When the Dems’ are looking to round up votes for their big government agenda items – their global warming tax and government-run health care bills – the leadership took wavering members behind closed doors and started cutting deals and twisting arms. But giving away millions of dollars in earmarks and sweetheart deals like the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase are nothing compared to the latest Democrat plan.

Dems now want Obama’s reconciliation bill for a government takeover of the health care industry to include a government takeover of the student loan industry. Neither job-killing takeover is backed by enough Dems to pass without circumventing the rules, so this plan to pass “2 Takeovers In 1 Bill” allows them to kill two birds with one stone.

The D.C. public school system is in dreadful shape, but one bright spot is the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. Each year 1300 students are selected for scholarships to attend private schools. While larger reforms are needed, at least these few students are allowed to escape their failing schools.

But this year’s enrollees will be the last, because Obama’s 2011 budget eliminates funding for accepting any new students. A bipartisan group of senators are calling on Obama to save the program.

Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) haven't given up on their bid to save the federally funded voucher program that allows low-income families in the District to send their children to private schools. We would like to see them succeed, but it's clear that President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress have already written the epilogue to this worthy program. Their disregard for how vouchers have helped children is so complete that it seems that the ... more

On Monday, Obama dragged the CEOs of major banks to the White House and chastised them for not lending more to small businesses, completely disregarding the fact that this would represent the same risky behavior Obama had previously criticized them for. 

Today, Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, arguing that banks should not be in the business of issuing student loans to college students, and that only the government should play that role.

See if you can follow the administration’s logic here: Banks SHOULD be lending money to unqualified small-businesses in a repeat of the same risky behavior that lead to the financial collapse; but banks SHOULD NOT be lending money to students. 

Putting aside the obvious hypocrisy in their messaging, what is truly frightening is the emerging trend that from health care to education, the Obama administration’s governing philosophy continues to be that government knows best.  The problem is that just as ... more