Free Republic

Conservative and Republican affiliated groups have started the 2014 assault against Democrats who support Obamacare. At the very same time, it is increasingly clear Republicans are laying the groundwork to abandon their opposition to Obamacare. The Business Roundtable, which has a great relationship with Republican Leaders, is now listing Obamacare as an entitlement worth preserving. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former economic advisor to John McCain and who opposed passage of Obamacare, has started a think tank premised on keeping, but fixing, Obamacare. Holtz-Eakin has the ear of Republican leaders. In 2009, Mitch McConnell appointed him to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission....

Republican staffers tell The Daily Caller that new tax cuts and regulatory reforms aimed at jumpstarting the economy will be on the agenda in the House of Representatives when it returns from recess after Labor Day. Staffers say no specifics have been locked in yet. But a significant tax reform package could come this fall, they say, because nothing is likely to be accomplished after the 2012 election cycle begins in earnest. The conservative House Republican Study Committee is also reportedly planning to supplement the Cut, Cap, and Balance plan with a “growth” element including tax cuts and regulatory reforms....

New Hampshire would seem to be surprise proof when it comes to visits from prominent people urging support for various causes, but it was something of an eyebrow raiser a when a former policy adviser for John McCain’s presidential campaign went before business folks Tuesday to say that federal oversight is needed to control greenhouse gases.“I won’t pretend that I get standing ovations,” joked Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was a staff economist for President George H.W. Bush and served as chief economic adviser to McCain’s campaign. He spoke Tuesday to a gathering of New Hampshire businesspeople at the New Hampshire Institute...

(snip) SAMUELSON: If John McCain had won, would there be more bipartisanship?HOLTZ-EAKIN: I think so. One reason is mechanical: it would have been a Republican president and a Democratic Congress. You have to operate in a more bipartisan fashion. It's also about style. McCain is more willing to disappoint Republicans than Obama is to disappoint Democrats.(snip)

Former McCain strategist is about to lose his health insurance. BY PHILIP RUCKER If history had taken a different course, Doug Holtz-Eakin would be inside the McCain White House driving the Republican president's domestic agenda, including health-care reform. But now, one year after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) lost the presidential election, the man who was by McCain's side as the campaign's top health-care guru remains unemployed -- and his COBRA health coverage is running out. Irony of ironies, it gets worse. Holtz-Eakin, who is about to start shopping for insurance on the individual market, is 51. And he has one...

As it turns out, swaying from conservative principles doesn’t always pay off for a Republican presidential candidate. Sen. John McCain learned that lesson that hard way. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy adviser to McCain’s failed campaign, said Nov. 19 that McCain’s support for the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector was the “key strategic blunder of the entire campaign.” “We also make mistakes,” Holtz-Eakin told a group of conservatives at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. “There’s no doubt about it--20/20 hindsight. I think the key strategic policy error of the entire campaign, that is mine, is believing that...

Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, Ariz., has acknowledged his technological shortcomings, but some in the media continue to portray him as a techno-phobe with no meaningful contributions to that sector of the economy. The September 16 "NBC Nightly News" examined McCain's rhetoric on the campaign trail in the wake of a serious banking crisis. Correspondent Kelly O'Donnell reported one campaign advisor cited McCain's legislative effort opening the door to technological advancements as evidence of his ability to steer Americans through the turbulent time. "And Brian, when an adviser today was stressing John McCain's economic credentials, he told reporters that...

A Dichotomy in Two Colors by Christopher Westley [Posted November 19, 2004] Call it the mystery of the red and the blue. After the presidential election, many have noticed the irony of how some of the more conservative, culturally red states seem to receive more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes. Meanwhile, some of the more liberal, culturally blue states seem to receive less in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes. You’d think the supposedly anti-Washington reds should be blues and the supposedly pro-Washington blues should be reds. After all, the red states seem to...

...The end of the last fiscal year on September 30 brought good news on the deficit front. And there's a fighting chance that the current lame-duck Congress will actually exercise some restraint in its appropriations for 2005. The media Furies and partisans are all astir because Congress voted to raise the debt limit again this week, as if not lifting the borrowing cap and defaulting was a viable option for the U.S. But the real story emerging this week is that the White House finally seems serious about holding the line on its budgetary spending strictures -- and won't stand...

If you're looking for the causes of the nation's steady loss of manufacturing jobs, our trade imbalance with China and other countries should not top the list, the director of the Congressional Budget Office said Friday. Former Syracuse University economics professor Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who has directed Congress's budget office since February, said most of the factory job losses the nation has been suffering have been caused by productivity growth, not the exporting of jobs overseas. "We're producing more," he said during a visit to SU. "We're just doing it with fewer people." Manufacturing job losses have been getting a lot...