‘Mike Brownfield’ Archives
Believe it, Obama’s a Big Spender
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION There are some things that are so apparent that they’re not even worth mentioning. What goes up must come down. The earth is round. President Barack Obama is a big spender. But this week, some in the media and in the White House are denying one of these totally obvious truths. It shouldn’t be a big [...]
Catholic Institutions Sue to Stop Obamacare’s Religious Liberty Violation
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION Three years ago, the University of Notre Dame invited President Barack Obama to deliver a commencement address and conferred on him an honorary law degree. But on Monday, the university joined 42 other Catholic institutions in suing the Obama Administration over new Obamacare regulations that force religious [...]
The Danger of Article 82 and Obama’s Latest Treaty
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION Back in 1982, President Ronald Reagan decided not to sign a treaty known as “Law of the Sea” (LOST), a United Nations convention that would raid America’s treasury for billions of dollars, then redistribute that wealth to the rest of the world by an international bureaucracy headquartered in Kingston, [...]
Would You Take an SUV into Combat?
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION Should our fighting men and women be forced to drive unarmed SUVs into war zones, with speed as their only defense against rocket and car bomb attacks? Tragically, that’s a true story of U.S. military readiness today, and America’s defenses will only get worse under the drastic cuts aimed at our armed [...]
A Better Life for Julia
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION Her name is “Julia,” and if you haven’t seen her, she’s a colorful cartoon character invented by the Obama campaign to help spread the message of how women will “benefit” under the president’s policies. What it shows instead, though, is the president’s vision of America — that individuals [...]
Socialism Rises Again
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION Last weekend, the people of France took a sharp turn to the left, and the rest of Europe may be on the brink of rebuking its recent tack toward fiscal responsibility. With Sunday’s election of French Socialist leader Francois Hollande, France has leapt backward toward the policies that have helped sink the [...]
Obama’s Crucifiction of “Big Oil”
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION If it ever was a secret, it’s not a secret any longer: The Obama Administration is on a vindictive campaign to injure America’s oil and gas industry. The proof materialized last week when video of an Environmental Protection Agency official revealed the White House’s vicious attitude toward the very [...]
America’s Budget Crisis in Pictures
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION It’s pretty clear to most Americans that Washington is broken and spending money well beyond the country’s means. In fact, Sunday marked three years since the U.S. Senate last passed a budget. Getting the fiscal house in order clearly isn’t their top priority. But just how bad is the country’s [...]
Washington Needs a Lesson on Student Loans
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION You know a politician is looking for applause when he speaks in front of a crowd of college students and says he’s there to help them pay back their student loans. After all, who doesn’t like the prospect of free money? But as the saying (sort of) goes, beware of politicians bearing gifts. That’s [...]
What’s the Senate Thinking?
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION April 29 marks the third year in which the U.S. Senate has not passed a budget — a staggering dereliction of duty, particularly given the country’s near-$16 trillion debt. But that’s not the Senate’s only blockbuster failure under the leadership of Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). From spending to [...]
Do You Know What the Constitution Really Means?
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION With a handful of words, the Founders set forth a simple principle that protects a central liberty enjoyed by all in this Republic — the freedom of speech, as recognized in the First Amendment. Yet after more than 200 years of history, liberals in Congress — including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi [...]
What if Fannie and Freddie Were Eliminated?
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION For the past several years, it’s not been an uncommon sight in Anytown, USA, to drive down the street and see home after home for sale after going through foreclosure. They are the still-lingering hangover from the housing crash that began in 2007. Though the true cause of what burst America’s housing [...]
Obama’s New Gas Price Scapegoat
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION High gas prices are not a president’s friend, especially in an election year, so it’s not surprising that President Barack Obama is trying his darndest to shift the blame for record-high fuel prices onto something other than his failed energy policies. Yesterday he made a desperate attempt to distract [...]
The Internet Taxes That Could Be Coming
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION If you’ve ever bought anything on the Internet, over the phone, or from a catalog, you might have noticed that when you buy from some stores, you don’t pay any state sales tax, but if you buy from other stores, you do. That’s because a Supreme Court decision protected out-of-state businesses from [...]
Buffett Rule 101
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION President Obama traveled to Florida yesterday to distract the nation from its real problems by laying out his case for the Buffett Rule, a plan to drastically raise taxes on successful Americans and small businesses. The core of his argument is that the rich aren’t paying their fair share. It makes for [...]
A ‘Global Minimum Tax’ if Biden Gets His Way
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION If you think a “global minimum tax” sounds like a whacky conspiracy theory, you’d be wrong. According to Vice President Joe Biden, it’s the answer for helping to spur manufacturing in the United States. Here are his remarks at a campaign event in Davenport, Iowa (in which he addresses the president [...]
Hispanics and the 2012 Election
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION After last week’s Republican primary elections in Wisconsin, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., the 2012 presidential primary season is reaching an inflection point, and eyes are turning toward America’s final decision on Election Day in November. While pundits and pollsters speculate on the horse race and [...]
Beware the Taxmageddon
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION Brace yourself. In a mere 271 days, you and your fellow Americans will be hit with a tax hike the likes of which this country has never seen. The Washington Post aptly called the unprecedented $494 billion tax hike “Taxmageddon,” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke described it as a “massive [...]
The Highest Taxes in the World
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION There aren’t many American-owned companies more iconic than Anheuser-Busch, the famous producer of Budweiser beer based in St. Louis, Missouri. That was true up until 2008, when the Brazilian-Belgian company InBev executed a hostile takeover of the historic brewer, leading to layoffs of more than 1,800 [...]
Did You See the Senate’s Gas Price Side Show?
MIKE BROWNFIELD, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION In case you missed it, there was quite a performance in the U.S. Senate yesterday. Liberals put on an election-year show, with the personal encouragement of President Barack Obama, in which they attempted to impose higher taxes on the oil industry as punishment for their profits while gas prices are at [...]
Another Vision to Solve the Budget Crisis
MIKE BROWNFIELD, HERITAGE FOUNDATION While Washington’s eyes are focused on the historic Obamacare hearings at the Supreme Court, work continues across the street in the House of Representatives where some Members of Congress — though not all — are doing their best to clean up Washington’s budgetary mess. It has now been 1,064 days [...]
Obamacare Comes before the Supreme Court
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation Rare is the occasion when the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather to hear three days of arguments, and rarer still is when it is for a case like Obamacare — one that cuts to the core of the Constitution and whose outcome could fundamentally alter the role of the federal government and its power [...]
The Secret Plan to Defend Obamacare
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation This week, The Heritage Foundation’s Rob Bluey obtained a four-page strategy memo that outlines a White House-coordinated campaign to force an unwilling public to accept Obamacare. Once again, all the strategies by the Administration and its liberal allies involve how better to message this hated law [...]
A Budget to Save the American Dream
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation America’s fiscal condition is dauntingly dismal. The national debt is well on its way to $17 trillion, 13 million Americans are out of work, and the country is stuck in the slowest recovery in the post-war era. Despite Washington bleeding taxpayers dry with reckless overspending, the U.S. Senate has not [...]
Press Conference Leaves Many Things Unanswered
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation Yesterday, President Barack Obama ended his months-long press conference drought and faced the White House press corps. Unfortunately for the American people, questions on some of the biggest issues facing the country remain unanswered. The 100-ton elephant in the room that wasn’t discussed? The [...]
China’s Military Rising
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation In early January, President Barack Obama traveled across the Potomac River to the Pentagon and joined Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to discuss his Administration’s military strategy, promising that he would keep America’s fighting forces the best-trained, best-led, best-equipped military in history. [...]
Defending Israel from the Iranian Threat
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation Less than 1,000 miles from Jerusalem, the Iranian government is operating in open violation of international law in a singular pursuit of developing nuclear weapons. Under the cloud of this threat, Israel is considering all options in order to defend its very existence, yet President Barack Obama is failing [...]
Two Centuries of Religious Freedom Rolled Back
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation Since 1791, when the Bill of Rights was formally adopted, America has enjoyed the legal protection of religious freedom, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Today, 221 years later, centuries of progress in the protection of religious and other liberties is at risk of being rolled back in one fell swoop. The [...]
White House Wants to Keep Gas Prices High
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation With the national average of gas prices hitting $3.65 a gallon, nearing $6 in some parts of the country, and poised to head even higher, America’s families are wondering when the bleeding at the pump will stop. But for Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu, those steep prices aren’t even a concern. In fact, he [...]
Obama Doctrine Failure
Mike Brownfield, Heritage Foundation Three years ago, President Barack Obama set forth to recast American foreign policy in an image of his own design. It was one in which the White House engaged with enemies and undercut allies, apologized for American exceptionalism, and favored the “soft power” of treaties and international [...]
