Category: Pete du Pont

Guess who's handing out your tax money to lobbying groups? The Environmental Protection Agency.

I've mentioned before the Washington post's Cindy Skruh-Zicki who covers the regulatory beat. She recently wrote about Congress's order, to the Office of Management and Budget, to figure out the cost of regulations.

In modern campaigns, there are a few things you come to expect. Republicans will always be accused of endangering Social Security and Medicare, and giving tax breaks to the rich. Democrats conversely will be described as tax and spend liberals who care more about butterflies than jobs, and who are in bed with trial lawyers and union bosses.

Pundits have offered a variety of reasons why John McCain is giving George W. Bush a stronger race than many (including me) predicted he would.

The world noted the passing recently of Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame, but I'd like to mention another name, Tom Landry, who died the same day.

Hi…looking at specific programs offered by leading presidential candidates has brought me to John McCain's tax plan. Like a lot of proposals this year, it has its ups and its downs, but the ups are interesting.

Here's a puzzler. A near majority of Britons polled recently said their greatest 20th century achievement is the National Health Service.

Before Bill Clinton spends billions on his prescription drug program, somebody mail him a new study from the NCPA.

Yesterday I talked about the huge new Bill Clinton budget, and the necessity for House Republicans to stand up and be counted. But will they oppose its spending increases?

We may be about to rid ourselves of the Social Security earnings penalty – and about time. Congress is supposed to consider eliminating it this year, and President Clinton has said he favors eliminating it. Opposition to the proposal has yet to surface. And the budgetary arguments against it, always based on suspicious economics, have been weakened by a surging economy.

Bill Clinton's last budget is worse than I thought.

Did you see the polls suggesting either Bush or McCain would beat either Gore or Bradley? Here's why that might be the case.

Even when you know you're right, it's nice to see it confirmed in the New York Times.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute recently came up with a list of the 50 best and worst non-fiction books of the 20th century.

When a Cleveland federal judge ruled against that city's school voucher program — a ruling now on appeal — he cited the first amendment's ban on government establishment of religion. Most of the schools involved are church-related. But Judge Solomon Oliver, Jr. doesn't know what he's talking about.

You have to hand it to Al Gore. When he stakes out a position, he sticks to it, no matter if the evidence shows he's completely wrong. And while he's wrong about a lot of things, he's really wrong about global warming.

Amazingly, even though enough money is being spent right now on health care for elderly Americans to provide prescription drug coverage for all of them, many of them aren't covered. The reason is the way Medicare is structured. And the answer is not a separate prescription drug entitlement, as proposed by some. Rather, the answer is reforming Medicare.

At President Clinton's instruction, the Department of Labor has published a proposed regulation allowing states to pay unemployment insurance benefits to parents who take time off for the birth or adoption of a child.

To hear Bill Clinton and Al Gore tell it, you'd think the economic boom is a democratic creation which began in January 1993.

The lead in the Wall Street Journal story gave me pause: according to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, Bill Clinton is the only post-war president to reduce real per capita spending. No kidding, its true.

The world is at a crossroads. One path takes us to brighter future, one where it is possible to feed the world's growing population without increasing pesticide use or converting more forests and meadows to croplands. The other path leads to lower food supplies, more illness and disease, and environmental degradation. Disturbingly, environmentalists are leading the charge to take the world down the second path.

I hope you'll pardon a bit of crowing today. The best health care bill in congress this session — and a bipartisan one at that — looks really smart…and it should, because it's pretty much ours.

I got a pained smile out of the recent story that the United States Government, having declared war on tobacco with one hand, is effectively promoting it with the other — by handing out subsidies to American Indian tribes so they can build smoke shops. The shops sell discounted cigarettes, making it easier, not harder, for people to smoke. It's as if, at the height of prohibition, the feds loaned trucks to rum runners and gave interest-free construction loans to speakeasies.

A couple of thoughts on Bill Clinton's final State of the Union Speech.

I was cheered to read that the fight to roll back regulations could be headed for a victory of sorts. Ok, it's over toilets, but you gotta start somewhere.