Posts By Author » Dustin Siggins

Bipartisanship & Big Government Buddies
5 Jul 2012 10:13 am

On June 13, Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow in Labor Policy James Sherk released a paper analyzing how the Obama Administration’s auto bailout could have cost the taxpayer nothing in the long run if the United Auto Workers (UAW) had received normal bankruptcy treatment. Instead, they were provided special treatment which violated numerous aspects of traditional contract law, and were given approximately $3.5 billion more in treatment than the total cost of the bailout. In short, according to Sherk, the taxpayers were charged $26.5 billion on their maxed-out credit card.
On Tuesday, …

Senator Rand Paul: Bringing Sanity to Congress’ Voting Process
3 Jul 2012 9:35 pm

Last week, Congress passed a flawed transportation/flood insurance/student loan bill that became law soon thereafter. The bill’s issues, which I outlined at the above link, include the following:

The conference report combined three unrelated bills into one, a too-common practice on Capitol Hill to offset costs and garner votes by putting “must-pass” legislation around bills of lower priority. TARP and the PPACA are examples of bills that followed this pattern.
Further student loan subsidization is a bad thing for college costs and quality. The lower rate was put into place as a …

The Future of Social Security: Getting Bleaker & Bleaker
29 Jun 2012 12:29 pm

On June 21, Charles P. Blahous III and Robert D. Reischauer, Public Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees, testified to the House Ways & Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Social Security on the 2012 Social Security Administration (SSA) report on the fiscal health of Social Security. During the hearing, from minute 51:55 to minute 58:42, Representative Kenny Marchant (R-TX) asked several important questions that garnered revealing information about the true fiscal problem Social Security faces in coming years and decades. (Full disclosure: I worked for Rep. Marchant …

The House, Senate, and the Transportation Bill
29 Jun 2012 11:17 am

Today, the House and Senate are set to vote on the conference version of the transportation bill. With a transportation cost of $120 billion, and a total cost of $271, it’s far lower in spending than what liberals want for a bill that funds until the end of Fiscal Year 2014, and far more than what House conservatives would like to spend. More than the typical difficulties of navigating an expensive bill through a divided Congress, however, are the hurdles the transportation bill faces.

First, funding for all transportation-related federal funding …

The Supreme Court, the Mandate, and “Taxes”
29 Jun 2012 9:22 am

In light of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (PPACA), conservatives have by and large been apoplectic. A picture with Chief Justice Roberts above the word “traitor” has made its way around Facebook, his Catholic faith has been called into question, and Mitt Romney’s campaign says 42,000 donations worth $4.2 million has been raised since the decision came out.
Voices more knowledgeable and of higher status than mine have commented at length about the Court’s decision, and so I won’t get into most of …

Interview with Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) on energy reform and the Supreme Court’s PPACA decision
28 Jun 2012 1:27 pm

Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) is a first-term Senator from North Dakota. Formerly governor of North Dakota for ten years, he is one of the Senate’s most avid supporters of a reformed, “all of the above” energy strategy for America. He sat down with me this morning to discuss a variety of aspects of energy policy as well as the Supreme Court’s decision this morning on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act.

Dustin Siggins: First and foremost, can I get a reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision on …

Random Thoughts Related to the PPACA & Tomorrow’s SCOTUS Decision(s)
27 Jun 2012 10:22 am

With the Supreme Court deciding tomorrow on the constitutionality of parts and the whole of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the political world is switching from tense to excited to nervous on what seems to be an hourly basis. The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein is not-so-subtly undermining the legitimacy of overturning the PPACA, Real Clear Politics’ Sean Trende writes that the entire health care law is in jeopardy based largely upon his expectation that Chief Justice Roberts will write the Court’s decision, and now Politico is reporting …

More of the Same…With a Twist
26 Jun 2012 10:53 am

In last year’s Budget Control Act, $2.1 trillion in deficit reduction policies over a ten-year period were enacted. Rather than a serious, substantive attempt to at least reduce America’s enormous deficits, the Act took a hodgepodge of bad policies and put them into place. Then Congress took this hodgepodge and made each policy’s impact so small that while specific, individual programs and departments would be hit hard the fiscal future of the nation would barely be improved.
Of course, now comes word that Congress may delay most of the Budget Control …

Rep. Charlie Rangel’s (D-NY) Last Hurrah?
25 Jun 2012 1:26 pm

This morning, Politico took a look at the race of longtime Representative Charlie Rangel (D-NY). Rangel, who has suffered from poor health and according to the article spent three months away from the House at one point this year, is running against three opponents whose combined efforts could very well prevent him from having a final term in the House at the age of 82.
The article itself isn’t bad, and draws attention to a symbolically important primary that comes to a head tomorrow. However, in largely highlighting the race from …

Sequestration, thermonuclear war, and the F-35 engine: an interview with SLD Forum’s Ed Timperlake
22 Jun 2012 12:02 am

Ed Timperlake is the Former Principal Director of Mobilization Planning and Requirements for President Ronald Reagan and a former Marine fighter pilot. He is currently the editor of SLD Forum, a website dedicated to a robust discussion of national security issues. We sat down earlier this week to discuss a myriad of pressing national security issues.

Dustin Siggins: What are your views on sequestration from a national security standpoint?
Ed Timperlake: Ignore it, it won’t happen. There’s no political will to gut the military. Nor should there be.

DS: Many people, including me, …

The RAISE Act Debate Shows the Desperation of Unions & Their Allies
20 Jun 2012 4:50 pm

In recent weeks unions have been making major national news. First it was the failed Wisconsin recall. Next it was micro-unions, which have D.C.-based business interests very concerned about gerrymandering within individual businesses that could end up causing many businesses, including retail and grocery stores, a great deal of financial harm. Most recently, though, it is the Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees (RAISE) Act, introduced in the Senate, that has caused a great deal of back-and-forth among varied interests this month. Below are four prominent opinions expressed in …

Interview with RSC Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH)
20 Jun 2012 10:29 am

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is the Chair of the Republican Study Committee (RSC). Otherwise known as the reason the Speaker Boehner is having a tough time corralling his Members on tough spending votes (nearly three-quarters of the House Republican Conference is in the RSC), the RSC has been a force in moving the Republican Party to the right in the last several years. And while the party itself may not be far enough to the right for some of us, it is the RSC that has led fights against major …

Rare Kudos to the New York Times
19 Jun 2012 1:28 pm

On Sunday, the New York Times published an editorial about the “fiscal cliff” pundits and politicians are concerned will hit the nation on January 1, 2013. Consisting of spending cuts and tax increases, the “cliff” is based upon the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) expectations that the nation will be put back into recession if the tax increases and spending cuts are put into place… but also how our nation’s fiscal health in the medium-to-long-term will be harmed if we ignore the impact of record deficits and, most importantly, our nation’s …

Call the President’s Bluff, Part 2
19 Jun 2012 12:59 pm

This morning The Hill reported that seven Senate Democrats are opposed to ending the Bush tax policies on anyone, even the wealthy, without a deficit deal along the lines of Simpson-Bowles. This puts the President in quite a tight spot, especially in light of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney’s statement on June 6 that the President would not extend the tax policies for upper-income earners, even temporarily:
Q Jay, is the President’s vow not to ever extend the Bush-era tax cuts on the wealthy again extend to a temporary extension …

Interview with Jonathan Bydlak, President of Coalition to Reduce Spending
14 Jun 2012 1:46 pm

Jonathan Bydlak is the President of the Coalition to Reduce Spending, a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization dedicated to one thing: reducing federal spending to balance the federal budget. Jonathan, a former fundraiser for the 2008 Ron Paul for President and 2012 Gary Johnson for President campaigns, believes the debt is the greatest threat to the future of our nation. Bydlak has now moved from working to elect candidates to generating support from across the political spectrum for balancing the budget.
I met Jonathan last week on the recommendation of a mutual acquaintance, and …

Interview With Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)
14 Jun 2012 8:45 am

Over the last decade 11 years America’s federal budget has nearly tripled, the size of government has doubled, and our country has lost its AAA rating for the first time. During his time in the House during the 1990s and as a Senator since 2004, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has stood in opposition to the policies that led to these dire straits. Whether it has been highlighting bipartisan hypocrisy, opposing earmarks, aiming to cut hundreds of billions in wasteful spending, or reforming entitlement and defense spending, Senator Coburn has been …

Media Matters: The Message is More Important Than the Facts
13 Jun 2012 5:09 pm

Since its release last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report on the long-term fiscal scenarios facing America has drawn a myriad of reactions from across the political spectrum. Liberals have said it shows we need to raise taxes, conservatives have said it shows we need to cut spending, and libertarians have said it shows both parties are corrupt and therefore Americans should support their movement.
These are all respectable, if differing, positions on policy and politics, and should be prominent in the coming debates over raising the debt ceiling, sequestration, …

The UAW and the Administration – working together at the expense of the taxpayer
13 Jun 2012 1:20 pm

On Wednesday morning, The Heritage Foundation released a paper by Center for Data Analysis Senior Fellow James Sherk on the cost of the 2009 auto bailout. The Treasury Department estimates that the auto bailout will end up costing taxpayers $23 billion and, according to Sherk, all of those losses are the result of the Obama administration’s special treatment of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. In the paper, Sherk pegs the eventual cost of that special treatment at $26.5 billion — $3.5 billion more than the auto bailout’s estimated net …

Interview with Star Parker on the HHS Mandate and the 2012 Elections
12 Jun 2012 12:07 am

Star Parker is the President of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) and a leading pro-life activist. A nationally syndicated columnist, she has led the fight against the HHS contraception/sterilization/abortifacient mandate, both in writing and publicly speaking out against its violations of a myriad of American rights and traditions. These speeches and columns can be found at her website, www.StarParker.com, and on her Facebook page.
This morning Star gave me her thoughts on how opponents of the HHS mandate can convince the American people that the mandate is as …

Krugman Keeps Pretending Spending Has Gone Down
11 Jun 2012 2:19 pm

In his June 08 column, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says a major part of the reason the recession under Reagan recovered more quickly than the current recession is because of government spending. From the column:
Why was government spending much stronger under Reagan than in the current slump? “Weaponized Keynesianism” — Reagan’s big military buildup — played some role. But the big difference was real per capita spending at the state and local level, which continued to rise under Reagan but has fallen significantly this time around.
There are a …

« Previous Page

Woman shoots back at would-be home invaders

Premium Right Ads

Blogads Right

Previous Features

10 Concepts Liberals Talk About Incessantly But Don’t Understand

7 Political Questions for Republicans Who Support Amnesty

25 Examples Of What America Would Be Like If Everyone Was A Liberal

7 Responsibilities You Have As An American

User Info

Features

Archives Best of RWN Humor John Hawkins Interviews Quotes Special to RWN Polling