repeal of President Obama’s centerpiece legislation. According to the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters, Americans support the repeal of Obamacare by a margin…
Just before the start of the holiday weekend, Rick Santorum gave a thoughtful and wide-ranging interview in Michigan. Over the course of 25 minutes, he discussed Iran (4:05-6:55), saying, “Israel shouldn’t be leading this. This is a national security issue for the United States...we should be…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney by 4 percentage points in Romney’s home state of Michigan. Santorum now leads Romney by the tally of 38 to 34 percent, while Ron Paul has 10 percent support and Newt Gingrich has 9 percent.
Mitt Romney is now explicitly arguing that Rick Santorum is not a fiscal conservative. CNN writes, “Mitt Romney unleashed his harshest public attacks to date on his surging rival, Rick Santorum, during a rally in Boise Friday. The former Massachusetts governor told an audience of more than one…
It’s rare to have a governing philosophy that usually hides behind a carefully constructed rhetorical justification be laid bare for all the world to see, but that’s exactly what happened when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently shared her thoughts about the document that she’s duty-bound to…
Rick Santorum, who trailed Mitt Romney by 20 points eight days ago, has now taken the lead in Gallup’s national polling. In the Gallup poll released on February 8, Romney led Santorum by the tally of 37 to 17 percent. In the current Gallup poll, Santorum has moved into the lead — 32 to 31 percent.
In the wake of the recent Obamacare decree that Americans should no longer be allowed to choose insurance policies that don’t cover contraception, morning-after pills, and the abortion drug ella — or even policies that charge copays for these items (in exchange for lower premiums) — President…
The Real Clear Politics average of recent polling now shows Rick Santorum having taken the lead in the Republican presidential race. Santorum’s average level of support across recent polling is 30.8 percent, compared to Mitt Romney’s 29.2 percent. Newt Gingrich is in third place, with 16.2…
Mitt Romney is now arguing that Rick Santorum’s record exposes him as one of those Republicans who “act like Democrats” once they get to Washington. Romney surrogate Tim Pawlenty adds that Santorum “clearly has been part of the big-spending establishment in Congress.” Another Romney surrogate,…
President Obama’s fourth budget has now been released, which allows for a relatively full accounting of deficit spending during his four years in office. The picture isn’t pretty, but it is revealing.
The first GOP presidential poll taken in California in 2012 shows Mitt Romney leading Rick Santorum by just 2 percentage points, which is well within the survey’s 4.6-point margin of error. The poll, taken by SurveyUSA, shows Romney with 33 percent support and Santorum with 31 percent support. Newt…
The latest Public Policy Polling survey shows Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney by 15 percentage points in the Republican presidential race. In the wake of his upset victory in Colorado and his lopsided wins in Missouri and Minnesota, Santorum now has 38 percent support nationally among usual…
Saturday's lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal discusses the White House's “accommodation” concerning its decree that all new private insurance plans must cover birth control pills, morning-after pills, and the abortion drug ella—and must cover them free of charge. The Journal writes, “Under…
There has been an extraordinary backlash to the Obama administration’s recent decree that, under Obamacare, all new private health plans must cover (among many other things) the birth control pill, the morning-after pill, and the abortion drug ella — and must cover them “free of charge” (thereby…
With St. Louis and Kansas City on opposite ends of the state, and with mostly small(er) towns or rural areas in between, Missouri features a blend of urban, suburban, and rural living somewhat like that of the United States as a whole. Yet as this map from the Los Angeles Times shows, Rick Santorum…
When Mitt Romney won the Florida primary last Tuesday by 14 percentage points, how many people in America imagined that when Colorado, Missouri, and Minnesota were contested just seven days later, he would fail to win in any of them? But it wasn’t just that Romney lost. In Minnesota and Missouri,…
If the 2012 presidential election is close, which by all accounts it will be, the outcome will likely be decided by 13 states. Of those 13 states (combining for 162 electoral votes), six (combining for 81 electoral votes) are located at least partially in the Midwest, making that the most important…
Highlighting how crucial it is that the eventual Republican presidential nominee be able and willing to put Obamacare front and center in the general election campaign, the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that independents overwhelmingly support the repeal of President Obama’s…
The latest Rasmussen polling of likely voters shows Rick Santorum faring 8 points better than Mitt Romney in respective head-to-head matchup versus President Obama. Rasmussen shows that Santorum leads Obama by 1 percentage point (45 to 44 percent), while Romney trails Obama by 7 percentage points…
Rasmussen’s latest polling of likely voters shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum by slender and nearly identical margins. Obama leads Romney by 1 point (46 to 45 percent) and Santorum by 2 points (46 to 44 percent). The President also leads Newt Gingrich by 8 points (49 to…
In President Obama’s first budget, entitled (with no apparent sense of irony) “A New Era of Responsibility,” he projected that the federal budget deficit in 2012 would be a rather hefty $581 billion (see summary table S-1). Fast-forwarding three years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now…
In Missouri, where the next Republican primary will take place (next Tuesday), a new poll by PPP shows Rick Santorum leading Mitt Romney by 11 percentage points — 45 to 34 percent — while Ron Paul has 13 percent support. Newt Gingrich isn’t on the ballot in Missouri, so the Show Me State offers a…
Here’s how many votes the respective Republican presidential candidates got in Florida for every $1,000 that they or their super PACs spent on TV advertising in the state (according to ad figures published by the Washington Post as of Friday):
With his comfortable win in Florida, Mitt Romney has now raised his winning percentage in this year’s Republican primaries or caucuses to .500 (with a record of 2-2).
Mitt Romney seems to have succeeded in raising enough doubts about Newt Gingrich to secure a comfortable win in Florida, but his attacks and his prospective victory coincide with a majority of Americans thinking President Obama doesn’t look too bad. Rasmussen’s polling shows that 51 percent of all…
Last night, Sean Hannity asked Sarah Palin whether she’d vote for Newt Gingrich in Florida. Palin replied, “Yeah, I’d keep the process going.” The 2008 vice presidential nominee and former Alaska governor said the key question is, “Who is best able to defend our republic?” She argued, “We find out…
As the Florida ad wars continue, Newt Gingrich has pulled an ad that left out the word “illegal” in characterizing Mitt Romney as “anti-immigrant,” but Romney continues to run an ad that leaves out the word “exonerated” in highlighting ethics charges leveled against Gingrich.
Politico reports, "Picking up where he left off during the debate, Rick Santorum said Friday that Mitt Romney’s health care record is 'a big, big liability' and 'something to get mad about.'"
Mitt Romney is back to talking about firing people. During last night’s debate, he responded to Newt Gingrich’s proposal that America establish a lunar colony by the end of the decade by saying that if someone presented him with that proposal, “I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’” While one might think…
During last night’s debate, Mitt Romney responded to Newt Gingrich’s proposal that America establish a lunar colony by the end of the decade by saying that if someone presented him with that proposal, “I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’” While one might think Romney justified in firing someone who pitched…
More than anyone else during any of the previous Republican presidential debates, Rick Santorum took dead aim tonight at the similarities between Romneycare and Obamacare. Arguing that those similarities could pose great problems for the Republican party and for the prospects for repeal if Mitt…
There is a great deal of debate going on about which Republican presidential candidate would likely fare the best versus President Obama this fall. The latest Rasmussen polling shows that all three leading GOP contenders are currently within 5 points of each other versus Obama, and all three are…
Mitt Romney has been attacking Newt Gingrich for alleged ethics violations during his tenure as speaker of the House. But as Byron York writes, the Gingrich ethics scandal was a product of vindictive partisan politics, it was inflamed by a complicit press corps, and it resulted (with little press…
In wake of his 12-point defeat in the South Carolina primary (which no previous Republican nominee has lost), Mitt Romney’s principal challenge is to convince Republican primary voters that he shares their core convictions and concerns. Above all, he needs to convince them that he shares their…
For the first time since the New Year, Newt Gingrich has pulled ahead of Mitt Romney in Gallup’s national polling. In the most recent 5-day poll — from January 20-24 (straddling the South Carolina primary) — Gingrich leads Romney by 3 percentage points: 31 to 28 percent. Ten days earlier (January…
According to the latest Rasmussen poll, Newt Gingrich now enjoys the support of 52 percent of Tea Party voters, and his huge advantage among such voters has vaulted him into the national lead in the GOP presidential race. The poll was taken yesterday, two days after Gingrich’s win in the South…
In an interesting portion of last night’s Republican presidential debate, moderator Brian Williams asked, “Governor Romney…what have you done to further the cause of conservatism as a Republican leader?” Romney replied,
Last Monday, Gallup’s national 5-day polling (taken from January 11-15) showed Mitt Romney leading his nearest competitors in the Republican presidential field (Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum) by a colossal 23 percentage points — 37 to 14 percent. Just seven days later, Romney’s lead over Gingrich…
The latest Gallup polling shows Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney each trailing President Obama by exactly the same tally — 50 to 48 percent. Across the months, Gallup has shown a slow decline in Romney’s level of support versus Obama: Romney led Obama by 2 percentage points in September, was tied in…
Saturday’s South Carolina primary featured a number of firsts:
As John McCormack writes, the Obama administration’s latest health-care decree states that, under Obamacare, religiously affiliated organizations (hospitals, schools, charities, and the like) will be required to provide free birth control and morning-after pills to their employees, including free…
In tonight’s debate, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum both questioned whether Mitt Romney actually governed in a pro-life fashion, even after his public conversion on abortion. Both claimed that Romney’s health care law increased access to taxpayer-subsidized abortion. Romney denied any culpability,…
The latest Rasmussen poll from South Carolina shows a 16-point swing between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich over the span of two days. In Rasmussen’s polling taken on Monday, before the most recent GOP presidential debate, Romney led Gingrich by 14 percentage points — 35 to 21 percent. Rasmussen’s…
An Insider Advantage poll taken in South Carolina on Wednesday — two days after the most recent Republican presidential debate — shows that Newt Gingrich has erased a double-digit deficit to take the lead over Mitt Romney. Gingrich now has 32 percent support, up 11 percentage points from his tally…
Last night, referring to the Republican presidential race, Sean Hannity asked Sarah Palin, “You haven’t given an endorsement. Are you gettin’ any closer to giving an endorsement?” The former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate replied:
Three days before the South Carolina Republican primary, the press corps is poised to declare the GOP race over. If Mitt Romney follows up his wins in Iowa and New Hampshire with a win in the South, the media will tell Republicans in the other 47 states that there’s no need for them to cast votes…
The latest Rasmussen poll from South Carolina shows little movement, aside from Mitt Romney apparently having picked up almost all of the support that previously went to Jon Huntsman. The poll likely represents a high watermark for Romney in South Carolina, as it was taken just after Huntsman…
Crossroads GPS, the policy arm of the American Crossroads PAC, says a key factor in successfully repealing Obamacare in 2013 will be emphasizing the importance of repeal during the 2012 election campaign. National Journal quotes Crossroads GPS president Steven Law:
Rasmussen polling shows Mitt Romney leading in South Carolina, while Newt Gingrich is in second place and closing. It’s also interesting, however, to note the Republican candidates’ respective levels of support among Tea Party and non-Tea Party voters in what will be the first Republican-leaning…
For those who might have missed it, Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren interviewed Newt Gingrich last night and asked whether he was “backing down” on his “attack on Bain capital.” Gingrich replied:
An Insider Advantage poll from South Carolina, taken after the New Hampshire primary, shows Mitt Romney with a narrow lead over Newt Gingrich. Romney has 23 percent support to Gingrich’s 21 percent support. Rick Santorum is in third place, with 14 percent support, followed by Ron Paul (13 percent…
Newt Gingrich edged Rick Santorum for 4th place in the New Hampshire Republican primary, nipping him by 49 votes, as the final tally came in as follows: Mitt Romney, 39 percent; Ron Paul, 23 percent; Jon Huntsman, 17 percent; Gingrich, 9 percent; Santorum, 9 percent; and Rick Perry, 1 percent. …
Yale law and political science professor Bruce Ackerman is certainly no friend of our written constitutional forms. In his book, We the People: Foundations, he advocates an informal constitutional “amendment” process, whereby the people may skirt what he calls the “classical” amendment process that…
The latest PPP polling in North Carolina, the swing-state where the Democrats are holding their 2012 convention, shows Rick Santorum faring slightly better than Mitt Romney versus President Obama. The poll shows Santorum and Obama tied at 46 percent apiece in a hypothetical general election…
The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that, since the survey taken in the first month after Obamacare’s passage, the gap between those who like Obamacare and those who dislike it has swung 8 percentage points against the health care overhaul. Kaiser is an outlier poll, consistently showing…
A national CBS News poll taken after Iowa and released today shows that no one in the Republican presidential field has the support of even 20 percent of GOP primary voters. The poll shows Mitt Romney leading with 19 percent support, followed relatively closely by Newt Gingrich (15 percent), and…
On the eve of the New Hampshire Republican primary, Rasmussen’s nationwide polling of likely voters shows that Americans want Congress and the President to repeal Obamacare. By a margin of 15 percentage points (54 to 39 percent), Americans want repeal. By a margin of 17 points (51 to 34 percent),…
In this morning’s Republican presidential debate on Meet the Press, David Gregory asked Mitt Romney, “What would you say to conservatives, so that they'll trust that you'll stand up for conservative principles?” Without skipping a beat, Romney replied, “They've got my record as governor.”
It was a tough distinction to earn (given the competition), but tonight ABC News managed to stage perhaps the most pointless debate of the Republican presidential race. George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer seemed to be under the impression that Mitt Romney is in 5th place in the GOP race (they…
The conventional wisdom says Mitt Romney is the candidate that President Obama and his allies fear, while they’re allegedly salivating at the thought of facing Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum. Of course, conventional wisdom didn’t have Santorum coming from sixth place in the polls with three weeks…
As Adam White explores in much greater detail, President Obama plainly doesn’t like being required to obtain Senate approval of his nominees — even though the Senate is controlled by his own party. Instead, Obama has preferred to entrust power to so-called “czars,” who aren’t approved by the Senate…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters offers a bit of good news and bit of bad news for Mitt Romney. The poll shows that President Obama and Romney are now tied, at 42 percent support apiece. But among independents, the group that’s most likely to swing the next election, Obama now enjoys a…
The New Hampshire Union Leader reports:
Michele Bachmann’s speech announcing her departure from the presidential field emphasized the singular importance of repealing Obamacare. Referring to Howard Chandler Christy’s painting of the signing of the Constitution, which hangs in the United States Capitol, she said:
The top-5 finishers in the Iowa Republican caucus had widely varying degrees of success in turning money spent into votes received. According to data published by BuzzFeed, showing how much was spent on Iowa media ads by each candidate (or by the super PACs and others who supported them), here’s…
Yesterday, I posed five questions about the Iowa caucuses, and the answers are now in. Mitt Romney set a new all-time record for the lowest winning share of the vote (for either party) in the Iowa caucuses — 25 percent — one point lower than Bob Dole’s 26 percent level of support in 1996. That’s…
The first Gallup poll released in the New Year — covering the period from December 26 through January 2 — shows Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich practically tied with 24 and 23 percent support, respectively, among registered Republican and Republican-leaning voters. Ron Paul is all alone in third…
As voters get their first formal chance to weigh in on the Republican presidential nomination process, here are five questions that will be answered during tonight’s Iowa caucuses:
It’s likely that no candidate will win so much as 30 percent of the votes cast in Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses. Yet you can bet that the press corps will crown as the big winner the candidate who gets perhaps one-quarter of the votes of caucus-goers in a state that’s half the size of the average…
During a recent 60 Minutes interview, President Obama revealed that he was being modest when he awarded himself a B+ grade near the end of his first year as president. “I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president—with the possible…
Two thousand and twelve is now upon us, and one thing is clear: It will be a nation-defining year. The election that will take place just over ten months from now will serve either as a welcome reaffirmation, or as a significant repudiation, of America’s founding principles of limited government…
It’s an article of faith among many Republicans that Mitt Romney is the most electable candidate in the GOP field. But it’s not clear that this assertion is actually true. In fact, if one were going to design a Republican opponent tailor-made to President Obama’s liking, that opponent would be…
Mitt Romney leads Newt Gingrich by just 2 percentage points (26 to 24 percent) in Gallup’s most recent national polling (which extends through yesterday). That’s well within the 4-point margin of error. Ron Paul is a distant third, with 11 percent support, while all other GOP candidates are in…
In the Washington Post, George Will writes that Newt Gingrich’s “campaign against courts repudiates contemporary conservatism’s core commitment to limited government.”
The Hill reports: “Requiring people to have health insurance is ‘conservative,’ GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney told MSNBC on Wednesday, but only if states do it.” The Hill adds: “The argument aims to improve Romney’s appeal to Republican voters concerned about the healthcare reform plan he…
The latest Gallup poll of registered voters, conducted late last week and over the weekend, shows Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney trailing President Obama by identical tallies — 50 to 48 percent. Gallup interestingly writes that it “finds a slight improvement in Gingrich’s standing versus Obama, but…
The latest PPP survey shows six Republican candidates with double-digit support in Iowa but no one with even 25 percent support. The poll shows Ron Paul leading with 23 percent support, followed by Mitt Romney at 20 percent, Newt Gingrich at 14 percent, and Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick…
During an interview on Dennis Prager's radio show today, Daniel Henninger elaborated on his piece in the Wall Street Journal, saying that he doesn't think Mitt Romney is yet ready for the challenge of taking on President Obama. Henninger, the deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page,…
1. Will “New Newt” reappear, thereby showing that even in the face of increasingly frequent and effective attacks, the Newt Gingrich of 2012 can convey the maturation, the positive message, and the commitment to fighting President Obama, that has marked his unexpected rise to date?
Many commentators who are friendly to the conservative cause have rightly argued (for example, see here and here) that independent voters will likely determine the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. With exit polling in 2010 having shown an electorate comprising 35 percent Republicans, 35…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by the whopping margin of 20 percentage points — 55 to 35 percent — Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. This marks the continuation of a striking trend: Since Memorial Day (just over six months ago), Rasmussen has taken 21 polls on…
During the Obama presidency (still less than three years old), the number of Americans who think their country’s best days are in the future, rather than in the past, has taken a 33-point turn for the worse, according to a newly released Rasmussen poll. The weekend before President Obama took…
A new Quinnipiac poll shows that President Obama is now trailing both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney among independents in the crucial swing states of Florida and Ohio. The poll shows that, among independents, Gingrich leads Obama by 4 percentage points (45 to 41 percent) in Florida and by 1…
Spike Dolomite Ward’s op-ed in the Los Angeles Times has been getting a fair amount of attention. Ward, a private citizen and an on-again, off-again supporter of President Obama and his party, is now thankful for Obama because Obamacare helped her get health coverage for cancer when she didn’t…
Gallup’s polling of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now shows Newt Gingrich with a 15-point lead over runner-up Mitt Romney — 37 to 22 percent. In the previous Gallup poll, taken three weeks ago, Gingrich led Romney by just 1 point — 22 to 21 percent. Gingrich appears to have…
Today marks the 70th anniversary of a date that has indeed lived in infamy: December 7, 1941 — the date on which the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and thrust America into World War II. The next afternoon, before a joint session of Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, to thunderous…
The Washington Post writes that “some Democratic strategists worry that the combative [Newt] Gingrich presents some challenges for the Obama campaign that would not exist if Romney were the GOP candidate.” Chief among these are the enthusiasm that Gingrich could potentially generate among…
The Washington Post reports that, under President Obama and his Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the Food and Drug Administration is considering letting “anyone of any age buy the controversial morning-after pill Plan B directly off drugstore and supermarket shelves without a…
On Saturday night, while most sensible people were happily flipping back and forth between the Big Ten championship game, the ACC championship game, and the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game, the Republican presidential candidates (save Jon Huntsman) appeared at a televised presidential forum in New…
In a piece subtly entitled, “The Bomb Buried in Obamacare Explodes Today — Hallelujah!,” Rick Ungar gleefully writes in Forbes that a rarely discussed provision of Obamacare will put us on “an inescapable path to a single-payer system for most Americans….” The provision to which Ungar refers is…
The new Des Moines Register poll shows Newt Gingrich with a 7-point lead in Iowa over Ron Paul, and a 9-point lead of Mitt Romney. “It’s a three-person race, but there’s a clear leader,” says J. Ann Selzer, the Register’s pollster. The last poll conducted by Selzer — the recognized expert in Iowa…
Kim Strassel has an excellent piece in today’s Wall Street Journal on Herman Cain’s underappreciated contributions to the GOP race. She writes, “[U]nlike Mrs. Bachmann, or Mr. Perry, or the no-shows [who didn’t run], Mr. Cain has fundamentally altered the dynamics of the GOP primary. In the…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters — which shows Newt Gingrich with a 21-point lead over runner-up Mitt Romney — suggests that Gingrich is uniting the Tea Party and establishment wings of the Republican Party. The poll shows that among likely Republican primary voters who do not consider…
The latest Rasmussen survey of likely voters — which shows Newt Gingrich beating Barack Obama, 45 to 43 percent — also shows Gingrich beating Obama among independents for the first time. In fact, the poll shows that Gingrich is now clobbering Obama among independents — 50 to 32 percent.
The November Kaiser Health Tracking poll shows that Americans have an “unfavorable” (44 percent), rather than a “favorable” (37 percent), view of Obamacare — including 29 percent “very unfavorable” to 17 percent “very favorable.” What’s most remarkable about Kaiser’s survey, however, is that it…
Minnesota Public Radio reports, “A loophole in the federal health care overhaul would allow many employers to game the system by dumping their sicker employees [into] public health insurance exchanges, according to two University of Minnesota law professors.” Such “targeted dumping” of sicker…
For the first time, Newt Gingrich has moved into first place in Gallup’s net favorability ratings. Here are the candidates’ respective tallies among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents:
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that Americans as a whole, and independents in particular, want Obamacare to be repealed. By a margin of 13 percentage points (53 to 40 percent), respondents support Obamacare’s repeal. Among independents, the margin is even higher — 19 points (57…
Remember those ads with a Paul Ryan-lookalike rolling granny’s wheelchair off a cliff? Well, just a few short months later, the New York Times writes:
The Wall Street Journal editorial board writes, “Here’s one good way to consider the vote in 2012: It’s about whether to re-elect President Lisa Jackson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, which these days runs most the U.S. economy.” The Journal observes that the Obama EPA has now…
We are just past the halfway point between the last congressional election and the next one, and the conventional wisdom is that the upcoming election will be all about the economy. Elections during the Obama presidency, we are continually assured, are not about profligate federal spending, federal…
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent claims to debunk the conservative argument against raising taxes on wealthier Americans, by drawing attention to “how much the share of their own income they are paying in taxes” and observing how much that share “has shrunk” (italics in original). But the facts…
It’s becoming increasingly hard to say whether Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney, the two leading Republican presidential candidates, would fare better against Barack Obama. The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows Gingrich trailing Obama by just 6 percentage points — 46 to 40 percent. Less than…
The failure of the supercommittee marks a good time to highlight just how out of control our federal spending really is. To see the matter in a clearer light, let’s leave aside all disputes over tax revenues for the time being, and focus purely on spending.
The latest Gallup poll of registered Republican and Republican-leaning voters shows Newt Gingrich in first place in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, edging Mitt Romney by 1 percentage point (22 to 21 percent). Herman Cain is in 3rd place, with 16 percent support — followed by Ron Paul…
Paul Ryan was right to cast his vote against the Balanced Budget Amendment on Friday. We need an amendment that treats the disease (excess spending), not the symptom (deficits). We need an amendment that would limit government spending, not set a tax trap. Instead of a Balanced Budget Amendment, we…
A new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that 74 percent of independents reject President Obama’s contention that (in the question’s wording) “the federal government [has] the constitutional authority to force everyone to buy health insurance.” Only 18 percent concur with Obama’s reading of the…
A new poll shows that, over the past month, Mitt Romney’s lead over Newt Gingrich in New Hampshire has shrunk from 35 points to 2. A month ago, a Magellan Strategies poll (a Republican poll) showed that Romney had the support of 41 percent of potential Republican primary voters in the Granite…
The latest Fox News poll shows Newt Gingrich leading the Republican presidential field, edging Mitt Romney. Gingrich now has the support of 23 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, compared with 22 percent for Romney, 15 percent for Herman Cain, 8 percent for Ron Paul, 7…
The National Debt Clock now shows the national debt of the United States of America is higher than $15,000,000,000,000.00. According to the White House, when President Obama was elected — just three years ago — the national debt was less than $10 trillion (see table S-9 on p. 134). At a campaign…
A new Gallup poll shows that Americans want repeal and that about two-thirds of those who want repeal think it’s “very important.”
During a recent press conference, President Obama referred to Hawaii — his home state — as being in Asia. One wonders what sort of press coverage would have ensued if, say, George W. Bush or Rick Perry had said that Pearl Harbor is in Asia. Here's video (around the 35:17 mark):
The latest PPP survey shows that Newt Gingrich’s recent gains haven’t just been among Republicans. Last month, PPP showed Gingrich faring 11 points worse than Mitt Romney versus Barack Obama, but this month that gap has closed to just 3 points. Last month, Romney was tied with Obama (at 45 percent…
Is it just a coincidence that the people that President Obama nominates to fill high-level governmental posts tend to favor government-directed health care rationing? Last year, Obama nominated Donald Berwick to head Medicare and Medicaid. Now he’s nominated Henry J. Aaron to head the Social…
By a colossal margin, middle class Americans want Obamacare to be repealed. The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, among those who make between $40,000 and $60,000 a year, a whopping 68 percent support the repeal of Obamacare, while only 27 percent oppose it — a margin of 41…
The U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will hear a challenge to the Obamacare ruling issued by a 3-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. That appellate court panel struck down Obamacare’s individual mandate but not the rest of the legislation, despite the White House’s assertion that…
Throughout the Obamacare debate, President Obama repeatedly promised, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Now, Gallup reports that from the first quarter of 2010 (when Obama signed Obamacare into law) to the third quarter of this year, 2 percent of American…
A newly released Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey of “usual Republican primary voters” in Ohio shows that Herman Cain is still leading — and by a fairly wide margin. Perhaps the survey’s most eye-catching result, however, is that Newt Gingrich has now moved into 2nd place in the Buckeye State.
In his Fox News “Center Seat” interview last night, Newt Gingrich highlighted (from 18:30 to 21:00) that “the first item” on his legislative agenda is “repealing Obamacare,” adding, “I think that’ll be the campaign theme in September and October of next year.”
In a ruling released yesterday, a 3-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t void any part of Obamacare, instead ruling that the health care overhaul doesn’t clearly exceed Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause. While concluding that Obamacare “seems an intrusive exercise of…
A ballot measure that StateImpact Ohio (a creation of local public media and NPR) describes as “a referendum on a constitutional amendment…aimed at keeping the national health care reform law from taking [e]ffect” won in all 88 counties in Ohio. In 81 of the counties, it won by a margin of at least…
Three weeks ago, Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters showed Speaker Newt Gingrich trailing President Barack Obama by a whopping 27 percentage points (51 to 24 percent) among independent voters. Now, Rasmussen shows, Obama’s lead over Gingrich has shrunk to just 6 points (41 to 35 percent) among…
When President Obama pitched his first stimulus, to the tune of $787,000,000,000.00, his administration famously claimed that such massive deficit spending was necessary to keep unemployment from reaching 8 percent and then to bring it below 7 percent by mid-2011. Yet for the past 28 months — since…
Here’s what the four leading Republican presidential candidates (based on the Real Clear Politics average of recent polling) have to say on their websites, in total, about why it’s so important that we repeal Obamacare — and about how highly they prioritize that goal. In both of these veins, one…
In Paul Ryan’s hometown newspaper, the Janesville Gazette, Grace-Marie Turner and Tevi Troy debate whether Mitt Romney is the right person for the job of repealing Obamacare and replacing it with real reform — reform that would lower health costs without amassing power and money in Washington at…
While some of the Republican presidential candidates continue to focus almost exclusively on the economy, Politico writes, “Medicare-aged seniors could have the biggest impact on the 2012 elections — and that’s a bad sign for the person who just overhauled their health care, according to the LA…
During the past three weeks, the Republican presidential candidates have been involved in their most contentious debate — which included their most substantial exchange on health care — and Herman Cain has struggled on two fronts (explaining his position on abortion and responding to claims of…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 15 percentage points, Americans support the repeal of President Obama’s signature legislation. Among all respondents, 54 percent support the repeal of Obamacare, compared to 39 percent who oppose it. Independents support repeal…
New evidence suggests there’s a reason why this economic “recovery” hasn’t felt much like a recovery. Figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the “recovery” has actually been harder on most Americans than the recession from which they’ve…
The latest Rasmussen poll shows Mitt Romney and Herman Cain running more or less even with President Obama among likely independent voters, while Rick Perry trails by double-digits. Among independents, Romney leads Obama by 2 percentage points (40 to 38 percent), Cain and Obama are tied (at 37…
The October Kaiser Health Tracking poll shows that, by a margin of 17 percentage points, Americans have an “unfavorable” (51 percent), rather than “favorable” (34 percent) opinion of Obamacare. This margin of opposition is all the more remarkable because the poll by Kaiser, a strong supporter of…
While some of the Republican presidential candidates consistently suggest that the economy is the only first-tier issue in the upcoming election, the party is missing a tremendous opportunity to run against the Obama administration’s unprecedented amassing of power and money at the expense of…
The latest Fox News poll, conducted earlier this week, shows that support for Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich has quadrupled over the past two months, while support for every other Republican presidential candidate except for Ron Paul has declined. Since late August, when Fox conducted its first poll…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, over the past week, the gap between President Obama and Herman Cain has swung 8 points in Obama’s favor. In a poll released shortly before the last Republican presidential debate, Rasmussen showed Cain leading Obama by 2 percentage points in a…
Herman Cain is coming off perhaps his worst week as a presidential candidate. Last Tuesday, he said that he could see himself potentially negotiating with terrorists and releasing several hundred prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in exchange for the release of one American soldier. That same night, in…
As President Obama travels around the country at taxpayer expense to peddle his newest stimulus proposal, his Council of Economic Advisors has yet to release its 8th Quarterly Report on Obama’s first stimulus — you know, the one that cost a cool $787,000,000,000.00. Perhaps this is just a…
It’s hard to imagine that an error-free presidency could produce such devastating results, but apparently that’s exactly what has happened. In an interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper, President Obama said,
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Arthur Laffer provides a high-profile endorsement of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan. Laffer writes, “Mr. Cain's 9-9-9 plan was designed to be what economists call ‘static revenue neutral,’ which means that if people didn’t change what they do under his plan, total tax…
The Congressional Budget Office’s recently released scorecard for fiscal year 2011 begs a simple question: Why is the federal government spending nearly one-third more money now than it did just five years ago? The CBO says that the federal government spent $2,729,000,000,000.00 in 2007 and…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 16 percentage points (54 to 38 percent), Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. Among independents, the margin is 30 points — 61 to 31 percent.
During tonight’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health care legislation was a hot topic of discussion, as he was challenged on it more strongly than in any previous debate. Rick Santorum was the first to advance the topic, saying, “Governor Romney, you just don't have…
During Herman Cain’s generally strong performance on Meet the Press on Sunday, David Gregory asked him, “Would you seek a constitutional ban for same sex marriage?” Cain replied, “I wouldn’t seek a constitutional ban for same sex marriage, but I am pro-traditional marriage.” Gregory followed up:…
On Friday, the Obama administration announced that it was abandoning the CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports) Act, because it was impossible to certify (as was required by law) that this aspect of Obamacare is financially sound. Now, in a surprise turn, the Hill reports,…
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now estimates that the federal deficit for the recently completed fiscal year (2011) was $1.3 trillion, or 8.6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). This is historic stuff: Prior to the year that President Obama was inaugurated, the only deficits in…
On the heels of a Rasmussen poll showing that Newt Gingrich has moved up into 3rd place in the Republican presidential race, a subsequent Rasmussen polls offers Gingrich less encouraging news. The poll of likely voters shows President Obama leading Gingrich by a tally of 2-to-1 among women (56 to…
The American people want Obamacare to be repealed. Republicans in particular consider the fate of Obamacare to be the most important thing at stake in the upcoming presidential election. Most independents share the Republicans’ view that Obamacare must go, and even some Democrats concur. In light…
With the Obama administration’s abandonment of its CLASS (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports) Act yesterday, the cost of Obamacare for its real first six years alone (2014 to 2019) just went up $53.6 billion, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. The AP reports,…
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows Herman Cain leading the Republican presidential race, while the latest Rasmussen poll shows Cain tied for first with Mitt Romney. The NBC/WSJ poll shows Cain leading Romney by 4 percentage points, 27 to 23 percent. Two months ago, Cain was at 5…
During Tuesday night’s debate, Michele Bachmann twice said that the federal government is spending about “40 percent more” than what it takes in. If only we were in that good of shape. The federal government has actually been spending about 75 percent more than what it takes in. For every $4 that…
During last night’s debate, when Herman Cain had the opportunity to ask another candidate one question, he said, “The 9-9-9 plan that I have proposed is simple, transparent, efficient, fair, and neutral. My question is to Governor Romney. Can you name all 59 points in your 160-page plan, and does…
In endorsing Mitt Romney for President, Chris Christie alleged that, when it comes to health care, “Any attempt to try to compare what happened in Massachusetts and what the president has done to the United States of America with his plan is completely intellectually dishonest.” The problem with…
During tonight’s GOP presidential debate, Mitt Romney vowed — for the first time — to advance legislation to repeal Obamacare “on day-2,” pledging to use the reconciliation process (the same process by which Obamacare was ultimately passed) to do so. This is a welcome step forward for Romney, who…
Yesterday’s New York Times published an A-section article actually highlighting that, about 50 years before Rick Perry’s birth, his alma mater, Texas A&M, had Klansmen on campus: “In 1968, Mr. Perry left home for Texas A&M, a deeply conservative university whose yearbooks early in the century…
The latest PPP survey of “probable Iowa caucusgoers” shows dramatic changes over the past two months in the Republican race in Iowa. Since August, Herman Cain is up 23 percentage points (to 30 percent), Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are up 3 points apiece (to 22 and 8 percent, respectively), Rick…
One of the six ways the Supreme Court could rule on Obamacare is to strike down its individual mandate while keeping the rest of the health care overhaul intact. Politico reports that liberal legislators, anticipating this prospect, are looking for alternatives to the federal mandate, especially…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows President Obama beating Herman Cain by just 3 percentage points (42 to 39 percent). Among independent voters, Obama leads by only 1 point: 38 to 37 percent. Rasmussen shows Cain faring better against Obama than any other GOP candidate except for Mitt…
If you type “Obamacare” into Google and then click on the first link that usually comes up, you’ll learn all about Obamacare from the most unbiased source imaginable—the Obama administration. The link will take you to healthcare.gov, where you’ll learn that Obamacare is all about “bringing down…
At Forbes, Avik Roy writes about a recent exchange he had with a Mitt Romney adviser. Roy characterizes the exchange as follows, “I asked: Why isn’t a repeal bill one of the five bills for Day One of a Romney presidency? The advisor responded that Romney is advocating the [50-state] waiver approach…
Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters now shows President Obama trailing “a generic Republican” presidential candidate by 6 percentage points (47 to 41 percent). Among independents, the generic Republican is winning by 11 points (45 to 34 percent). Unfortunately, no one in the current Republican field…
According to the pool report from last night's fundraiser in St. Louis, "The Obamacare line is getting big applause at the fundraisers today." The new line? "They call it Obamacare? I do care! You should care, too," Obama reportedly said.
For those wondering where the Republican presidential field might be headed in the aftermath of Chris Christie’s decision to stay on the sidelines, Gallup has released its new net favorability ratings — and they bode well for Herman Cain. The poll was taken over the 2-week period from September 19…
A recent Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows Mitt Romney is currently much stronger than Rick Perry in Virginia, a nearly must-win state for the GOP. The poll shows Romney with a 1-point lead (46 to 45 percent) over President Obama in the Old Dominion, while Perry trails Obama by double-digits…
The majority of the 50 states claim that Obamacare is unconstitutional, the Obama administration claims that it's not, and both sides have now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the question on appeal from a 3-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court. In August, the panel (made up of two Clinton…
In Annapolis today, Air Force and Navy met on “the fields of friendly strife.” With 10:00 left in the game, Air Force led 28-10, having more or less dominated play for the first 50 minutes. With 2:09 left, the Falcons still led 28-17. Then Navy nailed a must-make 37-yard field goal, recovered the…
A recent Gallup survey shows that, among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, Herman Cain has the highest net favorability rating of anyone in the current GOP presidential field. Cain’s net favorability rating among those who are familiar with him is +62 points (77 percent hold a…
Politico reports that Warren Buffett’s idea of tax reform is apparently quite different from President Obama’s. Buffett says he would raise taxes on those with “very high incomes that are taxed very low,” but not on those making annual salaries of $50 million.
In his speech yesterday at the Hoover Institution on health care reform, Paul Ryan said the real problem in health care is “runaway inflation” and that the Republican party needs “to coalesce around a complete reform agenda” focused on bringing down costs. This is exactly the opposite of the…
In his health care speech at the Hoover Institution, Paul Ryan not only laid out his plans “to confront health care inflation head-on” but also discussed President Obama’s approach to dealing with rising health costs, which mostly amounts to price controls imposed by an ominous, unelected,…
During a major speech today at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Paul Ryan laid out his vision of health care reform, saying, “Choice and competition are critical to controlling costs…[and] improving quality….And yet, across the federal landscape, choice and competition are undermined…
ABC News reports that during an interview with David Muir yesterday concerning President Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill, “Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner didn’t dispute a Harvard economist’s estimate that each job in the White House’s jobs plan would cost $200,000, but said” — mysteriously…
In addition to its main results, which John McCormack reported earlier, the latest CNN poll asked all respondents (not screening for likely or registered voters) whether a given candidate “has the personality and leadership qualities a President should have.” In that vein, here’s how President…
In the Los Angeles Times, Andrew Malcolm highlights another underreported gaffe by President Obama. During his recent quasi-campaign speech in support of his jobs bill, theatrically set next to a bridge on the Ohio-Kentucky border, Obama said, “We’re the country that built the Intercontinental…
When Mitt Romney answered a question about Romneycare during last night’s GOP debate, it unfortunately sounded like he was defending Obamacare.
In the Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove previews tonight’s debate, saying that it “presents opportunities and dangers for each candidate.” Rove writes that Rick Perry “has had two okay-to-mediocre debate performances,” which “is dangerous.” He says that Perry needs to convey that he would be a good…
At NRO, Scott Gottlieb writes, “Fresh off its successes in the green-energy patch, the Obama team is turning its investment skills to the life sciences. Last Friday, President Obama announced his intention to increase the federal government’s involvement in the business of…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters, conducted one week after the most recent Republican presidential debate, shows Rick Perry with a 4-point lead (28 to 24 percent) over Mitt Romney. Perry’s lead has dropped by 7 points in the poll (from 11 to 4 points) since his first debate appearance. No…
In the Hill, former Health and Human Services secretary Mike Leavitt and former HHS deputy secretary Tevi Troy write about the one part of Medicare that has succeeded in controlling costs — Medicare Part D (the prescription drug program), which works a lot like Paul Ryan’s proposed Medicare reforms.
In his recently released deficit plan, President Obama lays out the “Buffett Rule” (named, of course, for Warren Buffett, the famous investor and supporter of Obama). The rule, as Obama defines it, is “that people making more than $1 million a year should not pay a smaller share of their income in…
As the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin writes, the Economic Freedom Network is out with its latest rankings of how countries stack up in securing economic freedom, and the United States has now fallen to 10th place in the world rankings — behind the United Kingdom. Numerically, the U.S. fell off…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 20 percentage points (56 to 36 percent), Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. This marks the first time since the spring of 2010, shortly after Obamacare’s passage, that 3-straight Rasmussen polls have shown at least…
President Obama, whose annual deficit spending has been more than twice as high as any other recent president’s (even as a percentage of the gross domestic product), has now released his new deficit plan. As the Wall Street Journal notes, “It is the president’s fourth package of deficit-reduction…
A CBS News/New York Times poll taken from September 10th-15th (both before and after the most recent debate) shows Rick Perry with a 7-point edge (23 to 16 percent) over Mitt Romney among registered voters who intend to vote in a Republican primary or caucus. Newt Gingrich has moved into a tie with…
On September 17, 1787, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and 36 other Constitutional Convention delegates completed four months of labors at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and signed the glorious document that, upon its ratification, would become the Constitution of the United…
President Obama likes to talk about how “millionaires and billionaires” who make over $200,000 a year need “to give back a little bit more.” But by restricting charitable deductions, his proposed jobs bill would incentivize them to give back a little bit less. In today’s Wall Street Journal, former…
Charles Krauthammer writes that Social Security is, indeed, a Ponzi scheme. It’s also “the most vital…of all social programs,” and it can easily be saved from collapse — mostly by (gradually) raising the age of eligibility: “When Franklin Roosevelt created Social Security, choosing 65 as the…
Speaking in Virginia yesterday afternoon, Rick Perry admitted that his effort to require young schoolgirls to get vaccinated for HPV was a mistake, saying, “We should have had an opt-in instead of an opt-out.” Perry, who previously had said only that it was a mistake to have issued an executive…
As John McCormack reports, some leading Pennsylvania Republicans are apparently flirting with the idea of changing the state’s method of allocating electoral votes from the usual winner-take-all method—the norm since the American Founding—to a method of allocating one electoral vote for each…
President Obama said the following during his jobs speech last night:
I find it truly comforting that some things never change — and two of those things are President Obama’s ideas and rhetoric. Obama’s long-awaited jobs speech offered his usual mix of hyper-partisanship (no longer convincingly masquerading as post-partisanship), class warfare, and thinly veiled…
Fifteen minutes into last night’s Republican presidential debate, Michele Bachmann became the first candidate to mention and attack Obamacare. She did so after five other debaters had already spoken, and in response to a question that didn’t explicitly reference the overhaul — thereby immediately…
Michele Bachmann may not know what part of the Constitution she thinks was violated by Romneycare, but she nevertheless deserves credit for making an excellent point about our constitutional design during Monday’s GOP presidential forum. While many unsuspecting public school students (myself…
On Labor Day, during the GOP presidential forum in South Carolina, Mitt Romney had the following exchange with the host, Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.). DeMint asked, “As you know, if you’re the nominee, the president is going to say that you implemented Obamacare in Massachusetts. How would you…
Americans are more confident than ever that Obamacare will be repealed, according to the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters. By a margin of 25 percentage points (54 to 29 percent), Americans now think repeal is “likely” (whether “very” or “somewhat”).
Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters now shows Rick Perry leading Barack Obama by 3 percentage points (44 to 41 percent). Mitt Romney is within 4 points of Obama (43 to 39 percent), Herman Cain is within 7 (42 to 35 percent), and Michele Bachmann is within 8 (46 to 38 percent). (No other Republican…
An op-ed in one of President Obama’s hometown papers, the Chicago Sun-Times, highlights the 4,257 new regulations that his administration currently has in the works (219 of which will cost at least $100 million apiece, annually). The op-ed draws particular attention to one specific regulatory…
In the Washington Examiner, Jim Capretta and James Wootton write that House Republicans should freeze, investigate, and replace Obamacare. All three steps should be taken prior to the 2012 election and would help advance the already extraordinarily popular cause of repeal.
According to the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters, Americans support the repeal of Obamacare by a margin of 20 percentage points (57 to 37 percent), with 46 percent “strongly” supporting repeal. To put that into perspective, more than twice as many Americans “strongly” support repeal (46…
In the Washington Post, Camden Fine, president and chief executive of the Independent Community Bankers of America, writes, “I was astounded this month when the Federal Reserve announced its intention to keep interest rates at zero percent for at least the next two years. I kept staring at that…
Americans overwhelmingly continue to support the repeal of Obamacare, and among those who feel “strongly” (either way), support for repeal is greater still — according to the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters. Americans support repeal by a margin of 14 percentage points (54 to 40 percent), the…
Last month, I wrote that President Obama’s own handpicked Council of Economic Advisors had released an estimate that the president’s economic “stimulus” had added or saved just one job for every $278,000 of taxpayer money spent. Obama’s economists said the “stimulus” had cost $666 billion to date…
A recently released Rasmussen poll shows that likely independent voters strongly oppose Obamacare’s mandate — recently announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius — that all insurance companies must offer “free" contraception coverage at no direct cost to the recipient. By a…
It’s amazing that a senior member of a party that’s in control of a legislative body that hasn’t passed a budget of any sort in more than two years would publically try to pin blame for Standard and Poor’s recent downgrade of America’s long-term credit rating on, of all groups, the Tea Party. But…
The stock market lost all of its 2011 gains on Thursday. Investors lost a staggering $787 billion — the exact same amount of money President Obama’s economic “stimulus” was originally supposed to cost (before its costs were adjusted upward). Unemployment is now at 9.1 percent, up from 7.3 percent…
The stock market lost all of its 2011 gains on Thursday. Investors lost a staggering $787 billion — the exact same amount of money President Obama’s economic “stimulus” was originally supposed to cost (before its costs were adjusted upward). Unemployment is now at 9.1 percent, up from 7.3 percent…
While most Americans were fixated on the debt ceiling debate, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took the opportunity on Monday to decree that, under Obamacare, all Americans will hereby be required to pay for other people’s birth control pills and morning-after pills — including…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows continued overwhelming support for the repeal of Obamacare. By a margin of 16 percentage points (55 to 39 percent), Americans support the repeal of President Obama’s signature legislation. This marks the 67th consecutive week that more Americans have…
In his remarks on the debt ceiling deal, President Obama said, “The first part of this agreement will cut about $1 trillion in spending over the next 10 years....The result would be the lowest level of annual domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower was president.” This claim is utterly false, as…
A new report from federal officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) says that Obamacare will increase nationwide health care spending. Particularly interesting are the report’s findings for 2014, the year that’s slated for Obamacare’s grand opening (if the overhaul isn’t…
As President Obama watches the debt ceiling developments in the House of Representatives, it’s worth reflecting on what result he is likely rooting for.
While President Obama’s notion of a “balanced approach” to deficit reduction isn’t written down anywhere, it’s quite clear that it doesn’t involve repealing Obamacare (despite the fact that the health care overhaul would cost over $2 trillion in its real first decade, from 2014 to 2023). Polling,…
In his speech last night, President Obama once again did his reverse Harry Truman impression, showing that the buck stops anywhere but with him: “For the last decade, we have spent more money than we take in. In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But instead of using it to pay off…
How refreshing it is to see the actual lawmaking process finally proceeding — in the light of day — as the secretive closed-door meetings favored by this White House finally recede! This is how things are supposed to work in our republic.
Why, exactly, do we need to extend the debt limit to the point where the federal government can borrow another $2.4 trillion (hardly a nice round number) — about the same amount of money, even in inflation-adjusted dollars, that we borrowed to fight all of World War II? Because, as Treasury…
As of today, President Obama’s approval rating is only 42 percent in Gallup, while Rasmussen’s Presidential Approval Index shows that only 23 percent of likely voters “strongly approve” of Obama’s performance as president, compared to 44 percent who “strongly disapprove” — matching the highest…
NPR reports, “Former President Bill Clinton said if faced with default, he would single-handedly raise the debt ceiling using the 14th Amendment and he’d do it ‘without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me.’”
‘I’m the president of the United States, and I want to make sure that I am not engaging in scare tactics. And I’ve tried to be responsible and somewhat restrained so that folks don’t get spooked.” So said President Obama at his June 29 debt ceiling press conference. Two weeks later, CBS Evening…
As Bill Kristol writes, the House Republicans have been the only responsible players in the debt-ceiling debate, having passed actual legislation in the light of day, to increase the debt limit. Now, with all due respect, it’s time for House leaders to stay away from the White House.
Forty-two years ago yesterday, Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin ascended from the surface of the moon and rendezvoused with Michael Collins in the command module Columbia for their trip home from mankind’s maiden voyage to the moon. All three men are now in their 80s, and no human being…
The Obama administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that, since the official end of the recession over two years ago (in June 2009), the percentage of Americans who are employed has actually dropped, while most Americans who are employed are now making less money (in inflation-adjusted…
Senator Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), a member of the so-called Gang of Six, slams the Senate for dodging votes and offers support for the House Republicans’ recently passed legislation to raise the debt limit in exchange for cutting, capping, and balancing federal spending. The House plan is the only…
In a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger writes, “Next to generalized distemper in Republican circles over their presidential candidates, the second most-offered opinion on the race is that people wish Paul Ryan were running. The Wisconsin congressman and House Budget chairman…
On Tuesday night, the House of Representatives voted to increase the debt ceiling in exchange for cutting, capping, and balancing the out of control spending that has left us $14.5 trillion in debt. In marked contrast, the Senate has not voted to increase the debt ceiling, and President Obama has…
By a margin of 32 points (63 to 31 percent), independents favor the repeal of Obamacare, according to the latest Rasmussen survey of likely voters. Independents who feel “strongly” (one way or the other) support the repeal of Obamacare by a margin of 31 points (52 to 21 percent). Likely voters as a…
President Obama repeatedly insists that the debt ceiling must be raised by at least $2.4 trillion. Why this particular amount, rather than, say, an even $1 trillion or $2 trillion? Because $2.4 trillion is Obama’s estimate for what it would take to get him through the next election without needing…
President Obama and the Democrats claim that the Medicare reforms proposed by Paul Ryan and the Republicans would shift the burden of health costs onto the backs of seniors. This has been the central—and essentially the only—argument the Democrats have made against the GOP plan. But the Democrats’…
In his press conference today, President Obama shamelessly and condescendingly said, “Congress has run up the credit card, and we now have an obligation to pay our bills.” Yet Obama’s average annual rate of deficit spending in his first three years in office (including his 2012 budget) has been 9.7…
The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler offers a highly misleading account of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, saying they were “passed for the wrong reasons” and implying that, since there was no real need to cut taxes then, there’s no real problem with raising them now. (Kessler makes his claim in the…
Here are two clips from yesterday’s House Budget Committee hearing on Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). In the first, Chairman Paul Ryan asks Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about her views on competition and choice:
CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley asked President Obama whether he “can tell the folks at home that, no matter what happens, the Social Security checks are gonna go out on August the 3rd?” President Obama replied that it wasn’t just Social Security checks that would need to go out and that “I…
President Obama repeatedly insists that we need a “balanced approach” to dealing with our annual deficits, which have been twice as high during his tenure as during any other post-World War II presidency. In a memo sent yesterday to Republican colleagues, Paul Ryan responds to Obama’s claim with…
While Americans’ support for the repeal of Obamacare remains unwavering, the Obama administration continues to push the implementation of its highly unpopular overhaul. The administration is trying to coax states into implementing Obamacare’s government-run “exchanges” — with some success. But…
In the wake of rising Democratic — and universal Republican — opposition to Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will appear on Capitol Hill this morning to testify before the House Budget Committee, chaired by Paul Ryan. IPAB,…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 13 percentage points (53 to 40 percent), Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. In the 28 weekly polls that Rasmussen has taken in 2011, the average margin of support for repeal has been 15 points (54 to 39 percent). Only…
We are $14.481 trillion (and counting) in debt. That’s up from $293 billion 50 years ago. It’s up from $9.986 trillion when President Obama was poised to take office at the end of 2008 (see Table S-9). Heck, it’s up $14 billion (more than the annual profits of Coca-Cola, Disney, or…
By a margin of 23 percentage points (53 to 30 percent), Americans now think it’s likely, rather than unlikely, that ObamaCare will be repealed — according to a recent Rasmussen poll of likely voters. That’s the high-water mark to date for Americans’ expectation for repeal. By a margin of 14…
On Sunday, I noted that an estimate from President Obama’s own economists shows that the economic “stimulus” has cost taxpayers $278,000 per job and that, without the “stimulus,” 288,000 additional jobs would have been added or saved over the past six months. Yesterday, the White House fired back.…
Two months ago, I wrote about the plight of a private, Tocquevillian-style civil association in the small town of Orcutt, California. That group, the Old Town Orcutt Revitalization Association (OTORA), has raised $60,000 in private donations to build a flagpole — from which the American flag would…
When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that…
On Monday, in the case of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Supreme Court struck down a California law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to children. In a 7-2 holding authored by Justice Antonin Scalia (with Justices Alito and Roberts concurring and Justices Thomas and…
President Obama looks more and more beatable. He’s consistently below 50 percent in his approval ratings, he faces an economy that shows no real signs of progress (despite his having dumped far more money into it as “stimulus” than we spend annually on defense), and Obamacare is tied to his ankle…
There are some interesting findings in a recent survey from Democracy Corps — a Democratic poll founded by James Carville, Stanley Greenberg, and Bob Shrum — and they don’t bode well for the Democrats. The poll’s respondents (all of whom are registered voters) say by an eye-opening margin of 17…
The Treasury Department now says our national debt will exceed our entire gross domestic product by the end of this year. That hasn’t happened since World War II, when we had a few more justifiable expenditures and a far smaller economy. Meanwhile, the debt ceiling debate continues apace in…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 17 points (55 to 38 percent), Americans want Obamacare to be repealed. It’s not hard to tell why: By a margin of 32 points (49 to 17 percent), Americans think Obamacare would reduce, rather than improve, the quality of health…
The CBO’s newly released 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook forecasts that federal spending will soon exceed spending during parts of World War II. In 1942, federal spending equaled 24.3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) (Table 1.3). Less than 25 years from now (in 2035), according to the CBO,…
Andrew Klavan compares Paul Ryan's and Barack Obama's approaches to health care, the deficit, and the economy (all in less than 5 minutes):
Tom Daschle, President Obama’s original choice of secretary of Health and Human Services, confirmed yesterday that the motivation behind creating Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IBAP) was to vest power in an unelected body that is sufficiently insulated from the American people.
The Tea Party was clearly instrumental in fueling Republicans’ tremendous success in last year’s election, and Republicans will presumably need strong Tea Party support next year as well if they are to unseat President Obama and repeal Obamacare. So it’s worth asking this question: What does the…
Jay Cost has written that, in 2008, Barack Obama ran “a bandwagon campaign with a simple purpose. When your candidate lacks the experience traditionally thought to be necessary to run the government, and you have two wars and an economic slowdown, you need something to cover the gap. And that…
During the first Republican presidential debate last night, two people who were not in the room were nevertheless clearly on the minds of the GOP candidates: Barack Obama and Paul Ryan. The former, the sitting president, was not at all surprising; the latter, not having yet entered the…
Tim Pawlenty projects in his economic plan that the gross domestic product (GDP) would grow by 5 percent in real (inflation adjusted) dollars every year for a decade. The debate is now raging over whether such projections are realistic, but the more important consideration is whether the growth…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 19 percentage points (54 to 35 percent), Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. Among independents, the margin is 27 points (60 to 33).
A new CNN poll shows which issues Americans say will most influence their votes in next year’s presidential election. The issues that respondents most often listed as being “extremely important” were the economy (51 percent), health care (45 percent), unemployment (45 percent), and federal deficits…
A recently released CNN poll shows that Americans oppose Obamacare by a margin of 17 percentage points (56 to 39 percent). Independents like Obamacare even less, opposing it by a margin of 25 points (60 to 35 percent). CNN also shows that, by a 10-point margin — 52 to 42 percent — independents do…
On a conference call with veterans groups, Democratic senator Mark Begich of Alaska said of his party, "we look at the budget as a moral document." What should one conclude, then, from the failure of the Democratic controlled Senate to offer a budget for the second straight year?
Politico reports that there is growing support across the political spectrum for repealing Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). Politico writes,
A new study by McKinsey & Company finds that, under Obamacare, the exodus of employers from the employer provided insurance market would be “vastly greater than expected.” The report on the study states:
A recent National Journal article misrepresents the effects of the proposed Medicare reforms in the House of Representatives on current seniors. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has repeatedly noted that these proposed Medicare reforms — which would not go into effect until 2022 — would…
A newly released ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that President Obama’s approval ratings on dealing with the economy and deficits are now the lowest of his entire presidency. By a margin of 19 points (59 to 40 percent), Americans now disapprove of Obama’s handling of the economy. His numbers…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that Americans think Obamacare would achieve a sort of triple crown of failed health care reform: It would increase nationwide health costs, increase federal deficits, and reduce the quality of Americans’ health care. By a margin of more than 2 to 1…
From the moment the Democratic House passed Obamacare on March 21, 2010, it was clear that November 6, 2012, would be a defining moment in American history. It is not an exaggeration to say that, in many ways, that day will decide the future course of this country: Will our fellow citizens reelect…
The New York Times writes,
The AP writes, “Democrats are distorting the fundamentals of a Republican plan to reshape Medicare, falsely accusing the GOP of pushing a proposal that tells the elderly ‘you're on your own’ with health care and that lets insurers deny coverage to the sick.”
The Hill reports on a visit to the White House yesterday by members of the House Republican caucus:
A Rasmussen poll released yesterday shows that 35.6 percent of Americans are now Republicans, compared to 34.0 percent who are Democrats. That’s a higher tally for Republicans, and the widest margin between the two parties, than at any time since the GOP took control of the House in January. A year…
The New York Times’s Nate Silver claims that Paul Ryan’s proposed Medicare reforms — which are part of a budget that would save a staggering $1 billion a day in relation to President Obama’s budget — are likely to become unpopular. Silver argues,
Writing in USA Today, Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, and Jim Lovell —the first and last men on the moon, and the commanders of Apollo 11, 17, and 13 — highlight another example of President Obama’s lack of faith in American exceptionalism. In a piece entitled, “Is Obama Grounding JFK’s Space…
The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll in May skews Democratic by 9 percentage points, yet its results among those who feel strongly (either way) go against Obamacare by 10 percentage points. The monthly Kaiser poll includes 34 percent Democrats and only 25 percent Republicans. Despite this lopsided…
Yesterday, the budget proposed by the House of Representatives was put up for a vote in the Senate. Every Democratic senator (save one, who was absent) voted no. Subsequently, a budget proposed by Senator Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) was put up for a vote. Every Democratic senator voted no. Then a budget…
In June 2009, President Obama said, “Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin.” Two years later, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans have advanced a serious proposal to deal with these two biggest drivers of our debt. Obama…
Charles Krauthammer argues on Fox News that Paul Ryan is “the one man who could make the argument, which will be the central argument in the campaign, next year, over the size and the scope of government.” He adds, “I wouldn’t just ask him or cajole him. I’d get a posse up there.”
A recent AP/GfK poll has been getting a lot of attention for allegedly showing that Americans think the federal budget can be balanced without cutting Medicare spending. The poll’s sample, however, includes 35 percent Democrats and only 18 percent Republicans (and 46 percent Democrats and 29…
In a major speech last week, Paul Ryan claimed that, under President Obama’s proposed budget, high earners would have their federal tax rate raised to 45 percent — in addition to taxes that they would have to pay at the state and local levels. Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s “fact checker,”…
On Meet the Press, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said that “political courage on the Republican side means taking on the revenue piece” of the deficit equation. In other words, it requires Republicans to support raising taxes. Time’s Mike Murphy and…
Today, on Meet the Press, Paul Ryan responded to a question in which David Gregory asserted that the Medicare reforms proposed by the House are unpopular. Such assertions are regularly made by the press but are not backed up by a realistic look at the polls. The American people have actually…
When President Obama tours the country and touts Obamacare, one thing you never hear him highlight is that half of Obamacare’s projected decrease in the number of uninsured comes from people who would simply be dumped into Medicaid at taxpayer expense. Of the 32 million people that the…
President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), headed by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, has now granted Obamacare waivers to the entire states of Nevada and New Hampshire. In its letter to Nevada, HHS admits that, without the waiver, “there is a reasonable likelihood” that Obamacare…
As the New York Times reports, organizations that provide home health care or nursing home care are seeking waivers from Obamacare, which would otherwise compromise their ability to provide care. The Times writes that “many nursing homes and home care agencies, alarmed at the cost of providing…
Much has been made of the Paul Ryan-authored House budget’s proposal to make Medicare more solvent through increased competition and choice — and rightly so. But that proposal is hardly the sole difference between the respective budgets authored by Ryan and President Obama.
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 17 percentage points (55 to 38 percent), Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. Repeal is supported by men and women; by those in their 30s, 40s, 50s to mid-60s, and mid-60s on up; and by all income groups (ranging from…
Indiana state supreme court justice Steven David, a recent appointee of Governor Mitch Daniels, authored a 3-2 opinion that openly admits to overturning several centuries of common law understanding. At issue was this question: If police officers attempt to unlawfully enter the home of a free…
There is now talk of Paul Ryan potentially running for Senate in 2012, in the wake of Democratic incumbent Herb Kohl’s announcement that he is retiring. It seems unlikely, however, that this prospect will be very tempting to Ryan.
There is an awful lot of rampant speculation right now, much of it masquerading as confirmed fact, about how well the House Republican’s proposed Medicare reforms are going over with the American public. But there is very little hard evidence. There have only been two polls, to my knowledge, that…
In the small town of Orcutt, California, a private association has raised donations to erect a flagpole and monument between a highway exit and a park-and-ride lot, at the entrance to the community’s Old Town section. The pole would hang the American flag, encircled by five pillars, one each for…
Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s secretary of Health and Human Services, lowered the bar of political discourse still further yesterday. Sebelius said that, under the proposed Medicare reforms authored by Paul Ryan and passed overwhelmingly by the House of Representatives, many seniors would…
In response to the Justice Department sending a letter to the head of the NCAA, asking a few questions about why college football doesn’t have a generic playoff system in lieu of its highly successful Bowl Championship Series (BCS), Senator Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) encouraged the Obama administration…
Likely voters’ responses to two questions in a recent Rasmussen poll highlight both the challenge that Paul Ryan and the House Republicans face in persuading Americans to support their proposed budget, and why it’s likely that they will ultimately prevail. Rasmussen asked likely voters what they…
On talk radio and TV, there seems to be a rising chorus of voices calling for the White House to release photos of the deceased and bloodied Osama bid Laden. At least two potential GOP presidential candidates have joined the chorus. But the Obama administration should be commended for deciding not…
Ever since President Obama gave his speech on deficit reduction last month, in response to the Paul Ryan-authored 2012 House Republican budget, press accounts have suggested that he has released an actual budget that would reduce deficit spending by $4 trillion. This claim is wrong on both counts:…
In what could be a sign of desperation on the part of opponents of the Paul Ryan’s budget, the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein and Slate’s Simon Lazarus both argue that the House budget contains an Obamacare-like individual mandate that requires people to buy health insurance under penalty of law. The…
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the House of Representatives voted yesterday to repeal mandatory federal funding to states to establish Obamacare exchanges. The Inquirer writes:
A new Rasmussen poll shows Chris Christie and Paul Ryan running first and second, respectively, among potential Republican presidential candidates. This is one of the first national surveys to include Ryan and Christie in its list of prospective candidates. Michele Bachmann also fares well in the…
The 2011 TIME 100, Time magazine’s list of the 100 “most influential people in the world,” includes three — and only three — potential Republican presidential candidates. Which three? Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, and Michele Bachmann. Could Time, for all its weaknesses, have a better sense than the…
The Wall Street Journal editorializes on the latest activities of Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s secretary of Health and Human Services. Sebelius has decided effectively to tell the elderly CEO of Forest Labs to get a new job. The Journal's editors write:
The April Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that, even among a group of respondents that lean Democratic by 15 points, support is divided right down the middle between leaving Medicare as it is and reforming it as Paul Ryan and the House of Representative have proposed.
If there is a must-win state for President Obama, it’s Pennsylvania. The only time that Republican presidential candidates win Pennsylvania is when they don’t need it, while no Democrat has won the presidency without Pennsylvania in the past 60 years.
Medicare's chief Donald Berwick writes in today’s Wall Street Journal,
In light of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s shameless ad saying that the Paul Ryan-authored House Republican budget would “end Medicare,” it is worth noting that the Congressional Budget Office says that, in 2030, the Republican plan would give the average senior $18,276 in…
Recent polling shows that Americans think we have a spending problem, not a taxing problem, and that Republicans are the party they trust to deal with that problem. A USA Today/Gallup poll released this week shows that Americans trust Republicans over Democrats on the deficit issue by a whopping…
By a margin of 13 percentage points (53 to 40 percent), Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. According to the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters, Americans think Obamacare would increase the deficit, increase health costs, and reduce the quality of care—the direct opposite of President…
Under a headline reading, "White House may add politics to contract bids," Washington Technology Daily reports, "The Obama administration is determining how to require companies competing for government contracts to list their political contributions when submitting a contract bid." According to…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters once again shows double digit support for repeal (52 to 41 percent), and even higher support among independents (54 to 40 percent) than among likely voters as a whole. This comes on the heels of an AP/GfK poll that shows lower support for Obamacare than at…
In the New York Times, David Leonhardt discusses what he calls “a popular talking point on cable television and talk radio”—that 47 percent of Americans no longer pay any income tax. Leonhardt grants the point—“The 47 percent figure is not wrong”—but adds, “Over the last 30 years, rates have fallen…
President Obama said last week that “the tax burden on the wealthy is at its lowest level in half a century.” Let’s assume that he based that claim on the 2009 tax year, when most people’s tax rates dropped significantly. If so, when you have negative economic growth for the first time in 60 years…
Tax Day 2011 comes in the middle of President Obama’s push for raising taxes to tackle deficit spending. The president’s budget calls for raising both taxes and deficits. But last week, Obama said that we need to reduce deficits, and he announced his intention, as he put it, “to reduce spending in…
The legislative version of the budget deal that President Obama struck with Speaker Boehner (and Senate Majority Leader Reid) to fund the federal government for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year includes the following language to deny funding for four of President Obama’s “czars” — those in…
In lieu of offering an actual budget to reduce deficit spending, President Obama has now given a speech saying that we should reduce deficits by raising taxes, cutting defense, and “strengthening” Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). But rather than signing on to Obama’s stated…
About a week and a half into the battle over the 2012 budget, Gallup shows that only 41 percent of Americans approve of Barack Obama’s performance as president, while 50 percent disapprove of him. Gallup writes that its “polling includes interviews conducted before and after Obama announced his…
Talk about a successful budgetary proposal: House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would cut 46 percent and $4.4 trillion from proposed deficit spending under President Obama’s budget, reform Medicare and Medicaid to put these programs on solid financial footing, and repeal Obamacare.…
Given President Obama’s inference in his recent speech that, if only every other president had been as responsible on deficit spending as he has been, things would be great, it is well worth revisiting Obama’s actual track record versus other recent presidents (detailed more fully here). It’s also…
While delivering his do-over budget speech, President Obama spoke of Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. He said, "We're a better country because of these commitments." Then he said, "I'll go further: We would not be a great country without those commitments." So, is…
Chris Wallace’s interview with David Plouffe on Fox News Sunday suggests an administration that’s afraid to argue for what it really wants, isn’t sure what to say it really wants, and isn’t saying anything very well. During the course of the interview, Plouffe incorporated many of the…
As any baseball fan knows, Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in the summer of 1941 is arguably the national pastime’s most hallowed record. But even Joltin’ Joe didn’t keep it up for 56 straight weeks.
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin hits the nail on the head in a piece titled, “Obama’s do-over budget.” Rubin writes:
A recent Fox poll vividly illustrates how little support or momentum any potential Republican presidential candidate has yet acquired. This should not be viewed as a particular cause for concern for Republicans — it’s still 10 months until the Iowa caucuses and 19 months until the showdown with…
In The Week, David Frum claims that House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s proposed budget “actually increases the debt over the medium term — by even more [than] President Obama’s budget would,” thereby “worsening … the debt situation over the period from 2012 to 2021.” In today’s New York…
Here’s what President Obama’s hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune (which endorsed Obama in 2008), has to say about House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budgetary proposal and how much leadership each of the two men is providing:
Politico reports that House Republicans have taken action to try to keep Obamacare from letting people write off the costs of having an abortion on their taxes. Politico writes, “The House Ways & Means Committee voted along party lines to adopt a bill that would prevent women from deducting…
Kathleen Sebelius, the Obama administration’s secretary of Health and Human Services and hence the administration’s highest-ranking health care official, has this to say about American medicine: “our outcomes look like we’re in a developing country.” In marked contrast, most of her fellow citizens…
With a whopping 3.8 million votes now having been cast, Paul Ryan (1st) and Chris Christie (2nd) continue to lead the 2012 Tea Party Presidential Poll. Ryan and Christie have said that they are not planning to try to unseat President Obama, but the American people, or at least the significant…
Two days ago, I wrote that Republicans should be bold on entitlement reform. They should aggressively and sensibly make the case that, with mandatory spending by itself now surpassing total federal revenues (for this year, according to the president’s projections), we cannot in good conscience…
Questions continue to arise about the propriety of having Justice Elena Kagan hear a constitutional challenge to Obamacare. Kagan was the Obama administration’s solicitor general for 14 months, and as the Department of Justice (DOJ) website puts it, “The task of the Office of the Solicitor General…
In a recent call with liberal college groups (at 6:14 on the podcast), Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius said, regarding Obamacare: “Now, it’s really disappointing that some in Congress are still trying to repeal the law and argue the results of the last two years.” Hmm. Well,…
As the Hill reports, Joel Ario, director of Obamacare’s newly created Office of Health Insurance Exchanges, says, “If it plays out [that] the Exchanges work pretty well, then the employer can say ‘This is a great thing. I can now dump my people into the Exchange and it would be good for them, good…
For the 54th-straight week, Americans support the repeal of Obamacare—and for the 25th-straight week, they support it by double-digits, according to Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters. This week’s Rasmussen survey shows that Americans favor repeal by the whopping margin of 22 percentage points: 58…
As Republicans contemplate what sort of budget they should propose (real budget solutions, not continuing resolutions), it's important to realize that they are in a somewhat enviable position: What is clearly best for the country is also likely best for them politically.
Politico reports that the Obama administration’s pro-Obamacare Andy Griffith TV ad cost taxpayers $3.66 million, according to records obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services. Actually, there were at least three such ads (here, here, and here), so it’s not clear whether this was…
On the one year anniversary of President Obama signing Obamacare into law, Mitt Romney writes at National Review: “If I were president, on Day One I would issue an executive order paving the way for Obamacare waivers to all 50 states. The executive order would direct the Secretary of Health and…
Polls show that Obamacare, which was highly unpopular at the time of its passage, is even less popular today. And Gallup’s most recently released poll offers further evidence to that effect. However, the poll’s headline—“One Year Later, Americans Split on Healthcare Law” — suggests otherwise and is…
One year ago today, the then-Democratic House of Representatives openly disregarded the cool and deliberate sense of the people and rammed Obamacare down the American people’s throats. At the time, the Democrats claimed that their bill would become more popular once Americans found out what was in…
Ever wonder why health costs have risen so fast? Jim Capretta offered a thorough and informative answer to that question during recent congressional testimony before the House Budget Committee. Here’s the short answer: Federal programs and tax policy have created a situation where — whether their…
Already responsible (along with Congress) for $3.3 trillion in actual or projected deficit spending in just his first two years in office — thereby breaking the prior record of $3.2 trillion for an entire presidency — President Obama has proposed an unserious budget that, even according to his own…
After weeks of failing to provide even strong rhetorical support for the uprising in Libya — an uprising in pursuit of liberty and against a United States adversary — President Obama has now apparently decided that he has sufficient international authorization to act. This begs two questions:…
We have now gotten to the point — as I noted yesterday — where if national defense, interstate highways, national parks, homeland security, and all other discretionary programs somehow became absolutely free, we’d still have a budget deficit. The White House Office of Management and Budget projects…
For the first time since the passage of Obamacare last March, the Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that most Americans (51 percent) “strongly” favor Obamacare’s repeal, while fewer than a quarter (24 percent) “strongly” oppose it. Eighty percent of Republicans “strongly” favor repeal, while…
How much is entitlement spending the real source of our budgetary woes? Here’s a stat for you: In President Obama’s proposed 2012 budget, the White House Office of Management and Budget estimates (in Table S-4) that mandatory spending this year (2011) will be $2.194 trillion, while total federal…
President Obama’s average annual deficit spending (including his proposed deficit spending for 2012) has been 9.7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) — more than double the tally of any other president since World War II. In the wake of Obama’s spending spree, it’s therefore a bit…
President Obama’s Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius professes to have acquired a newfound concern for Medicare Advantage, the popular program from which the Obama administration would loot more than a quarter of a trillion dollars during Obamacare’s real first decade (2014 to…
Continuing to show his confusion over the proper role of government, Mitt Romney has now compared Obamacare to the Post Office. In his first appearance in New Hampshire since before last year’s election, Romney said, "Obamacare is bad law constitutionally, bad policy, and it is bad for America's…
Jim Capretta writes that Obamacare would raise Americans’ taxes and eventually ration their health care. Furthermore, “the most transparent administration in the history of our country” (that’s Robert Gibbs’s description, not Capretta’s) would do so in stealth fashion — by breaking from the…
The Hill reports that Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius added another 126 Obamacare waivers on Friday, bringing the tally to over 1,000 in the less than 12 months since Obamacare’s passage. Ed Morrissey aptly writes, “That’s one of the fundamental dangers of Obamacare. It’s…
The new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 15 percentage points (54 to 39 percent), Americans favor the repeal of Obamacare. This marks the 22nd straight week that Americans have supported repeal by double-digits.
According to Politico, President Obama will be forced to abandon his controversial nomination of Donald Berwick as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Politico reports that “Senate Democrats have given up on confirming Don Berwick as CMS administrator in the…
Rich Lowry makes a good point about federal district court judge Gladys Kessler’s recent decision, which held that ObamaCare’s individual mandate is not unconstitutional. (That’s the appropriate terminology; judges have no more authority to declare laws “constitutional” than juries have to declare…
In a newly released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that, in fiscal year 2010, $48 billion in taxpayer money was squandered on fraudulent or improper Medicare claims. Meanwhile, the nation’s ten largest health insurance companies made combined profits of $12.7 billion…
Having utterly failed to convince the American people to embrace Obamacare, and facing a steadfast House of Representatives that has passed a bill to repeal Obamacare by a margin of 56 votes, the Obama administration — always probing for weakness — is now testing the resolve of Republican…
For 50 consecutive weeks, Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters has been asking Americans whether (and how strongly) they support or oppose the repeal of Obamacare. Fifty times in fifty weeks, the majority of Americans have said that they support repeal. In 49 of those 50 weeks, Americans have…
Looking toward the crucial 2012 presidential race, three things are becoming increasingly clear:
The newly released Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that, by a margin of 27 percentage points (59 to 32 percent), seniors have an “unfavorable,” rather than a “favorable,” opinion of Obamacare. The same poll also shows that, by a margin of 5 points (48 to 43 percent), Americans as a whole have an…
In wake of Obama’s decision to punt on the budget, his lack of sure-footedness in dealing with Egypt, and his mystifying refusal to give voice to American ideals in Libya, the number of Americans who think the president is a “poor” leader now doubles the number who think he is an “excellent” one,…
The Obama administration’s taxpayer-funded, pro-Obamacare TV ads directed toward seniors don’t seem to be working. The new Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that, by a margin of 27 percentage points, seniors have an unfavorable, rather than a favorable, view of Obamacare. That’s the highest margin…
President Obama has now decided that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional. Thus, the Obama administration says that it will no longer defend that federal law in court. On the campaign trail, President Obama repeatedly…
If you type “Obamacare” into a search engine — whether Google, Bing, or Ask — you’ll find that the first site that appears at the top of the page is healthcare.gov. That site will tell you everything you want to know — or, rather, everything the Obama administration wants you to know (and nothing…
Most of the focus on public employee unions emphasizes the fact that states are going bankrupt and that states can’t continue to give these unions the almost obscene perks they have gotten in the past. But that misses the more fundamental point.
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that, by a margin of 16 percentage points (56 to 40 percent), Americans support the repeal of Obamacare. Independents support repeal by a margin of 22 points (59 to 37 percent).
President Obama’s tally in the Presidential Approval Index has declined by 14 points in the past month, according to Rasmussen’s poll of likely voters. Obama now faces a deficit of 20 points: only 21 percent strongly approve of his performance, while 41 percent strongly disapprove. The…
As we celebrate Washington’s Birthday — the name of the holiday is not “Presidents’ Day,” which would be no more appropriate (less, actually, in a republic) than “Congress Day” — it is worth recalling what the father of our country had to say about deficit spending:
Former-secretary Mike Leavitt, Kathleen Sebelius’s predecessor as secretary of Health and Human Services (and my former boss), writes in today’s Washington Post:
The latest Rasmussen poll showsthat, by a margin of 19 percentage points (57 to 38 percent), likely voters support the repeal of Obamacare. Another recent Rasmussen poll shows that 72 percent of likely voters consider health care to be a “very important” issue, second only to the economy (83…
The Wall Street Journal writes:
As Matt Continetti notes, Yuval Levin writes at the Corner that "it’s important to remember that our federal government budgets itself year by year, and in making next year’s budget it is not bound by this year’s budget." Thus, the president's budget for this year means something; his projections…
A CNN poll released this week asked Americans whether they plan to vote for or against President Obama in 2012. The options were "probably vote for," "probably not vote for," "definitely vote for," and "definitely not vote for." The most popular answer was "definitely not vote for" – chosen by 35…
At National Review, Jim Capretta explains why the Ryan-Rivlin plan would reform entitlements and bend the health care cost-curve down, while Obamacare would do neither. Actually, Obamacare would do far worse than "neither." It would add an unsustainable new entitlement while also bending the…
Testifying today before the House Budget Committee, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Doug Elmendorf confirmed that Obamacare is expected to reduce the number of jobs in the labor market by an estimated 800,000. Here are excerpts from the exchange:
Gallup's party identification figures now show that a lower percentage of Americans consider themselves to be Democrats (28 percent) than at any point over the whole span (early 2004 to early 2011) for which Gallup shows results. Republicans are also only at 28 percent, but being tied with the…
When asked by Bill O'Reilly in his pre-Super Bowl interview why public opinion is so against Obamacare, President Obama replied: "Actually, I think it's pretty evenly – it's evenly divided, Bill." That's only true in the sense that the Obama-McCain presidential race, decided by 7 points, was also…
Republicans have announced their proposed spending cuts for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year, but the press corps is hardly painting the whole picture — or even reporting the actual dollar amounts that Republicans would cut.
One week after a federal district judge ruled in favor of 26 states and declared Obamacare to be unconstitutional, Rasmussen's poll of likely voters shows that Americans support its repeal by a margin of 21 percentage points (58 to 37 percent). Among independents, the margin in support of repeal is…
Ten and a half months after the Democrats passed Obamacare without a single Republican vote, the Economist writes, "Health-care reform, or at least the debate about it, could not be more alive." It is increasingly hard to dispute that statement.
Today's New York Times reports that 41 percent of pregnancies in New York City (not counting miscarriages) are aborted. The Times writes, "Two of every five pregnancies in the city end in abortion, a statistic that has barely changed in more than a decade. At a news conference last month, Timothy…
The Senate will likely vote today on a bill to repeal ObamaCare. The vote will come in the wake of Monday's ruling by United States District Court Judge Roger Vinson, in favor of 26 states, that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. It will also come in the wake of a recently released poll by McLaughlin…
It was entirely predictable that, if United States District Court Judge Roger Vinson ruled that ObamaCare was unconstitutional, the Obama administration would accuse Judge Vinson of partisanship. What wasn’t so predictable was that the administration’s own response would so compellingly support…
What do doctors think of Obamacare? One good gauge is the views of doctors serving in the House of Representatives. Of the 16 doctors currently serving in the House -- perhaps an all-time high -- all but one voted for Obamacare's repeal.
In the wake of yesterday's federal district court decision in favor of 26 states, which ruled that Obamacare is unconstitutional in addition to being unpopular, USA Today reports that all 47 Republican senators have now signed onto Sen. Jim DeMint's repeal bill. Senate minority leader Mitch…
Here are excerpts from Judge Vinson’s 78-page opinion, in which he ruled (1) that Obamacare’s individual mandate is unconstitutional and (2) that since the individual mandate is “the keystone or lynchpin” of the entire act, upon its removal the entire 2,700-page act must be invalidated.
The 2011 National Physicians Survey, conducted by Thomson Reuters/HCPlexus and polling almost 3,000 American doctors, shows that while Obamacare would raise spending, premiums, overall U.S. health costs, and debt, it wouldn't raise the quality of American health care. Rather, by a margin of well…
On the heels of a Kaiser Health survey showing that Obamacare is now less popular than at any time since its passage, a Rasmussen survey of likely voters released today shows that Americans now favor repeal by a margin of 20 points: 58 to 38 percent. Perhaps even more strikingly, two-thirds of…
A scathing piece in Politico by two Democratic pollsters says that Obamacare's mode of passage causes it to bear an "anti-democratic stain," that it has spawned a "political catastrophe" for the Democratic Party, and that the claim that the repeal bill's passage is merely symbolic "reflects the…
"What I’m not willing to do is go back to the days when insurance companies could deny someone coverage because of a pre-existing condition," President Obama said during his State of the Union address. For the most part, this claim (or at least its plain inference) is nonsense: Obamacare's…
The January Kaiser Health tracking poll, conducted jointly with the Harvard School of Public Health, now shows Obamacare to be less popular than at any time since its passage. For the first time since Obamacare became law, Kaiser now shows 50 percent of respondents holding an "unfavorable" opinion…
The Associated Press reports:
In his State of the Union address, President Obama seemed to have two goals: the first was to sound centrist; the second was to try to convince everyone to accept the radical leftward policy lurch of the last two years and simply move on from there. As the tension between these two goals suggests,…
Having vastly increased non-defense, non-entitlement spending in the process of racking up unprecedented deficits, President Obama is now expected to call in his State of the Union address for freezing such spending at these new, much higher, levels. NPR reports that Obama will call for a 5-year…
The Wall Street Journal highlights the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) to give tonight's Republican response to the State of the Union address. As the Journal notes, Ryan has gone toe-to-toe with President Obama before, faring quite well in the process. He has provided exceptional critiques…
In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will reportedly issue a call for "responsible" efforts to reduce deficits (while simultaneously calling for new federal spending). In light of the President's expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it's worth keeping in mind his…
Charles Krauthammer writes about "flimflammery," "phony numbers," and the "the biggest budget buster in the history of the welfare state." Here are a few excerpts:
A day before the House voted to repeal the worst regulatory nightmare ever conceived on these shores, President Obama claimed in the Wall Street Journal that he's signing an executive order to prevent, among other things, "excessive" regulation. Moreover, Obama claimed, his administration will take…
Reflecting the clear and strongly held views of the vast majority of Americans, the House has voted overwhelmingly to repeal ObamaCare.
The Democrats' defense of Obamacare principally relies on the fiction that Obamacare is needed to protect Americans from big health care corporations, especially insurers. Yet, as Rose Ann DeMoro writes at the Huffington Post (of all places), the truth is that "nearly all the giants in the…
On the morning of the House of Representatives' vote to repeal Obamacare, it's worth noting that four polls in the past two weeks have asked Americans the straightforward question of whether they support or oppose repeal. Three of these polls didn't screen for likely voters (who tend to be more…
In the congressional floor debate leading up to the repeal vote, Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) highlighted a point that has generally gone under the radar: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that Obamacare would increase the national debt. The CBO writes that, by the end of 2019…
Watching the debate over the repeal of ObamaCare that's taking place on the House floor right now, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D., Tex.) said late this afternoon, "The choice here is whether to give more money to insurance monopolies or leave just a little bit in the pockets of middle-class Americans." …
Politico PULSE reports
The vote on H.R. 2, the bill to repeal ObamaCare, is scheduled for Wednesday in the House of Representatives. (H.R. 1, a simple resolution to elect the House clerk, chaplain, chief administrative officer, and sergeant-at-arms, was passed on day-1 by a voice vote.) It's quite fitting that the…
In the Wall Street Journal, Arthur Laffer writes, "There are...many truly bad provisions in...the president's health-care legislation that should and could be repealed. The Republicans should target these provisions for repeal and attach them to the bill to raise the debt ceiling." Laffer notes…
A widely reprinted AP story, based on a recent AP/GfK poll, is entitled, "Opposition to health care law eases." Don't believe it. What has eased isn't the level of opposition to Obamacare, but rather the level of effort that AP/GfK has made to ensure that its polling sample is representative of…
A new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that fewer than one in five Americans -- 18 percent -- want to keep Obamacare as it is. The 75 percent who don't want to keep Obamacare in its current form (the remainder are undecided) are pretty evenly split among three options -- repealing it and not…
The Virginia Pilot writes, "The Obama administration 'did a really terrible job handling health care reform,' he [Sen. Jim Webb (D., Va.)] said, because the president relied on Congress to draft a plan. 'You can't turn something that complicated loose on the United States Congress,' he said..."
In shopping for the best value in a health care plan, what sort of plan would you choose? What benefits would you choose to have it cover? Well, under Obamacare, that wouldn't really be your decision to make. It wouldn't even really be Congress's decision. Rather, It would be the decision of the…
Jim Capretta offers some outstanding advice in National Review about the upcoming budget battles. He writes, "Republicans need to convince voters, especially independents, that their plan is one of sensible, pragmatic stewardship of the taxpayers’ money, and that the president and his allies in…
Next week's repeal vote is where the rubber will meet the road for the 13 House Democrats who voted against Obamacare, as it's their chance to show whether they're really against the highly unpopular overhaul or not. Two of these 13 Democrats have already pledged to vote for repeal. Last night on…
The most recent Gallup poll shows that Americans favor repeal by a margin of 6 percentage points (46 to 40 percent) – and that's even without screening for likely, or even registered, voters.
In an otherwise fine editorial, the Wall Street Journal writes that, after Republicans vote for Obamacare's full repeal (next week), they should "attack ObamaCare piece by piece," by "restor[ing] funding for Medicare Advantage" and passing other bills of that nature – which, the Journal writes,…
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) issued the following statement with respect to House Republicans’ continued efforts to repeal and replace the Democrats’ costly government takeover of health care:
As I reported on Monday, the Obama administration is paying taxpayer money to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing so that, when Americans search for "Obamacare" (and a whole host of other entries, the first listing that comes up (or the first listing after "Stories" on Yahoo!) is the administration's own…
Rasmussen finds that more Americans now consider themselves to be members of the party of Lincoln and Reagan than of FDR and Obama. The poll finds that 37 percent of Americans now call themselves Republicans, compared with 34 percent who call themselves Democrats. Rasmussen adds, "Keep in mind…
On January 12, the House of Representatives will vote to repeal the unprecedented centralization of power, massive increase in spending, and disquieting affront to liberty known as Obamacare.
The brazenness of the Obama administration never ceases to amaze. Try typing "Obamacare" into Google, and you'll find that the first entry is now the Obama administration's www.healthcare.gov. If you don't particularly like that result, you'll probably hate the fact that you're paying for it.
Under the headline, "Construction Stops at Physician Hospitals," Politico reports today that "Physician Hospitals of America says that construction had to stop at 45 hospitals nationwide or they would not be able to bill Medicare for treatments." Stopping construction at doctor-owned…
A few weeks ago, I wrote about a 347-page, 118,072-word Obamacare "rule" released by Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius and unconfirmed-Medicare Administrator Donald Berwick, two people whose power would increase immensely under Obamacare. I wrote, "To get a real flavor for…
As we ring in the New Year, the Wall Street Journal reports, "The Credit Card Act signed into law last year [in 2009] was supposed to stop financial institutions from sleazy antics. But, instead, some retailers say, it may restrict stay-at-home moms."
With the flipping of the calendar to January, we've now moved into the first year in which Obamacare will cut funding for the popular Medicare Advantage program. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that, in 2011, Obamacare will cut Medicare Advantage by $2 billion. According to the CBO,…
Across the health care debate, supporters of Obamacare have tried to inflate the number of uninsured, and too often they have gotten away with it. Yesterday, for instance, a Huffington Post banner headline read, “Number of Uninsured Americans Soars to Over 50 Million.” But this claim cannot…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that 66 percent of independents support the repeal of Obamacare, while only 30 percent oppose it. Since the Democrats, of course, are the party that passed Obamacare -- without a single Republican vote -- it's amazing that independents are even more…
There's a lot of overblown talk right now about how President Obama has righted his political ship since the midterm election by helping to force through an abundance of mostly liberal legislation in the lame duck congressional session. A Rasmussen poll released yesterday presents a very different…
Not satisfied with the colossal amounts of power that she would acquire under Obamacare if it isn't repealed, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Kathleen Sebelius has issued a 136-page "rule" that will now give her (and her subordinates) largely unchecked power to pass judgment on the prices…
Two weeks before taking over control of the House of Representatives, Republicans have already succeeded in starting to defund Obamacare. As Ezra Klein, a zealous Obamacare supporter, writes in the Washington Post, "The Senate passed the Continuing Resolution [by a vote of] 79-16.... Another way of…
James Stewart, the star of It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Rear Window, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Spirit of St. Louis, to list just a few of his classic films, was truly an American hero, embodying the ideal of the self-reliant, decent, community-focused,…
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told reporters on a year-end conference call, regarding Obamacare: "I think it's important that folks understand that there is no going back." But the vast majority of American voters disagree with her.
The New York Times reports that incoming House majority leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and legislative leaders in 12 states are backing a repeal amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The proposed amendment, launched by Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett, would empower two-thirds of the states,…
The Washington Post's Ezra Klein and the New Republic's Jonathan Chait, two men who believe as an article of faith that government-run health care is the irresistible wave of the future, claim that they aren't fazed by this week's federal district court ruling declaring Obamacare's (in the words of…
Yesterday's ruling by a federal district judge, declaring that Obamacare's individual mandate is unconstitutional, is a noteworthy blow to the highly unpopular overhaul and its ultimate prospects for survival. The New York Times writes:
Confusion held by some Democrats about the proper role of government is coming to the fore in a recent push to get Republican House members who oppose Obamacare to eschew their federal health care benefits. Missouri Democratic Party chairman Craig Hosmer says the question is whether Missouri…
Republicans have rightly pledged to pass legislation in the House to repeal Obamacare, but they are also considering trying to repeal Obamacare 'piece by piece' after the Democrats inevitably kill that full repeal legislation. It's understandable that Republicans, in their determination to repeal…
The debt commission's report, to be voted upon tomorrow by the commission's members, is a provocative proposal that should help to jump-start serious discussions about paying off (or at least not continuing to add to) our $13.8 trillion debt. In truth, the commission's report is the best that one…
Politico reports:
House Republicans are pushing full speed ahead for the repeal of Obamacare. Rather than trying to sift through the president's "comprehensive" overhaul and separate the morsels of wheat from the warehouses of chaff, the Republicans will wisely repeal the whole thing and start over. If there's…
The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that Americans support the repeal of Obamacare by a margin of 21 percentage points (58 to 37 percent), independents support repeal by 24 percentage points (59 to 35 percent), and Americans think that Obamacare is more likely to be repealed…
There's nothing like the yellow, dying grass on the other side of the fence to make you appreciate what you already have. In that spirit, and with the prospect of Obamacare looming, a new Gallup poll shows that fully 40 percent of Americans now rate their health care as "excellent," the highest…
Today's Wall Street Journal reports:
Providing a strong indication of how personal, accessible, understandable, user-friendly, customer-service-oriented, and not at all posthuman your health care would be under Obamacare, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has just released a 347-page, 118,072-word "rule" to implement…
The newest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that Americans favor repeal of Obamacare by a margin of 21 points (58 to 37 percent), while independents -- who swept Republicans into office two weeks ago -- favor repeal by almost 2 to 1 (62 to 33 percent).
The recently released draft proposal from the federal debt commission offers some useful ideas for reducing runaway federal spending on health care. Even a committee comprising two-thirds Democrats is suggesting tort reform to curb wasteful malpractice lawsuits (Obamacare would do nothing about…
In the summer of 2009, Bill Kristol urged Republicans not to try to improve Obamacare but to “kill it.” That advice is equally trenchant today.
Obamacare wouldn't go into effect in any meaningful way until 2014, but it's already politicizing health care to a perhaps unprecedented degree. The AP reports that American taxpayers may soon be forced to pay for free -- and likely more expensive -- forms of contraception, as part of Obamacare's…
In the wake of the best performance by Republicans in a House election since 1938 (the last time Republicans gained this many seats) and arguably since 1894 (the last time Republicans gained this many seats and emerged as the majority party), President Obama and his allies are trying to interpret…
The November Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that President Obama's health care overhaul has now hit a lower level of popularity than at any previous time in his presidency. Kaiser writes, "Just a quarter of the public (25 percent) now says they expect their own families to be better off under…
In the midst of a resounding national rebuke at all levels of government, the Democrats have been taking some solace in having held the Senate. But to put the Republicans' Senate gains this week into perspective, Republicans won an even higher percentage of Senate races than House races (they won…
Those seeking to explain the decisive Republicans victory in the midterm elections have essentially divided into two camps. The first says the Democrats were primarily the victims of a poor economy. The second says they were the victims of their own policies, and particularly of their centerpiece…
Rasmussen writes, "Fifty-nine percent (59%) of those who voted in today’s elections nationwide favor repeal of the national health care bill passed by congressional Democrats in March, including 48% who Strongly Favor it." In contrast, fewer than one in three voters (32 percent) strongly opposes…
Democratic pollster Pat Caddell just finished providing a remarkable rebuttal on Fox News to President Obama's assertion in his post-election press conference that, "[T]here is no doubt that people's number-one concern is the economy, and what they were expressing great frustration about…
The last time the Republicans gained this many seats in the House while also regaining control of the chamber was in the 19th century. Moreover, at President Obama's press conference following this historic repudiation of him and his party by the American voters, the first three questions offered a…
As we begin Election Day, the Democrats not only appear poised to lose between 60 and 75 House seats (I’ll defer to Jay Cost for the exact number), but they appear to have a roughly 50-50 chance of losing control of the Senate as well. To be sure, this is not what most people are saying, and it’s…
Rasmussen's final pre-election poll on the repeal of Obamacare shows that independents favor repeal by the colossal margin of 45 points (70 to 25 percent). Likely voters on the whole favor repeal by a margin of 22 points (58 to 36 percent), men favor repeal (55 to 39 percent), women favor repeal…
Congressional Democrats' pro-Obamacare votes "could prove to be their political death," the Hill writes.
A close look at the Senate polls suggests that they are likely understating the probability of Republican victories. Most seem to be under-sampling either Republicans, independents, or both. As a result, in 10 of 12 key Senate races, the Republican candidate’s likelihood of winning appears to be…
In an article entitled, "Health care vote-switchers an endangered species," the Washington Post writes:
CNS News writes that, after having misquoted the Declaration on "at least five occasions in the past," President Obama has now started reciting its most famous sentence correctly, including its statement that our rights are endowed by our Creator. CNS News provides a great clip of the president's…
In what it calls "a dramatic rebuke to a sitting president and freshly minted statute," National Journal writes that likely voters favor the repeal of Obamacare by a margin of 10 percentage points: 51 to 41 percent. The newly released Congressional Connection Poll, which National Journal conducted…
Seven months after Obamacare's passage, the Senate's two doctors have conducted a “check-up” on the highly unpopular health care overhaul, the passage of which is about to cost the Democrats their nearly 80-seat advantage in the House and possibly even their 18-seat advantage in the Senate (where…
Newsweek has just released a likely-voter poll showing Democrats leading by 3 points (48 to 45 percent) on the generic congressional ballot. The same poll shows that likely voters approve of President Obama's performance by a 14-point margin (54 to 40 percent). Since Rasmussen shows Obama with…
The recently released AP-GfK poll, which shows Republicans leading by 7 points (50 to 43 percent) on the generic congressional ballot, asks voters whether they "approve" or "disapprove" of "the way Barack Obama is handling" various issues. To say the least, the results aren't good for the Obama…
Republican Pat Toomey continues to lead Democrat Joe Sestak by 4 points in Pennsylvania, according to the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters. I've written that the gap in the Pennsylvania Senate race is likely bigger than that which has been indicated by three recent polls, each of which…
Many people are talking about the dramatic tightening of the Pennsylvania Senate race between Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Joe Sestak. But upon closer inspection, most of that apparent tightening seems to be a mirage.
At a Democratic fundraiser on Monday night, President Obama once again misquoted the Declaration of Independence’s most famous sentence and once again omitted its reference to our “Creator.” According to the text of his remarks published on the official White House website, he said: “[W]hat makes…
Governor Joe Manchin, who trails Republican John Raese by 3 points in Rasmussen's latest poll on the West Virginia Senate race (the Real Clear Politics average has Manchin slightly ahead on the basis of two Democratic polls), is now running a pro-Obamacare ad:
Yuval Levin and others have had the foresight to warn that the choice we face is not between repealing Obamacare and fixing Obamacare, but between repealing Obamacare and expanding Obamacare – which means: if not repealed, the massive new health care entitlement would build "a health care bridge to…
Even the monthly Kaiser Health Tracking poll, an outlier poll that has consistently shown far greater support for Obamacare than one could glean from almost anywhere else – for example, the Kaiser poll in July maintained that only 35 percent of Americans opposed Obamacare – is now showing big…
Strongly indicating just how well ObamaCare is resonating with the public as we approach the midterm elections, Politico reports that, so far in October, advertising in opposition to ObamaCare and/or in support of repeal has outpaced advertising in support of ObamaCare by a margin of "20-to-1." …
West Virginia governor Joe Manchin, the Democratic Senate candidate who's locked in a tight race with Republican John Raese, is now running an ad in which he promises to "take dead aim" at cap-and-trade and then literally shoots a hole through the law (which is labeled, conveniently enough, "CAP…
Ever wonder why Republican challenger Ken Buck can't open up more of a lead against Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado? Bennet, the Democratic incumbent, was not elected by the people (he was appointed) and yet brazenly thought he could get away with voting for Obamacare in a GOP-leaning (if only…
In a debate yesterday in Michigan, the Republican, the independent, and the Green Party candidate all agreed that Obamacare must go. While the candidates had different thoughts about what Obamacare should be replaced with, they all agreed that it should be repealed, leaving only Democratic…
When Missouri voters passed an anti-Obamacare referendum two months ago by a tally of 71 to 29 percent, Sen. Harry Reid responded, “It’s very obvious that people have a lack of understanding of our health care reform bill." He added, “The more people learn about this bill, the more they like it.”
Based upon how residents of each congressional district voted in the past three presidential elections, House Democrats currently hold 68 Republican-leaning seats. Of the 68 Democrats holding these seats, 59 are running for reelection: 31 voted for Obamacare, 28 of these members of Congress voted…
If you like your hospital, you'll get to keep your hospital. Well, maybe not.
The New York Times reports that the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been busy granting selective waivers to Obamacare's mandates, restrictions, and requirements. The Times reports that, “To date, the administration has given about 30 insurers, employers and…
The Hill writes, "A majority of voters in key battleground districts favor repeal of the legislative overhaul Congress passed this year." A newly released survey that The Hill conducted of nearly 5,000 likely voters in twelve hotly contested congressional districts finds that 56 percent, including…
Earl Pomeroy (D., N.D.), who stubbornly cast not one but two votes in favor of Obamacare in a state that has favored GOP presidential candidates by an average of 21 percentage points in the past three elections, is now running an ad in which he brazenly tries to convince his constituents that he…
Less than a month before the midterm elections, candidates of both parties seem to have found something on which they can agree: There’s no sense in trying to defend Obamacare as it was passed by Congress and signed into law by the president. Instead, the debate over the federal health care…
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Likely independent voters favor repeal by a 27-point margin -- 60 to 33 percent -- according to the latest Rasmussen poll. Republicans, especially those running against one of the 34 Democrats who in March voted against Obamacare but who, six months later, now support "fixing" rather than repealing…
The Obama administration is spending still more of your tax dollars to have Andy Griffith tout Obamacare. Politico writes:
What’s the one issue that independent voters most strongly demand that a candidate get right? According to a survey of 1,000 independents (and likely voters) recently conducted by Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen and commissioned by Independent Women’s Voice, the answer isn’t “national…
A recent New York Times/CBS News poll shows, among other things, that more than twice as many Americans “strongly disapprove” of Obamacare (34 percent) as “strongly approve” of it (15 percent). Moreover, the poll shows that the vast majority — 82 percent — of those who disapprove of Obamacare…
The most famous words in the Declaration of Independence — and almost surely the most famous words ever written by an American — read, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these…
It's becoming increasingly hard to find anyone who's willing to express support for Obamacare publicly. Politico now reports that three times more money is being spent on anti-Obamacare ads as on pro-Obamacare ads – among Democrats. Overall, the tally is seven to one. Moreover, the movement is…
Two of the Obama administration's political allies (Families USA and U.S. PIRG) have just released “The Young Person's Guide to Health Insurance,” which contains a personal message from (who else?) President Barack Obama. The guide lists Obamacare's "Coming Attractions" and provides helpful advice…
It’s becoming increasingly apparent that, all other things being equal, the small minority of House Democrats who voted against Obamacare are in much better electoral shape than the vast majority of those who voted for it. At least five of these 34 more independent-minded Democrats are now running…
The New Republic's Jonathan Chait says the notion that the Democrats should have abandoned Obamacare in the wake of Scott Brown's election is "a transparently ridiculous argument," and he balks at the claim that "spending less time on health care and more on 'the economy' – where it's not clear the…
Nearly a year ago, former-President Bill Clinton visited Capitol Hill and advised congressional Democrats that the best way to secure their political futures was to pass Obamacare. Speaking to reporters afterward, Clinton said, "I think it is good politics to pass this and to pass it as soon as…
Jay Cost noted that Democratic senator Ron Wyden sent a letter last week to Oregon health authority director Bruce Goldberg, in which Wyden states that the federal government "has never had the flexibility" or the "will" to implement "innovative solutions" to our health care woes. Can you imagine a…
If there's any group you want on your side when approaching an election, it's enthusiastic independent voters. Independent voters carry elections in swing districts, and (even in a poll of likely voters) independents that feel strongly are presumably more likely to vote and less likely to waver.
A few miles up the road from Ground Zero, the Obama administration recently submitted its account of the United States human rights record to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The administration’s report, the first ever submitted by this nation to that body (whose members include Libya and…
The Huffington Post reports, "CBO warns Republicans that repealing health law would increase deficit by $455 billion." What the CBO actually says is that if Congress repeals Obamacare's $455 billion in "savings" (cuts) to Medicare and other federal health programs through 2019 (the CBO says that…
According to President Obama, "If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what." You can keep your plan, that is, if your employer doesn't decide to dump it in the wake of Obamacare's passage (as many major employers are…
Politico has released a piece that begins as follows: "Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to 'improve it.'" This is a truly remarkable…
It's hard to get more than 70 percent of Americans to agree on anything, but 71 percent of Missourians voted yesterday for a referendum opposing the centerpiece of President Obama's signature legislative initiative. In the first official vote by the American public on Obamacare, Show-Me state…
If not repealed, Obamacare would be financed through a combination of Medicare cuts, tax increases, and deficit spending. But to hear the Obama administration talk, Obamacare would instead improve Medicare coverage, lower taxes, and cut the deficit. The administration's amazing claims beg the…
Yesterday’s exchange between Elena Kagan and Sen. Tom Coburn did a fair amount to illuminate how Kagan would likely think and rule on the Court.
Americans are infuriated by their sense that Washington lives by a different set of fiscal rules than the rest of us. And nothing could help illustrate this much better than the Democratic Congress's recent announcement that it has no intention of passing a budget. American families have budgets,…
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, referencing a few polls, recently wrote of Obamacare’s popularity: “Public opinion remains mixed, and the trend is toward support, not opposition.” This, however, is wishful thinking on Klein’s part. A more thorough look at the polls shows that American voters…
The grossly misleading, full-color propaganda brochures that the Obama administration has been sending out to seniors at taxpayer expense don't seem to have swayed many minds -- at least not in the direction that the administration would want. For the 4th straight week, Americans favor repealing…
Here's a good way to remember John Wooden (1910-2010), the wonderful man who was a 3-time All-America basketball player at Purdue (1930-32), won 335 games and lost 22 in his last dozen seasons as UCLA's head coach, won 10 national championships over that span (no other coach has ever won 5), was…
Michigan, a state that Barack Obama won by 16 points and that hasn't gone to a Republican presidential candidate in 22 years, opposes Obamacare by 8 points, according to the Detroit Free Press. Perhaps even more disconcertingly for the Obama administration, voters under age-30 are opposed to…
Much of the focus on Obamacare has rightly been on its fiscal recklessness. But in a New York Times story —the type of story the Times couldn’t seem to find space for prior to Obamacare’s passage — we see a clear glimpse of the kind of care that Obamacare would likely spawn.
The Democrats and their political allies seem to have found a way to try to circumvent the fact that Americans plainly want, by overwhelming numbers, Obamacare to be repealed: They simply don’t ask Americans the question. The Hill writes, “A plurality of Americans said they would prefer Republicans…
As further evidence of how politicized health care would become under Obamacare, Politico reports that Planned Parenthood is pushing for a national mandate that insurers must provide free birth control. Over the objections of those who think that Americans should be free to seek out health…
As they followed one another off the political cliff in voting for the health-care overhaul, Democratic senators and representatives comforted themselves with their own self-created myth that, although ObamaCare was horribly unpopular as a bill, it would prove to be quite fetching as a law. …
Forget about open-heart surgery or cutting-edge cancer treatments. Under Obamacare, you might have a hard time finding a hamburger. A statement released by White Castle, the Ohio-based burger chain, highlights how damaging Obamacare would be to small businesses and to Americans' job prospects.…
In the first five weeks after ObamaCare's passage, Americans favored repeal by a whopping 16 points (56 to 40 percent), according to Rasmussen's poll of likely voters. Now, in the wake of developments such as the news that ObamaCare has actually prompted major corporations to discuss the…
As I noted last week, more than a month's worth of polling shows that Americans favor repeal of Obamacare by a whopping 16 points, 56 to 40 percent (according to Rasmussen's poll of likely voters). But it's also worth noting that support for repeal is even higher among independents -- who…
The evidence is mounting that Americans are correct in their overwhelming appraisal that Obamacare, if not repealed, would not only raise health costs and deficits, and would not only involve far too much government control over our lives, but would also reduce the quality of health care. It’s not…
"Repeal, and then real reform" is clearly the political message that most Americans, especially most of those who are strongly engaged, want to hear. However, the Left has taken some solace in a CNN poll showing that "only" 47 percent of Americans want to see Obamacare repealed, as opposed to…
A CBS News poll shows that ObamaCare's popularity has fallen off dramatically since the day of its passage. It appears that Americans aren't as inclined to reward politicians for defying them as the Democrats had hoped. The CBS News poll shows that ObamaCare is now 10 percentage points less…
Here's some helpful analysis of President Obama's first pitch today. It specifically critiques last year's pitch, but since he's shown no signs of improvement in the last year, it's equally relevant today.
Now that President Obama has signed his health care bill into law, people are saying that the overhaul will do this or will do that. But given the pains to which the Democrats went to structuring the legislation so as to avoid presenting its true ($2 trillion-plus) ten-year costs to the American…
The CBO’s most recent analysis is out, and it’s not likely to convince wavering House Democrats to jump to the Obamacare side of the fence. Even the Democrats are granting that the latest version of their proposed health care overhaul would cost $69 billion more than the previous version. …
The New York Times writes, “For weeks, Democrats...were taking a pounding in their districts.” But now “pharmaceutical companies [have] made a $12 million investment for a final advertising push.” The Times elaborates: “The new money from Pharma, the association of drug makers, as well as…
If you're wondering which members of Congress are the most important to contact about Obamacare, Andy Wickersham and I have put together our list -- along with indicating how red or blue their districts are, and whether or not they voted for the Stupak Amendment (to preserve longstanding…
In his second health-care rally of the week, at a high school gymnasium on the outskirts of St. Louis, President Obama drew 500 people, not all of them supporters. Far from providing evidence of a great and sudden wellspring of public support for the president's proposed health-care overhaul, this…
Last week, President Obama opined that health care "easily lends itself to demagoguery and political gamesmanship, and misrepresentation and misunderstanding." No one has done more to demonstrate the truth of this assertion than the president himself. In light of such concerns, the fairest thing…
Michael Barone writes:
ObamaCare supporters are trying to take encouragement from a new Associated Press survey, which shows that nine of the 39 House Democrats who are in the enviable position of having voted "no" on ObamaCare the first time around have now either "declined to state their positions or [have] said they…
The “health-care summit” has come and gone, and it was a good day for the Republicans. They were sharp and focused, the Democrats meandering and ineffectual. The latter came off more like wishful ideologues or naive amateurs than like practical realists with sensible solutions. They seemed…
One of the great things about the health summit was getting to witness certain members' rhetorical skills and getting to hear how they think about things. One of the most revealing comments was made by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who lamented that people whose medical bills are higher have to pay…
At tomorrow's "health summit," we'll hear a lot of talk from President Obama and congressional Democrats about unscrupulous and under-regulated insurers who pad their obscene profits by raising prices at their whim at the expense of helpless Americans from coast to coast. If only the federal…
In his speech to a joint-session of Congress on September 9, President Obama introduced what he called "my plan" for "health care reform." The next day, the Washington Post noted that "the president for the first time Wednesday embraced a set of ideas as 'my plan.'" About the same time, Obama…
In yet another interview in connection with a major sporting event—this time, the Super Bowl—President Obama proposed yet another unorthodox manner of addressing a political problem: this time, a bipartisan half-day health care summit on live TV. Why hold such a meeting nearly a year into the…
Now that Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) has decided to run for the Senate, it will be interesting to see how much he tries to distance himself from ObamaCare -- and how eagerly he switches his vote if that proposed overhaul ever makes it to another floor vote in the House. Of the 219 House Democrats…
On Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, it’s worth reflecting that, as great as Ronald Reagan was, he followed in the footsteps of the greatest Republican communicator. That title belongs to the party’s first president. In reading Lincoln’s speeches, one can easily imagine how he would have responded to…
Last night the moon was not only full, but it was about as close to the Earth as it will be all year. Looking up at its magnificence in the night sky, one cannot help but feel a sense of loss in knowing that President Obama does not want us to go back there.
“The Democratic Party is lashed to health reform—even in the face of polls showing tepid public support.” Thus Politico’s Carrie Brown paraphrases senior Democratic aides. As unappealing as that predicament may sound, Brown writes that those same aides say “it would be politically disastrous to…
On Sunday, the Washington Post tried to discredit the Safeway model of health care reform — clearly hoping to make ObamaCare look better in comparison.But if one reads the story carefully, it offers further evidence of the wisdom of the Safeway approach and the folly of ObamaCare.
Liberals like to talk about the federal budget deficits during the Reagan years (while exonerating congressional Democrats of all responsibility for them). So, how did those deficits, at the height of the Cold War buildup, compare to current ones?
One of the many problems with funneling our nation's health-care system through our nation's political system is that it would politicize health care. The health-care bill that recently passed the Senate could hardly provide better evidence of this claim.
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer writes, "POLITICO reported that, before it even becomes law, opponents of health care reform - including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich - are already talking about repealing it. Certainly there is a fundamental disagreement here, since many…
Rasmussen's health-care polling results since Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid orchestrated the Christmas Eve vote are full of undeniably bad news for Democrats. In roughly ascending order of bad news (if one is a Democrat)... Likely voters oppose Obamacare by more than the (18-point) margin by…
Democratic senators and congressmen have been trying to convince each other, particularly their more conservative colleagues, that they'll all be better off in the 2010 elections--and will avoid a repeat of their 1994 debacle--if they pass Obama-care. Bill Clinton, half of the central duo in the…
Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod said today that supporters of Obamacare are "right on the one-yard line." It is interesting that he said this less than 24 hours after Fresno State, in this season's first college football bowl game, also was on the 1-yard line very late in the game. At that…
With Obamacare, you get the good, the bad, and the ugly -- except for the first part. The Congressional Budget Office's score is in for the final Senate health bill, and it's amazing how little Americans would get for so much. The Democrats are irresponsibly and disingenuously claiming that the…
As Jim Capretta writes over at NRO, now that the government-run "public option" has been stripped out of the Senate's proposed health-care legislation, Obamacare is left as this: a mandate that Americans funnel huge sums in new taxes, through the federal government, to private insurers. Were you…
The scoring is in on the health-care bills, and it's hard to see what the Democrats' proposed health-care overhaul would achieve apart from centralizing and consolidating power in Washington. During the campaign, then-Senator Obama said, "I am committed to signing a universal health care plan into…
Senate Republicans have just released an outstanding chart highlighting the accounting games that Democrats are playing with the costs of their proposed health-care overhaul. The Democrats assert that their Senate bill would cost $848 billion over ten years. But Congressional Budget Office…
Here are four key facts about the costs of the Democrats' 2,074-page Senate health bill: 1. According to the CBO, only 1 percent of the bill's costs would kick in prior to the fifth year of its alleged "first ten years" (2010 to 2019). Starting in 2014, 99 percent of the bill's costs would hit --…
Among the health-care proposals advanced so far, here is the clear order of merit: 1. the House Republican bill (the only proposal the CBO says would lower insurance premiums); 2. the status quo; 3. the massive Democratic attempts to overhaul our nation's health-care system and dramatically…
As my piece with Ben Sasse in today's New York Post shows, the real 10-years costs of the Democratic health bills are not $800-900 billion, but roughly double that. In their real first decades, the House bill would cost $1.8 trillion, the Senate bill $1.7 trillion. And the House bill would raise…
According to 60 Minutes, cocaine trafficking has now given way to Medicare fraud as the number-one illicit enterprise in South Florida. Both 60 Minutes and the Washington Post report that nationwide Medicare fraud now costs American taxpayers $60 billion a year.
As 60 Minutes reported last week, Medicare fraud is rampant and has now replaced the cocaine (ahem) business as the major criminal activity in South Florida. Both 60 Minutes and the Washington Post report that Medicare fraud now costs American taxpayers roughly $60 billion a year. That may sound…
Even the Washington Post is not on board with the Senate's latest efforts to pass ObamaCare: Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) now says that "we need to fix the Medicare doctors' payments first, outside of health reform" -- thereby allowing $247 billion in new deficit spending to be…
The American people haven't been shy about expressing their views on health-care reform. In the polls and at public events nationwide, they've made it clear that they don't want a behemoth bill that would fundamentally transform a health-care system that works well for most Americans and which…
Ezra Klein has posted a blog criticizing the claim (made by Bill Kristol on the Daily Show Monday night) that the costs of government-run health care have greatly outpaced other health costs. But Klein is mistaken. Advocates of ObamaCare like to rely on studies comparing the cost-increases of…
In a recent op-ed, Tom Daschle repeatedly invokes a baseball metaphor when discussing government-run health care. His apparent aim is to make it seem as American as baseball or apple pie. But government-run health care is really about as American as government-owned Chevrolet--and would prove even…
Democrats frequently claim that government-run health care is more affordable than privately run health care. Too often, Republicans don't challenge this wild assertion. If they don't start doing so, the costs will likely be extraordinary--both to Americans' finances and to their freedom.
Under the bright lights, Florida scored 10 fourth-quarter points to beat Oklahoma 24-14 and claim the BCS National Championship. When asked for his thoughts following the Gators' tremendous win, President-elect Obama replied, "We need a playoff."
As you settle in with your bowl of popcorn and drink to watch the quadrennial competition for America's highest office, you need a scorecard. You are eagerly anticipating seeing the national map light up in red and blue--a welcome reminder of our federalist design--but what should you be watching…
When is 1,252 greater than 1,414? Apparently, when Hillary Clinton has the 1,252 (delegates, that is). Clinton is making a strong push to convince Democratic voters and superdelegates that her big-state wins matter more than Barack Obama's assortment of smaller-state wins.
AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE professor who created one of the computer rankings that determine which two college football teams will meet in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), I find the controversy over the rankings mirrors American political culture. Indeed, it shows American character is still as…