Research

The passage of Obama's health care bill brought with it an additional $570 billion worth of taxes on everything from your employer, your investments, your doctor, your medical devices (like wheelchairs), and if you fail to purchase government approved insurance, you as well. While on a campaign stop in North Carolina, in his continuous push to improve this job-killing bill's public image, he was asked by a woman in the crowd “whether it was a 'wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care' package.” The Washington Post reports the following bizarre response:

He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze. His discursive answer - more than 2,500 words long -- wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its ... more

Speaking in Charlotte this afternoon, President Obama was talking about his bogus announcement about offshore drilling for oil this week. He said that we don’t need to start drilling immediately to get relief from high gas prices, because they’re not a big deal.

But the notion that we could drill our way out of the problem -- you'll start hearing about this because you know what happens during the summer. As soon as gas prices start going up, every summer, it's the same thing, right? And politicians start standing up, “We're going do something about it!” And these days, some of my colleagues on the republican side, what they'll say is you've got to drill even more.

So who are these cynical politicians complaining about rising gas prices and saying they’d do something about them? Guess who said this?

In fact, if I'm not mistaken, he was quoted today as saying that he thought it was interesting that gas prices might reach $4 a gallon at the pump. He wasn't aware of it apparently. Let ... more

A troubling article in today’s Wall Street Journal reports former government officials “with close ties to the Obama administration” have held talks with the State Department designated foreign terrorist organization Hamas, giving Hamas officials hope “Washington may be softening its position toward Hamas.”  According to the Wall Street Journal article, information from the meetings was then shared with administration officials.

[T]he ex-officials involved in recent talks are seen as higher-profile figures in Washington's diplomatic establishment. They are also seen as enjoying more foreign-policy heft with the administration than U.S. officials in the past… While the talks weren't sanctioned by the White House, their contents have been shared with Obama administration officials, say participants and administration officials.

And while influential former government officials serve as shuttle diplomats between the Obama administration and Hamas, President Obama’s Senate mouthpiece ... more

We’ve previously talked about the $8 billion profit that the Federal government will reap from the sale of its 27% stake in banking giant Citigroup. However, the 7.7 billion shares that the Treasury holds won’t sell themselves and Wall Street firms have been anxious for an opportunity to manage such a massive offering. Today we learned though that the contract to manage the sale was given exclusively to Morgan Stanley, who offered the Federal government a rock bottom commission for the opportunity:

Morgan Stanley will be getting less than a penny commission on each Citigroup share it sells electronically for the Treasury Department. (The fee is $.003 a share). A standard commission for an electronic trade is about two cents a share. If it sells all of the Treasury’s holding of 7.7 billion Citigroup shares electronically, Morgan Stanley would earn $23 million, according to the government’s contract with the Wall Street firm that was released today. The firm will also receive a ... more

Yesterday, in yet another move in Obama’s war on Appalachia, the Obama administration “imposed strict new environmental guidelines that are expected to sharply curtail ‘mountaintop’ coal mining” in communities stretching from New York down to Mississippi.  Once again, the Obama administration is aligning with extreme environmentalists rather than the American worker, as this new rule will cause drastic job losses across the entire Appalachian region and imperiling an important U.S. commodity, since mountaintop mining currently accounts for 10% of U.S. coal production. 

Sadly, this regulation isn’t the first time the Obama administration ignored the American worker with jobs-killing regulations.  Just last week, Obama’s EPA proposed a veto of a previously approved 2007 Army Corps of Engineers project in West Virginia, the first time in EPA’s history an approved permit has been vetoed.  And under Obama’s supervision, only one mountaintop permit has been granted in West Virginia since ... more

In a bid to win support in the Senate for his unpopular cap-and-trade bill, President Obama announced his administration’s plans for an “expansion” of offshore drilling.  However, the truth of the matter is that Obama’s new plan will actually reduce and delay the production of domestic energy allowed by President Bush’s decision to end the decades long moratorium on offshore drilling in 2008.  That decision would have created jobs and reduced our reliance on foreign oil by freeing up millions of acres to domestic energy exploration.  These areas are shown below, in green, by House Natural Resources Committee.

Unfortunately, President Obama’s “expansion” of domestic exploration merely continues the offshore drilling moratorium of previously approved domestic energy sites in Alaska’s Bristol Bay and across the West Coast and delays possible development across the southern and central Atlantic seaboards.  With yesterday’s announcement, President Obama closed off a far greater area ... more

President Ronald Reagan once joked, “The 10 most dangerous words in the English language are, ‘Hi, I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.’”  Well, in today’s Wall Street Journal, Obama Commerce Secretary Gary Locke does his best attempt to deliver those 10 words with a straight face with “Don’t Believe The Writedown Hype:”

President Obama began his campaign to reform the American health-care system focused on three goals: protecting Americans' choice of doctors and health plans, assuring quality and affordable health care for all Americans, and reducing costs for families and businesses.

The new comprehensive health-care legislation meets these goals, and will significantly benefit American businesses by slowing and eventually reversing the tide of crippling premium increases washing over our nation's employers.

The reality is, unfortunately, that Sec. Locke’s words are rightly delivered on April Fools’ Day, because they are an attempt to fool the American people into ... more