In 1988, James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, testified before the Senate that based on computer models and temperature measurements he was "99 percent sure . . the [human caused] greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now."
The Clinton/Gore administration negotiated a treaty in December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, that would require the United States and most other industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to slow global warming. The U.S. committed to reducing its annual greenhouse gas emissions, mostly carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from fossil fuel use, by about 40 percent – to 7 percent below its 1990 level – between 2008 and 2012.
In 1996 Congress passed "mental health parity" legislation that required employers who had more than 50 employees and who included mental health coverage in their health insurance benefits to offer the same annual and lifetime benefits for mental health care as for standard health care such as surgery and physician visits. The law went into effect in 1998.
Social Security is not just a retirement system; it is social insurance that also provides disability income for individuals who are injured and cannot work, as well as a death benefit and survivors benefits for widows and widowers age 60 or older and children under age 18.
As the President and members of Congress consider expanding Medicare to include coverage of prescription drugs, Dr. Merrill Matthews, health care policy expert and vice president of domestic policy for the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, will visit Washington to discuss the crippling effect adding a new entitlement may have on the stability of the already over-burdened Medicare system.
As the President prepares to focus on a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour by 2002, policy which Congress is due to consider this year, Bruce Bartlett, economic expert and senior fellow for the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, warns Congress to reconsider.
"In heaven there is no beer, that's why we drink it here," the song goes. And now we know why. Beer is good for us. Just ask the researchers.
President Clinton has outlined a new prescription drug entitlement for people on Medicare, the federal health insurance program covering 39 million seniors and the disabled.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) has awarded NCPA Senior Analyst H. Sterling Burnett with its Gun Rights Defender of the Month Award for the month of May for his research on the benefits of defensive gun use in his recent study Suing Gun Manufacturers: Hazardous to Our Health.
Everyone in both our families seems to be happy with this union. That is everyone except our Uncle Sam. Instead of attending the event and showering us with a gift from a local department store registry or even sending us a card of congratulations and best wishes, he has decided to punish us. Sam must think that we are making a huge mistake because he has decided to pick our pockets just for tying the knot.
Just as Henry Ford's assembly line and the resulting practice of mass production revolutionized the United States' economy during the Industrial Age, companies like Texas' Dell Computers and Connecticut's Interactive Custom Clothes look to transform how America's economy works and is quantified in the Information Age.
Unwise government policies are largely responsible for the fact that the number of Americans without health insurance is 43 million and rising. Unwise government policies also are responsible for the fact that people who have health insurance are turning over an ever-larger share of their health care dollars to managed care bureaucracies that limit patient choices and sometimes give providers perverse incentives to deny care.
For some odd reason urban sprawl – which is really nothing more than suburban development outside central urban areas – has sparked a national debate over land use. Indeed, in a survey of 1,000 registered voters, the Competitive Enterprise Institute found that two-thirds of the respondents identified "sprawl" as a concern.
In the emotional aftermath of Littleton, the U.S. Senate decided to "act now, think later," in its Juvenile Accountability Act. It's an opportunity for the House of Representatives to take bragging rights as the more thoughtful, reflective body in Congress.
Dr. John C. Goodman, Ph.D, president of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, will deliver a "tax equity " message to the House Ways & Means Committee.
H. Sterling Burnett, Senior Policy Analyst for the National Center for Policy Analysis, will address the U.S. Conference of Mayors semi-annual meeting in New Orleans on Friday, June 11, to discuss the economic effects of the Kyoto Global Warming Accord on cities.
In 1996 Congress created a demonstration project permitting small employers and the self-employed to establish tax-free Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs). However, congressional lawmakers imposed strict limits on who can purchase MSAs and undermined their ability to work properly.
In the emotional aftermath of recent school shootings, the Clinton Administration and Congress want to "do something" about these extremely rare events, even though preventing them is beyond the power of the federal government. The U.S. Senate passed S. 254, the Juvenile Accountability Act, last month and the House will consider similar legislation in June. The 648-page Senate bill includes a range of provisions, among them new controls on firearms. However, none of the proposed rules would have prevented the massacre in Colorado or any other past school shooting, nor would they do anything to prevent future incidents. Here is a look at some of the provisions.
According to the Wall Street Journal, an indirect consequence of the horrible massacre at Littleton and other school shootings is that the gun market is booming. In addition, whenever the Congress wants to "do something" to stop these extremely rare events, the threat of new gun controls boosts gun sales.
Introduction The debate over Social Security reform has evolved significantly over the past few years – and especially the past few months. Almost everyone agrees that Social Security is in financial trouble. Both Republicans and Democrats have been looking for solutions and evaluating reform options, leading to a whole new vocabulary of reform.
"Everyone's heart breaks when one person decides to take the life of another," said Burnett. "Nonetheless, this entire trend of suing the industry for third party misuse is legally and intellectually suspect."
H. Sterling Burnett, a senior policy analyst with the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis, responded today to the decision of city officials in Camden, N.J. to sue more than 40 gun manufacturers, as well as gun dealers and firearms trade groups asking: "When will this dangerous lawsuit parade stop?"
A lot of my Republican friends are excited about the Medicare reform legislation being pushed so hard by Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) and Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.). I wish I could be as excited as they are, but politics and the past make me skeptical.
Things used to be made to order and made to fit. But they were labor-intensive and expensive. Mass production came along and made things more affordable, but at a cost – the cost of sameness, the cost of one-size-fits-all. Technology is beginning to let us have it both ways. And just as mass production was the hallmark of yesterday's Industrial Age, mass customization promises to dominate the modern stage of America's economic evolution-the Information Age.