…until we talked with James Gattuso from the Heritage Foundation. On the surface Net Neutrality sounds like something mind-numbingly boring and too technical to mess with, but this is an issue we all need to be up on. James does a great job of making sense of it:
Tag Archives: Heritage
Nick Loris From Heritage On The Costs Of Cap & Trade
Heritage is doing fantastic work with analyzing the 1,201 page cap and trade bill that no one in congress has read. Wait until you hear these numbers that John Tanner KNOWS are true, but still doesn’t know if he’ll vote for yet. Here is Nick Loris from Heritage:
Here are all of Nick’s posts on the Heritage website on cap and trade.
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Ben Lieberman From Heritage On Cap & Trade
Ben Lieberman from Heritage. It’s fun to compare his interview to Dan Weiss from the Center for American Progress. They’re both from this planet. I’m assuming they’re both in the same city. They’re both looking at the same topic, but they COULDN’T BE FURTHER APART from each other in their conclusions. America is an amazing country.
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Energy Day Tomorrow
6:30, Ben Lieberman from Heritage on fuel standards and the effect of cap-and-trade on Tennessee manufacturing.
7:00, State Senator Jack Johnson on his resolution that says if the federal government passes emission standards, Tennessee won’t participate. Lots of questions there.
Hold on to your seats at 7:30, with the other side of this debate, Daniel Weiss from the Center for American Progress will be with us to tell us why cap-and-trade is a GOOD thing for Tennessee and the country.
8:30, Congressman Marsha Blackburn on the cap-and-trade fight in Washington and her bill HR 391 which would prevent the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act.
All of our guests are of course open for questions!
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Calvin Coolidge Quote Of The Day
From the 1925 State of the Union address. Why can’t we have representatives who talk like this anymore?
It is a fundamental principle of our country that the people are sovereign. While they recognize the undeniable authority of the state, they have established as its instrument a Government of limited powers. They hold inviolate in their own hands the jurisdiction over their own freedom and the ownership of their own property. Neither of these can be impaired except by due process of law. The wealth of our country is not public wealth, but private wealth. It does not belong to the Government, it belongs to the people. The Government has no justification in taking private Property except for a public purpose. It is always necessary to keep these principles in mind in the laying of taxes and in the making of appropriations. No right exists to levy on a dollar, or to order the expenditure of a dollar, of the money of the people, except for a necessary public purpose duly authorized by the Constitution. The power over the purse is the power over liberty.
That is the legal limitation within which the Congress can act, How it will, proceed within this limitation is always a question of policy. When the country is prosperous and free from debt, when the rate of taxation is low, opportunity exists for assuming new burdens and undertaking new enterprises. Such a condition now prevails only to a limited extent. All proposals for assuming new obligations ought to be postponed, unless they are reproductive capital investments or are such as are absolutely necessary at this time. We still have an enormous debt of over $20,000,000,000…
Heritage points out that the debt in 1925 was $30 per person. That’s $352 in today’s dollars. The national debt today is $35,000 a person. If the debt was urgent and enormous in 1925, what is it now?
If only we had a representative who believed that fiscal discipline was more than a hobby.
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James Carafano From Heritage On Priorities
James Carafano from Heritage on our Friday conversation, “Anyone who voted for the stimulus package has put our troops and our country at risk.”
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Anyone Who Voted For The Stimulus Package Has Put Our Troops At Risk
My thesis: “Anyone who voted for the stimulus package has put our troops and our country at risk”
The argument: At a Senate testimony, Robert Gates said the US faces “hard choices” on weapons spending that may lead to cuts in some programs. From Heritage Senior Fellow James Carafano:
This, however, is a bad “hard choice”…short cut defense to pay for seeding the Mall in DC and subsidizing Hollywood films (yes…both in stimulus package)…and yes…the defense jobs that will be cut will be here in the US….so yes you got that right…we are going to layoff high-skilled engineers to spend hundred-of-thousands of dollars to hire gardeners. […] Don’t cut the defense budget. The world may or may not get richer in the next few years….it is not likely to get less dangerous. [Those are his ellipses]
Congressman Barney Frank, with the latest reason why he should be thrown off a bridge, said, “The biggest ongoing threat, I believe, to fiscal sanity in this country is an open-ended ever-expanding military budget.” This is a ludicrous statement. I think the chart speaks for itself:
Entitlement spending is set to hit 18% of our GDP. Defense is currently at 3.8% and defense is the problem? He’s living in a dream world.
The Secretary of Defense should never be faced with a “hard decision” on if we should fund our weapons programs. An F-22 has a flyaway cost of $141 million. The now defunct condom program was going to cost $300 million. Condom program….or 2 F-22’s…condoms…or 2 F-22’s. Hmmm.
This should not be a tough choice. I don’t see how anyone could vote for these bailouts and spending packages and still stand up and say they’re “for the troops” when they’ve bankrupt the country to the point that the military has to make spending cuts. And anyone who voted for the stimulus or any of the other bailouts has put our country and our troops at even more risk than this signed up to accept.
Dan, a member of the National Guard:
Roger from Jackson:
John from Jackson:
Chris from Medina:
Jim from Dyersburg:
James from Union City:
Greg, 25 years Air Force:
Adrien Eddleman from Jackson:
Chris from Dyersburg:
Alex from Jackson:
Tom from Jackson:
THE Craig R. Steinfels called in just after the show:
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JD Foster From Heritage On The Senate Bailout
We appreciate Dr. Foster, Senior Fellow of Economics and Fiscal Policy at Heritage, joining us this morning on about 5 minutes notice.
Explanation:
What’s up with the millionaire surtax?
Are there free market solutions to this?
Do you support raising FDIC insurance levels?
It worked in the House, but can we change the vote of our Senators?
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AUDIO: Tom Leatherwood Would NOT Have Voted For The Housing Bill
15 past presidents of the Memphis Area Association of Home Builders* have called for the defeat of Marsha Blackburn because she voted against the (disastrous) Housing Bill (Top 10 things wrong with the Housing Bill). MAAHB then endorsed Tom Leatherwood, but he wouldn’t have voted for the bill either:
*I misspoke in the beginning of the above clip. According to Marsha’s campaign, the Memphis Area Association of Home Builders have and still endorse Marsha. The letter against Marsha is from 15 past presidents.
Information about the Housing Bill from previous shows:
Wayne Brough from FreedomWorks on the credit card transactions
Brian Darling from Heritage on the $300 Billion bailout of the banks
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AUDIO: The Fine Print Of The Housing Bill
Once you get passed the fact that this bill is incredibly unconstitutional, costs everyone $300 BILLION, goes mostly to the banks who screwed up, and doesn’t help anyone at all anywhere, the BEST part of the new 630-page housing bill is all the provisions that invade our privacy.
Yesterday we talked with Brian Darling from the Heritage Foundation about the fingerprint database of anyone involved with the housing market (As if they’re already criminals). This morning we talked with Dr. Wayne Brough, the chief economist at Freedom Works, about the provision that requires anyone who receives credit card payments to report everything to the government:
Below is the press release from Bob Corker’s office:
For immediate release: Laura Lefler, 202-224-3467
June 25, 2008
Corker Votes for Legislation to Modernize FHA, Reform Oversight of Fannie and Freddie
Corker Says This Puts in Place Tools to Deal with Troubled Housing Market
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, today voted for legislation to modernize the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and reform oversight of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“This is a reasonable approach to putting in place tools to help deal with our troubled housing market,” said Corker. “These tools will go a long way toward enabling the private sector to stabilize falling housing prices and toward creating safety and soundness guidelines for the lending industry to help prevent this type of situation from occurring in the future.”
For months in Banking Committee hearings, Corker pressed for modernizing the FHA before expanding its role and exposure to more risky borrowers and made it clear that he could not support Senate passage of housing reform legislation that did not include twice-passed Senate language to modernize the FHA.
“FHA modernization is long past overdue, and by including it in this bill we will allow the private sector to respond to our housing dilemma responsibly,” said Corker.
Corker also praised the “long overdue and significant reform to the oversight of the government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” included in the bill.
“These entities were created to provide liquidity and stability to the conventional conforming loan mortgage market, and they are needed now more than ever. The inferred liability that our taxpayers have as it relates to these entities demands that we have a strong regulator in place. This bill is a very positive development to ensure the integrity of these organizations and to ensure that they do not become liabilities to our citizens.”
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The Mike Slater Show 
