Heritage Foundation

Hispanics and the 2012 Election

After last week’s Republican primary elections in Wisconsin, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., the 2012 presidential primary season is reaching an inflection point, and eyes are turning toward America’s final decision on Election Day in November. While pundits and pollsters speculate on the horse race and who will capture the hearts and minds of the American people, one segment of the electorate is garnering increased attention — Hispanic Americans.

Obama Economy Leaves Little Unchanged

America is at a crossroads. Today’s jobs report shows that two years into recovery the U.S. economy is still woefully underperforming, adding only 120,000 new jobs in March, about half the rate of job growth of the previous three months which were, themselves, somewhat disappointing for this stage of recovery.

Beware the Taxmageddon

Brace yourself. In a mere 271 days, you and your fellow Americans will be hit with a tax hike the likes of which this country has never seen. The Washington Post aptly called the unprecedented $494 billion tax hike “Taxmageddon,” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke described it as a “massive fiscal cliff.” Whatever your preferred imagery, it’s a really big deal.

The President’s Curious Speech Lacks Solutions

If you’re looking for an iron-clad indictment of Barack Obama’s failed fiscal policies, you don’t have to look much farther than the President’s own words in a speech he delivered yesterday at the Associated Press luncheon in Washington, D.C.

Obama Slams Supreme Court over Obamacare

The highest elected official in the United States dished out an extra helping of irony yesterday when, in speaking at a joint news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, President Barack Obama slammed the Supreme Court as an “unelected group of people” who will have turned to “judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint” if they strike down Obamacare.

The Highest Taxes in the World

There aren’t many American-owned companies more iconic than Anheuser-Busch, the famous producer of Budweiser beer based in St. Louis, Missouri. That was true up until 2008, when the Brazilian-Belgian company InBev executed a hostile takeover of the historic brewer, leading to layoffs of more than 1,800 workers. Unfortunately, conditions in the United States are growing ripe for even more takeovers like these to occur, especially now that the nation’s corporate tax rate is officially the highest in the world.

Did You See the Senate’s Gas Price Sideshow?

In case you missed it, there was quite a performance in the U.S. Senate yesterday. Liberals put on an election-year show, with the personal encouragement of President Barack Obama, in which they attempted to impose higher taxes on the oil industry as punishment for their profits while gas prices are at an all-time high.

And Now the Supreme Court Must Decide

For the past three days, the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court heard a series of arguments on Obamacare — what promises to be one of the most seminal decisions in the Court’s history. Now that the dust has settled, it appears more than likely that President Obama’s signature health care law is on the verge of being struck down — perhaps even in its entirety.

Another Vision to Solve the Budget Crisis

While Washington’s eyes are focused on the historic Obamacare hearings at the Supreme Court, work continues across the street in the House of Representatives where some Members of Congress — though not all — are doing their best to clean up Washington’s budgetary mess.

Obama Whispers Away America’s Security

It is hard to overstate the dangerous implications of what happened this week when President Obama was caught by an open mic sending a message to Russia’s dictator-in-waiting to wait quietly till after the November elections, after which Mr. Obama could make concessions on America’s national defense. The White House is trying to explain this incident away as par for the course in an electoral year. It is not.

Obamacare Comes before the Supreme Court

Rare is the occasion when the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather to hear three days of arguments, and rarer still is when it is for a case like Obamacare — one that cuts to the core of the Constitution and whose outcome could fundamentally alter the role of the federal government and its power over the people. But today the Court will do just that when it open its doors and begins weighing the arguments on the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s seminal health care law.

Obamacare’s Dreadful Anniversary

Two years ago today, President Barack Obama signed into law Obamacare, a 2,700-page bill that will radically alter America’s health care system and wreak havoc on medical costs, quality of care, and fundamental rights in ways that are beyond the scope of our imagination.

Obama Mocks Critics As Gas Prices Go Up

As you drive America’s ribbon of highway, from California to the New York island, there’s one reality that can’t be escaped — gas prices keep going up, with no end in sight. But instead of taking action to bring relief to the American people, the Obama Administration is patting itself on the back for a job well done while mocking those who are calling for a commonsense energy policy.

Bringing the Light of Freedom to Cuba

The society that Pope Benedict XVI will find when he lands in Cuba next week will be a destitute one, prostrate in every way. The once proud and comparatively wealthy Cubans are now among the poorest in the hemisphere, definitely the least informed and, consequently, the least free. For outsiders, Cuba is a cautionary tale about what happens when a minority with guns takes over and tries to create a socialist paradise. For Cubans, who can’t escape, Cuba oscillates between inferno and merely tedious existence.

Get on the Path to a Balanced Budget

Paul Ryan (R-WI), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, will release his budget blueprint today in what will surely be one of the most important policy developments in Washington this year. If as expected Senate Democrats fail yet again to advance a budget for the government, then the Ryan Budget and the President’s Budget released a few weeks ago will present the leading alternatives for how the federal government would dig out of its present fiscal mess. And if the Ryan budget is anything like last year’s effort, the differences couldn’t be clearer. The Heritage Foundation is reviewing Congressman Ryan’s latest budget proposal and will provide analysis in the hours and days ahead.

Obamacare Is A Cancer That Must Go

Fellow Americans:

The Secret Plan to Defend Obamacare

This week, The Heritage Foundation’s Rob Bluey obtained a four-page strategy memo that outlines a White House-coordinated campaign to force an unwilling public to accept Obamacare. Once again, all the strategies by the Administration and its liberal allies involve how better to message this hated law as the anniversary of its passage approaches and the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on its constitutionality. If only the Administration put this much effort into lowering the price of gas or creating jobs.

A Budget to Save the American Dream

America’s fiscal condition is dauntingly dismal. The national debt is well on its way to $17 trillion, 13 million Americans are out of work, and the country is stuck in the slowest recovery in the post-war era. Despite Washington bleeding taxpayers dry with reckless overspending, the U.S. Senate has not passed a budget since nearly a year before Apple released the original iPad, leaving the country in a lurch, desperate for leadership in Congress that will bring bold changes and an end to the unconscionable pattern of spending and borrowing.

Harry Reid Opts for Political Theater on Judicial Nominees

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has rightfully earned the reputation of running a do-nothing Senate. More than 1,000 days have elapsed since the upper chamber approved a budget. He’s currently ignoring the House-passed JOBS Act and actively opposing steps to lower gas prices.

Obama’s New Regulations Cost Billions

If you fly across the country, it’s easy to see signs of America’s ingenuity and productivity — skyscrapers in New York City, steel mills in Pennsylvania, factories in Chicago, farmland in the Great Plains, and the glittering technology of Silicon Valley. But what you can’t see, though it’s very real, is the invisible web of red tape crawling forth from Washington, crisscrossing the landscape, strangling job creators, tying down entrepreneurs, and tangling America’s engine of innovation in a mess of regulations. Under the Obama Administration, those endless miles of government-imposed directives has kept getting longer, as The Heritage Foundation reveals in a new study released today.