Mitt Romney speaks to Heritage
June 1, 2009 | By Nathaniel Ward
The government should not cut essential defense programs in order to pay for lavish social programs, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said today at a speech sponsored by The Heritage Foundation.
"After all, the first and highest duty of government is to provide for the common defense," he explained in his address at the United States Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C. "Backing away from missile defense, and depleting the defense budget to fund new social programs, particularly in the face of global turmoil, would put America and Americans at risk."
» Watch Gov. Romney's speech on MyHeritage.org.
Government Motors is not the answer
The Obama administration announced today that it would give the bankrupt General Motors an additional $30 billion of taxpayer money in exchange for a 60 percent ownership stake in the auto company. This would effectively nationalize the company, which filed for bankruptcy protection this morning.
As Heritage's Conn Carroll explains, General Motors faces a "myriad of inherent new conflicts as the Obama administration now becomes GM's regulator, tax collector, customer, lender, and owner."
President Obama denied that the government would run the company in a hands-on way. But Carroll notes that the administration will now be in a position dictate what cars to make, where to make them and how to market them—and it seems likely that politics, not business sense, will motivate these decisions.
"We need an exit strategy out of Obama Motors today," Carroll insists.
Other Heritage work of note
- The media world is evolving rapidly, and more and more Americans get their news from online sources instead of traditional media like newspapers and television. The Heritage Foundation is working hard to ensure conservative ideas play an important role in this new media environment. Just last week, for example, Heritage economist Alison Fraser helped blogger Glenn Reynolds launch his online video program, InstaVision, with a discussion about runaway government spending. You can watch the video on the Pajamas Media website.
- When you think about the Obama administration's economic policy, what comes to mind are the big-ticket items: the trillion-dollar "stimulus" bill, the nationalization of General Motors, or the bank bailouts. But Heritage's Ernest Istook says the government is also tackling smaller fish. "The Obama administration is talking about new gun controls… a federal ban on smoking in public places... controls on advertising, to make sweets as verboten as cigarettes. Their proposed sin taxes go far beyond alcohol and tobacco, demonizing whatever fizzes or appeals to a sweet tooth. And of course they are cracking down on Cheerios. Literally." Talk about death by a thousand cuts.
- A new Heritage Foundation chart shows the damage that a North Korean nuclear weapon could inflict on a city like Seattle. The chart makes clear that we need to prevent this sort of catastrophe by building out our missile defense systems.
<img src="http://author.heritage.org/Press/ALAChart/images/ALC_53_300px.jpg" alt="What if North Korea Nuked Seattle?" />
- The Heritage Foundation has long committed itself to providing timely, factual analysis of policy changes to policymakers and the media. Because of this commitment, our Center for Data Analysis is perhaps better equipped than any other group to answer questions about the economic impact of climate-change legislation. In fact, our experts can produce a complete analysis of new legislation in a matter of days. Read the latest CDA analysis on Heritage.org.
- Rapidly increasing gas prices – prices are up 30 cents since last month -- are only the beginning, warns Heritage senior policy analyst Ben Lieberman. Should Congress pass the cap-and-tax bill, Americans, particularly low-income Americans, will be hit hard with soaring pump prices and electricity bills, and millions could lose their jobs.
- Heritage legal experts continue to promote the rule of law -- one of the 10 transformational initiatives under our 10-year Leadership for American campaign -- by closely analyzing the Supreme Court confirmation process to assure that no information is kept from the American public. Heritage senior legal policy analyst Robert Alt's op-ed on Judge Sotomayor's views on the role of ethnicity and gender in judging was printed in 18 different newspapers.
In other news
- Are the media in the tank for President Obama? Perhaps it's not just conservative exaggeration, as the Left would claim: a study by the Pew Research Center finds that mainstream media coverage of the new President is vastly more favorable than it was during similar periods of the last two presidencies.
- Sen. Ted Kennedy is set to introduce his health care plan this week. The plan would require all Americans to have health insurance, impose new burdens on employers and create a "government option" to "compete" against private health insurance plans.
- North Korea appears to be ready to test yet another missile, this one a longer-range model capable of hitting Alaska. A Pentagon official says that the U.S. has "reasonable chance" of intercepting a North Korean missile. With additional investment in missile defense, these chances could be improved.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected President Obama's call to freeze all of his country's development in existing government-sanctioned settlements and to tear down unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank.
- George Tiller, a Kansas abortionist, was murdered Sunday. Pro-life groups condemned the killing.
- Israel is preparing itself for the possibility of war with Iran by staging a five-day emergency drill -- the largest in the nation's history.
Coming up at Heritage
To attend these or any other events at Heritage please RSVP at Heritage's website. Or you can view these events live online. All times are Eastern.
- On Tuesday, June 2 at 1:00 p.m., Dr. Wang Dan, a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests joins Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) for a discussion of liberty in China.
- On Thursday, June 4 at 4:00 p.m., authors Martin and Annelise Anderson explain how Ronald Reagan fought to stop the Soviet Union in its tracks and abolish nuclear weapons.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Amanda Reinecker contributed to this report.
