The State of the Union
February 2, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward
On Tuesday, President Bush gave his fifth State of the Union address to Congress. Long story short: the President said the union is strong, but Congress must act on a series of important reforms if that’s to continue.
Within hours, Heritage responded to the President’s address:
- Brian Riedl lauded calls for entitlement reform and budget cuts
- James Phillips said the President was right to say terrorism is about more than Osama bin Laden
- Ben Lieberman said the President shouldn’t just recycle old energy policies
- Nile Gardiner wrote that the speech “projected a confident, outward-looking vision of U.S. foreign policy”
- Ariel Cohen critiques calls for democracy alone as a salve for terrorism
- James Carafano said the President’s national security message was strong
- Michael Franc examined the President’s critique of isolationism
- Dan Mitchell pointed out the speech’s mixed messages on tax policy
- Robert Moffit and Nina Owcharenko looked at health care portability and health savings accounts
A new majority leader
House Republicans today elected Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) to be their new Majority Leader, replacing Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX). Rep. Boehner defeated House Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) by a vote of 122-109 in the second and final round of voting this afternoon. Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) was eliminated in the first round.
All three candidates presented their reform plans to Heritage’s Conservative Member Retreat on Monday and Tuesday. Sixty-six conservative members of Congress attended the event, which Heritage has hosted since 1998.
At the retreat, conservative luminaries like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and columnist George Will called on members to return to the conservative ideals of the Republican revolution. Maintaining the big-government status quo into which some Republicans have drifted, they maintained, would be a betrayal of these ideals. Other notable speakers included Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) and Chuck Colson.
A better energy policy
“America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world,” President Bush said during his address. “The best way to break this addiction is through technology.” He proposed dramatic increases in energy research—and he didn’t name any spending cuts to allow the government to pay for these increases.
Heritage energy expert Ben Lieberman writes that reliance on foreign oil “is a legitimate concern, though the President‘s ‘addiction’ rhetoric was excessive.” The solution to this reliance on foreign energy is to reduce and streamline regulations here at home and to allow free markets and American ingenuity to provide our energy. The President’s solutions—substantially increased research funding—have a history of “many more disappointments than breakthroughs,” Lieberman explains.
Meanwhile, it was recently reported that ExxonMobil earned record profits last year, prompting new calls for “windfall taxes” whereby the government discourages successful companies from making money. This punishment would only discourage needed investment in the energy sector, Lieberman explained last time liberals raised the issue. In fact, the last windfall profits tax discouraged domestic production and increased reliance on oil imports. Congress should be opening America’s oil reserves to drilling, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for example, not blocking the investment America needs.
Securing the border
President Bush also said America needs immigration reform to secure our borders. “We must have stronger immigration enforcement and border protection. And we must have a rational, humane guest worker program that rejects amnesty, allows temporary jobs for people who seek them legally, and reduces smuggling and crime at the border.”
The rejection of amnesty is a key element of any immigration reform. We cannot maintain secure borders in the future if we reward law-breakers today. Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, under the leadership of Ronald Reagan Fellow Edwin Meese, will continue to investigate the dual problem of border security and guest worker programs.
With Heritage’s guidance, Congress and the President can agree to an immigration plan this year that:
- Does not include any form of amnesty
- Establishes a secure and temporary worker visa program that removes those illegally present
- Better regulates entry and exit at the border and improves internal enforcement
- Strengthens citizenship
On reforming health care
A few readers responded to Tuesday’s report with some concerns about the health care plan that Heritage developed with Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA).
These readers are absolutely right that many of the 40 million uninsured choose not to be insured, and that expanding government programs to cover them is a terrible idea. They’re also right that we should not invent a “right” to health coverage.
But the current system in effect provides free care to the uninsured—at tremendous cost to taxpayers and individuals. “To allow people to go without health insurance, and then when they do fall ill expect someone else to pay the tab for their treatment,” Heritage’s Ed Haislmaier explained, “is a de facto mandate on providers and taxpayers.”
In short, Gov. Romney’s reform
- Mandates that no individual foist the cost of his health care on others
- Uses the market to achieve this end efficiently and effectively
I should also clear up an inaccuracy in the last report: the Massachusetts program does not require that individuals purchase coverage, only that they choose between buying insurance and maintaining a $10,000 escrow account with the state. Many states already do something similar with auto insurance: coverage is not required, but the uninsured must purchase waivers, often at great cost.
Gov. Romney plugs Heritage
On Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Romney spoke with Fox News Channel host Neil Cavuto about his innovative health care program. The governor noted Heritage’s role in developing the plan on Cavuto’s television show: “The Heritage Foundation—and we worked on this with a lot of effort—said, ‘look, it doesn’t make sense for someone not to take the personal responsibility to either have health insurance or pay their own way.’ We give people choice.”
Gov. Romney visited Heritage last week to discuss his health plan. Read all about it on MyHeritage.org.
There’s pork in that (ground)hog
Early this morning, famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, which according to tradition means six more weeks of winter. But you probably didn’t know that this tradition is maintained with federal taxpayer money.
In December 2004, the groundhog himself visited Capitol Hill to defend a $100,000 pork-barrel earmark to the Punxsutawney Weather Discovery Center, an organization dedicated to the “the science and folklore of weather prediction” including the famed groundhog.
In other news
- President Bush has said he will ask Congress for $70 billion in Iraq funding and $18 billion in Katrina relief funding. He did not, however, ask Congress to set priorities and trim funds from less essential programs to pay for this new spending. Perhaps the new House leadership can help in this regard.
- American and European diplomats are working to gain the broadest possible consensus about action on Iran before bringing the rogue nation’s repeated nuclear proliferation violations before the UN.
- There's a minor spat developing over a series of cartoons published in a Danish newspaper that depict the prophet Mohammed. Multicultural activists and radical Muslims, saying the cartoons are offensive to Muslims, want the Danish government to intervene against the newspaper, but the government has rightly refused, citing freedom of expression.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
