Free Republic

... What Mr. Mackey is proposing is more or less what he has already implemented at his company—a plan that would allow more health savings accounts (HSAs), more low-premium, high-deductible plans, more incentives for wellness, and medical malpractice reform. None of these initiatives are in any of the Democratic bills winding their way through Congress. In fact, the Democrats want to kill HSAs and high-deductible plans and mandate coverage options that would inflate health insurance costs. The Whole Foods health-care story has been largely ignored by proponents of a government-run system. But it could be a template for those in...

John McCain is red in the face and hopping mad. I’m sitting in his office in the Senate Russell Office Building, and he’s just rushed in after delivering a speech on the Senate floor where he seethed about the earmarks in the Homeland Security Bill. “Can you believe they are putting $6 million of pork into Homeland Security?” he asks with his trademark clenched-fists. [...] He says he has worked to keep his relations with President Barack Obama “cordial,” but he pulls no punches criticizing the president’s economic policies. [...] He certainly was dealt a lousy hand. .....Why did he...

Why are Democrats trying to cover up their sweetheart relationships with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? And why does the media allow it? This past week I appeared on Bill Maher's HBO show Real Time with Representative Maxine Waters of California. Ms. Waters fibbed on the air about her connections to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It all began when Mr. Maher tried to the lay blame for the credit meltdown on inadequate regulation of Wall Street. I pointed out that among the biggest failures this year were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and that Democrats had protected them against...

This week John McCain officially released the details of his economic recovery tax plan. The howls of protest from the left were both loud and predictable. The Obama campaign ripped into the McCain plan with the mantra of "tax cuts for the rich," while leftwing special interest groups claimed that McCain would blow a supersized hole in the budget deficit. Yes, that bogeyman issue of the budget deficit is back again. That's the issue that's never an issue except when Republicans want to cut taxes, in which case deficits are suddenly one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Never...

WASHINGTON – California, which once lured Americans from near and far, is now driving out millions of the most productive residents – including high percentages of the most affluent. "When California faced a Mount Everest-sized $14 billion deficit in 2003, one of the major causes for the red ink was the stampede of millionaire households from the state," says a report called "Rich States, Poor States" by economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore. "Out of the 25,000 or so seven-figure-income families, more than 5,000 left in the early 2000s, and the loss of their tax payments accounted for about half...

Guess Who Really Pays the Taxes By Stephen Moore From the November/December 2007 Issue Yes, income in America is skewed toward the rich. But taxes are skewed far, far more. The top 5 percent pay well over half the income taxes. STEPHEN MOORE has the numbers. 1. Are income taxes fair?That depends on who is offering the opinion. Democratic candidates for president certainly don’t think so. John Edwards has said, “It’s time to restore fairness to a tax code that has been driven badly out of whack.” Hillary Clinton laments that “middle-class and working families are paying a much higher percentage...

Beijing’s state-run Xinhua news service was quick to herald the latest lobbying effort on China’s behalf launched by the Club for Growth, a libertarian organization dedicated to electing public officials who agree with its free trade ideology. “More than 1,000 top American economists have signed a petition to urge Congress not to impose protectionist measures against China,” read the story filed by Xinhua from Washington on August 3. What the Club for Growth is protesting are two bills passed by the Senate Finance and Banking Committees seeking to pressure Beijing to cease its currency manipulation, a practice that gives producers...

Although there will no doubt be a winner in their straw poll of Republican presidential favorites for ’08, many participants at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington March 1-3 voiced to me dissatisfaction with the current field -- all of whom except John McCain addressed the conclave of 6,000-plus conservatives at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. “I haven’t given it much thought,” Jennifer Graf, who managed the winning anti-affirmative action initiative in Michigan last November, told me when I asked her favorite for the GOP in ’08. Similarly, Diane Schachterle, who works in the office of affirmative action foe...

With the House and Senate preparing to vote on extending George W. Bush's investment tax cuts, it's no surprise the cries against "tax giveaways to the rich" grow increasingly shrill. Just yesterday Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid charged that the Bush tax plan "offers next to nothing to average Americans while giving away the store to multi-millionaires"... Oh really. New IRS data released last month tell a very different story: In the aftermath of the Bush investment tax cuts, the federal income tax burden has substantially shifted onto the backs of the wealthy. Between 2002 and 2004, tax payments by...

A headline in Wednesday’s edition of USA Today read: “Oil Prices Hit Highest Since Sept. 1990.” The story glumly reported that “oil traded for more than $39 a barrel last week … the highest closing price since 1990 and the 6th highest price ever.” Good news: It isn’t true. Yes, gas prices have spiked upwards by at least 30 percent in most local markets this year, and yes, it’s infuriating to pay $2.00 a gallon to fill up the tank. And yes, higher oil prices are a significant tax on the U.S. economy — given that we’re the world’s largest...

At 7:45 ET this morning: Call-In Future of the Republican Party C-SPAN, Washington Journal Shays, Christopher, U.S. Representative, R-CT Moore, Stephen, Senior Writer, [Wall Street Journal], Economics Participating by remote video feed, Representative Shays and Mr. Moore discuss the future of the Republican Party. Mr. Moore participates from West Palm Beach, Florida, while Representative Shays speaks from Stamford, Connecticut. They will discuss the Republican agenda, leadership in Congress, the House majority leader elections on February 2, and issues to be mentioned in the State of the Union address. The guests respond to telephone calls and electronic mail.

Conservatives now have a chance to take back the House. The era when Republicans promised to make government smaller and smarter by abolishing hundreds of obsolete federal agencies seems a distant memory now in this era of Bridges to Nowhere. In the last five years, Republicans have enacted the largest increase in entitlement spending in three decades, doubled the education budget, nearly tripled the number of earmarked spending projects.....

WASHINGTON -- The more Republicans stumble in Washington, the higher Sen. John McCain climbs in the polls. His political fortunes seem to run countercyclical to those of the party whose nomination for president he may very well capture in 2008. This at least partially explains why he's just about the hottest thing in town, the frontrunner among GOP presidential contenders in all the early horse-race polls. It also explains why even many conservatives, after his impetuous presidential run five years ago, are turning to him as the party's savior and the only antidote to Hillary Clinton. When I ask Mr....

When will trial lawyers dip their scoops into Ben & Jerry's? STEPHEN MOORE I've always prided myself on conscientiously avoiding funding anti-free-market liberal causes in America, so you won't ever catch me pouring Newman's Own oil-and-vinegar dressing on my salad. But I confess to an addiction to Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey and the greatest flavor ever invented in ice-creamdom, Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. So this weekend, while in Vermont to speak at the Freedom Fest sponsored by the Ethan Allen Institute, a conservative state think tank, I paid a visit to the world-famous Ben & Jerry's ice-cream factory. To...

 The Federal Election Commission’s suit against the Club for Growth continues this agency’s war on the First Amendment and its defense of incumbents from criticism of their policies. The FEC’s claims and legal theories are a bizarre interpretation of the Club’s mission, the Constitution, the laws adopted by Congress and their own regulations governing nonprofit organizations.The Club’s principle purpose is to advocate for and defend pro-growth policies. One of the ways we do that is through the Club for Growth PAC, which allows Club members to donate to pro-growth candidates and independent expenditure campaigns. We have consulted with counsel every...

The flat tax--the same tax rate for everyone, without all the deductions that now complicate the tax code--is an idea with a decades-long pedigree. Politically its high-water mark in the U.S. came in 1996, when Steve Forbes ran for the Republican presidential nomination against Bob Dole and a tired GOP establishment. Mr. Forbes single-handedly thrust revolutionary ideas into the political headlights--ideas about health insurance and Social Security, for instance, but most famously about the tax code itself. The GOP establishment hated his message, but the conservative rank-and-file loved it. Mr. Forbes was suddenly the talk of the town. There he...

Flat Tax Revolution An idea whose time has come--just not here. BY STEPHEN MOORE Thursday, September 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT The flat tax--the same tax rate for everyone, without all the deductions that now complicate the tax code--is an idea with a decades-long pedigree. Politically its high-water mark in the U.S. came in 1996, when Steve Forbes ran for the Republican presidential nomination against Bob Dole and a tired GOP establishment. Mr. Forbes single-handedly thrust revolutionary ideas into the political headlights--ideas about health insurance and Social Security, for instance, but most famously about the tax code itself. The GOP...

Steve Moore's children don't get along. When Moore, a longtime anti-tax activist, joined the Wall Street Journal editorial board earlier this year, he left behind two Washington political groups he started: the Club for Growth and the Free Enterprise Fund. The two groups have been squabbling, acting out and showing other signs of sibling rivalry. Moore formed the Club for Growth in 1999 after seven years with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and about 10 with the libertarian Cato Institute. The club, known as a 527 organization under federal campaign finance law, became a powerful player in the...

--- snip --- Gov. Warner's pitch is thoroughly Clintonian -- Bill, not Hillary. He attacks Washington Democrats for "defending the same government programs, thinking they are going to get us new results." Then he adds, "We need leaders who can see a little bit farther down the road." This sounds like a man who wants to build a bridge to the 21st century. He lobs rhetorical grenades at the party leaders for running presidential campaigns that immediately surrender 33 mostly Southern and Western states and then "try for a triple bank shot" to win all the other 17. --- snip...

President Bush's fifth State of the Union address laid out an agenda that is perhaps the most ambitious domestic agenda of any second term President. The President's plan for an “ownership society” could go a long way in giving citizens more control over their own lives. Stephen Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund, has compiled a book that provides a short, easy-to-read defense of President Bush's policies entitled Bullish on Bush: How George W. Bush's Ownership Society Will Make America Stronger. Originally written before the 2004 election in order to persuade voters that President Bush's policies are better for...

The Young and the Ripped-off It was just about 35 years ago that the youth movement made one of its most famous imprints on American history when thousands of college kids and 20-somethings marched on the capital in Washington to protest the Vietnam War. The peacenik hippies commanded headlines by burning their draft cards and reciting the memorable chant: "Hell no, we won't go." Well, the youth movement is alive and well in America, but this time the students aren't denouncing war, but taxes -- Social Security payroll taxes to be precise. This Sunday, several thousand college-aged kids (Generation-Y) and...

As legend has it the famous Laffer Curve was first drawn by economist Arthur Laffer in 1974 on a cocktail napkin during a small dinner meeting... attended by the late Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley and such high-powered policy makers as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The Laffer Curve helped launch the Reaganomics Revolution here at home and a frenzy of tax rate cutting around the globe.... The theory is really one of the simplest concepts in economics. Yet its logic continues to elude the class-warfare lobby whose disbelief is unburdened by the multiple real-life examples which validate its...

AT his press conference last Thursday, President Bush for the first time put meat on the bones of his proposal to modernize Social Security and save it from financial collapse. Despite their relentless opposition, Bush included an enormous olive branch to Democrats — one that has some conservatives unhappy. But his reform package is still a winner for all Americans.

If American consumers and taxpayers have learned any lesson over the past number of years it’s that sugar producers don’t like competition. In fact, they loathe it. Always have. Since 1820, when Louisiana sugar planters successfully argued for high tariffs to prevent a collapse in the value of slaves, the industry has used political influence to fleece consumers and taxpayers and avoid competition. In the last two centuries, no other industry has better used its deep pockets and political clout to restrain trade and competition. American consumers have been victimized by this racket. In 2004, government price controls through trade-quota...

The Associated Press blares the headline that all conservatives have been dreading: “GOP Considers Dropping Personal Accounts.” The story begins, “Senate Republican leaders are considering whether to seek Democratic support for Social Security legislation without the personal accounts.” The story continues, “top Republicans discussed an approach under which they would effectively acquiesce in an attempt to test the waters for bipartisan legislation without personal accounts.” What would be included in such legislation? The story cites “extending the payroll tax beyond the current $90,000 in income” and “raising the retirement age.” It also refers to a proposal advanced by Sen. Robert...

PRESIDENT BUSH'S PLAN TO CREATE personal retirement accounts for Social Security, which seemed so promising a few months ago, is now officially floundering. Senate Republicans are now crafting a compromise proposal that takes personal accounts off the table. Meanwhile, House speaker Denny Hastert recently said "not this year" for Social Security reform. And Democrats remain united in their "just say no," obstructionist strategy. Despite all this, there's still a path to victory for reformers--though little chance of instant gratification. If the debate over the past months on Social Security has established anything, it is that the Ponzi financing scheme for...

This week President Bush will meet with Mexican President Vicente Fox to discuss a number of thorny issues, primary among them: immigration and border control policy. George W. Bush has long been supported a pro-growth, pro-freedom immigration strategy and clearly sees immigrants as assets to the United States. On this issue, his world vision collides with the Republican Party's more nativist faction, which would drape a "No Admittance" sign over the Statue of Liberty. On the economics of immigration, Mr. Bush is more right than his critics. Whether skilled scientists and engineers in Silicon Valley or the migrant laborers who...

by Stephen Moore and Lawrence Hunter President Bush has been heroic in pushing personal investment accounts for Social Security. But he's still got the wrong marketing strategy. At his press briefing Wednesday, Bush again stated that personal retirement accounts are insufficient to make Social Security permanently solvent. With all due respect, Mr. President, you're wrong. The chief actuary of Social Security has scored four separate personal-accounts plans as achieving full solvency without tax increases or benefit cuts. The President makes this mistake because he is receiving bad economic and political advice. The misconception that personal accounts are inadequate not only...

recently had the opportunity to interview Stephen Moore, the president of the Free Enterprise Fund. Mr. Moore is also the former president of the Club For Growth. The Social Security debate is heating up, and many still have questions about how to reform Social Security. The following is the complete interview, conducted via e-mail this past week. MATT MARGOLIS, BLOGS FOR BUSH: Recent polls have indicated that personal retirement accounts are still not very popular, but also that the public "knows little or nothing about the details and specifics" about the personal retirement accounts, and much of what people think...

Simply Templeton Two financial futures for Social Security. Last week I debated New York Times columnist Paul Krugman at the National Press Club on the future of Social Security. This was about as much fun as trying to eat corn on the cob with braces. Krugman is the leader of the opposition to personal investment accounts. He argues, and most liberals agree with him, that the Social Security system is not facing a financial crisis and that minor tweaks to the system will pull it out of the red for at least the next 50 years. A recent USA Today...

The nastiest fights in Washington always come down to money, so it isn't surprising that, two weeks after President Bush released his 2006 budget, many on the left are moaning their pet projects aren't being fully funded. Well, it's about time. In his first term, Mr. Bush enacted some of the most fiscally reckless budgets in a quarter-century. The budget grew twice as fast as under Bill Clinton. The first-term Bush administration rhetoric of Reaganite tight-fistedness never caught up with the reality of the fiscal meltdown in Washington. Bloated Bush budgets, only padded with more grease and fat by Congress,...

The debate on Social Security reform is not going well for President Bush. The Washington Post reported this week that some Republicans are having second thoughts about the political wisdom of tackling the issue. GOP lawmakers are now wandering off in dozens of different directions on the issue and President Bush might as well be trying to herd stray cats. Democrats have also dug in their heels against Social Security reform, arguing that the system is just fine. The support base for reform has been shrinking lately, not growing. In addition, some Republican analysts are now arguing that Social Security...

In recent months, dozens of major Fortune 500 companies have waved the white flag of surrender to radical environmental groups by signing on to the antigrowth agenda on global climate policy. Like prisoners who have come to admire their captors, many corporate leaders have agreed to lobby beside the very interest groups that would put them out of business.

Moore Passes Torch to Toomey Former PA Congressman to Lead Preeminent Pro-Economic Growth Advocacy Group WASHINGTON, DC – The Club for Growth, the nation’s most influential organization dedicated to advancing economic growth policies, today announced that former Congressman Pat Toomey (R-PA) has agreed to serve as the group’s president. “The Club for Growth has come a remarkably long way. Now that so many stars have been elected to Congress, I have decided to devote my energies over the next two years working to enact historic legislation on reforming Social Security, the tax code and the litigation system,” said Stephen Moore...

Well, my good friend Grover Norquist may finally see his lifelong dream come true. It looks like the Left is finally going to leave us all alone. If everything goes according to plan, blue-state Democrats are going to let us keep our guns and our money and our kids and our faith — and all the other things that government keeps trying to wrest from us. Allow me to explain the basis for my optimism. The Canadian embassy reports that the requests from U.S. citizens for travel visas, citizenship applications, and political-asylum petitions have skyrocketed since the glorious day of...

Well, my good friend Grover Norquist may finally see his lifelong dream come true. It looks like the Left is finally going to leave us all alone. If everything goes according to plan, blue-state Democrats are going to let us keep our guns and our money and our kids and our faith — and all the other things that government keeps trying to wrest from us. Allow me to explain the basis for my optimism. The Canadian embassy reports that the requests from U.S. citizens for travel visas, citizenship applications, and political-asylum petitions have skyrocketed since the glorious day of...

Sorry to post a vanity...but I haven't found ANY other Freepers yet on the National Review cruise here in the Caribbean...any of you have friends or family present? If so drop me a line, I'd love to meet them. As for the cruise itself, it's been quite fun - there are around 400 mostly rabid Republicans here, plus several of the staff & contributors of National Review and a few other notables like Ed Gillespie, Dick Morris, Michelle Malkin, & Stephen Moore. Today they gave seminars on how Bush won, and thoughts on who the Repub. candidate might be for...

Stopping Specter Giving the Pennsylvania Republican the Senate Judiciary chairmanship would hurt conservatives. By Steve Moore Newly reelected Pennsylvania liberal Republican Arlen Specter is in the midst of a fight to clinch the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which because of the tradition of seniority, he is next in line to take. But comments made to Pennsylvania media the morning after the election, his record, and an outcry from conservatives have put that all in doubt. Steve Moore, an NRO regular, is the president of the Club for Growth, which, besides putting together some sassy commercials during the presidential...

Well, I just can't stop being happy. I don't mean elated--it's hard to get elated by big history, as opposed to by the birth of a baby, say, or a child's being elected president of the debating club--but I continue to feel relief (the exit poll hives have gone down) and satisfaction (my countrymen, such good sense they have). So let's just let the mood continue and have fun. This week I went to a symposium thrown together at the last minute by the Club for Growth, the Washington-based political action committee that gives crucial financial help to candidates who...

Remember the classic 1970s comic routine from Steve Martin? You can make a million dollars and pay no taxes. First, get a million dollars. Then when the IRS comes knocking on your door demanding to know why you didn't pay your taxes, just remember two simple words: "I forgot." Well, John Kerry has his own version. It goes like this: You can make a billion dollars and pay almost no taxes. First, marry a billionaire. Second, hire a gaggle of tax accountants and lawyers to bring your tax rate down to about half what many middle-income families pay.

This week President Bush is expected to sign into law tax legislation that could enormously affect U.S. competitiveness and job creation. Many Democrats in Congress — the very people who have pummeled President Bush for not generating enough new jobs — voted against the measure. Now for purposes of full disclosure, I will confess some of the turkeys that found their way into this bill are fatter than grandma's Thanksgiving bird. There's a buyout for tobacco farmers, a subsidy to native American whalers, continuation of the inane ethanol tax break, and even dollars for tackle box companies. Only two words...

President Bush and Sen. John McCain would ban independently financed political attack ads from the TV and radio airwaves; Bush says that election season ads by "527" organizations, such as the one I run, the Club for Growth, "are bad for the political system." John Kerry, meanwhile, has been damaged in the polls by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads financed by big Republican donors; many of his supporters want them pulled off the air. Such complaints are drenched in hypocrisy, no matter which side they come from. Back when the White House was promoting the McCain-Feingold campaign law,...

September 09, 2004, 10:31 a.m. The Prosperity Killer Wall Street is repelled by John Kerry. EDITOR'S NOTE: This article appears in the September 13, 2004, issue of National Review (the Kerry issue!). It's hard to remember the last time Wall Street was as repelled by a presidential candidate as it is by John Kerry. Many stock analysts are convinced that the mere threat of a Kerry presidency has caused equity values to slump in the past two months. "No one wants to make major investments in the wake of a presidential candidate whose economic agenda would substantially raise taxes on...

Killing the Class-Warfare Argument The rich are paying more taxes since the Bush tax cuts. One of the inconvenient facts for the foes of the Bush tax cuts is that the percentage of total taxes paid by the rich rose after the economic stimulus plan was put into effect. This consequence of the Bush tax cuts is highly damaging to the case by the Bush-haters that his tax cuts disproportionately benefit Halliburton executives and Bill Gates. Moreover, the Bush tax cuts took some 2 million low-income taxpayers off the tax roles entirely, so it’s hard to argue that working families...

One of the inconvenient facts for the foes of the Bush tax cuts is that the percentage of total taxes paid by the rich rose after the economic stimulus plan was put into effect. This consequence of the Bush tax cuts is highly damaging to the case by the Bush-haters that his tax cuts disproportionately benefit Halliburton executives and Bill Gates. Moreover, the Bush tax cuts took some 2 million low-income taxpayers off the tax roles entirely, so it’s hard to argue that working families didn’t get a financial benefit. But the Left continues to work as best it...

August 10, 2004 Move over, Move on From the Commentary section Left-wing "hate Bush" groups just recently proudly announced they have raised some $75 million to run attack ads against President Bush in battleground states. A good chunk of these funds are from Democratic gazillionaires like George Soros. The hypocrisy of the left on campaign financing is truly stunning. For years, those on the left were cheerleaders for legislation like McCain-Feingold that would take "big money" out of politics. The were sick of multimillionaire donors "buying elections." Well, excuse me, but what in the world do they think George Soros...

August 5, 2004.  One of the other ads that the Club for Growth plans on releasing later this month is called “Are You Rich?” which talks about John Kerry’s tax hike votes in the Senate. Let us know what you think about it before we purchase airtime.Donate Money to Buy Airtime For This Ad Visual   Audio Footage of Kerry on ski slopes. Words on screen: “John Kerry says he’ll raise taxes, but only on the rich.”Kerry on ski lift. Graphic on Kerry and higher taxes on gas, income, small businesses, home heating oil, and social security.Pop-up images of car, job,...

Kerry May Be Biggest Threat To the U.S. Economy by Stephen Moore Posted Aug 6, 2004 The biggest threat to the U.S. economy today may be Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. The centerpiece of Kerry’s economic program is to repeal the Bush tax cut for those earning more than $200,000. Let us put aside for a moment the improbability that John Kerry and his running mate John Edwards would only “raise taxes on the rich.” That was Bill Clinton’s claim in 1992 and we all got soaked. But even if Kerry is true to his word, his plan would almost...

Club for Growth Launches National Ad Campaign at Democratic National Convention in BostonWashington, D.C.— The Club for Growth, one of the nation’s leading free-market political advocacy organizations, today unveiled a new $1 million television ad campaign at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. The ad shows a spinning weather vane to represent Kerry’s many flip-flops on issues from the death penalty for terrorists to welfare reform to tax cuts. “John Kerry has never taken a position without checking the weather vane,” said Club for Growth president Stephen Moore. “He checks which way the wind is blowing and rides the breeze....

National Ad Campaign Shows John Kerry was "Wrong Then and Wrong Now"Washington, D.C.—The Club for Growth, one of the nation’s leading free-market political advocacy organizations, today launches a new television ad campaign that contrasts the policies of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush for fighting communism and terrorism respectively to John Kerry’s. This ad campaign was announced last week and was not aired until after consulting with the Reagan family.“History shows Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had what it takes to make tough decisions to protect national security,” said Club for Growth president Stephen Moore. “President Reagan had...