America’s economy is poised to roar ahead if only Washington would stop holding it back. Ever since the Great Recession officially ended, the private sector has been adding jobs. What’s kept the economy in low gear and the unemployment rate stubbornly high has been the shrinking of government workforces: cops, teachers and other valuable public employees let go in the face of inadequate tax revenue. What fiscal policy should Washington adopt to boost our economy rather than drag it down? The first thing is to acknowledge that our current debt-reduction efforts can’t be primarily focused on spending reductions. We can’t cut our way out of debt, especially if we want to support our economy at the same time. We need a balanced approach of thoughtful spending curbs and increased revenue. If we don’t want to go deeper in debt, we need sufficient tax revenue from those best able to supply it to support job-creating federal investment in our still-struggling economy. – William Rice, Americans for Democratic Action
Even though economic growth is what we badly need to hasten our recovery, many of our leaders in Washington are hungry for even more tax revenue. Some still champion a big-government agenda that requires greater resources to implement more programs. But a heavy tax burden means consumers have less of their income to spend in the economy and businesses have less for hiring, expansion and investment. So when taxes go up, the rate of economic growth goes down. In order to keep our economy humming and put the government back on sound fiscal footing, we must undertake comprehensive tax reform and exercise real spending restraint through fundamental entitlement reform. Comprehensive tax reform should broaden the tax base so more people are paying into the system and simplify compliance for all business entities. It is the responsibility of the business community to keep the pressure on. Let’s remind Congress and the administration that, when families and employers fall on hard financial times, they must make tough decisions. It’s time for Washington to follow suit. – Martin A. Regalia, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Can increasing American energy exploration improve our economy? Yes, but more to the point, it’s already happening. Energy – and the jobs and growth it will drive – is the foundation for our economic recovery. Our nation is blessed with some of the most abundant energy resources on Earth. Thanks in large part to the technology-driven shale boom, we have enough natural gas to power America for 120 years. We also have at least 200 years of oil under our lands and off our shores and more than 250 years of coal. And that’s just what we can recover with today’s technology. With continued advancements, we will be able to access even greater domestic supplies in the future. Energy presents the biggest opportunity to build a stronger foundation and a brighter future for our country. The 21st century has brought America an era of energy abundance. Let’s make the most of it for the sake of our economy, competitiveness and national security. – Karen A. Harbert, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Abandoning fossil-fuel exploration altogether is not feasible for America. But significant further government support of oil and gas drilling in places like the Alaskan wilderness or the American heartland in the name of economic growth would be a huge mistake. Instead, for our national security, economic growth and a sound energy policy, what we need is to shift to promoting industries and technologies that focus on clean, renewable and alternative sources of energy. Clean-tech is a fast-growing global industry that holds the potential to fix our current climate and other environmental challenges and build the jobs of tomorrow. The 2010 BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and the serious concerns raised about hydraulic fracturing have not merely been the results of chance. Nor are the extreme storms, droughts and heat waves, which are expected to rise in frequency and severity with fossil fuel use-linked climate change. The U.S. cannot afford to invest and lock itself into many more decades of reliance on the dirty and unsustainable sources of energy of the past. – Tseming Yang, Santa Clara University
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., got a lot of attention Wednesday for mounting an honest-to-God filibuster of President Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan. The nation’s political class marveled at his real-life Mr. Smith act. But it’s worth taking a moment to consider the substance of Paul’s objection. The libertarian and son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul has plenty of views that are far outside the mainstream, but in this case he zeroed in on an issue all Americans should find uncomfortable: Would it be legal for the U.S. government to use a drone strike to kill an American citizen on American soil? In the end, the Obama administration felt compelled to respond, and Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder sent Paul a letter assuring him that the president does not “have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil.” That was good enough for Paul to drop his objection to Brennan’s nomination, which was approved by the Senate, but it still leaves open plenty of questions about the use of drones. – Baltimore Sun
Give Rand Paul credit for theatrical timing. As a snowstorm descended on Washington, D.C., the Kentucky Republican’s old-fashioned filibuster Wednesday filled the attention void on Twitter and cable TV. If only his reasoning matched the showmanship. The U.S. government cannot randomly target American citizens on U.S. soil or anywhere else. What it can do under the laws of war is target an “enemy combatant” anywhere at anytime, including on U.S. soil. This includes a U.S. citizen who is also an enemy combatant. The country needs more senators who care about liberty, but if Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms. He needs to know what he’s talking about. – Wall Street Journal
Little evidence exists to suggest that modest increases in the minimum wage lead to job losses, so the battle ahead in Congress is really one between free-market orthodoxy and basic human decency. We would invest our money in decency. In his State of the Union address, President Obama called upon Congress to boost the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour by 2015, up from the current $7.25. The wage would rise in steps and after hitting the maximum in two years would thereafter be indexed to inflation. Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage in the late 1960s was about $10 per hour, and it was even higher in the 1980s. President Obama’s call to raise it to $9 is far from excessive. The state of Washington is already higher. Conservatives may argue that the market should set wages, but they argued the feds should let GM fail, too. Working people need a raise. Congress should give them one. – Battle Creek (Mich.) Enquirer
At a time when the U.S. economic recovery has slowed to a standstill, President Obama’s State of the Union speech seemed to come from an alternate universe as he prescribed more tax hikes and costly federal regulations. His call for a 24 percent increase in the minimum wage to $9 an hour would be especially damaging. Hiking the minimum wage discriminates against entry-level workers. The higher it goes, the minimum wage not only raises business costs and reduces the number of available jobs, but also biases the labor force toward workers who already have work experience – or just eliminates jobs altogether. You only need to go back to the last minimum -age hike to see its negative effects. In 2007, Congress passed an ill-timed minimum-wage bump – a two-year, 40 percent, phased-in increase from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour by 2009. The result was a plunge in working youths. To protect entry-level jobs and priceless working experience, Congress should hold off on any new wage increases. – Detroit News
Americans who have become weary of Washington’s endless battles over spending and taxes – and the stagnating economy that stalemate has produced – got a chance to hear about a different path on Tuesday night. President Obama’s message in the State of the Union address was clear: It doesn’t have to be this way. The country doesn’t have to get bogged down by demands for endless austerity and government contraction. It doesn’t have to defer investments in education and public works. The poor don’t have to remain on society’s lower rungs, and the middle class can aspire to do better. Obama said his proposals to bring about growth with government action would not have to raise the deficit. What is required to move the country forward is political will, which has been missing for too long. While many of the president’s proposals were familiar, and will probably be snuffed out by politics, his speech explained to a wide audience what could be achieved if there were even a minimal consensus in Washington. – New York Times
The big question of President Obama’s second term is whether he wants to forge bipartisan compromises in the next two years, or whether he wants to spend these years campaigning against Republicans to regain Democratic control of the House in 2014 and then finish his presidency with another liberal crescendo. Judging by his inaugural address and Tuesday night’s State of the Union, we’re guessing he’s going for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Obama’s second inaugural was a clarion call to “collective action,” as he put it, and Tuesday’s speech showed what he thinks that should mean in practice. “The American people don’t expect government to solve every problem,” he said, while proceeding to offer a new government program to solve every problem. It was what a Democratic president might expect to pass in a liberal Democratic Congress. It was not an olive branch for bipartisan deal-making with the House GOP. In its ambition and partisan framing, the agenda sounded like the opening bell in the 2014 congressional campaign. – Wall Street Journal
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced this week that all military combat jobs will be open to women, who in fact already have served in ground combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Restrictions have gradually been eased over time, but full equality in all service branches now has the unanimous support of the Joint Chiefs, and that is overdue. Being denied some combat assignments and other front-line duties limits the rank to which servicewomen can aspire, which in turn limits the talent pool the military can draw from. Removing gender discrimination simply means equal opportunity. If individuals can’t qualify for certain kinds of duty because of physical limitations or other factors, they won’t get the job, whether men or women. But some and perhaps many women will qualify for combat roles now off-limits, and America’s military will be stronger for it. – San Jose Mercury News
Women have been in combat since the United States began combat operations in Afghanistan in 2001. They have fought and served with distinction. However, placing women in infantry and other front-line units is a different issue, and it has nothing to do with their courage or capabilities. The people making this decision are doing so as part of another social experiment. Infantry or Special Forces units have the mission of closing with and destroying the enemy, sometimes in close hand-to-hand combat. They are often in sustained operations for extended periods, during which they have no base of operations nor facilities. Their living conditions are primal in many situations with no privacy for personal hygiene or normal functions. This decision to integrate the genders in these units places additional and unnecessary burdens on leaders at all levels. – Jerry Boykin, Family Research Council
The much-needed push for gun safety in America is on. President Obama set the wheels in motion by announcing 23 executive orders aimed at reducing gun violence. He asked Congress to pass substantial laws, including bans on assault weapons and magazines of more than 10 rounds. He also called for background checks on all firearms purchases, including private sales and those made at gun shows. Those steps alone would decrease the likelihood of casualties in shootings and make the United States a safer and saner nation. Better tracking of who is buying and selling firearms would give police valuable tools to prevent the shootings that ravage Kansas City and other urban areas. Only irrational obeisance to the gun lobby would prevent Congress from passing such a sensible law. – Kansas City Star
I am disheartened by the White House gun violence task force’s recommendations, which primarily focus on gun control and missed the opportunity to provide bold proposals that would address the root of these tragedies: mental illness. I will fight proposals in the Senate that threaten our Second Amendment rights and fail to take real action to curb a culture of gun violence in America. I fully support enforcing the gun laws currently on the books instead of creating new ones that erode basic rights of self-protection. It has been statistically proved that passing gun legislation has no effect on removing guns from the hands of criminals. In the end, it is law-abiding citizens who are punished by gun control. With the emphasis mostly on gun control, the president avoided serious measures to tackle the increasingly violent culture in America. – Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan.
On Monday, President Obama nominated Chuck Hagel, 66, a Republican who served two terms in the Senate from Nebraska before stepping down in 2008, to succeed Leon Panetta as secretary of defense. He would become the first Vietnam veteran, and the first former enlisted man, to head the Pentagon. You’d think Republicans as well as Democrats would be delighted with this appointment. The wiser ones are. Here’s a man who grew up in poverty, got drafted, earned two Purple Hearts, worked his way through college, made a fortune in the cellphone business and then entered public service. He’s subsequently in the private equity business and now teaches at Georgetown University. If Horatio Alger were a Republican, he’d look a lot like Chuck Hagel. Barring any new disclosures, there is nothing in Hagel’s past or present that should keep any senator from voting for confirmation. And there is a great deal to suggest that he is precisely the leader the Pentagon will need as the nation transitions out of an era of too many wars and unlimited military spending. Hagel, rifle squad leader-turned-internationalist, would bring the right perspective to Pentagon priorities. Troops first. Contractors last. Look before you leap. – St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Chuck Hagel, the president’s nominee to be the next secretary of defense, must face serious questions about his record, his statements and troubling hints of anti-Semitism. Once a Republican senator who supported the war in Iraq, he turned against the war, and opposed the surge. Long a darling to those eager for rapprochement with Iran, he has sharply criticized sanctions and opposed the designation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity. Hagel has decried “intimidation” by the “the Jewish lobby” in Washington. Taken in the context of other positions and in light of his consistent willingness to downplay the threat posed by terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, it is not unreasonable to ask whether Hagel has a problem with Jews and the Jewish state. Last but not least, one must wonder at the president nominating a man with a history of slurs against homosexuals, an A rating from the National Rifle Association and a zero rating from the pro-choice lobby NARAL, all questions on which Obama is at odds. – Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institute, in USA Today
It would have been grand if the fiscal-cliff package traded Medicare reforms for higher tax rates and a tax-code overhaul. It doesn’t; Congress is too polarized to reach such a deal. Still, the agreement doesn’t deserve the derision it’s getting from some. For now, Congress has found enough common ground to defuse a $600 billion fiscal time bomb – no easy feat considering our divided government and the deep ideological differences between the parties. The agreement’s economic effects also could surprise the naysayers. It sensibly retains some short-term fiscal stimulus while increasing revenue in the long run. And lest we forget, Congress already made more than $1 trillion in spending cuts in 2011. An additional $1.2 trillion could be saved or raised later this year. When added to the just-concluded pact, the total could come close to $3 trillion in spending cuts and tax increases over the coming decade. Deficit reduction in fits and starts is still deficit reduction. – Bloomberg News
So Congress has passed a bill to avoid the tax cliff – hallelujah. This is the way to look at it if you have a pre-Copernican view of politics where Washington is the center of the economic universe. The better way to see it is that the tax bill on the private, productive part of the economy is now coming due for President Obama’s first-term spending and re-election. The Senate-White House compromise grudgingly passed by the House is a Beltway classic: The biggest tax increase in 20 years in return for spending increases, and all spun for political purposes as a “tax cut for the middle class.” But taxes on the middle class were only going up on Jan. 1 because the politicians had set it up that way, manufacturing a fake crisis. The politicians now portray themselves as scrambling heroically to save the day by sparing the middle class while raising taxes on small business, investors and the affluent. – Wall Street Journal
More than 60 percent of Americans want out of Afghanistan. Yet the war goes on, and even the White House plans for too slowly reducing the U.S. troop presence meet resistance from the Pentagon. U.S. commander Gen. George Allen was pushing just a few months ago to keep the current level of troops for another year. The military would also like to maintain a permanent presence of 6,000 to 15,000 troops. That is not going to happen, as the Afghan people don’t want foreign troops in their country. But the attempts to establish a permanent base of operations will make it more difficult to negotiate an end to war. We need to end this war in Afghanistan and other operations in the Middle East and elsewhere that are making Americans less secure and recruiting new enemies daily. Then we can focus on fixing our broken economy at home. – Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research
American soldiers should never be put in harm’s way unless it’s vital to our national interests. And if it’s a vital interest, they should stay until the mission is accomplished. To suggest that they can be withdrawn from a mission by an arbitrary date – regardless of progress made or lost – implies that the mission is not important, that they shouldn’t have been sent in the first place. Our armed forces don’t fight for the sake of fighting. And they don’t want to fight on a clock. They fight to serve our nation. And they would rather stay longer and do the job right than come home too soon. Rather than pick a date, the U.S. would do better to ensure that its interests are protected before it walks away. And it should commit to maintaining the forces and capabilities needed to secure its interests in the foreseeable future. – James Jay Carafano, Heritage Foundation
Grover Norquist, an unelected right-wing lobbyist accountable to no one except his wealthy funders, has had the Republican Party in his hip pocket for several decades. All but a handful of congressional Republicans have signed his pledge never, ever to raise taxes. Perhaps no other individual is more responsible for the intransigence and irresponsibility of the modern GOP. With the “fiscal cliff” deadline looming, it is time finally for the Republicans to exercise true statesmanship by defying Norquist and asking the most privileged among us to assume a little more sacrifice. The Norquist vision, as he has famously said, is a government so small “we can drown it in the bathtub.” He apparently believes that people who need government support ought to be washed down the drain. For the good of the country and also the Republican Party, it’s time to toss Norquist’s no-tax pledge over the cliff. – Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.
Grover Norquist has become one of Washington’s favorite whipping boys, but taxpayers owe him thanks for focusing needed attention on the real problem in Washington: excessive spending, rather than too-little taxing. Norquist’s no-tax pledge does exactly that. Excessive spending is the cause of Washington’s unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits in recent years. The disorder in the federal government’s fiscal house can be set right only by getting rid of spending programs that America’s taxpayers can’t afford. There are plenty to go round. Signing Norquist’s pledge doesn’t mean opposing all changes in the federal tax code; it merely means looking to spending cuts, first, and then to reforming our Byzantine IRS tax apparatus for collecting them. Republicans, especially, and all of us owe Norquist thanks, not condemnation. – William F. Shughart II, Independent Institute
Most businesses’ main interaction with government is paying taxes. Government doesn’t help them succeed but rather only erects barriers to overcome. The cost of government taxes and regulations are part of the overhead of a business. The greater the cost of the government overhead, the fewer people a business can hire. The major challenge for President Obama is to realize there is little he can do to help the average business in our country. We want to make a profit so that we can invest to grow our businesses or reward our employees and ourselves for successfully taking on the challenges and uncertainty of business. We also would welcome a little respect for the long hours we put in without any guarantees of reward. We would appreciate some common sense on regulation where absolutes can’t apply but cost-benefit analysis makes sense. – Peter Rush
The canard that President Obama is anti-business is a propaganda remnant from Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign. Obama, after all, was the president who bailed out Wall Street with the Troubled Asset Relief Program. TARP and other Obama corporate rescue programs, after all, benefited such goliath corporations as Bank of America, Citigroup, AIG, General Motors and Chrysler – saving tens of thousands of jobs. Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the economic stimulus package of 2009, provided direct and indirect assistance to small and large businesses through the hiring of construction firms and related firms to rebuild roads, highways, rail lines, airports and telecommunications infrastructure. Obama actually is saving American capitalism by reining in its excesses and plowing under its inequities. – Wayne Madsen
The facts on the ground make clear that states would be wise to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act. First, states will be required to pick up very little of the tab. The federal government will pay for 100 percent of the cost of states’ Medicaid expansions through 2016. The federal contribution will start to decline gradually beginning in 2017, and states will be required to pay for 10 percent of the cost of the expansion in 2020 and beyond. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that as a result of these federal subsidies, states’ Medicaid expansions will increase their expenditures on Medicaid by only 2.8 percent between 2014 and 2022. Second, by expanding Medicaid coverage, states will be able to reduce their spending on uninsured individuals through programs other than Medicaid. Recent estimates show that state and local governments cover nearly 20 percent of the cost of uncompensated hospital care and nearly 45 percent of the cost of mental health services provided to low-income and uninsured individuals. The third rationale for expanding state Medicaid programs is perhaps the most compelling: Expanded health coverage will help millions of low-income Americans to lead healthier, more productive lives. – Adam Thomas, Georgetown Public Policy Institute
States are already struggling to pay their Medicaid bills. Why put taxpayers on the hook to pay even more? Medicaid is the single biggest item in state budgets today. It consumes, on average, 23 percent of state dollars spent, pinching funds for other high-priority functions such as education, transportation and emergency services. Yet expanding Medicaid was a central tenet of the Affordable Care Act. It required states to open their program to all individuals earning less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level. The goal was to reduce the number of uninsured – by dumping 17 million Americans onto the Medicaid rolls. Many state officials are leery of federal promises to pay program costs in perpetuity. Such skepticism is warranted. Medicaid is a troubled program than can’t be sustained in its current form, much less on the grander scale envisioned by Obamacare advocates. What’s needed is not expansion but reform – a complete makeover of the program that gives the working poor access to private health insurance like the vast majority of Americans enjoy today and restores Medicaid to a true safety net to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in society. – Nina Owcharenko, Heritage Foundation
If the economy falters from here on out, it will be difficult to blame the Federal Reserve. Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, and all but one of the other members of the Fed policy committee, took decisive steps on Thursday to spur the economy, pledging to buy $85 billion worth of assets each month until the end of the year and to continue pumping money into the economy until the job market improves “substantially.” The open-ended nature of the plan and its linkage to jobs are welcome changes from previous interventions. Will the latest approach work? No one knows for sure because each new round of strong monetary easing is to some degree experimental. What is known is that fiscal policymakers – that is, Congress – have failed to step forward with stimulative policies, largely because Republicans have refused to even consider measures to hire teachers, rebuild schools and otherwise create jobs. The economy needs more help than the Fed can provide. But the Fed is to be applauded for doing what it can. – New York Times
Chairman Ben Bernanke and his music men at the Fed’s Open Market Committee put on their party hats Thursday and unleashed an unlimited program of monetary easing. The move exceeded even Wall Street’s expectations, but whether it will help the real economy in the long term is doubtful. This is the Fed’s third round of quantitative easing (QE3) since the 2008 panic, and the difference this time is that Ben is unbounded. The Fed said it will keep interest rates at near-zero “at least through mid-2015,” which is six months longer than its previous vow. The bigger news is that the Fed announced another round of asset purchases – only this time as far as the eye can see. Bernanke forswore any partisan motives on Thursday, and we’ll give him the benefit of the personal doubt. But by goosing stock prices, and thus lifting the short-term economic mood, the Fed has surely provided President Obama an in-kind re-election contribution. The irony is that, with this historic and open-ended easing, Bernanke is also tacitly admitting how lousy the Obama-Bernanke economy really is. – Wall Street Journal
It was up to President Obama to make the case for another term, with a speech that was every bit as fraught with uncertainty and risk as his 2008 convention address. Just as he did then, he rose to the occasion. Obama didn’t hesitate to go after Mitt Romney. “You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can’t visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally,” he said. And he clearly laid out a vision for governing squarely at odds with the one that Romney has, but was hidden from view at last week’s Republican convention. He promised deficit reduction “without sticking it to the middle class”; to enact a reformed tax code that raises rates on income above $250,000 to where it was under President Clinton; to preserve middle-class deductions; to “never turn Medicare into a voucher.” Obama met his challenge in Charlotte. – New York Times
President Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was a prosaic call for support accompanied by some vague plans for action. Convention speeches, we concede, are not policy briefings. Still, there is room for more specifics than Obama provided, or Romney did in his speech. Obama’s greatest missed opportunity may have been his cursory treatment of the federal budget deficit: He reiterated his plan to reduce it by $4 trillion over the next decade. What no one knows – does the president? – is how to get there from here. It would be churlish to criticize Obama too much for vagueness, given the occasion. Yet that was the curious thing about this speech: If it didn’t get down into the details, neither did it soar. – Bloomberg View
Mitt Romney needed to make a convincing case for new leadership in America: his leadership. In accepting the Republican nomination for president Thursday night, he did just that – and then some. Romney spoke directly to the millions of voters who were genuinely filled with “fresh excitement” by President Obama’s election four years ago – and who are now sorely disillusioned by his non-leadership. “‘Hope and change’ had a powerful appeal,” Romney noted – but “there’s something wrong … when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.” Indeed. It was Romney himself who gave voters fresh reason to regain the hope they’d lost: “The time has come to turn the page,” he said. “Now is the time to restore the promise of America.” Sure, the commentators and pro-Obama media were busy picking nits in Romney’s words, just as they’ve done for months. But it was Mitt Romney up there accepting the nomination – defiantly. – New York Post
Mitt Romney took his turn at blasting and belittling Barack Obama on Thursday night, working too hard on twisting “hope and change” into a weapon rather than offering ideas to woo the disappointed to his side. In his speech accepting the GOP nomination for the presidency, Romney tried to cozy up to those who once backed the current president and now feel disaffected and are hurting financially. Choose me, he said, and let me get the unemployed to work and end the divisiveness that tears at our nation. But Romney, in his workmanlike speech, never presented a convincing case for how he would solve the nation’s steep challenges. More troubling: the misstatements, omissions and deceit. Romney promised no higher taxes on the middle class, overlooking the tax breaks middle-class families experienced during Obama’s tenure. While he praised immigrants, he neglected to mention his position favoring self-deportation and against the DREAM Act. – Kansas City Star
It has never been easier to find out what’s happening in the world, and it’s never been easier to get numerous perspectives on the issues of the day.
In light of the information explosion, it isn’t at all clear that subsidies for public broadcasting – like those that go to National Public Radio – are necessary or wise.
Today – in contrast to 1970, when NPR was founded – anyone with access to an Internet connection also has access to a virtually unlimited amount of information from a wide variety of sources. NPR adds little of additional value to the mix.
There also are a couple of important facts about NPR that should give us pause.
First, NPR programming, like most media programming, leans left. Forcing people to fund programming with which they disagree – even at very low levels – is not much different from forcing them to help pay my pastor’s salary.
Second, NPR listeners tend to have higher-than-average incomes. Subsidies are not needed. If they value NPR, listeners could easily write out checks to cover its costs.
Art Carden, Stanford University
Some conservative members of Congress are seeking to de-fund National Public Radio, but these legislators might want to think twice about that effort. NPR is – believe it or not – a favorite of many conservative listeners. In a survey by the research firm GfK MRI, 28 percent of the network’s listeners self-identified as conservative or very conservative and 25 percent identified as middle-of-the-road. Millions of informed conservatives regularly listen to a network that some critics describe as a service aimed at a prosperous liberal elite.
Some members of Congress who seek federal de-funding of NPR point to what they say is the network’s liberal bias in news reporting. I don’t hear it. I hear a scrupulous attempt to be – may I coin a phrase? – fair and balanced.
More affluent public radio stations could pay for NPR programs from other sources, like listener contributions. But some smaller stations would not have enough of those non-federal funds.
National Public Radio, through local public radio stations, serves listeners across the country, from the largest cities to the smallest rural communities. Congress should reject all legislation aimed at eliminating NPR’s federal funding.
Fred Andrle, independent journalist
Congress and the administration need to unleash the dynamism of the private sector by adopting policies that will result in the economic growth necessary to reduce our deficits and put our citizens back to work. A reduction in the corporate tax rate to the average rate of other industrialized countries – about 25 percent – would eliminate a great disadvantage faced by businesses. The basic strategy is to achieve these lower rates by eliminating exemptions and other tax breaks, essentially broadening, flattening and simplifying the tax structure. It’s a daunting assignment, but with hard work and a focused effort, comprehensive reform can be accomplished within a year. At the same time, the United States must modernize its international tax system to enable American companies to compete more effectively in foreign markets. Comprehensive tax reform is a significant step we can take today that will improve American competitiveness, increase economic growth and put the nation on the path toward fiscal stability. – John Engler, Business Roundtable
Thanks to record profits, essentially zero short-term borrowing costs and extremely low effective tax rates, U.S. companies are sitting on more than a trillion dollars in cash. Further business tax breaks will do nothing to provide the real incentive that companies need in order to invest in our economy: strong consumer demand. Claims that federal business taxes are too high usually cite the nominal corporate tax rate of 35 percent. But what really matters is not the official rate, but how much companies actually pay, and by that measure corporate taxes are already very low. A study released in 2011 by Citizens for Tax Justice of 280 Fortune 500 companies found that their average effective tax rate over the previous two years was just 17.3 percent, less than half the statuary rate. Instead of cutting already low effective rates, corporate tax reform should focus on ending incentives to send profits and jobs overseas and making sure all companies pay their fair share. – Don Kusler, Americans for Democratic Action
The modern presidency demands so much of one individual – decisions of immense complexity, consequence and difficulty – that the candidates’ character must be thoroughly examined. The exploratory process is often unpleasant for candidates, especially when it is stimulated or exploited by their opponents. But it is essential for voters. The probing and investigating is a chance to examine all the ups and downs of a career, the critical moments and life experiences that might foretell how a president will make decisions. This is why Mitt Romney’s tax returns are important. He has described himself as a successful capitalist who took risks and created wealth, a laudable credential. Voters would benefit by seeing and evaluating the details of that story, including through his tax records. It is insulting to voters for Romney to keep them under wraps and will only fuel suspicions that he has something else to conceal. – Washington Post
As the existing Bain Capital attacks show, Team Obama will twist any factoid Mitt Romney gives them into a new attack ad. I don’t know what is in Romney’s tax returns. But if the professionals who run Romney’s campaign think Obama will distort something in them, I am inclined to believe them. Team Obama also will look vindicated if Romney caves. Even if there is absolutely nothing in Romney’s returns, a big “if,” Team Obama will claim a victory for transparency. Romney will look weak for caving. Besides, the request for documents will always be endless. Romney’s dad gave 12 years of returns. If Romney did that, then that would bring us right into the middle of his tenure at Bain. Would the Obama campaign let Romney stop there? No. It would want his returns from all of Romney’s time at Bain. And then before that. The only way to shut Team Obama down on this issue is to say “no” and stick to it. – Conn Carroll, Washington Examiner
Retailers compete with one another every day on price, service, convenience and selection. But under the current system, the law gives remote sellers a singular advantage that brick-and-mortar stores can’t match because they aren’t required to collect sales tax. As stores have lost business, communities have lost much-needed jobs. In Ohio, for example, a recent study found that leveling the playing field for local retailers could add 15,000 jobs to the state’s economy. Forcing online retailers to collect sales tax also would provide revenue for cash-strapped state and local governments – more than $23 billion this year nationally, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In the Senate, Democrats and Republicans sponsored a bill called the Marketplace Fairness Act that would require online retailers to comply with state sales-tax laws. To avoid burdening smaller merchants with compliance costs, the bill exempts online retailers with less than $500,000 in annual sales. In other words, casual sellers just looking to make a few extra bucks on eBay would have nothing to fear. During this time of economic challenge, Main Street businesses across America already have paid their fair share. Now online retailers should, too. – Matthew Shay, National Retail Federation
There is no “sales-tax exemption” for out-of-state vendors. State and local sales taxes are owed by consumers, not producers. If the good or service is provided by an in-state firm, that firm must collect the applicable sales tax from the consumer. If the stuff comes from a “remote” seller that has no contact with the consumer’s state, the sale is not “tax-free”: The consumer owes a “use tax” equivalent to the local sales tax. However, state and local governments would rather not trouble their own citizens with enforcing that rule. Thus they demand a federal law that would allow them to impose collection and remittance obligations on out-of-state sellers whose goods or services happen to be demanded in, and therefore end up in, the local jurisdiction. What we have here is not a tax or equity problem but an enforcement problem. And no one, including the state officials and federal legislators who yelp about “fairness,” seriously believes that problem warrants a central solution. – Michael S. Greve, American Enterprise Institute
Russia, the world’s ninth-largest economy, will open its doors to greater trade when it joins the World Trade Organization this summer. This could be a tremendous opportunity to sell more U.S. goods and services to Russia’s 142 million people. But U.S. companies won’t be able to take full advantage of Russia’s new open markets or the dispute resolution system unless Congress passes legislation establishing what’s known as Permanent Normal Trade Relations. This is the same status the United States routinely authorizes with other countries joining the WTO to ensure consistent and fair trade relations. The problem is that some believe PNTR should be withheld to pressure Russia to address human rights and foreign policy issues. Unfortunately, this approach is based on the mistaken notion that Russia would somehow be penalized if Congress fails to approve the legislation needed to promote greater U.S. trade with Russia. In reality, congressional inaction would only penalize U.S. companies and their employees by depriving them of improved access to Russia’s markets. – Douglas R. Oberhelman, Caterpillar Inc.
President Obama wants Congress to remove most restrictions on trade with Russia. Like so many of Obama’s initiatives, his latest move seems naive because Russia will get all the benefits of free trade in the U.S. market, but American companies may have to wait on Russian strongman Vladimir Putin (in photo) to remove Russia’s harrowing trade barriers. Moreover, Obama cannot ignore the importance of human rights that Americans hold dear at home and expect to see respected abroad. Business groups forever dream of huge exports to Russia. Is that realistic? Hardly. Just the other day, Putin told the world he wants vastly expanded trade with China. Obama, who wants Russia in the World Trade Organization without a quid pro quo, apparently wants to believe that the audacity of hope will turn Putin into an honest player on the world stage. – Bogdan Kipling
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision upholding the core of the Affordable Care Act is good news for the court and the country. Chief Justice John G. Roberts was statesmanlike in choosing to side with four more liberal justices in finding that the law’s most controversial provision, the mandate that individuals obtain health insurance, was a constitutional exercise of Congress’ power “to lay and collect taxes.” That solution allows the main provisions of the law to take effect. Even more important, it is respectful, as the court should be, of congressional authority and the democratic process that underlies it. Many Americans were watching the court to see whether, at a time of extreme partisanship, it could craft a decision that impressed as an act of law, not politics. In our view, the court passed that test of legitimacy. Now the arguments over Obamacare can continue where they are best fought out, in the political arena. – Washington Post
If there is a modicum of hope in Chief Justice John Roberts’s inglorious one-man opinion, it is that Americans were reminded again that they cannot count on others to protect their liberty. Certainly judges aren’t reliable. They can be turned by the pressure of the media and the whims of vanity. If Americans want to repeal Obamacare, their only recourse is to demand it at the ballot box in November. The Affordable Care Act is more unpopular now than when it passed, yet it will grind on toward implementation in a second Obama term. The president made that clear in his remarks Thursday, deploying the usual half-truths he used to jam the law through Congress. He continued to claim that no one will lose his current health insurance, though millions are sure to do so as they are dropped from business coverage and tossed into Medicaid or government exchanges. – Wall Street Journal
President Obama’s attempt to invoke executive privilege to forestall contempt-of-Congress proceedings against Attorney General Eric Holder failed. Instead, the claim elevates the dispute between the administration and Capitol Hill to a new and troubling level. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted Wednesday to recommend a contempt charge against Holder. Since October, the Justice Department has refused to respond to a subpoena seeking 1,300 pages of documents related to the botched Fast and Furious Mexican gunrunning operation. Negotiations between the Justice Department and committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., broke down, and the contempt recommendation followed. Obama’s last-minute move to extend the umbrella of executive privilege raises the question of whether the president or his staff had extensive prior knowledge of the operation, because this privilege can only be invoked when the chief executive’s office is involved. – Washington Times
The political feud between the White House and congressional Republicans has now culminated in a House oversight committee vote to cite Attorney General Eric Holder for criminal contempt. His supposed crime is failing to hand over some documents in an investigation of a botched gunrunning sting operation known as Fast and Furious. The Republicans shamelessly turned what should be a routine matter into a pointless constitutional confrontation. And the White House responded as most administrations do at some point: It invoked executive privilege to make a political problem go away. There was no reason the House committee and the Justice Department could not work out a deal to produce the documents requested, or some form of them. Instead, they show again that every issue, large or small, can be turned into ammunition for political combat. – New York Times
Last week’s U.S. drone strike, which killed al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader at a house in northern Pakistan, was by any measure a step forward in the war on terrorism. The attack also added a bit more fuel to the debate over the morality and effectiveness of such remote-control warfare. What’s missing from the arguments, though, is a viable alternative. Drones have been a remarkably effective way to hunt down terrorist leaders and keep others cowering. Six top al-Qaida leaders have been killed in Pakistan and Yemen in the past year. That success has generated bipartisan support and 83 percent public approval in the U.S. for the program. There are valid concerns about civilian casualties, rules of engagement and more. For the time being, though, the U.S. continues to confront a nonstate enemy bent on plotting terror attacks inside America. Unless someone comes up with a better way to protect the nation, the drone strikes should continue, at least until Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahri (in photo), is eliminated and al-Qaida is out of business. – USA Today
When our nation violates the law in the name of our national security, it gives propaganda tools to our enemies and alienates our allies. That is why the government’s targeted killing program, which has resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths, is both unlawful and dangerous. Today our government is killing people in countries in which the United States is not at war. It reportedly adds suspected terrorists – including U.S. citizens – to “kill lists” for months at a time, which by definition cannot be limited to genuinely imminent threats. When mistakes are made, our nation refuses to acknowledge them and does not compensate victims. Russia, China or Iran may claim tomorrow, as our government does today, the power to declare individuals enemies of the state and kill them far from any battlefield, based on secret legal criteria, secret evidence and a secret process. That is the world we are unleashing unless the program is stopped. – Hina Shamsi, American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, in USA Today
From the beginning, the money behind Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (in photo) was intended to turn a once-reliable blue state into a laboratory for Republican ideas, where business could grow free of union fetters, taxes could be cut, and thousands of people could be removed from Medicaid rolls. That’s why David Koch, the billionaire industrialist whose family money was crucial to Walker’s election in 2010, gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association this year, which, in turn, ran ads supporting Walker. Koch said Walker’s fight against public unions was “critically important.” The tactics worked in Wisconsin, and in several other states. Labor, so long in decline in the private sector, is also losing its clout in states and cities, unable to match or withstand the unfettered bank accounts of industry. The people who kept Walker and his policies in power are just getting started. – New York Times
Now that Scott Walker has decisively won Wisconsin’s recall election, I wonder if we’ll be hearing any expressions of remorse for the smears, false rumors and general vilification that his opponents have hurled at him over the past year and a half. Walker’s foes are now complaining that he bought the election with corporate money from out of state. Of all the excuses being offered, this is the most pathetic. Of course Walker exploited existing state campaign-finance law to raise as much money as possible wherever he could. What the heck did his opponents expect him to do? Unilaterally disarm? The unions and Wisconsin Democrats knew the rules. If they didn’t want Walker to bring a financial gun to their knife fight, they shouldn’t have started it in the first place. – Charles Lane, Washington Post
America’s economy is poised to roar ahead if only Washington would stop holding it back. Ever since the Great Recession officially ended, the private sector has been adding jobs. What’s kept the economy in low gear and the unemployment rate stubbornly high has been the shrinking of government workforces: cops, teachers and other valuable public employees let go in the face of inadequate tax revenue. What fiscal policy should Washington adopt to boost our economy rather than drag it down? The first thing is to acknowledge that our current debt-reduction efforts can’t be primarily focused on spending reductions. We can’t cut our way out of debt, especially if we want to support our economy at the same time. We need a balanced approach of thoughtful spending curbs and increased revenue. If we don’t want to go deeper in debt, we need sufficient tax revenue from those best able to supply it to support job-creating federal investment in our still-struggling economy. – William Rice, Americans for Democratic Action
