CEI Today: Highway bill, labor law reform, Obama budget and more
Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 09:44AM 
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
In the News Today
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Press Releases
Entries in President Obama (508)
Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 09:44AM 
RNC - WMUR: Demers Nominated To Obama Administration Role
Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 09:37AM All – just wanted to make sure you caught this story from last night.
Demers Nominated To Obama Administration Role
WMUR
James Pindell
February 14, 2012
Jim Demers, arguably President Obama’s point person in New Hampshire, has been nominated to a part-time role within the Obama Administration.
On Friday, Demers, of Concord, was nominated to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. OPIC works to connect private businesses in the United States into emerging markets around the world.
Ahead of Obama’s first trip to New Hampshire in December 2006, Demers played the lead local role to organize his key visit. As the campaign began, Demers took on a leadership role.
His involvement in the campaign even became an issue in the final debate before the 2008 New Hampshire primary when Hillary Clinton signaled out that Demers is a New Hampshire lobbyist.
Appointments, Election 2012, President Obama, RNC AFC - President's Budget Proposal Fails to Fund D.C. Voucher Program
Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 07:57AM 
Despite reauthorization agreement, Obama aims to halt highly-successful Opportunity Scholarship Program
WASHINGTON, D.C. (February 13, 2012)—President Barack Obama’s newly-released federal budget would not provide funding to the highly-successful D.C. voucher program, despite an agreement signed by the president last year that reauthorized the program.
The American Federation —the nation’s voice for school choice—strongly decries the president’s failure to provide funding to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), which currently provides scholarships to more than 1,600 children from low-income families across the nation’s capital to attend the private schools of their parents’ choice.
Though the OSP is in little danger of going unfunded—Congress is charged with appropriating funds, and House Speaker John Boehner is an ardent defender of the program—the move by President Obama is effectively a reneging on the promise he made last April in a budget agreement he signed that helped avert a government shutdown.
“The president says he’s for education reform, but his actions continually aim to send low-income and minority students back to schools that are failing them academically, are unsafe, or are otherwise not meeting their needs,” said Kevin P. Chavous, a senior advisor to AFC and a former D.C. Councilman. “This latest hypocrisy is just the most recent instance in which the president has stood in the way of students who are improving test scores and graduating in higher numbers.”
Since barring new students from entering the program in 2009, Obama has made a number of statements expressing support for reform that have contradicted his actions regarding the OSP. In 2010, President Obama publicly stated that he would not send his daughters to D.C. public schools, despite actively working to bar low-income families from having that choice.
And while the president rightly talks about the nation’s severe dropout crisis—as he did in his State of the Union address last month—he’s unwilling to support the OSP, where students’ 91 percent graduation rate is 21 percentage points higher than those who applied but couldn’t get a scholarship. And according to the Institute of Education Sciences—the primary research arm of the U.S. Department of Education—the OSP has the second highest achievement impact of any of the programs it has studied so far.
Since the program’s inception in 2004, more than 10,000 families have applied to participate in the OSP. Four years of studies by Georgetown University and the University of Arkansas have shown overwhelming parental satisfaction, and 74 percent of D.C. residents polled a year ago supported reauthorization. More than 700 participants participated in a signup event for the program on Saturday, hosted by the D.C. Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation. The Trust received more than 520 applications at the event.
“By any reasonable measure, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program has been an overwhelming success,” Chavous said. “President Obama wouldn’t be where he is today without a private school scholarship. He needs to stop playing politics and do what’s right for kids.”
Read this release online here.
Daily Grind: Obama's tenuous truce with the Church
Monday, February 13, 2012 at 07:10PM 
Feb. 13, 2012
Obama's tenuous truce with the Church
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: "[W]e we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders… is unacceptable and must be corrected."
Is There Even One Patriot in the U.S. Senate?
Obama has torn through the separation of powers with his radical 'recess' appointments. What is the Senate going to do about it?
Indiana's Right to Work Law Could Boost State's Competitive Standing and Transform Midwest
Indiana's new 'right-to-work' could have a transformative impact on the entire Midwest region where organized labor has traditionally held considerable sway and influence.
Gasparino: A 'deadbeat' bailout
"We're teaching a generation of home-owners that there are no risks to their decisions because the government will bail them out."
US Rep Bass Statement on Release of President Obama's Budget
Monday, February 13, 2012 at 06:59PM 
WASHINGTON – Congressman Charles F. Bass (NH-02) issued the following statement today after President Obama released his budget plan for Fiscal Year 2013, which includes $47 trillion in government spending over the next decade and $1.9 trillion in new taxes.
Bass said:
“President Obama has once again put forth a budget that spends too much, taxes too much, and fails to address the long-term fiscal challenges facing our country. After three years of failed economic policies that have only grown our national debt and deficits, we have yet another presidential budget that will continue the uncertainty that is stalling our economic recovery and hurting the ability of businesses to hire. The facts do not lie: under President Obama’s watch, the national debt has increased by $6.4 trillion. We are now at a point where our national debt surpasses the total size of the economy and threatens our children’s and grandchildren’s futures. Now is the time for real leadership, not gimmicks and an unwillingness to offer solutions.
“The American people expect a responsible budget blueprint for our nation that cuts spending, reforms our tax code to make it simpler and fairer, stops borrowing trillions of dollars to pay for failed economic policies like the stimulus, and addresses the need to strengthen and preserve programs that protect the health and retirement security of seniors now and in the future.
“Sadly, the President’s budget fails to accomplish these goals. And the Senate Leadership has indicated it won’t even bother to do its job and produce a budget of its own this year. The people of New Hampshire, and indeed the nation, deserve better. I will continue to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure we have a budget that contains real solutions to help our economy grow and secure a future of opportunity for our children and grandchildren.”
Budget, Budget Deficits, NH CD-2, President Obama, Spending, Taxes, US Rep Charlie Bass