Heritage fellow Talent in National Review
February 22, 2007 | By Nathaniel Ward
Sen. Jim Talent's article on the cover of National Review.
Last month, former Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO) joined The Heritage Foundation as a distinguished fellow, and already his ideas are making an impact.
Writing in the forthcoming March 5 issue of National Review, Talent explains the need to increase military spending. “Without a substantial increase in procurement spending, beginning now and sustained over the next five to ten years — an increase measured not in billions but in tens of billions of dollars per year above current estimates — the U.S. will be unable to modernize its forces to the degree necessary to preserve its security with the necessary margin of safety.”
America, he insists, must maintain more substantial defense spending in order to ensure we are ready to face future threats.
[T]he core defense budget should never sink below 4 percent of the nation’s GDP. The War on Terror will eventually end, but the need for American strength will not; there is no conceivable international scenario for the next generation that does not justify at least such a modest ongoing investment in the nation’s security. As Reagan liked to say, “Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because America was too strong.”…
This program — called the “4% for Freedom Solution” by the Heritage Foundation — would send the clearest possible message to America’s friends and enemies that, whatever happens in Iraq, America will remain a force to be reckoned with.
Click here to read his whole article online.
‘A protracted campaign to hamstring President Bush’
With their symbolic vote rebuking the administration’s Iraq policy, Heritage Middle East scholar Jim Phillips argues, liberals have taken “the first step in what will be a protracted campaign to hamstring President Bush’s Middle East policy and undermine his constitutional authority as commander in chief.”
An education revolution
In their wisdom, the Founding Fathers gave America a federal system which allows states to make their own laws in many policy areas. This means that instead of having a one-size-fits-all policy imposed by Washington, states can experiment, rejecting failed strategies and implementing those that work.
Education policy is one of those areas where federalism has allowed new ideas to flourish. For example, a new Utah law, explains Heritage education expert Dan Lips, “creates a sweeping school voucher program that puts Utah on track to offer all children a scholarship to attend the school of their parents’ choice.”
Click here to read more about Utah’s major step towards reform.
The upside of low taxes
Liberals continue to talk about repealing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to help pay for their lavish new spending proposals. But many in Congress, write Heritage policy analysts Tracy Foertsch and Ralph Rector, “appear to have little sense of how revenues and the economy would likely react if the tax cuts were extended.”
Foertsch and Rector, of Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis, ran the numbers and found that keeping the tax cuts in place after 2010, when they’re set to expire under current law, would be a boon for the country between 2011 and 2016.
Extending the low tax rates would:
- Raise real gross domestic product (GDP) by an average of over $75 billion annually, and by nearly $100 billion in 2012;
- Add an average of 709,000 jobs annually, and roughly 900,000 in 2012;
- Lower the unemployment rate, which means that about 270,000 unemployed workers in 2012 alone would find jobs; and
- Increase real personal income by an average of almost $200 billion annually.
Put another way, this is what we’d be missing out on if liberals get their way and hike taxes.
James Swanson’s reading list
Heritage scholar James Swanson took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal last Saturday to highlight his five favorite books about America’s wartime Presidents.
Swanson is himself author of a book about a wartime president. A paperback edition of Swanson’s New York Times-bestselling book, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, is available this month.
In other news
- Another liberal court ruling, another step towards redefining marriage: New Jersey yesterday began recognizing same-sex unions and offering those couples the rights and responsibilities of marriage. A state court last year ordered that the legislature rewrite its marriage laws to recognize the unions—though it stopped short of mandating that lawmakers call this new state of affairs marriage.
- Labor special interests are lobbying Congress to eliminate the secret ballot in unionization drives. But a new poll, Heritage labor expert James Sherk reports, demonstrates that union members themselves feel the current system is fair.
- Iran’s nuclear program may be hitting a snag. Government officials in Russia, which is helping Iran build a nuclear reactor, said the Islamic regime has missed payments and has had trouble obtaining needed equipment.
- Al Qaeda is using remote regions of Pakistan as a safe haven in which they can rebuild their operations, according to news reports. Meanwhile, America’s British allies report a sound thumping of Taliban holdouts in Afghanistan this weekend.
- As plans progress to place American missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, Russian officials are threatening the countries that would be home to the new installations.
- A story from the AFP news wire suggests that liberals are gaining ground in their quest to impose controls on the economy in the name of global warming prevention. In related news, a World Bank bureaucrat on Monday admitted that such restrictions would be unlikely to do much for the climate—but he called on governments to limit economic activity in any case.
Coming up at Heritage
To attend these or any other Heritage Foundation events, RSVP at Heritage’s events website. Or you can watch these events live online at Heritage.org. All times are Eastern.
- On Friday, February 23 at 10:00 am, Heritage and the Center for Strategic and International Studies host a panel discussion on lessons learned from terrorist surveillance initiatives.
- On Monday, February 26 at 11:30 am, author Andrew Roberts will discuss his new book, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900.
- On Tuesday, February 27 at 10:30 am, author James Mann will examine the tendency of many American leaders to look the other way on China’s record of human rights abuses.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
