Heritage offers a plan to gain control of government spending

Heritage: Judge Vaughn Walker "was more interested in making a political statement than upholding the rule of law"

This Tuesday voters in Missouri, by a 40-point margin, approved a ballot measure rejecting the individual mandate at the core of President Barack Obama’s health care law. Asked what the vote meant to the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs said: “Nothing.” Yesterday in San Francisco, federal judge Vaughn Walker gave the exact same weight to a California ballot measure that affirmed marriage as an institution between one man and one woman. Specifically Judge Walker overturned the California Marriage Protection Act after concluding, as a matter of fact, that the majority of Californians who voted to protect marriage were bigots who had no rational basis to define marriage on their own terms. Here are just some of the “facts” Judge Walker found:

•Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.

•The campaign to pass Proposition 8 relied on stereotypes to show that same-sex relationships are inferior to opposite-sex relationships.

•The Proposition 8 campaign relied on fears that children exposed to the concept of same-sex marriage may become gay or lesbian.

•The genetic relationship between a parent and a child is not related to a child’s adjustment outcomes.

•Children do not need to be raised by a male parent and a female parent to be well-adjusted.

How did Judge Walker arrive at these “facts”? By agreeing with everything the same-sex marriage proponents’ “experts” said while ruling that the traditional marriage witness was “unreliable” and “provided no credible evidence to support any of the claimed adverse effects proponents promised to demonstrate.” In so doing, Walker not only ignored the views of millions of Californians, but by basing his decision on the 14th Amendment, he also ignored the factual determinations of every single popular vote that has been held on the issue in the past two decades. According to Judge Walker’s reasoning every single one of these Americans is a bigot whose opinion on marriage has no place under Judge Walker’s Constitution.

From the beginning, it was clear that Judge Walker was more interested in making a political statement than upholding the rule of law. That is why after Judge Walker ruled that the trial could be broadcast live, the Supreme Court took the remarkable step of overturning his decision, writing in January: “Not only did [Judge Walker's court] ignore the federal statute that establishes the procedures by which its rules may be amended, its express purpose was to broadcast a high-profile trial that would include witness testimony about a contentious issue.”

Clearly that Supreme Court would have rightly viewed with great skepticism every sentence of Judge Walker’s spurious ruling. But that Court will not be deciding this case. Today the Senate will vote on whether to confirm President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. The same Elena Kagan who manipulated the law and facts to deny military recruiters equal access to Harvard law students because she did not personally approve of our military’s personnel policies regarding same-sex relationships.

The same Elena Kagan who was simply ”not sympathetic” to the claim of a petitioner that his 2nd amendment rights were violated, and was actively involved in President Clinton’s gun control agenda. The same Elena Kagan who advised President Clinton that it would be a “disaster” if the full medical truth was revealed about partial-birth abortion, endangering the gruesome procedure.

The facts are becoming quite clear. Kagan, Walker, Gibbs, and Obama all give the same weight to the will of the American people as expressed at the ballot box: “Nothing.”

Obama celebrates a $500,000-per-job Korea-owned, U.S.-subsidized plant that misallocates capital and will destroy jobs

Today, President Barack Obama will attend a groundbreaking ceremony in Holland, Mich., for a South Korean-owned factory that will make batteries for electric cars. The purpose of the trip is to highlight the “success” of the President’s $862 billion economic stimulus package which the White House claimed yesterday has already “saved or created” 3 million jobs. Specifically, this factory is being subsidized by $151 million of stimulus funds from an even larger $2 billion honey pot of stimulus money set aside for electric car battery investments. This one plant is expected to employ 300 workers. That works out to more than $500,000 per job created. $500,000 per job. This plant, in a nutshell, explains why the President’s stimulus plan has been an objective failure.

The American people know the President’s stimulus has failed. A new CBS poll out today shows that 74 percent of Americans believe the Obama stimulus either damaged the economy or had no effect. And a Washington Post poll released Tuesday again showed that a majority of Americans disapprove of President Obama’s handling of the economy. So how on earth can the White House claim they “saved or created” 3 million jobs? By rerunning the same economic models that predicted the stimulus would prevent unemployment from ever rising above 8%. That’s right. The White House’s 3 million jobs number is not based on any real world data.

So what does the actual objective real world data show? When the President first began selling his stimulus plan to the American people in November 2008, he promised it would create 2.5 million jobs. But as employment fell at the end of 2008, President-elect Obama increased his employment promise by one million to 3.5 millions jobs created. At the time, employment stood at about 135.1 million. Using these two data points, one can objectively establish the Obama jobs target for December 2010 at 138.6 million. Fast forward to July 2010 and the latest jobs report shows total U.S. employment at almost 130.5 million. This means President Obama’s stimulus has failed to meet its own standard for success by 7.4 million jobs.

Why has the President’s $862 billion stimulus failed by 7.4 million jobs? Because government spending does not stimulate economic growth. All it does is move resources away from one sector of the economy to another. And government has a horrible track record at efficiently allocating resources. All that really happens is that, on net, jobs get destroyed in the transfer process.

Heritage: advocates still mislead on Obamacare

The Heritage Foundation fact-checks Obamacare:

■Taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal immigrants: The House bill, as currently structured, does not offer clear guidelines to ensure that illegal immigrants cannot access taxpayer-funded health care benefits. An amendment to safeguard so only U.S. citizens could access federal health care benefits failed on a straight party-line vote.

■Government takeover of health care system: Whether it’s a public health insurance plan, government-run cartel (which is being dubbed a “co-op”), individual mandate or employer mandate, the provisions in the health bills being pushed by the Obama administration call for more government regulation and intrusion in the American health care system. Even the mainstream media is calling President Obama to task for his own “misinformation” — that if you like your health insurance you can keep it if a public plan is introduced in the private insurance market. The Lewin Group found an estimated 56 percent of Americans with employer-based coverage would lose their current insurance under the House bill.

■Funding abortions with taxpayer dollars: This concern has been raised in all three House committees and the Senate HELP committee. Based on the passage of an amendment to require at least one insurance plan to cover abortion each geographical region and the failure of several amendments to prohibit federal funds for abortion services, taxpayers could end up financing abortion.