Tag: Wall Street Journal

July 18, 2014

Embedded in the $10.8 billion Highway Trust Fund measure that the House passed Tuesday in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, 367 to 55, is a funding gimmick called “pension smoothing.” This mechanism, first used in a 2012 transportation bill, allows companies to temporarily defer contributions to employees’ defined-benefit pension plans. Companies save money in pension contributions and pay more in taxes up front, temporarily increasing federal revenue. But when companies eventually make up the missed pension payments, plus interest, tax revenue declines.
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July 16, 2014

Members of the District of Columbia city council have proposed renaming the thoroughfare in front of the White House “DC Statehood Now Way.” The council members want to rename those two blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue to draw attention to the fact that residents of the District have no voting representation in Congress. But because the nation’s capital is a federal district and not a state, control over changing the street name–as with many aspects of Washington life–rests not with the D.C. Council but with Congress. D.C. residents pay federal taxes but do not enjoy the same rights as other Americans. D.C. license plates, including those on the presidential limousine, carry the phrase “Taxation Without Representation.”
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July 15, 2014

A Florida court ruling striking down part of the state’s congressional map is notable for its impassioned admonition of the unchecked power of political parties for whom “winning is everything.” The 41-page ruling last week, by Judge Terry Lewis of the state’s second judicial circuit, ordered several congressional districts in central Florida to be redrawn. It said Republican political consultants influenced the process and that districts had been drawn to protect incumbents and Republican seats.
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July 10, 2014

President Barack Obama says he didn’t go to the Texas border to see for himself the humanitarian crisis that has brought tens of thousands of Central American children to the U.S. because he’s “not interested in photo ops.” But visiting an immigrant detention facility would have underscored that the president really cares about this problem, as well as allowing him and the American people to see what is happening at the border.
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July 8, 2014

The GOP was smart to choose Cleveland to host the 2016 Republican National Convention, even though, as The Journal’s Reid Epstein points out, that doesn’t mean Republicans can count on carrying Ohio in the presidential election. It is, however, all but certain that without Ohio the GOP would have almost no chance of winning the White House. Ohio is the swingiest of swing states and has been closely divided politically for a century. Its governorship has been passed back and forth between Republicans and Democrats since 1899, with neither party holding it for more than eight years.
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July 8, 2014

For more than 150 years the Republican and Democratic parties have controlled U.S. politics: the presidency, almost all congressional seats, governors’ offices and state legislatures, with only a small number of exceptions. But public confidence in the two parties and their management of government has eroded. America’s polarized politics are mired in a dysfunctional and increasingly unpopular two-party system that has failed to address this nation’s major challenges and threatens its future.
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July 7, 2014

After sharp criticism, the House Ethics Committee reversed itself on changing how lawmakers publicly report trips financed by interest groups. Just two days after the change was first reported last week, the bipartisan panel decided House members would continue filing information about privately funded trips in their annual finance reports.
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July 4, 2014

As Americans observe the Fourth of July and celebrate the birth of this nation, the disconnect between people’s reverence for the principles on which this nation was founded and how they feel about contemporary American institutions and political leaders is striking. A Gallup poll this week showed record low confidence in Congress and the Supreme Court. Fewer than a third of Americans have confidence in Barack Obama‘s presidential leadership.
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July 1, 2014

National Republican leaders were probably relieved at the outcome of last Tuesday’s GOP gubernatorial primary in the swing state of Colorado, in part because it could have a significant spillover effect on another Colorado race: the fight for a U.S. Senate seat. In the governor’s race, establishment Republican Bob Beauprez, a former U.S. representative who has run for governor before, won the primary–and the chance to challenge Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, a former mayor of Denver.
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June 27, 2014

The unanimous Supreme Court decision Thursday striking down a Massachusetts law allowing 35-foot buffer zones outside abortion clinics raises questions about what happens when constitutional rights collide. The court ruled that the state’s buffer zones infringe the free-speech rights of those who want to protest abortions performed in the facilities. But what about the privacy rights of the clinic patients asserted in the 1973 landmark case Roe v. Wade and previous Supreme Court decisions that have upheld buffer-zone laws?
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