In a September 27th Hill article, Russell Berman reports that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) will promote a bill that aims to increase the manufacturing base in the United States. Berman writes, “In the speech to be delivered at the National Press Club, Hoyer will lament the decline in homemade goods during the last three decades and highlight Democratic efforts to promote ‘Make It in America’ policies as the November midterm elections draw closer. ‘Manufacturing, and the middle-class economy it creates, is a part of the American character that we must not give up,’  Hoyer plans … Continue Reading

Reporting for The Hill, Walter Alarkon, in his July 13th article “Democrats and AARP want to make IRA enrollment automatic,” implies that the automatic investment retirement accounts (IRAs) is a Democratically controlled plan with support only from the White House and the Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP). But The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Research Fellow in Retirement Security and Financial Markets David John refutes Alarkon’s assertion that the Automatic IRA is a partisan idea:

The Automatic IRA has enjoyed wide bipartisan and cross-ideological support since it was first unveiled at The Heritage Foundation in

… Continue Reading

One can understand why facts might be hard to come by while reporting on Vice President Joe Biden’s economic stimulus claims, but The Hill’s Michael O’Brien makes two easy errors in his June 2nd article. First he calls it the “$787 billion” stimulus bill. That was once true … nut not anyomore. According to revised accounting by the Congressional Budget Office released this January, because the stimulus failed to keep unemployment below 8% as promised, it will end up costing $862 billion thanks to increased food stamp and unemployment payments.

O’Brien’s second factual error comes three paragraphs later when … Continue Reading

“The Department of Defense’s new proposed budget would dwarf military spending sought during President Ronald Reagan’s time in office, concludes Michael O’Brien of The Hill in a January 25th articel titled “Obama spending more on defense than Reagan had at peak.” O’Brien cites a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report. He also reports Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote in a post on the CBO Blog defense spending “exceeds the peak of about $500 billion (in 2010 dollars) during the height of the Reagan Administration’s military buildup in the mid-1980s.”

On the surface O’Brien’s report makes defense spending seem … Continue Reading