In 1878, Chester Alan Arthur held one of the most powerful and lucrative patronage positions in the federal government: collector of the Port of New York. Thanks to the percentage system by which he was paid, Arthur took in about $50,000 per year at a time when the president earned half as much.…
On the morning of December 12, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took the stage at the Dean Acheson Auditorium to conduct a year-end town-hall meeting with his anxious and largely skeptical State Department staff. The event was keenly anticipated and the venue packed. No one in attendance—not even…
As the Republican effort to repeal and replace Obamacare withered on the vine, the self-described socialist senator from Vermont rushed to fill the political vacuum. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All Act of 2017 is a single-payer proposal that shamelessly attempts to harness the popularity of…
On October 31, exactly 500 years will have passed since a German monk named Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. That’s at least the tradition, but certainly Luther circulated his collection of brief contentions. Mainly he intended to provoke a debate…
On October 31, exactly 500 years will have passed since a German monk named Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. That’s at least the tradition, but certainly Luther circulated his collection of brief contentions. Mainly he intended to provoke a debate…
Obamacare “repeal and replace” may have failed this year, but that doesn’t mean the Affordable Care Act can’t be significantly defanged. For example, there is still time to excise the Independent Payment Advisory Board from the law before it is up and running.
Obamacare “repeal and replace” may have failed this year, but that doesn’t mean the Affordable Care Act can’t be significantly defanged. For example, there is still time to excise the Independent Payment Advisory Board from the law before it is up and running.
To understand the pragmatic realities of federal governance in the 21st century, one must recognize the existence of a fourth branch of government: the administrative state. We have some two million federal bureaucrats with extraconstitutional legislative powers. Not only do they write the reams of…
To understand the pragmatic realities of federal governance in the 21st century, one must recognize the existence of a fourth branch of government: the administrative state. We have some two million federal bureaucrats with extraconstitutional legislative powers. Not only do they write the reams of…
In DC Confidential, New York Law School professor David Schoenbrod describes how Congress degenerated from a responsible legislature, one that took responsibility for difficult decisions, to a body continually looking to dodge blame. The book is an absolute delight. Schoenbrod begins with an…
In DC Confidential, New York Law School professor David Schoenbrod describes how Congress degenerated from a responsible legislature, one that took responsibility for difficult decisions, to a body continually looking to dodge blame. The book is an absolute delight. Schoenbrod begins with an…
Any effort to reform the Republican nomination process is going to have to go through the Republican National Committee, and, by extension, the state parties whose members comprise it.
During Tuesday's WEEKLY STANDARD podcast, I made a point that requires some amplification. The polls consistently show that the vast majority of voters—about 130 million in total—do not like either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, who were selected by just over 30 million people. There must be…
Later today, the White House and the Brennan Center for Justice will host an event pressing for the release of thousands of convicted federal felons in the name of sentencing reform. During this event, titled “The Economic Consequences of the Criminal Justice System," those consequences will likely…
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which replaces No Child Left Behind, unceremoniously ushers Uncle Sam out of a domestic arena like no legislation since welfare reform two decades ago. How in the world did that happen during the hyper-progressive Obama administration?
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…
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,…
Ted Cruz, who in 1996 clerked for then-chief justice William Rehnquist and is now a first-term senator and GOP presidential candidate, has assumed the leadership of conservatives aiming to rein in a Supreme Court they fault for imposing on the country rights not found in the Constitution. This is…
Waukesha
Campbell Brown has launched the http://www.the74million.org, a new online outlet dedicated to covering education.
The American system of market-based capitalism is in trouble. And the reasons are not the ones commonly cited. The trouble is not that the financial system came close to collapse in the fall of 2008: We have experienced panics before, and the ability of the political and regulatory authorities to…
At a Manhattan fundraiser yesterday (as noted by The Hill), potential presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke of the rioting in Baltimore by invoking a theme of the Obama administration: the need for reform of the criminal justice system.
With congressional Republicans back from their spring recess, presumably revived and resolved to keep our country competitive, there is one more thing they should do to gird up for the resumption of legislative business.
Rand Paul argued for immigration reform in an interview tonigth with Fox News's Sean Hannity:
Last week, to much fanfare, Glenn Beck declared that he was leaving the Republican party and becoming an independent. During a Tuesday night appearance on the O’Reilly Factor, Beck explained his decision thusly:
Tom Cotton’s letter to the Iranian regime has spurred furious blowback from liberals. They want the president to cut a deal with Iran, and Cotton’s letter gets in the way; thus, they’ve engaged in a specious fight over inter-branch protocol. Never mind that the president is looking to sign an…
In a town hall in Miami, President Obama encouraged probable Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush to lobby folks in his party to support immigration reform:
In an MSNBC townhall in Miami, President Obama vows to fight the court ruling against the executive amnesty he adopted last year.
Bernie Becker of the The Hill writes that:
The first ad making the case for Scott Walker for president of the United States, from his newly formed committee called Our American Revival:
“Give me your tired, your poor … your huddled masses … wretched refuse … the homeless,” implores the Lady in New York harbor. Little can she know that 11.4 million of these “tempest-tost” souls are already here, having arrived illegally, most from Mexico and points south. Some 4-5 million of those…
A fired up President Barack Obama had a message to immigration activists at a dinner this evening in Washington, D.C.: "no force on earth can stop us."
Everyone involved in the Kabuki theater surrounding the nine-month extension of revenue for the highway trust fund has so far played their parts perfectly.
Immigration reform is deader than ever in 2014 and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee says President Obama is to blame.
In the New York Times, Jonathan Martin calls David Brat's defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor in a Republican primary "one of the most stunning primary election upsets in congressional history."
"Everything reminds Milton of the money supply," Robert Solow once said of his fellow Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman at a symposium. "Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper."
Matthew Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon:
Daniel Gade lost his right leg in Iraq. But Gade, an assistant professor of political science at the U.S. Military Academy, does not consider himself disabled. Instead, he uses himself as an example of how the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs often inaccurately assesses disability.
Obamacare is failing. Faced with this unpleasant reality, President Obama offered up during his State of the Union address his only remaining defense of his eponymous program: There is no alternative. “[M]y Republican friends…if you have specific plans…tell America what you’d do differently….We all…
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,…
Ted Cruz says that anyone in favor of the so-called immigration reform bill "should go ahead and put a 'Harry Reid for Majority Leader' bumper sticker on their car."
The Wall Street Journal reports that some House Republican leaders:
House majority leader Eric Cantor applauded President Obama's push for so-called immigration reform in last night's State of the Union Address:
As Bill Kristol and Jeff Anderson noted earlier today, the introduction by Republican Senators Burr, Coburn, and Hatch of an Obamacare replacement plan is an important milestone in the health care debate. This is a serious and practical replacement proposal, offered by three prominent legislators.…
2017 Project executive director (and frequent TWS contributor) Jeff Anderson has an important memo outlining the new health care reform proposal from three senior Republican senators that would repeal Obamacare and replace it with legislation that "beats Obamacare in every particular" and would…
As Alex Roarty of National Journal reports:
White House photographer Pete Souza tweets this picture of President Obama and Vice President Biden holding hands "during a prayer at end of mtg w faith leaders on immigration reform."
Everyone’s angry at American colleges. Parents groan about tuition, students pile up debt and can’t find work, employers gripe that graduates lack job skills, conservatives decry liberal bias, Ph.D.s without a regular post become bitter transient adjuncts, and politicians suspect that tax dollars…
The government shutdown drama is over, and already it feels like ancient history. But Republicans made missteps and suffered for them, so it’s worth pointing out how Republicans can recover and succeed in 2014 and beyond. In short, they must adopt an agenda— and run on it.
When it approved reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) last year, a normally spendthrift Congress showed that its members could work together and do the right thing for taxpayers. Majorities from both parties voted to end some of the program’s subsidies for vacation homes and…
In the early days of the Obama administration, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was the bipartisan superstar. At Duncan’s confirmation hearing, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) told him, “President-elect Obama has made several distinguished cabinet appointments, but in my view of it all, I think…
Several weeks ago in San Francisco, Attorney General Eric Holder told the American Bar Association that our criminal justice system is too harsh, too costly, and gives convicted African-American males sentences 20 percent longer than others for similar crimes.
Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican, is marking Labor Day with a statement lamenting the decline in America’s workforce and the strident push toward passing an immigration bill.
After five decades of liberal antipoverty programs that have produced only failure and futility, it is more than time for a conservative response to the problem of poverty—one that emphasizes work, family, and economic freedom.
In a sharp memo sent this morning to fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill, Senator Jeff Sessions argues that the GOP elite view on immigration--shared by President Barack Obama and Senator Chuck Schumer--is "nonsense." Instead, Sessions, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, advises his…
If you are a U.S. senator and have a cool idea about taxes but are worried to speak it aloud for fear some of your constituents will peel your hide off in small strips ... well, there is hope. A couple of your colleagues have come up with a plan.
Republicans forged ahead in their effort to transform North Carolina into a reliably red state, with Gov. Pat McCrory and top legislature leaders agreeing Monday on a tax cut plan to boost economic growth and job creation.
President Obama will turn to four "Spanish-language outlets" to push the immigration bill, Mike Allen reports.
NBC's Chuck Todd said this morning that "the White House doesn't see a path" to passing an immigration bill by the end of this year:
There is some movement in Washington toward reforming the tax code which may sound like mere legislation but, as Nancy Cook of the National Journal writes, is being treated more like combat by some interested parties.
Sean Trende asks, in a thoughtful and data-heavy piece, whether the GOP has to pass immigration reform to be competitive in the future at the presidential level. The answer is no.
The boss last night on Fox News:
For nearly 30 years—at least since Bill Bennett’s tenure as secretary of education and Lamar Alexander’s as governor of Tennessee—education-minded conservatives at both national and state levels have embraced a two-part school reform strategy, focused equally on rigorous standards and parental…
In 1986, three million illegal immigrants in the United States were given the right to become citizens. It was a full-scale amnesty, created by a bipartisan majority in Congress and signed into law by President Reagan. It had one big flaw.
Yuval Levin has an excellent piece at NRO, "Reforming Immigration Reform," on how the Gang of Eight's immigration bill could be improved. Levin notes "that, compared with some other conservative critics (including some of NR's editors), my starting point on this subject is significantly friendlier…
A Louisiana high school is in "chaos" after 57 teachers skipped school to protest the governor in Baton Rouge. The problem is that there were not enough substitute teachers to replace those who decided to protest the Republican governor, Bobby Jindal.
Fred Barnes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
Hardly anyone who takes a close look at the network of federal and state laws mandating minimum prison sentences for myriad offenses can doubt that they waste billions of dollars, destroy lives, and do a disservice to justice. Reading the stories assembled by groups like Families Against Mandatory…
For all the talk of "changing the culture in Washington," it appears to be business as usual ... only more so. Things are done – when, and if, they are – by people who play a tough inside game with no spectators. Washington will soon be working on revisions to the tax laws – since, obviously, they…
Following the Republican shellacking in the recent election, David Brooks highlighted some voices shaping center-right conversation on the Internet. One of his more surprising choices was that of a Republican Study Committee staffer who had penned a (quickly withdrawn) memo for the caucus of…
President Obama and the Democrats have made clear that their “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants should be as direct as possible. Many Republicans are not sure they want any such path. Those who do, like Senator John McCain, call for “a long and arduous process.” His fellow Arizona senator…
The Senate Republican Conference has released this video, showing that Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, was against filibuster reform before being for it:
The president-elect of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, praised President Barack Obama's immigration plan in a meeting today at the White House.
Viewers of the 2012 debates have witnessed an extraordinary turnaround. John Stuart Mill famously spoke of “a party of order and stability, and a party of progress or reform.” Once upon a time, Barack Obama and Joe Biden could claim the mantle of change and progress. But the televised exchanges…
In election law, as in so many things, the word “reform,” when associated with a new idea, is usually a sure sign that mischief is afoot. A case in point: early voting reform. This innocuous sounding but insidious idea, which has led some 32 states to allow voting to commence as much as six weeks…
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…
Mitt Romney has a well-deserved reputation as risk-averse and cautious. His campaign team has made no secret of its strategy to have their man tiptoe to the presidency by focusing almost exclusively on President Obama’s stewardship of the economy. The execution of this strategy depends on Romney…
C. Boyden Gray and Jim R. Purcell, writing in the Wall Street Journal:
The New York Times profiles the mayor of Thessaloniki, Yiannis Boutaris, the Scott Walker of Greece:
The Fox News Sunday Internet-only after show Panel Plus, with Bill Kristol, Charles Lane, Liz Cheney, and Mara Liasson, on the Wisconsin recall election:
Less than twelve hours after he won the election to recall him from office, Scott Walker made a direct and forceful pitch to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: go big, and go bold.
Mike Bost, a Republican member of the Illinois general assembly from Murphysboro, unleashed an explosive tirade on the Democratic-led legislative body for repeatedly bringing pension reform bills to a vote before giving lawmakers a chance to read them.
James Pethokoukis recommends that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney use the following response to the news that JP Morgan lost $2 billion in risky trading:
Fyodor Dostoevsky once purportedly wrote that the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. As many in the mainstream media have reminded us since his April 21 death at age 80, Charles W. Colson first did so in 1973, as President Nixon’s “hatchet man” sent to…
Robert Samuelson has a strong column today on how one of the biggest obstacles to Social Security reform might be psychological. Though FDR's original vision for the program was a "contributory pension plan" and most Americans are still under the the impression that this is what it is, the reality…
Governor Bobby Jindal brings hope and change to the education system in Louisiana. The AP reports:
While the spending side of the House Republican budget plan is getting most of the media attention, the revenue portion of the plan deserves just as much attention for what it achieves—the resumption of a healthy debate over just what tax reform should entail.
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is moving ahead with education reform--but it isn't without controversy.
Today’s jobs report is all good news for the country, and bad news for Republicans who are hoping that a failing economy is all they need in order to unseat President Obama. The economy added 243,000 jobs in January, 257,000 in the private sector, driving the unemployment rate down to a three-year…
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…
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…
On a conference call with bloggers and reporters from conservative media outlets today, Newt Gingrich continued to do damage control in the wake of his comments on Meet the Press, in which he used the terms "radical change" and "right-wing social engineering" when discussing the House Republicans'…
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.