By Nathan Mehrens Stephanie Hicks, former president of the union representing employees at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, was recently arrested after being indicted on charges of bank fraud, forgery, and aggravated identity theft charges. The charges are related to her alleged embezzlement of $132,000 from the union, American […]

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By Rick Manning What a week. Bibi Netanyahu was elected in a landslide comeback and President Obama threw a temper tantrum after his Iran policy was rejected by the voters of Israel who have the most to lose if he is wrong. Obama’s law professor, Lawrence Tribe of Harvard […]

By Robert Romano The news broke on Friday that the controversial head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms resigned in the wake of his causing the Administration headaches they don’t need by issuing a regulation that eliminated an almost thirty-year exemption for a type of […]

By Rick Manning In the months ahead, there will be an ongoing debate in D.C. amongst Republican strategists about what to do about Obamacare. This debate will be driven by two known upcoming events, one is completely controlled by the Republican majorities in both Houses, and the […]

By Robert Romano Being first has its advantages. Since the advent of the Iowa caucuses in 1972 and the South Carolina primary in 1980, the “first in the nation” political contests, including the New Hampshire primary which dates back to 1916, have had an uncanny knack of declaring who the nominee for President will eventually […]

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By Robert Romano “Simply writing off the cost of repealing the sustainable growth rate is foolish.” That was from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget , noting that any permanent repeal of Medicare’s sustainable growth rate — a 1997 reform intended to put the failing program on a sustainable footing before its trust fund was exhausted — could add as much as $2.3 trillion to the unfunded liabilities of Medicare Part B over the next […]

By Robert Romano The sustainable growth rate is history. Once contained in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 as its centerpiece, under the provision the costs of Medicare were going to be contained, and the program would be saved from insolvency. That year, the Medicare trustees were predicting that the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund would be exhausted by 2001 . The government shutdowns […]

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