Free Republic

Hillary Clinton is pushing for Congress to reauthorize the federal government's child healthcare program, lending her support to congressional Democrats looking to keep the program around. "[D]espite strong bipartisan support, we are concerned that gridlock in Washington and unrelated disputes over the Affordable Care Act could prevent an extension of the program," Clinton and former GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times on Thursday. "As parents, grandparents and former legislators, we believe that partisan politics should never stand between our kids and quality health care," the pair added. Clinton, the presumed...

The Obama administration is considering whether to declassify still-secret sections of a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks which examined Saudi Arabian support for Islamist militants, the White House said on Thursday. Interest in the 28-page section of the report was raised after an imprisoned former al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, said in deposition transcripts filed this week that more than a dozen prominent Saudi figures donated to his group in the late 1990s. Current and former U.S. officials familiar with the report's classified section, which documented the involvement of Saudi families and entities in financing terrorism, were...

DENVER – Republican Rep. Don Coram of Montrose is at odds with members of his own party after co-sponsoring a measure that would fund long-acting contraceptives for low-income women. Coram Enlarge photo The measure, House Bill 1194, was introduced on Friday, despite cries that the legislation funds devices that induce abortion. The issue has become a battle of science, with doctors arguing that there is little evidence to indicate that intrauterine devices, IUDs, cause abortion. Coram’s bipartisan legislation, which he is carrying with Rep. KC Becker, D-Boulder, would provide $5 million from the state general fund to continue a program...

Teacher pensions are a huge and growing crisis waiting to explode without major reforms, warns a new report released Tuesday by an educational think tank.“Do the math on teacher pensions and it just doesn’t add up,” argues the National Council on Teacher Quality in its report, Doing the Math on Teacher Pensions. Total unfunded teacher pension liabilities in 2014 were a whopping $499 billion dollars, the group found. That amount is surging rapidly; in 2012, the total was just $394 billion, meaning that pension debt is growing by over $50 billion a year.Some states are in a particularly huge hole....

In promoting a new variation on its expansive mission, a recent Michigan Economic Development Corporation press release referenced a "surge in new businesses, restaurants and shops." However, none of those enterprises will receive any of the $50,000 MEDC is kicking in to a “crowdfunding” project sponsored by the Michigan Municipal League, a lobbying and information resource organization funded by local governments. Instead, a total of $100,000 will be turned over to the City of Ypsilanti to convert a city-owned farmers market called the Freighthouse into a “community center.” Essentially, a state “economic development” agency is helping a government-funded lobbyist organization...

Conservatives in Congress are reviving the push for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution now that Republicans control both houses of Congress. GOP lawmakers in both chambers have filed several amendment proposals in the early days of the congressional session, breathing new life into an issue that had faded somewhat from the agenda. “I came here with a clear mission: work to get a balanced budget and do my best to reduce the size and scope of government, so that our small businesses and farm families can grow and create jobs,” said Freshman Rep. David Rouzer (R-N.C.) in a recent...

The short answer to that one is, “no.” The evidence for that being this perfectly credulous tweet via NBC News Capitol Hill reporter Luke Russert who apparently believes it is his role to repeat Democratic talking points nearly verbatim. Rs will vote D motion down but they're in essence voting against funding DHS + increased money to anti-terrorism centers across USA— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) January 14, 2015 Lucille Bluth couldn’t summon an eye roll exaggerated enough to communicate the imprudence of this assertion. The Democratic Party’s messaging against the GOP’s efforts to halt the implementation of President Barack Obama’s...

"....While he ended 2012 a scorned member of the Republican family, he has spent the past year a virtual kingmaker. His endorsement carried weight in the 2014-midterm primaries and he was a sought-after surrogate on the campaign stump. This “failed” nominee was so important to the GOP that his “ideas” summit,held last summer in Utah, drew the whole field of party luminaries and presidential contenders, from former running mate Rep. Paul Ryan to Sen. Rand Paul, Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Rob Portman, and former Gov. Mike Huckabee.[SNIP]With all of that said, however, I’m not sure if Romney is actually running...

48 second Video at link. (CNSNews.com) - House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) vowed today to fight “tooth and nail” against President Obama’s unilateral amnesty of up to five million illegal aliens—an amnesty the administration has been able to move forward with because Boehner’s House permitted funding of it. The 1,603-page omnibus spending bill that Boehner pushed through a lame-duck Republican-controlled House last month put no prohibition on Obama using government funds to implement the amnesty. That omnibus funded almost all the government through the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30 and the Department of Homeland Security through Feb....

This policy brief focuses on the challenge of developing a viable, user-friendly, per-mile charging system to replace fuel taxes for the nation's major highways. In doing so, it outlines 10 reasons why per-mile tolling is a better highway user fee than fuel taxes. Reason 1: Per-mile tolling is a direct, rather than indirect, user fee. Motorists would pay for the amount of service they received; they would pay providers directly for providing that service; and they would know exactly how much they were paying and what they were getting for it. Reason 2: Per-mile tolling is a sustainable long-term funding...

Would you pay more to visit your favorite national park? The National Park Service hopes so. The agency is proposing to increase entrance fees at many national parks across the country in an attempt to raise more revenue from visitors to help cover the cost of park operations and maintenance. The proposal comes at a time when Congress just authorized the largest expansion of the national park system in nearly three decades — but with no plan for how to fund it. The defense authorization bill, recently signed by President Obama, creates seven new national parks and expands nine existing...

Victoria Nuland, U.S. secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said the U.S. has been internally preparing more financial support to Ukraine.“Senior IMF leadership was in Ukraine this week issuing a public validation of the reform program going forward but also confirming that the program agreed last year is going to need a significant adjustment – that there is a fiscal hole to the tune of $10-15 billion,” Nuland said at the American Enterprise Institute during a discussion examining the Ukrainian revolution one year later.“We expect that the IMF and the World Bank will have to increase their support...

As the end of the legislative year draws near, motorists still wonder: What sort of changes will the Legislature and governor make in the way the state funds its roads and highways? Political observers in Michigan expect some sort of compromise among competing plans passed by the House and Senate, but the specifics are still lacking. According to projections from the state and University of Michigan economists, under the House-passed road plan – which devotes $1 billion more to roads with no tax hike – school funding will increase from $11.5 billion in 2014 to $14.0 billion in 2023. With...

Most people don’t understand how government defined-benefit pension systems operate, which is one of many obstacles to reforming the deeply underfunded systems. Part of the problem is that the methods used in pension funding and accounting are very different from anything a regular person ever faces in their own personal finances. For example, people rarely buy a product, including a financial product, without knowing its cost. But projecting the cost of pension systems requires making various assumptions about the future to decide how much must be contributed to meet defined-benefit pension promises. Making a wrong assumption can put taxpayers on...

As conservatives push back against a bill to fund the government past Dec. 11, Speaker John A. Boehner signaled Thursday that he didn’t expect to make any sizable changes to the so-called “cromnibus” in order to placate voices to the right. “I expect that we’ll have bipartisan support to pass the omnibus,” Boehner told reporters Thursday, in response to a question on whether the Ohio Republican anticipated needing some Democratic votes to pass the bill, and whether that would give Democrats leverage on negotiating riders in the appropriations bill. Conservatives are bashing the cromnibus — which would fund all elements...

President Obama on Tuesday urged the lame-duck Congress to approve roughly $6 billion in emergency funding to fight the deadly Ebola virus, saying “we cannot beat” the disease without a greater financial investment from lawmakers. “The urgency remains. If we are actually going to solve this problem for ourselves, we have to solve it in West Africa as well,” he said after a tour of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. “Let's get it done,” Obama added. “This can't get caught up in normal politics.” Obama's visit to the National Institutes of Health was meant to promote the...

Detroit bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes called on the state to address the underfunding of local government pension benefits in his oral opinion. He stated that the state has a “constitutional, legal and moral obligation to assure that the municipalities in this state adequately fund their pension obligation.” A government’s own employees should not be its largest creditors, nor should retirement benefits they have earned be placed at risk, as happened in Detroit. There are a number of current bills that would help local governments avoid underfunding, and the Legislature should consider passing them. When an employee earns pension benefits, the...

On November 4, voters fired the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, replacing it with a GOP majority that campaigned against Obamacare and big spending. But the Democrats who lost are still running the show. These lame ducks lack the moral authority to govern. They shouldn’t be allowed to do any more than the bare minimum to keep government operating until January, when the new Congress meets. Allowing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to ram through an omnibus spending bill for the coming year, or make other key decisions, would be like letting your ex-spouse keep using your checkbook. One...

Conservative lawmakers are pitching a number of legislative proposals to House speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) and other House Republicans in order to avoid passing a long-term funding bill that would provide President Obama with the money he needs to implement his pending administrative amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. “We could essentially be green-lighting it if we do a full omnibus in the lame-duck with everything,” says a House Republicans who signed Representative Matt Salmon’s letter calling for the House to pass a continuing resolution in the lame-duck session that would prohibit Obama from implementing his executive orders. The...

The White House on Wednesday is expected to ask Congress for additional funding to fight Ebola, congressional aides told The Hill. The administration will ask lawmakers to approve $6.2 billion in emergency funding, according to Bloomberg News. Of the total amount requested, $3.1 billion would be allocated toward the Department Health and Human Services (HHS), $2.9 billion would be for the State Department and HHS, and $100 million would be for the Defense Department. House Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Hing confirmed the panel has heard about the request, but members have not yet seen details.