Making the case for keeping government subsidized student loan interest rates at 3.4 percent for another year, President Obama told students at University of North Carolina Tuesday, “We have to make college more affordable for our young people. That is the bottom line.”

But do federal loan subsidies make college more affordable? President Ronald Reagan’s Education Secretary Bill Bennett didn’t think so. Back in 1987 he wrote in The New York Times, “If anything, increases in financial aid in recent years have enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions, confident that Federal loan subsidies would help cushion the … Continue Reading

As spring turns into summer every year, the only thing more certain than the rising price of gas are liberal attempts to blame “oil speculators” for the phenomenon. Unfortunately, President Obama has proved no different. With the average price of gasoline approaching $4 a gallon, Obama took to the Rose Garden to denounce “an irresponsible few” who are “illegally manipulating or rigging the energy markets for their own gain.” “We can’t afford a situation where some speculators can reap millions, while millions of American families get the short end of the … Continue Reading

President Obama’s defense of what The New York Times calls “the centerpiece of his reelection campaign” reached new levels of comedy this week when Obama claimed that Ronald Reagan would have supported raising taxes on the American people. Speaking at in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Obama said:

[I]t is just plain wrong middle-class Americans pay a higher share of their income in taxes than than some millionaires and billionaires. … I’m not the first President to call for this idea that everybody has got to do their fair share. … Ronald Reagan was calling for then is the … Continue Reading

Admittedly, it is not easy defending a law as convoluted and intrusive as President Obama’s health care reform. But Solicitor General Don Verrilli did such a poor job this Tuesday that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was forced to step in and explain the administration’s rationale for the individual mandate:

Mr. Verrilli, I thought that your main point is that, unlike food or any other market, when you made the choice not to buy insurance, even though you have every intent in the world to self-insure, to save for it, when disaster strikes, you may not have … Continue Reading

As the price at the pump has gone up, President Obama’s job approval rating has gone down. That is why he is in the middle of a four state energy policy tour this week in Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, and Oklahoma, peddling one simple message: don’t blame me.

Previewing his energy message in Maryland last week, Obama told students at a community college:

America uses more than 20 percent of the world’s oil. If we drilled every square inch of this country — so we went to your house and we went to the National Mall and we put up … Continue Reading

“I placed my bet on the American worker,” President Obama told the United Auto Workers conference in Washington, D.C., Tuesday. “And now, three years later, that bet is paying off.”
Obama is right about one thing, his bet is paying off … for him and the UAW. But not for American taxpayers.

The first thing to remember about Obama’s auto bailout is that it was not the first time the federal government came to Detroit’s rescue. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter pushed through the first bailout of Chrysler at a bargain basement price of just $1.5 … Continue Reading

If you are one of the millions of Americans who has to fill up their own gas tank, you already know that gas prices are rising … and fast. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average price for a gallon of gas is $3.59 nationwide, up almost 7 percent from just one week ago. Many analysts, including Oil Price Information Service’s Tom Kloza, believe gas will continue to surge past $4.00 a gallon, and may even hit $4.25 nationwide by April. To put that in perspective, the all-time record … Continue Reading

Defending President Obama’s budget on Meet the Press this Sunday, White House chief of staff Jack Lew claimed, “The president’s budget has $1 of revenue for every $2.50 for spending cuts.” This is just plain false.  In fact, Obama’s budget doesn’t have any spending cuts at all.

Obama’s budget does raise taxes. According to his own numbers, Obama hikes taxes by $1.9 trillion over the next ten years. Currently, the federal government consumes 15.8 percent of gross domestic product through taxes. Under Obama’s budget that number will rise to 20.1 percent by … Continue Reading

Last June, Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute and Jason Richwine of The Heritage Foundation released a study showing that the federal government pays its employees 61 percent more in total compensation than the private sector. They concluded that taxpayers could save $77 billion a year by reducing federal employee compensation to private sector levels. The reaction from federal worker unions and their liberal allies was predictable and fierce.

William Dougan, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees said the report was full of “lies.” Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry … Continue Reading

President Obama claimed during his Tuesday State of the Union address that he had “approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.” Can this possibly be true? Have Republican critics been unfair to Obama’s true regulatory record?

Obama does have one narrow fact to hang his hat on. The Obama administration did approve 613 regulations in his first 33 months, which is 30 fewer than Bush approved over the same time frame. But not all regulations are created equally. A new rule dictating … Continue Reading