Columnist.
Imagine if in 1961 John F. Kennedy's advisers had told him, "We will never put a man on the moon." Or what if Ronald Reagan's advisers had assured the Gipper, "The Cold War is unwinnable. We should sue for peace." Actually, many naysayers told JFK and Reagan exactly these things. Fortunately, these presidents were visionaries. They asked: "Why not?"
Governors and state legislators say they are running out of money again, and many are demanding tax hikes to close budget gaps.
One of the mysteries of American government over the last half-century is why Congress has acceded so much lawmaking authority to what is now the fourth branch of government: federal agencies and interest groups. These agencies — the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Food and Drug Administration and dozens more — have become fiefdoms that reign over private industries. They are effectively accountable to no one — and certainly not to Congress.
The Baker-Shultz plan will do nothing to save the planet, but it will surely make America poorer.
I have nothing but respect for former Secretaries of State Jim Baker and George Shultz, but come on, gentlemen: You've been snookered.
The stock market has risen about 9 percent since the election of Donald Trump, with an increase in wealth of nearly $2 trillion. Is this the start of a big bull-market rally?
Donald Trump's wise and humanitarian move to reinstate the Reagan-era "Mexico City policy," which prohibits U.S. foreign-aid dollars from going to non-government organizations that perform or provide referrals for abortions, has incited a torrent of liberal outrage.
All of Washington seems to be in cardiac arrest over news reports late last week that Donald Trump is planning a budget featuring $10 trillion in cuts over the next decade. We can only hope and pray that the reports are accurate.
To create a level playing field, the U.S. has to reconstitute our tax system.
If America's competitors intentionally tried designing a tax system to destroy the American economy, they probably couldn't come up with a better plan than the way the United States currently taxes its own businesses.
The day after the presidential elections, Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, glumly called the Donald Trump victory "devastating for our climate and our future." Well, yes, if you're a climate-change alarmist who hates fossil fuels, you're in for a bad four and maybe eight years.
President-elect Donald Trump has selected Andy Puzder, CEO of Carl's Jr., the successful fast-food hamburger restaurant chain, as his secretary of labor. This has set off a bit of protest by the hard left and the union bosses.
Back in early 2015, oil and gas company ConocoPhillips requested a permit from the Obama administration to launch an oil-drilling project in Alaska. The energy project, called the Greater Mooses Tooth development, is located within the National Petroleum Reserve and would create thousands of jobs in an economically depressed area of the state. The project has the full approval of the local community and poses little threat to the environment in a sparsely populated region.
On election night, at around 6 p.m., a Hillary Clinton political operative went on TV and smugly opined that she believed they had a 95 percent chance of winning. Wow, 95 percent. In statistics we call that a very high level of certainty. But of course, five hours later the woman was in tears, and the 1-in-20 long shot named Donald Trump came in.
The blue states of America are in a depression.
The blue states of America are in a depression. I don't mean the collective funk of liberal voters because they lost the election to Donald Trump.
I stirred up some controversy last week when I told a conference of several dozen House Republicans that the GOP is now officially a Trump-working-class party. For better or worse, I said at the gathering inside the Capitol dome, the baton has now officially been passed from the Reagan era to the Trump era. The members didn't quite faint over my apostasy, but the shock was palpable.
When Donald Trump said last week that he will double the American growth rate, his skeptics scoffed. The left doesn't think 4 percent growth is possible, because they never came close to that target under Barack Obama. But there's no law of nature or economics that says America is doomed to anemic growth rates. We believe that with the right policy fixes, fast growth is not just possible; it's probable.
The latest spin out of Washington is that stock-market declines over the last 10 days are due to Donald Trump's surge in the polls. Well, it is true that Wall Street tends to hate change — even when it's positive. And if Donald Trump is anything, it is a change agent that will rattle the cages in Washington, D.C., and perhaps on Wall Street. Investors didn't respond at all well to Ronald Reagan until his policies were put in place and the economy rocketed forward. Only then, in 1982, did the greatest bull-market expansion in American history launch.
By now, everyone knows that Obamacare is the public-policy flop of this generation. With the latest news of premiums increasing 22 percent, insurance companies dropping out, rising taxes and less completion, this is truly the Hindenburg of health plans. But there is another part of the story that needs to be told. President Obama's team and the liberal echo chamber lied about Obamacare from the start and covered up the financial time bomb that would soon detonate in Americans' laps. This was like Enron officials cooking the books to cover up financial fraud.
