Transparency and Accountability at the Federal Reserve
Increasing transparency at the Federal Reserve is critical given the breadth of the Fed’s recent activities, but many of these activities involve private parties. Congress should consider that private firms will be disinclined to deal with the Fed if they lack adequate assurances that confidential information will remain confidential. Tasking the GAO to perform a comprehensive audit of the Fed would create new dangers, as the GAO, being a creature of Congress, could not provide the necessary assurances. It could also ultimately diminish the independence of the Fed and therefore degrade the Fed’s ability to fight inflation. A better approach is to rely on the Fed's Office of Inspector General to carry out the audit and to create a new entity in Congress to receive any confidential information associated with the audit.
Decreasing Union Transparency: A Step Backward for Workers
Union members deserve to know how their dues are spent. Congress should act to protect workers if the President will not.
Heritage Employment Report: October Has Few Treats, Lots of Tricks
As job losses mount, the monthly jobs report continues to demonstrate both the failure of the stimulus bill and the hollowness of the Administration's claim that it created or saved 640,000 jobs.
General Motors Bankruptcy and Nationalization: Exit Strategy Needed
Congratulations: If you are a U.S. taxpayer, you will soon be a part owner of a car company. Under the latest reorganization plan for General Motors, Uncle Sam would take ownership of 72.5 percent of the troubled automaker while providing an additional $30 billion in funds to the company.
Killing the Entrepreneurial Spirit: Government Is Not a Good Investor
President Barack Obama calls his stimulus bill and proposed budget an "investment" plan, implicitly recognizing that investment--rather than simply spending--creates economic growth. But this plan is based on the faulty assumption that only government is able and responsible enough to invest at this time.
What Unions Do: How Labor Unions Affect Jobs and the Economy
Unions function as labor cartels, restricting the number of workers in a company or industry to drive up the remaining workers' wages. They also retard economic growth and delay recovery from recession. Over time, unions destroy jobs in the companies they organize and have the same effect on business investment as does a 33 percentage point corporate income tax increase.
Financial Systemic Risk Regulators: Congress Is Asking the Wrong Questions
Congress may be about to create a new financial regulator without fully understanding exactly what problem it is supposed to solve or how the new regulator is supposed to accomplish its mission.
Five Reasons the EPA Should Not Attempt to Deal with Global Warming
On April 17, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an endangerment finding, saying that global warming poses a serious threat to public health and safety. Thus, almost anything that emits carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases could be regulated under the Clean Air Act. This is the first official action taken by the federal government to regulate carbon dioxide.
Left-wing proxy plays
An awful lot of people who have never even run a lemonade stand are presuming to micromanage corporate conglomerates. General Motors Corp., now headquartered at the White House, is the most prominent example.
Should Unions Prevent Your Next Raise?
Suggest imposing wage caps on a few hundred highly paid executives, and you get plenty of attention. Highlight the federal law that imposes wage caps on over 8 million mostly middle-class workers, and you'll probably be ignored.
Nationalized Cheerios?
Regular superheroes save us from villains. Liberal superheroes save us from ourselves.
Reward Workers With Better Laws
Over the past generation, the labor market has changed profoundly. Computers have automated many manual and repetitive tasks. The share of American workers employed as operators, fabricators and laborers or in precision production craft and repair occupations has fallen by 10 percent.
'Economic policy insanity': Obama's approach threatens to prolong recession, weaken recovery
Last week the government reported 539,000 jobs were lost in April. As a sign of the times this was considered good news. Some are crediting government, including President Obama's just implemented policies, for the good news. Spring is in the air.
In the Green Room: Jeff Kemp on How Free Enterprise and Strong Families Fix Social Problems
“Optimism is important for anything in life-to realize that our condition is never final.” With unbridled and infectious optimism, Jack Kemp (1935-2009) championed hope, growth, and enterprise to overcome poverty and social breakdown in America and around the world. In his roles as U.S. Congressman, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and passionate proponent of the Read More...
NFIB: Senate Health Care Bill Is “A Disaster” for Small Businesses
After “many months of discussion” in which the National Federation of Independent Business was engaged in efforts to ensure that the high cost of health care was adequately addressed in reform legislation, the organization yesterday came out in full force against the Senate health care bill, declaring it a “disaster for small business:” Small business can’t Read More...
With Reid Bill, Obama Would Again Break “No Tax” Pledge
With the event horizon of the vote on the Reid Health Care Bill approaching, it appears that passage of the legislation would, yet again, amount to President Barack Obama breaking his “no new middle class tax” pledge. As blogger Keith Hennessey reminds readers, then-candidate Obama pledged on September 12, 2008: I can make a firm pledge. Read More...
Slow Job Creation, Not Job Losses, Driving Unemployment
Unemployment has risen above 10 percent and no one in Washington seems to understand what is going on. Yesterday, a little noticed release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shed important light onto the job situation. The BLS’s Business Employment Dynamics (BED) program uses unemployment insurance (UI) records to track job private sector job gains Read More...
TARP: It Couldn’t End Thune Enough
In an era when legislation routinely exceeds 1,000 pages, the bill introduced by Sen. John Thune yesterday — at seven lines — doesn’t look like much. But looks can be deceptive. If adopted, those seven lines would guarantee the end of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a critical first step Read More...
In the Green Room: Jeff Kemp on How Free Enterprise and Strong Families Fix Social Problems
“Optimism is important for anything in life-to realize that our condition is never final.” With unbridled and infectious optimism, Jack Kemp (1935-2009) championed hope, growth, and enterprise to overcome poverty and social breakdown in America and around the world. In his roles as U.S. Congressman, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and passionate proponent of the Read More...
NFIB: Senate Health Care Bill Is “A Disaster” for Small Businesses
After “many months of discussion” in which the National Federation of Independent Business was engaged in efforts to ensure that the high cost of health care was adequately addressed in reform legislation, the organization yesterday came out in full force against the Senate health care bill, declaring it a “disaster for small business:” Small business can’t Read More...
With Reid Bill, Obama Would Again Break “No Tax” Pledge
With the event horizon of the vote on the Reid Health Care Bill approaching, it appears that passage of the legislation would, yet again, amount to President Barack Obama breaking his “no new middle class tax” pledge. As blogger Keith Hennessey reminds readers, then-candidate Obama pledged on September 12, 2008: I can make a firm pledge. Read More...
Slow Job Creation, Not Job Losses, Driving Unemployment
Unemployment has risen above 10 percent and no one in Washington seems to understand what is going on. Yesterday, a little noticed release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shed important light onto the job situation. The BLS’s Business Employment Dynamics (BED) program uses unemployment insurance (UI) records to track job private sector job gains Read More...
TARP: It Couldn’t End Thune Enough
In an era when legislation routinely exceeds 1,000 pages, the bill introduced by Sen. John Thune yesterday — at seven lines — doesn’t look like much. But looks can be deceptive. If adopted, those seven lines would guarantee the end of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), a critical first step Read More...
AIG: Did Geithner Give Away the Farm?
It’s official: U.S. taxpayers did not get a good deal when they bailed out AIG last year. That was the conclusion of a report released yesterday by Neil Barofsky, the federal government’s special inspector general for TARP. The conclusion is no surprise: no one holds up the $170 billion Read More...
440 Phantom Congressional Districts Get $6.4 Billion According to Recovery.gov
The government’s Web site that is supposed to tell taxpayers how their stimulus dollars are being spent, and which spends $84 million per year to do so, shows that $6.4 billion of the stimulus has been spent in 440 congressional districts that don’t exist, according to a report by the Franklin Center, as reported by Read More...
In Pictures: The Big Labor Takeover of Big Government
As we reported last week, 2009 will mark the first time ever in American history that the majority of union members work for federal, state, or local governments. The percentage shift has been staggering. In 1973 only 17.3% of union members worked for government. Today that number is 51.2%. When unions depended on steel plants, coal Read More...
Morning Bell: The Fake Jobs of Obama’s Failed Stimulus
Forget everything bad you’ve ever heard about President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus. Combing through the data on the $18 million Recovery.gov website, you’ll find tons of Obama stimulus success stories from across the country. In Minnesota’s 57th Congressional District, 35 jobs have been saved or created using $404,340 in stimulus funds. In New Mexico’s Read More...
Outside the Beltway: $1.2 Billion for Michigan, But No Stimulus Jobs Created
Last year, with Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm standing by his side, President-elect Barack Obama proclaimed the importance of rapidly passing a stimulus package, described his intense focus on job creation, and noted that a new president can have an “enormous impact” on the economy. This week, The Detroit Free Press reported that Obama’s stimulus package has Read More...
What should be done about financial markets
Two things should be clear to anyone trying to figure out the financial crisis, says Heritage President Ed Feulner. One is that we need to get to the bottom of what caused it and why. The second is that we can't rely on Congress to conduct such an investigation. Learn More...
Red Tape Rising: Regulatory Trends in the Bush Years
Contrary to much popular rhetoric about massive regulatory rollbacks, the regulatory burden has grown during President George W. Bush's tenure, and the President's final year may see a regulatory surge. Policymakers should work to prevent this surge and adopt reforms to ensure that new and old rules are thoroughly vetted to ease the burden of this regulatory tax on Americans. Learn More...
Heritage Experts on Enterprise and Free Markets
Media Information Line: (202) 675-1761
James L. Gattuso
Senior Research Fellow in Regulatory Policy , Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies
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